The next day, we grabbed a cab to the airport to pick up our flight to Sarawak. Sarawak occupies the north west flank of the island of Borneo and our first stop was Kuching. Kuching is the capital of Sarawak and relatively small and quiet in comparison to KL. You can cross the road easily here! We were picked up from the airport by the hotel shuttle and the hotel was great. Cheap but with all mod cons and very comfortable beds! It is right in the city so close to...

So, we travelled for about 18 hours and I have to say the journey was not fun. Auckland to Melbourne was ok but the 9 hour trip to Singapore was not for me....it seemed to bump ALL the time and made me feel a little sick for most of the journey :o( I did however manage to watch 'Julia/Julie' and 'Slumdog Millionaire' and get a little bit of sleep before we landed in Singapore and then had an hour before getting back on yet another plane and heading to Kuala Lump...

So, the time had finally come for paradise and a small island called Raratonga in The Cook Islands, South Pacific and about 3.5 hours flight from New Zealand. The flight was really good on Air New Zealand - their entertainment system is great with so many films and so much music to listen to...as well as ice creams for dessert, the time flew by (get it?)...and we arrived to a blast of super hot air and a man called Jake playing the ukelele to say Kia Orana (welco...

The drive to Queenstown was lovely. Through mountains and by the side of beautiful lakes, and we stopped a long the Haast Pass to see the Blue Lakes. These are super clear glacier-fed deep azure blue pools. From here, we headed to Wanaka and had a lovely mooch around town, doing some shopping, eating yummy ice creams and sitting by the lake in the lovely sunshine. From here we made the longish journey, arriving in Queenstown in the early evening. We stayed in a l...

So after a stressful morning, Max managed to get his interislander ferry (3.5 hr crossing), $200 less in his pocket for the flipping car towing, and I got the 12 seater Soundsair flight (19 mins) which was actually not too bad, but the plane was like a ping pong ball in the air as we were landing at Picton airport (well a strip of land in between 2 farmhouses and some startled sheep) so I was glad when the wheels were on the ground. I hung around the info centre ...