CATHY GIDDY IN NEW ZEALAND MARCH 2008.

Hello all from New Zealand!! :)

How is the family doing?

We are really starting to relax well into our holiday. Our flight to Hong Kong was long and because it was during the day we didn't get much sleep. We arrived at about 8am in Hong Kong and after customs etc found a bus that would take us into town. Lugging our bags, looking like real tourists with our map opened up and waving around over our heads as we tried to figure out where we were and how to get to our hotel we walked for a bit before we found our hotel. We stayed at the Charterhouse Hotel, a good hotel in Hong Kong standards. They let us check in early which was great! A quick shower and we head off into the streets of Hong Kong, Charterhouse is situated in Wan Chai on the border of Causeway Bay which is where there is quite a bit of activity and markets. We walked the full day around the areas exploring the streets and markets and so on. That evening it began to rain and there began our run back to the hotel. Completely drenched by the time we arrived back at the hotel we decided to get dry, rest for about an hour and then head out for the night. Back at the hotel we heated up our packet meal in our tea cups with the boiled water from the kettle. There wasnt any teaspoons in the room so we used drink stirers to eat with. Was too funny (but we were saving as much money as possible). WELL we put our heads down and we were completely out of it woke up with quite a start and it was dark outside. Lucky it wasn’t actually that late so we had a quick shower again just to wake ourselves up and we headed down to the concierge to book our tour for the next day. After we arranged our activities we went walking again.

Getting side tracked by a Crocs shop where we bought ourselves the most 'comfy' Crocs, or so we thought until we walked back to the hotel to put our stuff down and by the time I got home I had blisters on my feet and Saul was flinging them off with every step. Anyway, we discuss our shoe situation and decided that we can’t do with these shoes, so pulled on our takkies and started running back to the shop. Down the side alleys and across the busy roads we dashed and turned before panting and puffing we arrived back at the Croc shop just before they were closing the doors. Ha! We got new pairs of great fitting Crocs the second time round :)

After quite a long time we found a pub (we were looking to mingle with the locals and drink local beer). So we were ushered into this bar called 'Cars bar' well the name says it all. The building looked clean and quite upmarket from the outside and from the ground floor, up the lift and into this dingy dark little bar we were the only people there. The place STANK of cat pee. It was so bad I had to hold my breath for a while to get used to the smell. Anyway, all part of the experience I suppose. The staff was lovely though and they had this big screen for their Karaoke and had Chinese music playing with the music videos. First they offered for us to sing some songs but after some protest they understood that we weren’t going to be singing anything :) Anyway, we had our local beer during this time the bar filled up a bit so we weren’t the only ones there anymore. Later we left and headed back to the hotel.

The next morning wake up call at 7am. Complete Zombies we showered, packed our bags for check out (had to check out then because our tours would only end late) and rushed downstairs to meet our tour guide. A quite abrasive woman greeted us downstairs and rushed us onto her couch. Along with a single English girl, an Indian family of three us the two of us we headed off onto day tour of Hong Kong. First stop of Man Ho Temple ( I will send photos later), the up the steepest tramway in the world to Victoria Peak and down to a Jewellery factory (NO we DIDN’T buy a ring... for those of you that got any thoughts :)) and then onto a boat ride around the harbour before heading towards Repusle Bay and onto Stanleys Market. Back at the hotel we used their gym to shower and get dressed before lugging our bags down the streets again and off to the airport. Was a great stay, quick but we got to see and do a lot - will tell more in detail later.
Our terminal was 65, it took us 25minutes to get there and that was on the fast walk way belt as well. So on the plane we eyed out an empty four seater which we jumped for the first second we got and stretched out for a hopefully better night sleep.

We arrived in New Zealand at 12:30, again hardly any sleep and now really feeling the effects of sleep deprivation and the time differences. The days were short and the nights even shorter. Saul’s parents greeted us at the airport and we made our way to their house. After some coffee and catching up we showered and ended up going out for a walk on the beach and a cup of coffee near by. It was about 11:30pm when we arrived back home, Saul and I went to bed and slept solid! We only woke up at 2pm the next day!

Ok, well I’m not going to put our New Zealand trip in here yet, I will let you digest all my blurb here now and send you an update with what we did in the past few days probably tomorrow or the next day. We are really having a wonderful time and a great adventure. Tomorrow we head to Rotorua and Toupau (something like that) for the day. We are planning to go away for the night I think on Monday with his folks and then we will do our campervan trip for a bit.

I will keep you updated.

Please send this on to all the people that I have not copied into this email, it’s only because I don’t have their email addresses in my hotmail address book and I really don’t want to go into my work account at all costs to get the addresses.

Love you all!!

Cathy
30.03.2008.