Australia/New Zealand 01/31/2018

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The Itinerary:
Sydney Feb 1st - Feb 8th
Surfing - https://letsgosurfing.com.au/
Vivid Sydney (Darling harbour)
Eagle Rock Adventures
Light house - http://www.nationalparks.nsw.gov.au/...
Sydney Opera House
Taronga Zoo
CLOVELLY Bowling & Recreation Club - Lawn bowling

Feb 6th - Feb7th

Cairns
http://cairnsdiveadventures.com.au/...
Ferry from cairns to fitzroy for great barrier reef snorkeling:
Cairns- fitzroy - 8a, 11a, 1:30p
Fitzroy - cairns - 930a 12:15p and 5p.

Auckland - Feb 8th - Feb 13th
zip line
hike
sky diving.
Kitekite Falls
Cornwall Park
awol canyoning adventures
http://www.hobbitontours.com/en/our...
Silo park
T2 On queens street, free tea tasing.
Ferry to Devonport

Food need to try in Australia:

The Lot burger
Tim Tams - From grocery store
Meat pies
Sausage rolls
Prawns
Barramundi
Veggemite - grocery store, paste to try on bread.
Oporto
McDonalds
Kangaroo sausage - grocery store
Schweppes Agrum Soda - Grocery store

Food need to try in New Zealand:
Hangi
Kina - sea urchin
Kiwi burger
Jaffas - super market
L&P Soda - super market
whitebait fritters
Manuka
Mcdonalds
Feijoa - super market
Pavlova
Kiwi - super market
Marmite - super market

My Check-ins:
Leo Mass added 3 new photos — with Eric Mend and 2 others in Burwood, New South Wales, Australia.

February 1 at 6:55pm

Hello from the world down unda!

Leo Mass added 3 new photos — eating lunch with Eric Mend at McDonald's Burwood Westfield.

February 1 at 9:53pm · Burwood, NSW, Australia ·

What you know about the chicken Big Mac, bbq meat lover and frozen coke?

Leo Mass added 2 new photos — with Eric Mend and 2 others at Burwood Park.

February 1 at 11:15pm · Burwood, NSW, Australia ·

Leo Mass is eating Australian with Eric Mend and 2 others at The Picnic Burwood.
February 2 at 1:12am · Burwood, NSW, Australia ·
This is how we Australians eat mate.

Leo Mass added 3 new photos — with Eric Mend and 2 others at Circular Quay ferry wharf.
February 2 at 5:54pm · Sydney, NSW, Australia ·
On our way to the zoo

Leo Mass added 5 new photos — with Eric Mend and 2 others at Taronga Zoo Sydney.
February 2 at 9:47pm · Sydney, NSW, Australia ·
A monkey, a meerkat, a roo oh my!

Leo Mass is eating prawns with Eric Mend and 2 others at Buckley's.
February 2 at 11:20pm · Sydney, NSW, Australia ·
An Aussi pit stop

Leo Mass added 3 new photos — with Eric Mend and 2 others at Sydney Opera House.
February 3 at 12:40am · Sydney, NSW, Australia ·

Leo Mass is with Eric Mend and 2 others at Paddy's Markets Haymarket.
February 3 at 6:15pm · Sydney, NSW, Australia ·
The famous Paddy's Market. Thanks Tania Lewis

Leo Mass added 4 new photos — with Eric Mend and 2 others at Hornby Lighthouse.
February 3 at 11:06pm · Watsons Bay, NSW, Australia ·

Leo Mass added 3 new photos — with Eric Mend and 2 others at Luna Park Sydney

February 4 at 2:09am · Sydney, NSW, Australia ·

Leo Mass is drinking Hamburguer Gourmet with Eric Mend and 2 others at Batch burger and espresso.

February 4 at 3:39am · Kirribilli, NSW, Australia ·

California burger comes with water crest?

Leo Mass added 4 new photos — with Eric Mend and 2 others at Sydney Harbour Bridge.
February 4 at 3:48am · Sydney, NSW, Australia ·

Leo Mass is with Eric Mend and 2 others at Circular Quay ferry wharf.
February 4 at 4:34am · Sydney, NSW, Australia ·
Eric Mend added 11 new photos — with Aura Castro and Leo Massat Luna Park Sydney.
February 4 at 11:57am · Sydney, NSW, Australia ·
Luna Park Sydney. Where nightmares are made.

Leo Mass is with Eric Mend at Chambers Fine Coffee Burwood.

February 4 at 6:20pm · Burwood, NSW, Australia ·
Sausage rolls for breakfast

Leo Mass added 2 new photos — with Eric Mend and 2 others at Bondi Beach, Sydney.
February 4 at 10:48pm · Bondi, NSW, Australia ·
Everybody goes surfiiinnggg. Surfing.... Australia

Leo Mass added a photo and a video — with Aura Castro and Jordan Loop in Cairns, Queensland, Australia.
February 6 at 12:13am ·
On our way to see the great barrier reef.

Leo Mass added 4 new photos — with Eric Mend and 2 others in Fitzroy Island.
February 6 at 1:16am ·
Adventure

Leo Mass is eating pizza with Eric Mend and 2 others at Lush Pizza.
February 6 at 1:51am · Cairns City, QLD, Australia ·
Aussie pizza which contains egg.

Leo Mass added 2 new photos — with Eric Mend and 2 others at Glenroy Bowls Club.
February 7 at 12:27am · Glenroy, VIC, Australia ·
Lawn bowling mate.

Leo Mass added 2 new photos — eating B-DAY celebration with Eric Mend and 2 others.
February 7 at 12:30am ·
Been waiting to try for a while and it's not that good

Leo Mass added 2 new photos — with Eric Mend and 2
others at Pop Up Comedy.
February 11 at 2:35am · Auckland, New Zealand ·
Hhahaahaha

Leo Mass is with Eric Mend and 2 others at Skydive Auckland.
February 11 at 7:50pm · Auckland, New Zealand ·
If your friends jump out of a perfectly good plane. Would you?

Leo Mass added 2 new photos — feeling pumped with Eric Mend at ZORB Rotorua.
February 11 at 8:21pm · Rotorua, New Zealand ·
Couldn't stop laughing
Leo Mass is

drinking Fresh with Eric Mend and 2 others at Fat Dog Cafe and Bar.
February 11 at 8:35pm · Rotorua, New Zealand ·
I have to say. American food is better.

