KIA ORA!

I'm now in Downtown Auckland, chilling in the hostel. After my dismal flight(s) to get here I stayed in a hotel (which I am now trying to claim back from Virgin Australia because it was their fault) Then on Wednesday afternoon I went to stay with cousin Tim and Maree, plus their two daughters. It was good to catch up with the New Zealand chapter of my family and I'll no doubt be seeing them again soon.

Yesterday I checked in to the Fat Camel after a meal with Tim, Maree and the kids before being dropped off at the hostel, which is between 'Mermaids' the strip club and 'Lipstick' the massage parlour (where the Thai ladies look old, I mean, really old). The hostel itself is a bit scummy and there is a weird smell coming from our floor's common room/kitchen. Apart from that it's OK. Auckland itself is a lot cheaper than the Australian cities I've visited, though the exchange rate of 0.50p to the NZD means working out how much I'm paying is easy and it isn't that bad (got a Chinese dinner for £5 and it was pretty good)
 
The hostel does have a bar downstairs, which is kind of cool. Thursday night is the 'bar crawl' and I went along to get to know people/learn a few bars. It was OK although the bars all seemed remarkably similar (I would later find out that Auckland doesn't have any proper clubs, just bars playing the same songs as the other bars)

Here's a few pictures, the usual kind of pictures from nights out.

I met lots of people, although few of them were from my hostel, I've been thinking I might look for an apartment anyway, but that's for another day. One of the ladies I did meet (Kimi) was, shall we say 'keen' to go back to my hostel... so we did. Don't worry, I'm not going to go all '50 Shades of Grey' on you, but I will make a joke about eating 'Japanese' later on.

Next morning, after some more loving (as soon as the room was empty, obviously, it's just common courtesy), we went our separate ways because we both had stuff to do, although my stuff was walking around taking pictures.

The following picture was too gory for this blog

The Harbour Bridge

Later on Kimi and I met up for a Chinese (because I'd eaten sushi the night before (BAM!)) and then went to a couple of bars and just chilled out.

Well, it was pretty chilled out until the Hari Krishna's appeared!

HARI HARI KRISHNAS!

 

We ended up in the Viaduct area and sat by the fire at Danny Doolans (the place where I had a meal with Tim and Maree the day before) listening to some acoustic duo playing everything from Floyd to The Jam, then a couple more pictures...

Pictured: A couple more pictures

...before heading back to my hostel (because Kimi's is a 14 bed dorm that only gets cleaned once a week) to lay around and watch South Park. So not a bad start to my stay in New Zealand and next weekend I should be starting the weird farm job that I'm not too sure about and is probably a drug farm or something.

Today I will sign up to Adecco, the job agency, because I've been told they're actually quite good (unlike those ones in Sydney that want you to pay upfront), I'll also update the blog (done) and then... hmmm... Not sure, but if I do anything else then I'll be sure to write it on this blog.

Here's another picture of the Sky Tower