Auckland
and goodbye...
To all our readers...
It's the end of November 2007, and i've been working in Auckland NZ for the last month; and our journey's almost come to an end..
In an hour's time we'll be heading to Auckland airport. From there on flying to Hong Kong, whereupon we'll be spending 12 hours or so kicking our heels in TST. An then on to London.
We left September 2006, and now it's time to go home. In that time, we've had some crazy times. An now on to the most crazy time of all: Becky's pregnant.
Time to go home, and grow up :-}
Animals
The parrots, and
cockatoos, were something that Becky just couldn't get enough of.
Apparently they're endangered, but that seems unlikely if the number
of birds that we saw. Especially when we drove down Megalong Valley,
near Katoomba in the Blue Mountains. I'd hired a bike there, and
ridden along the top of the cliffs that wall the valley in (famous
for the Three Sisters rock formations). From the fire-trail I was
riding on I had some magnificent views - and could hear all the
squawks in the national park below (but not see much, other than the
occasional flash of white).
Water
Gum trees don't look very verdant at the best of times; rather than being a bright green like the trees I've gotten use to in Europe and Asia, these are a blueish grey. Of course now with this drought, they're even worse. Looking around from our stop, the predominant colours were the blackened trunks of the trees, the red soil, and the faded yellow of the grass (Perhaps not coincidentally the colours of the Aborigine flag that one often sees flying above the various craft shops on the tourist route).
G'day, and other clichés
"Ooh, look at the parrots". As Becky pointed to the pair, one of them obligingly pooped on the pavement. This was one of the first novelties on arriving in Australia for the first time: seeing a pair of wild parrots cheerfully going about their business, whilst perched on pole providing electricity to the Melburnian trams.
Back in the EU
(almost, Taman Negara)
August is high season for Malaysia, and European tourists. As a result, the facilities at the park where heaving. Having not had any sort of interaction with 'westerners' in months (except for Craig, my boss; and he's born in Penang anyway), we were quite overwhelmed by all these pink tourists. It was quite interesting to see them searching for a knife on the table when they were eating – I've almost forgotten that for most of Europe a knife and fork (rather than a fork and spoon) is the norm. Becky and I indulged in some nostalgic, hypocritical i confess, ranting about the foreigners (“Typical French; they're always generalising about other nationalities”); much to the bemusement of Amin and Suzi.