Music: Rowland S. Howard - The Passenger

Getting Ready for the Trip
My friend Aura, who you may remember from the time I went to Texas, turned 30 and wanted to go to Australia. She wanted to see the great barrier reef, and New Zealand for a few years now. We promised her that when she turns 30 we will go with her and here we are, Happy Birthday Aura! She asked me to plan everything and plan everything I did months in advance. In October I got the plane tickets, I got the Air BnB, I got the itinerary all set. As always ready for the trip months in advance. Eric was apart of it, you may remember him from the last China trip. Aura also was going to bring her new friend Jordan.

Of course as fate has it. I get an email a few weeks before the trip that Air BnB for Sydney has been cancelled because of some construction or something. Air BnB apologizes and gives us a little bit more money as credit if we decide to get another place. Of course all the good cheap spots are taken that are nearest to the city so even with the credit we end up paying more and living further away from the city. Sucks, but oh well everything is all set and ready! Not a week passes and I get another email stating AirBnB for New Zealand cancelled. At this point I'm really upset. My first time using AirBnB and almost all the places I booked have cancelled me. The only one that hasn't cancelled me was a place in Cairns where we are only going to stay one night anyway and even there, I got an email stating that the price was supposed to be higher because it was per person not for the whole house. I had to meet him halfway, but still it was about $30/night total which was awesome. Whatever, I booked yet another place in Auckland also far away and a bit more expensive, but what can i do?

01/31/2018 Wednesday
My mom drives me to the flyaway bus so I can meet up with Eric and take it to the LAX airport. As we drive to toward the unloading area I take out my luggage and tell my Mom Ludmila goodbye. My mom turns around and says, "Oh no, I'm going to park and see you off." I tell her it's not necessary but whatever. I get to the bus terminal and meet up with Eric. We get the roundtrip bus tickets and see my mom coming up to us and exchange greetings. I tell her that she doesn't have to stay, we will be on the next bus. As I'm saying this, I check the time and the next bus won't be here until a half hour! Usually it's every 15 minutes. I calculate it in my head and don't want another Guam experience. "You know what mom? Actually can you please drive us to the airport?" She says yes and we drive to the airport so we won't be late. Thanks mom.

We made it just in time. Aura and her friend Jordan had a connecting flight at LAX from Austin. We were there at the same time but we couldn't meet because they were taking American Airlines and we took Quantas Air. Eric and I booked at different times so we were going to have different seats but I remembered my girlfriend Yelena telling me that we should check in and upon checking in our bags to ask the person behind the desk to put us into the seats together. I did and it worked! We sat right next to each other. Thanks Yelena.

Quantas air was pretty good except once again the controler was attached to the seat so that if someone next to you puts their arm on the arm rest they may hit something. This time, Eric was sitting there so I can actually yell at him if he touches something rather than stay quiet when a stranger does it like last time. The controller is a bit better than last time because you can take it out of the seat and if you flip it horizontally, it looks like a super nintendo controllers with the L and R buttons on top included and you can play games. The game I played was a centipede type game and when there were a lot of enemies on the screen it did that old school thing where it would slow down because too many things were going on and the system couldn't handle the FPS rate. Needless to say yours truly beat the game with the highest score.

After my victory, Eric and I watched a famous Australian film called Crocodile Dundee and oh man was it ever so boring. Why is this film so famous? There was a part 2 on the plane, but I decided to skip it. If anyone saw that and have an opinion on it, let me know if I should watch it. Everything was fine with Quantas air, just wish they provided plugs for chargers or at least a USB port. Also it would be nice if there was free internet on the flight like I had in previous flights.

02/02/2018 Friday
We land in Sydney, Australia. We see a machine that says epassports here. I wasn't sure if my passport qualified but I went up to it anyway. To mine and Erics surprise all U.S passports were qualified to go through an epassport machine so you can go through customs faster, sweet! We completed everything and met up with Aura and Jordan. We get our luggage and through customs and a dog came and detected something in my luggage. "Do you have any fruit or anything like that in your bag sir?" Customs asked me, "No I replied." They looked at the dog and the dog again signals that I had something in my backpack. They look at the dog with a stearn look as if he did something wrong and took a look in my backpack. Turns out that I had mandarines that I had forgotten about and the dog was correct in detecting it. I completely forgot I packed a snack before leaving. I even ate at the LAX airport, but I'm so used to bringing food with me whenever I travel, I didn't even think of what they were asking. "We will let you go this time, but don't try this if you're going to New Zealand, they will charge you a fine." They tell me. I apologize and they ask me to stand again with the fruit in my backpack so the dog can detect it again and they can tell him he's a good boy.

We get outside the airport and ah my goold ol friend humidity is back. Wasn't too bad this time. We went to the bus stop which we were supposed to take to get to the city of Burwood. We get in and Jordan gets on his phone to type in the address so we know which stop to get off. I used to have sprint and switched to Metro PCS. Eric has Sprint and Aura has T-mobile. The only service that worked there was Sprint! I swear it works everywhere else but the United States, specifically Los Angeles. After a few stops Jordan sees that we are about 1.5 miles away and asks if we should get off. I look at him dumbfoundedly because I mapped this back home and it should take at least 45 minutes to get to our stop. I ask the bus driver and he said yes, it will be the last bus stop and that's where you should be getting off. So we stay, and Jordan looks at his phone, 2 miles away... 3 miles away. Everyone is looking at me to see if we should get off and just go back, "No." I say stubbornly. "We stick with the plan and not get off until we get to the last bus stop." 5 miles away... 6 miles away. I know I've done the research and I know that it has to be at least 45 munte bus ride... Right? Maybe the bus will go back around and we will return to where we are supposed to be. "Last stop." The bus driver shouts. We ended up at around the 8 mile mark away. "It can't be right." I shout as we walk out of the bus. Everyone looks at me, "Why can't it be right? Why can't you be wrong about this?" They ask already pretty annoyed. "Because I've mapped this out and I know my memory isn't that good but in this case I specifically remember! Let me see your phone Jordan." I take his phone and look at exactly what he put. Street address seems to be correct, postal code is right. Wait a minute the city is wrong! I make him retype the address exactly as I showed it to him because it's an Iphone and I can't use Iphones. Boom, we are 0.4 miles away. I was right, but unlike many people I know, I didn't gloat about it. I'm not a gloater yet it was still an awkward walk to our place. We made it to the outside of the Airbnb. Now, how do we get inside the building. I check my previous emails that were saved on my phone because no connection and didn't see any information on it. Not even a unit number. We had no idea how to contact the host to let her know we are here.

