After 6 weeks working I (TOM) decided that was quite enough and I better have another holiday!! No, in truth the hotel I was working at ran out of bookings so I got the sack as there was nothing to do anymore. So I am now back in the city of Christchurch with internet access and phone single and people. People everywhere, it's quite a shock. I don't think I will ever live anywhere so remote and so lacking in civilized aspects of life that you take for granted again. Literally the only people I socialized with were the 4 other staff in my staff house (one being Matt). Thankfully, the other staff were a great bunch. No matter what direction I looked in I could only see 2 buildings at most both part of the hotel. Every morning I awoke to uninterrupted views down the valley for miles and miles. Apart from physically working you could sit and watch TV or walk somewhere. No pubs, no shopping, no starbucks, nothing. I even got so bored I took up running, miles of it, that and the lack of pubs has resulted in a previously unknown level of fitness! See how long that lasts now.

So pleased to have no more toilets to clean!! Not a job I would repeat in a hurry. Although the waiter element of the job was pretty cool. And spent the last day working out in the forest with the owner collecting firewood which consisted of me getting a course in 4x4 off road driving and use of a chainsaw to fell a tree. Only in NZ would a guy simply throw me his keys to his seriously cool pickup truck and tell me to go off to xyz without even asking if I can drive lol! I had much fun sliding round corners when he wasn't looking :)

Having been out here nearly 6 months long days cleaning caused my thoughts to wander to greener grass and home, after much deliberation the decision was made when one afternoon myself and two of the other staff found cheap tickets back to England via Thailand, thus before I knew it the tickets had been purchased and a plan was hatched.

So I now have only three weeks left in NZ flying to Bangkok on the 10th of April, we then have 4 weeks in Thailand before returning to England on the 11th of May. Although this means I will be home slightly sooner than I had planned it means I can travel Thailand with an awesome English couple (Jo and James) and see some really different culture. (NZ does not have any different culture on account of it being English!)

With my last 3 weeks in NZ I hope to find some fruit picking work to tide me over and live as cheap as possible with the 3 staff from the hotel. (matt is still working at the hotel, now the only member of staff!).

So having concluded another chapter of my travels I will board a coach tomorrow to Wanaka and the first page of a new chapter.

Until Thailand,

Tom