The post I never wanted to write.....fin!

That possibly has to be the quickest year in recorded history. Nic and I were still in disbelief that we were boarded a plane heading for ‘London’ a week ago, and we’re still shell shocked that our trip is over! It’s weird being back home where we have the convenience of toilets in close proximity, a comfortable bed, and we don’t wake up next to each other. Although the trip has been a lot of fun, to think back we have done some amazing stuff. Not many people can claim to have driven 30 000km around the entire length and breadth of Australia (without breaking down!), gone diving on the Great Barrier Reef, snowboarded in New Zealand and walked the Great Wall of China. Slightly better than your average weekend in Maidstone! Thanks so much for reading this blog, I hope you have enjoyed it as we have had a so much fun creating it and we’re very sad that it’s over! Southern hemisphere, you may now breathe a sigh of relief.

China

Not a word

5 days before home we flew from Auckland to Beijing, to finish off the trip in style by checking out China’s capital. Having been in English speaking environments since Christmas, we knew China would render conversing with the locals slightly tougher, but the ‘no I don’t want to buy your souvenir toot’ technique that we had perfected in Thailand, was sure to do us proud. Arriving late on a Wednesday night we decided to get a taxi to our hostel, given that we didn’t have a clue where it was and the address sounded more like the menu at my local China Chef takeaway. Showing the taxi driver the address of the hostel was met with blank looks and general dialogue that needed subtitling. Here is where we realise that it wasn’t written in Chinese and they couldn’t understand our fancy Western text. Like our wily Thai friends, the fact that he didn’t know the destination didn’t deter him and we got in the car and drove. He was a nice man though, and we chatted the whole journey. We may have both been speaking different languages but I felt we both knew the score. Next thing I know he interrupts our scintillating chat and phones a friend that could speak English, and I read out the address in my best Chinese. It was never going to work given that her English wasn’t that great, and I couldn’t pronounce ‘Changchunjie’. So we carry on and eventually we magically make it to the right area, stopping a few times bang in the middle of the road for us to get out and look, looking back now I have no idea why we bothered as there was no English written anywhere so we could have been standing right next to it and still not have a clue. Eventually we made it and found our hostel where we were 2 of 5 Westerners staying there!

Great Wall!

Taking a well earned break

They didn't mention this in the brochure!

Amazzzzzzzzzzing!

We booked a tour to the Great Wall of China which consisted of a 4 hour bus ride full of all the other ‘whiteys’ in Beijing, ending up at the Wall in one of the quieter parts with fewer tourists. First of all we got a cable car up to the wall and immediately you get this view of the wall that spans as far as the eye can see, it was awesome. The idea was to walk 10km to another part of the wall, Simitai, taking in all the views and climbing up all the dodgy parts of the wall! All of a sudden we were joined by some Mongolian women who were offering to take our photos and claiming that we were ‘beautiful lady’ and we knew that they weren’t exactly out to take in the views. The followed us like leeches for the first 10 minutes, helping us up and down the steps, and then we realised that they were trying to sell us crappy souvenirs that they produced from their bags. We said we weren’t interested and before you can say egg fried rice they had disappeared! The yanks didn’t quite get wise to them and they were pursued for a good hour to be offered an ‘I walked the great wall’ t shirt! The walk was really really tough, most bits were badly maintained and some bits had just…fallen away! We made it though and it was definitely worth it for the views that we got to see of the wall!

Sight seeing in Beijing!

Acrobatics show

Summer Palace

Forbidden City

Temple of Heaven

Bird's Nest!

As a city, Beijing offers a lot for tourists and we just about made it all in our 5 days there. First of all we went to Tian’anmen Square, which has a bit of a sad history, but was gateway to the Forbidden City. The Forbidden City is closed off from the rest of Beijing by huge walls, and was home to the emperors during the Ming and Qing dynasties. Compared to Oz and NZ, its nice to be somewhere with such a long history, dating back to the 13th and 14th century, the city was very impressive. We had an audio guide that meant we had some clue as to what building was what, and we spent the whole afternoon in there. The next day we mastered the subway and made it to the Bird’s Nest Olympic stadium and the water cube. We paid to get inside the stadium, alongside 50 million Chinese people, and had a look around. It was really awesome to see it so soon after the Olympics and the architecture was pretty cool. Then it was on to the Temple of Heaven, which is a tall temple that can be seen all round Beijing, and is where people used to prey for all sorts of things, but I’m pretty certain it was mostly for good harvests. Well, that’s what I could fathom from my Chinese translation! Finally we made it to the Summer Palace, which is a huge park which is home to a temple and a large lake. It was a beautiful place and we were there just as the sun was setting, watching people taking boat rides, or flying kites or just…hanging around! On our last night we went to a Chinese acrobatics show which was so awesome! There was jumping through hoops, spinning plates and general crazy feats of flexibility! It was a good way to end the trip.

Lost in translation

Fan no 1

Fan no 2

Fan nos 3 and 4

Given that Beijing has only just closed the doors on its Olympics, we thought that as Westerners we would be well catered for. It was becoming increasingly clear however, that no one spoke English here and the way of life was very different. I’m not just talking about the squat toilets. To be honest, the Chinese really have no need to concern themselves with the rest of the world, as walking down the street we were the only non ‘slitty eyed’ (as my PC Mum would say) for miles around, and so there would be no real need to learn another language. Add into the mix that their language consists of symbols that you can’t even hazard a guess at the meaning, and Nic and I had problems. It really is incredible being in a situation like that where you are just so unlike the rest of the population and everything is completely foreign to you.