There is an Anytime Fitness nearby and I go inside to ask if I can use their phone. I try the number listed and I still have yet to figure out how to dial an outside of the country number from outside of the US. I sometimes have to ignore the first few number sometimes not, sometimes just leave out the 1 number sometimes not. I even ask the people there to dial it and they don't know where to begin. It's amazing, Germany all over agiain. If someone from another country comes to me and gives me a phone number to dial inside the US, I would count the last 10 numbers and dial it, it's as easy as that! Apparently you can't do that in other countries, it becomes a calculus problem to use a phone. Some how some way my phone gets a little bit of service and I write that we are downstairs by email. Which is weird because Metro PCS told me that it doesn't work at all internationally. She comes to get us and takes us to the unit. This was my first time ever renting from Airbnb so note to self, make sure to get all the details including the unit numbers after booking in another country.

We get inside the unit and it's a pretty good unit that has a few rooms but we were only allowed in one that had 2 bunk beds. I had the top and Eric had the bottom one.

We get situated and decide to go get groceries. There was a grocery store conviniently located right across the street from our place. We go and get some good food. Jordan is a cook professionally so we made the poor guy cook for us, which he didn't complain.

Eric and I went to search for a converter and to eat at a Mcdonalds. We found a westfield mall at a walking distance and went there. We had a chicken big mac, bbq meat lover, and a frozen coke. Everything was alright, the beef big mac is much better in the states and I still think that Cancuns burger was the best.

We came back home and after just relaxing Jordan had made us Kangaroo steak for dinner. We ate it and it tasted like beef. Wasn't smelly like duck and the consistensy was great. We got full and Eric and I decided to try the Veggie Mite. A paste made of yeast that every Australian knows about and every Australian that we spoke with loved it. So we smeared some on bread, we cheersed, and began to bite. We looked at each other with scrunged faces and continued to chew slowly with disgusgt. Can't spit it out now, gotta take it all in. This was the most pungent, yeasty, like so many flavors in one thing that we could barely stomach it. We didn't like it. But we had a full jar left so I decided to eat a little bit by little with everything until I acquired the taste. Spoiler alert, I never acquired the taste.

02/03/2018 Saturday
We decide to pack some of our food and go to a nearby park to explore and have a picnic.

It was a nice park, and here was the first animal that we had never seen before. Birds that only live in Australia.

It's at this point that I finally feel like I'm in a different country. The birds looked and sounded much different from the birds that I was used to. Also I finally took in how people were driving on the other side of the road. Everytime we crossed the street we almost got hit because we were looking to the right and as you're walking then looking left. This was a hard habbit to break because obviously you should be looking left then right if people are driving on the other side of the street.

We leave the park and get to a ferry so we can go to the Taronga zoo. I wanted to see kangaroos. The zoo was pretty cool. It had one of those gondola lifts that takes you to the entrance to the zoo and you can oversee part of it.

We get to the entrance and see all kinds of creatures. The zoo was huge! My favorite part of it was seeing a pelican. It looked unreal, like someone drew a 2d picture. I swear if it wasn't moving, i would think it's just a drawing.

And yes we got to see kangaroos and koalas. They actually had a section of the zoo where they can roam around and nothing separated you from them, so you can just cross paths with each other. They were hopping all over the place, I'm thinking since customers weren't allowed to feed them or anything, the kangaroos just minded their own business and never came up to any of us.

We left the zoo and went out to eat at a restaurant called Buckley's on the promenade. I had prawns. Online when I was reading on what to do in Australia, someone had commented to not say shrimp in Australia, they are called prawns! So I ate prawns. It was ok, nothing special.

After we were nice and full we kept walking to get to the Opera House. It was really nice as expected. We looked at it from all sides and even went to the souvenier shop in the inside.

While we went outside it was already turning dark and we saw birds flying all over us. Jordan exclaimed that, "Those are bats." Nah we all said, "Bats don't fly like that and they're so big!" Turns out they were actually big bats. We couldn't get any good pictures of the bats, but here is how it looked like.

Actually I did find a photo of a bat I took

Someone told us that there would be a light show coming and we had asked where was the best location to see it from, and they told us from the Harbour Bridge. "How do we get there?" I ask, "Oh you just walk some meters and then go through the rocks and you'll be on the bridge." He said a specific number for meters, but since I have no idea how to measure with meters I assumed it was closeby. We started walking but couldn't find any rocks to climb on or an entrance to get to the bridge, but nearby it was a place to sit on the pier and boom fireworks right over the Opera House. It was beautiful.

02/04/2018 Sunday

My friend Tanya has suggested that when we visit Australia we go to Paddy's market for souveniers. So we took the train and metro to Paddy's market. A huge swap meet type place where you can get things for cheap. We were browsing and buying things for quite a while.

Afterwards we got hungry and found out that there was whole mall upstairs. We went in, I brought sandwiches that we can eat so we ate those at the food court.

Next stop was supposed to be Lawn Bowling so we waited for the bus to get there, but the one we needed didn't stop for us and every other bus had come except for the one we were waiting for. After about an hour of waiting we didn't know what was going on, so we ended up using Eric's phone to call an Uber. At this point we all notice that a shared Uber ride with the four of us is actually the same or sometimes cheaper than taking the bus! The bus was always around $3/person whereas the Uber was usually $7-$10! I've never traveled around the world with this many people so I've never realized this myself. Another traveling lesson learned.

We get to the beach of the light house and have to hike up to see the actual light house. We begin hiking and walking on a bridge and on the top of it we look down and see a nude beach. All guys were there walking around showing everything off. You can tell who the tourists on this bridge were because they had a smirk on their faces including ours. We get to the light house and enjoy the scenery... Erm the scenery of nature not the...

Next, when we were on the ferry on the way to the zoo, I noticed that there was some sort of carnival park on the way. So we decided to go there, I asked the ferry people if it was still open, "Yes, Luna Park is definitely still open, closes at night." We got the tickets and went to Luna Park. An eerie vibe came over us when we got there, probably because the place looked like this:

We were walking around but nothing was moving. No rides were functioning at all and only a few people like us were walking around, which made it even more creepy. The lady told me they were open, so what is happening? Turns out that there was an Indian wedding. The wife in a nice red wedding dress and husband wearing a turban were walking around. I could be wrong, but it seems like they closed the whole carnival for their wedding which was held inside one of the buildings. Soon after we saw the newly weds, we got kicked out from the staff.

