Kia Ora

This 2nd visit to NZ was also pretty busy, catching up with frens (ex-colleagues) in Auckland and Christchurch.
Audrey and Cecilia were on a packaged tour with Chan Brothers, and coincided with my trip to Auckland.
We met up with YokeHar who cooked a sumptuous meal for us, and lil' Julia was a gracious host helping her mom entertaining the aunties. : ) Good to see this precocious babe so bubbly and chatty... given the things she had to go thru' these few years. She's a real fighter, her dad says. YokeHar & family stays near this happening place by the coast, they say it's Auckland's version of Holland Village. Nice. Erm, forgot the name already, but i know how to go there. :P

This time, managed to do a lil' bit of shopping on Queen Street. But nothg much to buy, as the stuff were pretty expensive. So, we bought those typical souvenirs like shot glass, fridge magnets, and chocolates. Dunno what's the diff, but my insurance agent, Aunty Lucy, insists that the cadbury bars from NZ taste creamier than the versions sold in S'pore. *shrugz*

This time, didn't stay at Crowne Plaza. So, no more spooky tales. :) We stayed in The Stamford Plaza. It's owned by a S'porean. Maybe we were too pampered by the 5-star hotel standard in Asian cities like BKK, HKG, MNL, HCMC, SG, etc... It doesn't look posh to me, and the breakfast was lousy... but the rates they charging per nite was more expensive than the 5-star hotels in BKK, and MNL.

We had dinner at this Sailing Club, where Jerry was a member. On weekends, you'll see sailboats in the waters off the city. Jerry actually sent his sailboat all the way from UK to Auckland! It's not called the "City of Sails" for nothing, y'know? The kiwis realli know how to make sure they have work-life balance.

Christchurch
Extended my stay over the weekend by flying to Christchurch to visit Jasmine. And also helped deliver some of her stuff which her hubby Aldrin passed to me. It happened to be one of those long weekend in NZ, hence many of the hotels were fully booked. I ended up paying quite alot for the Christchurch trip, and stayed at The Rydges. It's a damn expensive weekend trip. Hehe... Jasmine felt so bad, she was ultra nice to me the entire weekend. :)

It's a very ENGLISH town with this famous sprawling botanic garden. Very different from the cities like Auckland and Wellington. The houses are nicer here, and not many tall buildings. We took the gondola to this peak where we took photos of the beautiful view of the Christchurch area like the pix on the right. It's realli a nice change from the compact skyscrapers we have in S'pore.

We also spent sometime at the museums, and there was this flea market where there were artists hawking their wares. Nice works but not cheap also.

As there's really nothing much to do in Christchurch in the evening, we checked out the casino. I was requested to show my ID to prove that i was above 18. He almost flipped when i passed him my passport. :Pp As we made our way up the stairs i was grumbling, amazed that he was not able to guage my age, given that there are so many asians in NZ?! .. and Jasmine was sulking that how come he asked for my ID but not hers... :Pp
I was so 'suaku'... we were in this jackpot section, and i kept asking Jasmine "where're the jackpot machines??" Only to be told that nowadays, the jackpot machines don't come with the 'one-arm jack' version. :Pp The 1st few rounds were fun when we were winning... but it gets boring after awhile as it's not a thinking game. Anyhow, we still lost NZ$20+... bummer... I majored in Statistics, i should know better the odds of winning.