Going out for food was fast becoming a real test. And we were getting hungry. We suddenly had a new found empathy for people who can’t read, struggling to even recognise a restaurant from a brothel as we couldn’t understand the signs outside. When we were successfully inside what we thought was a restaurant, we then had to mime that we wanted to see the menu, with the universal hand sign of opening and closing your hands. It worked a treat. But then the menu is all written in Chinese. How do you know if you’re ordering turtle or duck tongue? So we could only go to restaurants that had picture menus, the sign of someone who’s truly illiterate! Even then the choice of food was a bit dodgy, we were afraid of dog, but I would have gladly served up a plate of Fido rather the Alligator blood and sea cucumber that they had on offer. After making a ‘safe’ choice of meal we fancied a beer, which we asked for, and received a carton of milk. So Nic goes up to the bar and simply points at the beer she wants from the display cabinet. So she gets that beer! Yes, I mean that beer, as in the display copy. THEN we are faced with the trauma of learning how to use chopsticks, I seemed to learn faster than Nic though, who after battling with her egg fried rice gets offered a fork by one of the attentive waitresses! Eating out shouldn’t be this hard!

Being on the road for a year now we have made a name for ourselves. It was about time that someone had sat up and took notice. That ‘someone’, my friends, is the entire nation of China. It was difficult to walk down the street without being stared at by the locals, which I guess we put down to the fact that we looked different, and weren’t spitting in the street (common practice in China, nice). But it seemed much more than just a passing inquisitiveness, it was as if we were celebs. People actually stopped us and asked us to have our photos taken with them countless times. At one point a big group of girls got their cameras out and they all, one by one, wanted their photos with us! We’re like, ssssssssso big in China right now.

Waitomo black water rafting!

On 3, fake a smile!

Nic looks like a PRO!

Believe it or not there is a hole down there that we fit into!

Even in practice I work the pout

Can you believe it, everyone was English except Patrick

So far we have counted that we have done 51 of the 101 Must Dos for Kiwis, so in our last few days we decided to do the 52nd, the Waitomo caves. These caves are a series of underground caves that go on for quite some distance, and have a stream running through it, and full of amazing glowworms! We met up again with Patrick, our American friend from Napier, as he had done the trip before and wanted to do it again. We got kitted out in wetsuits and boots and helmets and even balaclavas, to finish off our sexy ensemble. The start of the morning involved an abseil to enter the caves, through the teeny tiniest of holes. So we had to make our way town the 37m rope to the bottom of the cave, which we mastered! Then we had a 'flying fox', which is where you're attached to a zip line and you travel from one side of the cave to the other, in complete dark, except for the ceiling being alight with glowworms. Then we each grabbed a rubber ring and had to jump in the freezing water, still sat on the ring, and we made our way upstream. We turned all our lights off and just floated back just taking in all the light of the glowworms, it was crazy! We got rid of the rings and then it was just walking, and sliding, and going on our hands and knees through caves, trying not to get swept away by the water! It was awesome, and even finished off by climbing up 2 waterfalls, which I now realise, is possible....especially when you have a guide to push your bum up the cave wall, for that extra much needed boost!

Return to Rotorua

Face mask anyone?!?!

Bubblin' mud baby!

At least this girl went to the trouble of being authentic and got her face tatooed

If you look carefully you can see the white guy, sorry, authentic Maori, on the right

The Haka, sans Japs

Just before they saw my potential and snagged me out of the crowd

After the Rihanna concert we had a week left until we leave NZ, so we decided to revisit one of the places that we thought we hadn't quite 'done'. The lucky town was Rotorua, the smelliest town in NZ as it has sulphur fumes coming from every nook and cranny as its rife with geothermal activity. It was also the scene of our previous 'Zorb' triumph. One of the things that we were still keen to do in NZ was 'something Maori'. Rotorua is the place to do that as they have cultural perfomances and 'hangi' (aka banquet) in various locations, whether it be in an actual Maori village or on stage in a hotel. Given funds, we opted for the hotel idea. It was slightly odd though when we turned up at the Heritage hotel, given that we were the only ones there in a room off about 200 seats. Never to worry though as after half an hour 50 million Japanese tourists turned up, clicking their cameras. When we were all seated the perfomance began, with 4 women and 4 men in loin cloths and such took to the stage and danced and waggled their tongues at us. The ladies showed us a 'poi' dance (twirling balls of twine on the end of a piece of string) and they needed willing participants to come on stage and demonstrate. I still can't figure out now how I got picked. Me and 3 Japs took to the stage and tried to copy our maori 'wahine', as Nic filmed on, trying to keep the camera still through all the laughter. The highlight has to be when they had 4 Japanese guys on stage perfoming the Haka, complete with tongues out and enthusiatic slapping of thighs. I think the whole thing would have been a lot better if it lasted longer than half an hour, all the performers weren't laughing, and one of the guys wasn't white. Nevertheless, after our half hour treat we got a three course meal 'traditionally prepared' of course, and we most definitely had our fill, given that we were the last ones left in there.

The next day we had free entry to Hell's Gate thermal reserve, which was a Maori owned area the had plenty of steaming sulphur pools and bubbling mud! Some of the temperatures were over 200 degrees, steamy! We disobeyed some of the rules and we stole some mud, given that they were packaging it up in their gift shop and selling it as face masks for $10, woops!