Visiting with the Kiwis

Our flight schedule allowed a less than 24 hour stop in Auckland on the way from Sydney to Tahiti. We took the opportunity and stopped for a night and day to get a little taste of the city.

Sky Tower

You really can't miss the Sky Tower in this city. For the ones looking for an adrenaline rush they offer to let you "sky jump" off the tower. It's a bit like a controlled bungee jump and looks pretty crazy when you see people come flying down at you.

The city was clean, had nice character and the people were very friendly.

We were in New Zealand for such a short time and just in the city, so we can hardly say we visited. But we've heard such great things, so we definitely plan to go back and explore the land properly some day.

G'day mate!

We spent only a few days in Sydney, but had a great time.

We stayed just one night in a hostel and then three with friends. Christi knows Audrey from work in Switzerland and we both met her husband Mario for the first time here. Both super nice and fun to hang out with. Thanks!!

We took it pretty easy while here and spent the time exploring the city and beaches around this area.

Darling Harbour.

We took a ferry boat across Sydney Harbour to Manly Beach.

Opera house.

Bondi Beach


Flying fox bats in the botanical garden.

Tokyo

Tokyo by night

Take away sushi shop in the neighbourhood

Ueno Park, a huge park with nice temples in the middle of Tokyo.

Ueno Park

Japanese packaging is great. So many things have cute caracters on it, like this chips bag with the comic on how they grain was growing.

At a sock shop in Shibuya

Tower for the Olympic flame of the 1964 games. First we thought it was a huge diving board tower.

Waiting in line for the freshest (and pretty cheap) sushi in town.

Here is some of the sushi we got there. OISHI!!! Very delicious!!!

Sake

Naoko and Davids little sunshine Riana

Oktoberfest in Tokyo

Fondue Party at David & Naoko's house. The pary was great - thanks guys!

Plastic dishes with plastic for desplay at a restaurant in China Town. You'll find these in front of many restuarants and they are very helpful if you are having difficulties identyfiying those Japanese characters.

Mt. Takao

Time to do some exercise after eating all that sushi last night. We decided to climb Mt. Takao, which is only 50 min outside of Tokyo, by train.

The way up was easy. Not too steep...well okay, we took the cable car for the first, steep part....and then there were lots of steps to climb up. Along the trail we passed some cute rock statues and the Yakuo-in Temple.

Find Semu

On the way down we chose a different trail. We had to hurry a bit to make it in time for the last semi-express train back to Tokyo. It had already been raining pretty hard by then. The steep, wooden steps were very slippery and part of the walking trail that was supposed to go nicely along the river actually turned into the river. But it was still really fun to be on this trail. Anyhow, we ended up running most of the 3km down the hill, jumping roots and puddles. We definitely got our exercise for the day.

And yes, caught our train JUST in time!

Hakone, Japan

Our friends David, Naoko, and their 2 year old daughter Riana took us to Hakone for the weekend. Hakone is about 2 hours from Tokyo and the area is known for it's volcanic hot springs. We stayed at a traditional Japanese Ryokan with it's own hot Onsen baths. The baths are built of rocks placed in a great setting overlooking green mountains and a river. To take a bath we got to wear Yukatas to walk to the bath. When putting the Yukata on make sure the left side is folded over the right side!




For breakfast and dinner, traditional Japanese food was served. Wow!!! Have a look at all the different dishes, each beautifully arranged like a piece of art.



The next day we went up to the natural steam geysers on top of the mountain. This spot is famous for boiled eggs in the hot sulfur bath. The sulfur makes the egg shell all black, but not too smelly on the inside. Eating an egg means extra 7 years added to your life.

Kuala Lumpur

We booked an Air Malaysia flight from Phuket to Tokyo and took the opportunity to have a stop over in Kuala Lumpur for a day.

There is a certain amount of free tickets available each day for visiting the Sky Bridge on the 41st floor of the Petronas Towers. So we spent a lot of time waiting in line for those tickets...but it's worth it. No more than about 50 visitors are allowed to go up there at once so you get a good view over the city.

Besides the sparkling clean and huge shopping malls in the Golden Triangle part of town KL has a busy China Town for cheap accommodation and Little India with great food. We're just loving the Naan, Vegetable Curry & Masalas.

Beaches...

Life at the beach is great so we spent about a month at different beaches in Thailand pretty much just hanging out doing nothing but eating, sleeping and watching the sun set over the ocean.

We were tired of long bus rides and booked a flight from Bangkok to Phuket, stayed one night on Phuket island at the beach and left for beautiful Kho Phi Phi island the next day. Kho Phi Phi is a bit touristy in the main town part. There are tons of restaurants, guest houses, tattoo places and bars & booths offering "Buckets" of liquor, soda and red bull. Luckily we came here during low season.

The beaches and surrounding islands of Kho Phi Phi are really beautiful. We took a day trip on a long tail boat visiting different white, sandy beaches and went snorkeling as well. Fun fun, if there are no jelly fish around... We had a great group of people on our boat which made the day even more fun and perfect - thanks guys!!

Below you'll see the view of the sun set look out spot & Tsunami rescue place on Kho Phi Phi. To get up there you gotta climb over a 1000 stairs.

Following our friends recommendation, we went back to the mainland to Krabi, and because Krabi is not at the beach we continued our journey right away to Railay Beach. Railay is the perfect place to be if you like remote and rustic places at the ocean.


After two weeks we had to leave Thailand because our 15 day visa ran out, so we went to the closest island in Malaysia for a few days. The island Palau Langkawi is all tax free and the beer there is super cheap. Perfect for a hot day at the beach. We weren't all lazy though and rented a scooter to check out the island and a waterfall.


Back in Thailand we went right back to Railay & Tonsai beach and stayed there for the rest of our time in South East Asia. It's a climbers paradise, the area is full of beautiful, perfect lime stone formations and some routs for rock climbing start right at the beach. Sweet! We went climbing for one day....oh boy was I out of shape....great fun though. The next day we recovered our sore muscles with a real Thai massage. They stretch and twist your whole body any way possible, and it actually felt very good.



We had a few different "pets" at the hotel, like packs of monkeys jumping on the roof, a rooster and it's hens waking us up every morning, a frog poking it's head out of our shower drainage, ...

The place above has the best Pad Thai, "Thai Spicy" Tom Yum Vegetable Soup and Banana Bread in Tonsai, mmm! There are super nice people working there, too : ) "Kap kum kaaa!"

It seems like we built up our tolerance for spicy food pretty well thanks to all the delicious "Thai spicy" curries with extra lots of curry past we ate. Oh yeah, we're still loving Thai food!!!