We walked out and decided to walk the Harbour Bridge. To get up there, we wanted to take a city bike which we had seen the first time at the light house. They are yellow bikes, that people can ride and hop off anywhere they'd like, no need to park them at any rails like they have here in Los Angeles. Just ride and leave it on the ground whenever you're done. So we made sure to get the app on the phone because you have to scan the barcode with the phone to use the bikes. This was the time to do the scan so we went to check it out. However, it turns out that every phone needed the app to rent each bike. Since our non-Sprint phones didn't work, we couldn't get them so we decided not to do it this time. I wish we had them like that in Los Angeles, instead we have Citi-Bank bikes which you can rent and have to park in specific locations every half hour or so like in New York. So stupid! We decided to walk and on the way to the bridge we stopped at Batch Burger to eat.

In the menu there was the California Burger which came with absolutely nothing that I've seen in burgers in California. It came with a thing called a water crest. The hell is a water crest? So I decided to order it and I asked to make sure they put in the water crest so I can see what it is, "A what?" The waiter replies. "I have no idea, but it's in the menu right here." I tell him. So he says he doesn't even know what that is but will let the cooks know. I get the burger and find out that the water crest is.

It's watercress! Also, usually not in any burger I've seen in California. We like kale right now, that's what we are into, get it right Australia! Anyway, the burger was alright. I promised myself that I will not eat anymore gourmet burgers, I end up not really liking them. Keep it simple with cheese, tomato, onion, pickles, mustard and ketchup.

After we ate the burger, we went across the Harbour Bridge.

Nice walk with a nice vieew.

On this bridge you can also walk on top of the railings with a guide for about $300 USD. We decided it was a good idea but wasn't worth the money. Maybe next time I'll come back to visit Australia, I'd be rich enough to try it.

We came off the bridge and walked down toward the pier through some small streets. These streets were thin boasting with apartments and little shops. People were being loud and having fun outside of a bar. I look at a sign and it said "The Rocks" This is what the guy was talking about on how to get to Harbour Bridge!? He didn't mean actual rocks!!?? Any way the place reminded me of Germany with the small streets that they had.

After exploring and laughing at myself for thinking that we had to cross actual rocks, we move on back to the Opera House because Aura was convinced that on the other side of the wall there would be some light show. It just didn't make sense to me because the side of the wall where we saw fireworks would have more of an audience because that's where the stores and the bridge are. The other side was just water. We get there and wait. Eric and I do some more exploring and walk around. After some time has passed, low and behold the stupid light show starts. Why would they put it to a place where fewer people can see? Gah! It was a projector much like they have in Las Vegas Freemont Street with speakers all around the outside. It was really neat.

02/05/2018 Monday
We wake up and Jordan makes us some kangaroo sausages. Really good sausages, thanks again Jordan! I take a look on my laptop and get an email stating that the AirBnB for Cairns has cancelled. What!? Cairns is tomorrow and we now don't have a place to stay! I am absolutely hating on Airbnb at this point and very upset looking for some other place to stay. Not $30/night anymore! Might as well have gotten a hotel so we are sure that we have a place and most would have had free breakfast! After this I don't think that I will use Airbnb again. I booked another place, whatever I'm over it.

After that debaucle. Another person named Kevin who was also staying at our Airbnb in Sydney overheard our plight and said, "There is going to be a typhoon in Cairns tomorrow." "Now listen here Kevin! We are already going through all this trouble to just enjoy our visit. We don't need more bad news, ok!?" Just kidding, I didn't say that, but the group got a little freaked out, but I was stubborn and told them, "We will go through a typhoon if need be, we are still doing this!" Dropped the mic and stormed off.

We then went to Bondi Beach to go surfing. We got there a bit earlier than our set time to be early for surfing lessons so we just chilled out a bit. Aura went sunbathing and Eric, Jordan and I went toward the water. The water was actually pretty cold which I didn't expect. Still refreshing but nowhere near as warm as Guam. We start contemplating life and I look over to the sand and see what looks like a man that is very tan with bigger boobs than what a usual man would have. I don't think much of it and continue on with our life pondering conversation. Jordan was enjoying this trip so much that he was telling us that he wanted to move here, "And cooks here can make around $100,000 USD" He added. As he was giving us all the good reasons to move to Australia I look somewhere else and see a topless woman sunbathing face up! That last person wasn't a man with irregular boobs, it was a woman! Not everyone was nude at this beach but there were a few and this time I only saw women that were topless no guys like at the light house. I didn't know how to feel, I guess this was normal practice at the beaches in Australia. I tried not to look so much to be respectful but I still felt out of place. As much as I applaud Australia for these liberal values, I'd still appreciate it if my girlfriend or anyone I knew for that matter not to go nude at a public beach like this. My puritan American heart isn't there yet.

It's finally time for us to take the surfing class. We meet up with our guide and I'd say we were with at least 15 other people. It was a pretty big class. We each say our names, where we are coming from, and what we want to learn. People came from all around and I think that we were the only American ones. Of course the typical answer to what people want to accomplish in this class was just to stand up on the board. Typical answer for a beginner class, but I've already surfed before. I only took this class to be with my friends. So my answer was, "I'd like to learn to surf inside the curl of a wave." I thought I'd get quite a reaction, but they went on to the next person. When we were ready to get out there, another instructor came and asked who are the more advanced in this group so me and three others raised our hands. He took us away from the group and we went further in and just surfed. He did tell us to change some things up and how we can do better, but he liked to talk when we were yards away. None of us can hear him. We would be close to him, and then try to paddle out to get a wave, that's when he would decide to give us the lecture. We can't hear you sir, and your Australian accent isn't helping! Whatever, I caught a few good waves and I was happy.

We came back home and got ready for Cairns. I decided to book an extra day here for the Airbnb just to leave our stuff and take our essentials to Cairns. Also, booked everywhere a day early so we don't have another Cancun moment where I couldn't check in until after 4pm.

02/06/2018 Tuesday
We get to the airport. Quantas again but this time of course the plane wasn't as nice and there were empty seats everywhere. In this plane they had a screen that comes down and everyone has to watch the same movie at the same time. It was Thor part 3 which I actually already seen in the previous flight. There was an option to view other movies on the phone or tablet through their app, but guess what, I needed service to download the stupid app! I will ask this question again and again, why don't airlines tell you which airplanes have which kind of entertainment right after you book them? Better yet, why don't all the planes have the same exact entertainment or at the very least free limited internet for like an hour at this point so I can download some stupid app? Other than that the flight was pretty comfortable and we land in Cairns with the storm.

