New Zealand Travels (March 12th, 2003)

"Up with the last lark in the aviary who decided to sleep in due to a heavy night the night before. Roughly translated, I was a lazy arsed bastard who didn't surface until 10am. I mooched off to an Internet Cafe to sort out my emails and upload my piccies. Once I'd done that I sorted out my gear, packed some lunch and got on the bus. However, I had left something behind.
On the bus I got chatting to Katie who was coming to the end of her big trip - she had about a month to go before heading back to the UK, in Brighton. I mainly sat and listened attentively as she described her travels down through Asia (home of bribery and corruption) and on to Australia. Here are some top tips:-
1) Make sure you are stamped out of a country and into the next one - especially on border crossings over bridges
2) If asked to pay a fine take the officials badge number and stand your ground
3) Carry hard currency (USD) about 500 bucks is enough
4) Avoid cheap tickets on ferries - get a cabin
5) Be very patient as disorgansiation rules

After settling in Mount Mauganui I decided that 30 days was not enough time to fully get to apreciate New Zealand. So I phoned up the airport and rearranged my ticket for 14 days laters. At no charge. Bloody excellent! (Well only a token NZD10 for admin)
Now astute readers may have noticed a reference to a certain missing item. Yes, I did it again. I obviously did not learn my lesson the first time and so had to learn it again. I left my glasses behind in the KiwiPacker YHA in Rotorua. Memories of French airports came flooding back. How stupid did I feel? Damn stupid. I tried phoning the YHA a couple of times in the hope that maybe someone would have handed them in, but no. Gone forever. The best of glasses I'd ever had were lost. Still, looking on the bright side, the quiz game that night was good fun. We came third, but beat the other Magic Bus lot - 3 cheers for the Freddy Mercury Fan Club (it's a kind of Magic - geddit?)"