Wander More Work Less

We arrived into Auckland fine and whizzed through passport control and customs with our carry on bags. The domestic terminal though was in chaos. Flights being delayed and cancelled, people sent home, then recalled, Wellington particularly impacted due to wind and Blenheim by an engineering issue. We had to check our bigger bags for the smaller plane to home. They accepted the bags and we waited to see if we would get to fly home or not. Messages from Nelson suggest weather there is crap too, heavy rain and low cloud but not too windy. It's supposed to improve later in the day. 🤞 A few final thoughts on this trip. You could describe it as "the trip of a life time" which is true. But I don't want to rule out doing something even better in future. Just not the near future. My favourite part of this adventure was definitely the Greek Island hopping part. We loved Santorini and Naxos in particular, but also enjoyed the other islands as well.  Second place goes to the Pra...

It was an early start, but not too bad — a 6 a.m. alarm so we had time for a shower and final pack-up before breakfast at 6:30 a.m. We checked out and ordered our Grab car to the airport, which arrived very quickly. A really efficient service. The traffic was typical Hanoi, but it’s amazing how well it flows with their cautious merging, turning, and constant looking out to avoid hitting one another. Their city intersections don’t even have stop signs — just a slow-down-and-proceed-with-caution approach. There are a few traffic lights at major intersections, but not many. There were slow parts of the drive, but we never stopped in bumper-to-bumper traffic. It works well here, but would never work in New Zealand. We arrived at the airport before 9 a.m., having already checked in online via the Vietnam Airlines website. We’re heading to Hong Kong first, then on to Auckland with Air New Zealand. Fingers crossed it all goes smoothly. 🤞 It certainly pays not to read the news on the day of a...

These hotel breakfasts are a nice way to start the day — and hopefully, we’re walking most of it off each day. It's certainly a lot more calories than muesli or corn flakes! We’ll find out the impact when we check the bathroom scales in a few days’ time. This morning, we decided to combine a walk and a visit to the West Lake area with a Geocaching Event that a pair from the USA were hosting. It was another chaotic walk to get there. I’m not sure you could ever get desensitised to this environment! We saw some beautifully coloured houses next to a canal just before reaching the lake. Once at the lake, we zeroed in on the event coordinates, which were at a bridge beside a small pagoda. We were about ten minutes late for the 10 a.m. start, but there didn’t appear to be anyone there. Bit weird — even for Geocachers! There were two young guys sitting at a table inside the pagoda courtyard, so I approached them to see if they were the hosts. They didn’t speak any ...