As soon as we get off the plane, we call and Uber to get us to the Ferry which would take us to Fitzroy Island where we can snorkel and hang out. At this point I'm thinking it's definitely closed and even if we can get to the island, the weather is so bad that they will never let us snorkel. We get to the place, and ask for tickets. Miraculously they are open and told us to get a ticket quickly because the boat is about to leave. We get it quickly and run to the boat, get our seats, and are on our way to the Island. And what a boat ride it was!

It was so awesome. Everytime the boat went down off a wave, everyone was like whoooowwww and wwwoooowwww. Even if we didn't get to snorkel this was already worth it, being in a boat, going to an island in the middle of a Typhoon!

After a 1.5 hour boat ride, everyone at this point was turning sickly green and water splashing everywhere. After about an hour, we finally get there. The captain thanks us for enduring the ride and tells us that we can basically do anything on the island just know that there aren't any lifeguards and it would be a good idea to get stingproof water suits because a lot of Jellyfish have been spotted this season.

First we decided to get lockers to put our stuff in and eat a bit. There is a liquor store that we walked in and I had my meat pie. It was pretty good, nice and hot that it burned my mouth a bit.

After we ate, we hiked up to a path called "The Secret Garden." It reminded me of Guam, but with a typhoon going on, it was actually quite beautiful.

I found a Tarzan vine and swung on it. It held very well and there were tons of them around.

After the quick hike we go back to our lockers and while my friends were getting situated, I spotted a water trampoline and naturally, I swam up to it and started jumping.

We get the sting suits, put our snorkel gear on and go snorkeling. The water wasn't too cold but the rain had made the water very murky. Only a handful of fish can be spotted and the great barrier reef was very grey even to begin with. It seems like where we were the reef was sadly already dying.

Guam was definitely a better site for reefs and colorful fish. Jordan and I decide to go to a different spot, maybe the fish are more colorful and the reefs are more alive a bit further. So we pick up our snorkeling gear and walk somewhere else. We continue to walk and I see a sign that says this way to the light house. "That should be a good place for reefs." I say without even thinking that a light house is probably high up so boats can see but we start walking anyway. We walk and walk and walk. The light house is nowhere in sight and we are just walking uphill at a 60 degree angle. I'm not even exagerating, we were losing balance at some points. "The light house has to be somewhere here." Jordan says trying to keep positive. Is this what I sound like when I get lost? "Shall we continue, I don't want to be late because we have to be at the ferry by 3:30pm." I ask him cautiously. "Well we got this far, we should keep going." He tells me trying to find confidence in his words. I look at him and realize that he may be almost as stubborn as I am! So we continue. We walk and walk and walk. We left our belongings in the locker, and all we had with us was our snorkeling gear. So there was no way to tell the time.

We get really high up and still the mountain keeps going. The wind was getting so strong that the rain was stinging us as the water whipped onto our skin from the sideways rain. We see a sign, "The Lighthouse" it read. We made it! We go up to the lighthouse and take in the view. This is definitely not the spot for swimming because the ocean is miles underneath us, but the view was worth it. I wish we can take a picture, but again, nothing but snorkel gear.

We quickly enjoy the view and start on our way back still unaware of the time. A bit after the lighthouse we see another sign. "Island Summit." "Want to go all the way to the top?" Jordan asked what I assumed jokingly. So I answer jokingly, "Sure." And unjokingly we started hiking there. What was going on!? We just kept going and couldn't stop maybe it was adrenalin or just two fools that didn't know when to quit. We get to the summit and again, beautiful! Here is a stock photo:

Just imagine it being grey and rain. We head back, and I tell him that I think it goes around and if we keep going we will have to get there because we are exactly on the other side of the island. So we continue and low and behold, we get to the other side of the island again. Here is a map of the complete circle we had just done.

We get back and look at the time, 2:30 pm. Psh! Plenty of time! It only took us about one and a half hours to circle around the whole island. It felt like it took us at least 2.5 hours. We meet back up with Aura and Eric who weren't even worried or anything and go with them to snorkel where we were supposed to go. Nothing new or special here. We get out and with plenty time to spare we go into the locker room so we can get nice and dry.

The boat had finally came to pick us up and on the way back it wasn't as exciting because we were going with the wind now, so there were no crazy wave jumps.

After the ferry ride we call an uber driver to take us to our Airbnb. This was probably the coolest place to stay in especially with a Typhoon going on. They had our rooms. Two rooms separated by a big open doorway. This time the door was open and the keys were inside so it was very convinient. Come back out of our room there was a common area. Common kitchen, living room, and two bathrooms. This area had a roof overhead but like a huge balcony without a wall. It felt really nice especially with the rain outside.

The bathrooms were also the coolest I've seen. It was just a shower head inside a huge room with a sink and that's it. You close the door and can splash all over the place! I'd definitely want a shower like this in my place at some point.

We get hungry and we try to walk to a nearby pizza place. It was about a quarter mile away but we could barely get around a stupid train station so we called an Uber. We waited and waited, but the uber didn't come, seems like the guy was lost. We had to cancel the Uber and order another one. However you do get charged for cancelling an Uber! I didn't know this, I understand that gas was wasted and the person needs to get paid, but if he goes back and forth for 20 minutes, you shouldn't get charged. Anyway, Eric said that if you have a good excuse then they will reimburse you anyway, but he wasn't sure how it worked in Australia. Turns out that it works the same way so we got reimbursed.

Another Uber driver picked us up and we got to Lush Pizza. I chose the pizza that came with egg, seems like that's a typical pizza topping in Australia.

It was meh. Los Angeles still has the best pizzas so far.

02/07/2018 Wednesday
We get to the airport and have a 6 hour layover in Melbourne. So we decide to go lawnbowling for a couple of hours. We searched for the nearest one to the airport. Glenroy Lawnbowling.

We get there and I say, "We want to do lawn bowling." "Ok." The patron says. After a moment of silence goes by, "Do you know how to play?" He asks. "No we do not!" I reply, so he asks us to follow him outside of the bar into the back where there is the lawn. He sets it up by putting a white ball on the other side and explains to us that the ball that you roll is weighted more on one side. So when you roll it straight it will roll to the left or the right automatically depending on which way you hold it. There are two of the same symbols on the ball on each side. The difference is one symbol is smaller than the other. So the side with the smaller symbol will guide the ball to that side. Each team gets 4 tries to get their colored balls closest to the white ball which is called the Jack. If someone taps the Jack and it doesn't roll out of bounds then wherever it moves to is your new target.

