It’s a bit tough to put into words, but there’s a certain feel of Southeast Asia. Getting off the plane in Bangkok, it’s pretty obvious you’re in Thailand – all the signs are in Thai squiggles (sorry), the weather is unbearably hot, and the streets are filled with hawkers selling street food, clothing, and assorted knick knacks.
But for me, the real feeling of Southeast Asia came when I saw the paved sidewalk tiles:
Customer support is a thankless task – you have to deal with all sorts of befuddled, confused, and angry customers. But occasionally, you have an experience so out of the world, that it must be recorded in the annuls of time, in the tales from customer support.
During my travels in New Zealand, I rented a campervan – a Jucy Cabana. It’s been a year since I last drove, and yet I now found myself driving thousands of kilometers, on the left side of the road. To make things easy, the rental folks (Jucy) provided a concierge phone number, which I can call with questions. Hilarity ensues.
Campervanning around New Zealand:
Stats & statistics:
– Days spent on the road: 38
– Kilometers traveled: 5226
– Speeding tickets accumulated: 1
Continue reading Travel Stories: Campervanning around New Zealand
After almost a month and a half of travel, we reached our final destination on the south island – the recently shaken (not stirred) city of Christchurch. A little over two years ago, a major earthquake hit the city, destroying much of the city center, and the city still has not fully recovered. Here, I took a couple of days to relax and recuperate, before flying out to my next destination – Bangkok!
During my travels of New Zealand, there was one place I knew I had to visit – the southwestern Fiordlands in the south island. Carved out of mountains by retreating glaciers centuries ago, the Fiordlands are supposedly the most beautiful but remote place in all of New Zealand. It is true that you can get tired of anything, even breathtakingly beautiful scenery, but I was still pretty damn impressed.
Warning: this post will be text-light and photo-heavy.
Queenstown in the south island is known to be the adrenaline rush capital of New Zealand – from here, you can go skydiving, bungee jumping, swinging over a gorge, or whitewater rafting.
Personally, I found the entire place to be over-hyped, over-priced, and under-impressive, but you can do all sorts of crazy things here – if you have the cash. For example, I’m not crazy enough to do this, but there are a variety of ways you can swing across a canyon – jumping off, tipping over backwards while sitting on a chair, riding a tricycle over the edge, etc:
I hate tourist towns, AKA, how I got my first speeding ticket:
While passing through Wanaka, a tourist town in the southern island, I got pulled over for a speeding ticket, for allegedly going 11 km (less than 7 miles) above the speed limit. In an area right after a 100 km limit transitioned to a 50 km limit. Going downhill.
The accompanying fine was $80; if I had been measured at going 1km / hour less, the fine would have been $20.
Check one off of the bucket list: climb Fox Glacier, on the Western edge of New Zealand’s South Island
So what exactly is a glacier? It’s this giant block of ice that’s slowly sliding down a mountain, carving out a path through the valley. The iceberg gets something like 10 meters of rain per year, which freezes and adds to the iceberg’s mass – as the iceberg grinds its way down the mountain, it continues to melt, so the iceberg shrinks and expands depending on rainfall and temperature.
