Left Singapore on the 5th late at night and it was a grand send off that looks like this:
Ok la not too bad haha
Then 8 hours of transit at Sydney before we reached our first stop in NZ late on 6th night.
Only saving grace at the end of the eight hours wait was the dramatic sunset
And we didn't get our accommodation so it's another camping experience at airport for me
This garung group of weird hoodie peeps tried to stay up all night, my 2 hour nap would later save us from accidents when I had to drive with an apocalypse scene happening in the van...
And then the day broke! And this is the first scene of NZ we had. Woohoo! Finally, after 30 hours of waiting... Off we go to pick up our van!
And tada! This is us with our van on the very first day! And yea, that's the face of sleep deprivation. Anyway, this was also after we had some simple orientation of the car, headed for the supermarket, found a corner lot to awkwardly squeeze our van into, and went into the city center to explore the few attractions this major city offers
A random lake in the garden but loving this temperature and autumn feel~
Cardboard museum that qingying wanted to see! Quite interesting, the inside of the cone roof is made out of cardboards
Then grabbed some lunch at the Re:start mall with all the push carts selling food
This was not too bad
This Froyo made with real Strawberries is the bomb though! Sorry for the lousy backdrop haha
Made a round back to the Botanic Gardens where the iSite is located at this nice looking medical building. Also, many buildings here are still on rumbles from the recent earthquake few years back, so it's fortunate that these nice buildings survived!
Must show a tree since we go Botanic Gardens right haha so here's a weirdass one with the branches sweeping the floor... Issit to get water?
Many more of such views but this was the first!
And this was where I changed over from ah Zong to take on the evening night sky while the rest knocked out.
Camped in the wild at/near Arthur's Pass and even until today, I thought this was the best night, when we braved the cold (negative temperatures!), holding our coffee and tea cups in our hands for warmth, took out our field chair (one of the very rare few times), and sat down under the Milky Way... Nothing much beats this experience, really
PS: from the notes I kept, "not even the cruise trip in Finland beat this" but it's a close second or third I'm sure. Haha