Easy enough, we start playing and it's pretty fun. Aura and the fellas had their beer while playing. We played for a good few hours up till 5 points and then switched teams and played till 5 points again. Whoever was on my team of course won the game each time.

We were finished and had to get back to the airport. We go back up to the bar and ask the guy how much we owe him. "Nothing." He says, and he adds, "Just tell people in the states that Melbourne is a much better place to visit than Sydney." So here I am sticking to my word right now typing. Melbourne is a much better place to visit than Sydney.

It was at the bar that I truly realized that Australians are the nicest people. Everyone was so helpful and took their time to explain things, humorous, and really try to connect. Move out the way China, this is the nicest country so far. We went back to the airport and this time I downloaded the Quantas app when we had wifi so I can watch anything I wanted on my phone because of the stupid one screen situation during our last flight. Of course this plane had the screens again. I gave another Australian movie a chance. This one was called, "He Died with a Falafel in His Hand." Another movie really about nothing but it was actually pretty good.

Speaking of wifi, I noticed that everywhere in Australia they offer wifi which was really nice for me since I didn't have any other service. However, just like the LAX airport, it seldom worked. It was so annoying to see if the wifi would work or not. Sometimes it just doesn't take you to the sign in page where you need to add your email address to sign in or once you do sign in and it works for only about 5 minutes and then that exclamation point comes on by the wifi symbol and the phone just becomes useless again. It is so annoying, why do people need to sign in to use the wifi? I understand that they want your email to sell it to advertisers which is fine with me, but make it consistently work at least! Oh well, better than nothing. I still commend you Australia to having free wifi everywhere. Much better than Los Angeles already.

We get back to Sydney, to our usual Airbnb. Our next flight leaves to New Zealand the following night at 7:00pm. I text the host asking her if we can checkout late, and of course being at the nicest country ever, she replies with, "You can checkout anytime you want, just leave the keys on the table." Amazing!

02/08/2018 Thursday
We wake up and go back to Paddys Market for some last minute shopping. We cross the street to go to China Town Alley that has a bunch of shops and restaurants. We get inside a food court and decide to eat in a restaurant there. We shared all kinds of dumplings which was good and I tried the Barramundi Fish. It was one of those smelly fish which I didn't much like. Now I know that I don't like the Barramundi Fish. After eating, we head up to the Star City Casino.

It was a pretty nice place with all the casino games in there. Since we couldn't be there for a while and play Hold em, I decided to play Roullette. I actually won and walked out with $60 which was nice.

I believe Jordan or Aura won a few bucks as well and Eric didn't play. So technically, we were all winners! We head back to our Airbnb to finish packing and be on our way to New Zealand.

We finish packing and say goodbye to our roomate and leave the keys on the table. You treated us well Australia, now onto New Zealand.

The flight was the same, Quantas air. We get in line and the person behind the counter was very chatty and took way too long to process our tickets. "Do you have proof of a return ticket?" She asked. "We do but we will have to go online on our phones to get it." I respond as I struggle to go on my email to get the info. The airport has wifi, but just like all of the wifi around in Australia, to connect to it is close to impossible. I manage to connect and show her the itinerary. "Ok, we will need to tag the baggage." She takes her sweet time to get the stickers out and doesn't say anything. We have to understand to put the next luggage on the scale and wait until she slowly tags that one too. The lady worker next to her probably helped at least 8 people while it takes our lady just 1 luggage to tag. Good thing we came there hella early and weren't in a rush or I would be really upset. I ask her, "What time is it?" And she says oh my you only have a bit more than an hour, you need to hurry. Yet she still doesn't move! We start walking fast to our gate and now it's Jordans turn to get stopped by customs so they can remove his shaver. New Zealand has the strictest customs policies. They make him throw away his shaver and we make it on time to the flight.

Same setup as last time where you can watch movies on the seat. However, this time there wasn't any video game remote controls where you can control what you can choose on the screen. Last time you can use the D-pad on the video game controler to choose your movie, rewind the movie, put the volume up and so on. It was convinient and Eric and I had watched Crocodile Dundee and made sure that the movie was exactly in sync. This time it was only touch screen and it was very slow, didn't read your finger making contact, or just made the contact at the wrong place. We tried to watch "Batman and Harley Quinn" and tried to press play at the same time, but sometimes the volume went up instead or it just didn't connect. Very annoying, and the seat had channel, volume control, and contrast right on the hand rest again. God that was so annoying! Eric kept pressing the volume up on my screen with his elbow and changing the contrast. So I had to yell at him again. Why do airplanes think this is a good idea!? Make it just a video game controller inside a compartment of the hand rest. Anyway we saw Batman and Harley Quinn, I didn't like it too much. I think I was putting it on a high pedestool because I love Batman Animation. So I would recommend watching it, just don't expect too much.

We finally get to New Zealand.

Also rainy weather, we wait for the Uber. He drives and drives toward our location. This is the furthest we've been from the airport yet, up high in the hills is our air bnb about a 45 minute drive. We make it, and the host greets us. She shows us around and dissappears. We never see her again. This time we have the whole 3 bedroom house all to ourselves. Being a late night, we unpack and go to sleep.

02/09/2018 Friday
We wake up and now we can see a beautiful site outside our balcony.

This is actually how I pictured New Zealand to be, ocean water and greenery all around. We try to get an Uber down so we can get something to eat. I wanted to bring honey chicken which was saved from a restaurant over in Australia so I can have it for breakfast now, but of course at the time New Zealand customs also made me throw that away. Unfortunately, we are out of the Uber signal and we are stuck in the air bnb. "What do we do now?" We asked, hoping to come up with an answer quick because we were so hungry. "Well, looks like we need to rent a car." I answered, not even knowing if we can do so since we were in a different country. I called New Zealand Rentals and they said to come on down to pick it up. We tried Uber one last time, and somehow Eric got it to work. We get picked up and get our car rental. We made sure that we can drop it off at the airport and he looked at us and said, "Well we don't have any locations at the airport." But being the nice New Zealander that he is he went on. "But you can park the car in the parking lot of the airport and just leave it there with the key inside and we'll pick it up once you leave." I'm probably going to get a lot of hate for this, but I consider New Zealand and Australia to be one in the same. So this still counts as the nicest people I've met. He made us pay a bit more to leave it at the airport and we gladly paid. It was only about $20 NZD with about $50 NZD insurance. This was even cheaper than ubering everywhere with the group! Sigh, lesson learned again. We get a small white Huyandai and are on our way to eat.

I was the first to drive the car on the wrong side of the road! It was absolutely weird and I felt myself veering too close to the left lane and had to catch myself to fix it. Making wide right turns and quick left turns was just so bizzare.

Our first stop was to the Lynn Mall, we found a place to eat at called Wagamama. I had the lollipop prawns. Pretty much shrimp on a stick. This restaurant was probably the best we have eaten at so far.

Nice and full we go to the grocery store and buy more things that were on my list to eat while in New Zealand. We bring everything home. We play a bit of inside lawn bowling, erm... Carpet bowling? Yours truly won again.

Then we tried a little bit of everything that we had gotten from the store.

Does the marmite bottle look familiar? This is the competitor of Vegiemite. That's right, Vegiemite has a competitor. They eat Vegiemite in Australia and Marmite in New Zealand. To me they tasted a bit different and maybe I finally got the taste for it, but Marmite tasted a little better than Vegiemite. Just a little, it was still pretty gross.

02/10/2018 Saturday
Next day we wake up and be on our way to Eco Zip Flying Fox Adventures. This is also in an island where you need to take the ferry to. We made sure that this time we had a lot of time to get there. It was an hour away and we had our own car, nothing can go wrong. We get to the location where you need to buy tickets for the ferry. "We'd like to buy 4 tickets please." I say in a kind of a nonchalant way because we have so much time. "Sure,what time would you like it for, the next ferry leaves in 2 hours." She says also nonchalantly as if we had 2 hours to spare. "2 hours!? We need to get there by this time and there is no way we have 2 hours." I say not so nonchalantly. Then she starts to speak with the thickest Australian?... New Zealandy?... accent ever. I barely understood her but she said that you can take the car ferry so you can barely make it and even then you may be late. I agreed and she printed out the tickets.

As she was giving us the tickets, what I thought she said was that the car ferry leaves in about 45 minutes and when you get to the island, you will have to drive the car a bit further away for another 40 minutes until you get there. So we leave, go to the bathroom and wait a bit. I'm not sure where I should park the car for the ferry so I go back and ask. She looks at me with big wide eyes, "What are you still doing here?" She asks frantically. "The ferry hasn't shown up yet." I reply confused. Turns out that the ferry was leaving in 45 minutes but it wasn't in this location, we needed to drive to a different location which takes about 40 minutes to get to. We quickly zoom to the car and I try to drive as fast as I can in a different country, going on the other side of the road, in the rain.

Thank God that we had Sprint to give us directions. I swear I'm not sponsored by Sprint, and I actually don't like them which is why I made the switch, because again it doesn't work for anything in Los Angeles. But it is a charm in other countries. I bought a sim card to try to use it in New Zealand, but unfortunately my phone was purchased within 3 months so I couldn't unlock it to use it. Aura had a sim in Australia and used it in New Zealand and it seemed to work pretty well. Note to self, unlock the phone and get sim cards when traveling outside of the US.

So we get to the ferry and I see that there is a line to get on. I'm focused to get there so right now I have very narrow vision and attention. I take the car all the way to the ferry. I have never had to take a car to a ferry before, but I did it anyway and parked behind another car literally inside a boat. A frantic lady runs up to us as we are exiting the car. "You weren't supposed to enter the ferry!" I take a look back at the car, and reply. "I'm sorry this is my first time, where would you like me to go?" She sees that I have tickets in my hand, takes them and storms off. I'm still not sure what I was supposed to do.

We go upstairs and there are chairs with tables where we took out some food we brought from home and ate as we were on our way.

It took us longer than 45 minutes probably because of the bad weather and now we have to really zoom over to the place. We called the zipline and let them know that we were going to be late. They said that we didn't have to worry if we were like 10 minutes late. We kept driving, and now we are more than 10 minutes late so we call again. "We will be about 18 minutes late." They respond with. "Well maybe we can put you with another group later on." Which would be terrible since we will have to wait another 2 hours. We finally get there and they already know who we are. They get us to our zip lining outfits really quickly and get us to join the group... We just made it without even a second to spare.

Our guide was really cool with a sense of humor. There were 3 long zip lines that we went through.

The first one not so long, the second one was my favorite because you zip line over the trees and the third one had a beautiful view.

It was a lot of fun, they ask to grab the pole so they can reel us in on the other side. The third one was the longest one but I guess I didn't weight enough because I didn't even get to the pole so they had to get some sort of extender to get me. It was fun, but wait it isn't over! We now need to hike all the way back up from where we started.

As we hike one of the guides was telling us a bit about the jungle we were in. I believe it was a jungle that was over a century old. We saw creatures like huge spiders.

He told us the history of some trees and there was a dog that kept barking from the distance. The guide said that the dog would scare some birds which would faint and fall off the trees so it would eat them. They kept trying to get the dog removed, but it's some owners that lives close by.

We make it up. Good times.

We go back to the Ferry and go back toward home. We find a place called Otahuhu which serves Hangi. Hangi is meat that is cooked on top of heated rocks. Another New Zealand treat that I had to try. It was good, but very plain. I wish they put spices on it while it was cooking. Otherwise, it was good and warm.

Afterwards, we went to Sylvia Park Shopping Center so we can try the 9d experience. In Russia I tried 5d, I wondered what 9d was like? We go inside the mall, and this 9d cinema was nowhere to be found. We asked around and no one knew what we were talking about. We went up to the movie theatres and they had no clue either. We thought it had to be somewhere outside of the mall, so we walk through the entire mall and as we exit, we see 3 pods and a sign that says 9d cinema. This isn't a cinema, it's a video game. Us boys decide to try it out.

You sit in a pod and they give you 3d goggles where you attach a phone to. You get immersed into a game you have chosen. We chose a game with a dragon. In this game you are riding on a track and look around while wearing those google goggles with phones in them while the pod moves and you have controls to shoot the dragons. The controls didn't even move, you had to move your head to shoot at the right place. The problem is, whether you shot or not, the story line will go on so there really is no point in shooting. Technology is just not up to par these days. In the United States also. When you tell me 9d, I imagine being so immersed in such a real looking world that I forget that I'm in the real world to begin with. I hope to see something like that when I go to Japan. Needless to say, I was dissapointed and actually found the 5d in Russia to be a better experience, because I didn't have to put any goggles on and could enjoy it with my friends at the same time.

After the "9d experience" we find a McDonald's in the mall. We try the Kiwi Burger.

This one comes with beets and an egg! Beets definitely do not belong on a burger, and what a random thing to think of. In short, Mexico still has the best Mcdonalds Burger so far.

We are still in Auckland city and think of what to do since we live a bit far and don't want to go home yet. We decide to go to a comedy bar. We go there and it was pretty good. I got most of the jokes but at some point someone was talking about some president in New Zealand I believe, who has a boyfriend and isn't married which was the most awesome thing they said. I didn't really know who they were talking about but it was nice hearing about their politics. Of course they knew American politics and were talking about Trump too.

02/11/2018 Sunday
I forgot to mention it but I had skydiving on the itinerary in New Zealand. As soon as we got to New Zealand I've been calling the sky diving place to see if the weather is good enough to jump and every time they said no and to call again in the morning. The next morning, I called and have been told the same thing because of crappy weather. We wake up this morning and I call again. This is the last day we can sky dive because we are going to be leaving tonight. "Yes!" They say enthusiastically. "We are jumping today." Yes! We eat breakfast and get going to the place called Skydive Auckland.

We get there and we have chosen to jump from the middle height which is 13,000 feet. While we watched an amped advertisement video when we were there, they tried to hype us up to buy 16,500 feet. I've already been skydiving before in San Diego, actually about exactly a decade ago on my birthday so an extra 30 seconds of free fall for an extra $100 didn't really interest me. Aura, who was the most frightened in the group, decided to do it. Eric made the comment that they use the metric system everywhere except for skydiving, they use feet which is interesting. We get in gear and on other photos posted around on the walls we saw that people were writing things on their hands. So we decided to write on our hands too, and I decided to get the package with the photos. I wasn't really scared and actually the fall was quite nice. This time I made sure to really enjoy the view and it felt twice as long as last time I went sky diving. I noted that later on and the guide told me that after every fall it lasts longer and longer.

In San Diego the sky was clear. This time I was falling straight through the clouds. It was amazingly awesome, I'm actually glad that it rained for the most part except for this day so the clouds can be nice and full.

I definitely had to pop my ears quite a bit when as we were falling. I finally know how to pop my ears thanks to scuba class! It felt great doing it while we were parachutting down.

We all came down nice and safe and were very excited. After we got our photos we were on our way to the next event.

I also forgot to say that I am not a Lord of the Rings fan. However, Jordan and Eric got hyped to do the famous Hobbiton tour. I fought it for a little bit, the main reason being is that it was a good 3 hour drive from where we were. However, I folded because now we had a car and it was a very unique thing to do which I always go for. So I got the tickets two nights before on the laptop and after skydiving we head to Hobbiton.

We drive toward Rotorua, New Zealand. It was a long drive, so we took turns and really enjoyed the scenery. This was also how I imagined New Zealand to be. Nice and green all around with fields. We saw tons of sheep and cows too. Definitely reminded me of Ireland. I would say this was the beautiful and most scenic drive, it's close, but Utah takes the cake on that one still. But the plains were still so beautiful. I was actually getting really excited to see this Hobbiton place, it must be an amazing sight.

After lots of driving, we finally get to the place where the buses take you to Hobbiton. We get to will call and they ask me for my name. I say it and they tell me I'm not in the system. "Weird, let's try somebody elses name, maybe I booked it under them?" They try every name we can come up with and we are just not in the system. I say ok, well we have a scheduled tour at 4:45pm. The girl looks on the computer and tells me they are all booked. I say, "How can this be, I booked it for today." She looks and sees that I had actually booked it for yesterday at 445 not today. I didn't see how that I would have done that, but it's possible being that my laptop did have the US date instead of New Zealand. I ask her, "Well is there anything available for the day?" She says she'll need to ask her manager. She asks, and tells me there is nothing they can do, everything is booked. I ask her if we can get our money back then since we didn't get the tour, she again says, "I'm sorry there isn't anything we can do." Which is of course BS. Thank God for chargebacks.

I still couldn't believe her, but we start heading out, and I see a computer system for self check-in. I look at it and I see a booking on our name for the following day instead of the day before. I'm still not sure if I made the mistake or if their system did, oh well we decide to do something else. We continue toward Rotorua which is where we decided to hang out for the rest of the day and then I see a sign for Zorbing.

I am subscribed to the worst channel on youtube called Devin Supertramp. I hate him so much because he is a person I very much aspire to be and his videos make me jealous as all hell. I usually skip his videos because they are too awesome and I hate it. But I managed to catch his zorbing video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPKKtvkVAjY

I had promised myself that I absolutely needed to do it when I went to New Zealand, but I had forgotten about it because it was a 3 hour drive from where we were, so I decided that I had to come back to New Zealand to go there next time. However, we were three hours away now and there it was!

Eric and I decided to try it out. It was pretty cool, of course not as cool as Devin Supertramps video, but I'm so glad I did it. The only gripe I have about it was that you had to pay per track. There were three tracks, one went straight down, one that had like one turn, and then a zig zaggy one. Eric and I wanted to do a zig zaggy one together, but you can only do the one that goes straight down together. It was about $45 NZ to do each which I'd only do once for the experience and never again because the price is just too high. Anyway I went down, and I coudln't stop laughing the whole way. Water splashing everywhere, you can't see out of the ball so you don't know where you're going. You're tossing and turning everywhere and it's just an amazing unique experience.

We dry off and head on to walk around Rotorua. We walk around a quaint little city. This is where we should have stayed, not Auckland. Seems like there was much more to do and see in this place. Oh well something to come back to next time. We stop and eat at Fat Dog Cafe and Bar.

We head back to the 3 hour drive with a beautiful sunset over the plains.

This was our final night. I'm not used to vacations being this long and was pretty glad it was coming to an end. There was family and friends at home I've really missed and was excited to get back to. We get back to our air bnb, pack, and go to sleep for an hour because we need to get up early.

02/12/2018 Monday
We get up and start stuffing our tiny little car with our luggage. The smallest, which is me and Aura get crammed in the back with the luggage.

You can't tell by the picture but Aura is also somewhere in there. We get to the airport, get our luggage, and leave the car in the parking lot. We were on our way back to Australia where there is a 2 hour layover then finally to the US. The reason for this is because you can't buy a one way ticket to New Zealand, because you need proof of return. Also, I think this was a cheaper way to do it. We flew back to Australia. Again the movie screen was fine and this time I watched "Christopher Robin." It started with the narration and it even had a narration on those logos coming up before the movie starts. "Men on a horse, riding up shooting three arrows into a target." The narrator says in a British accent as it is displaying on screen. I never seen this movie and I thought it was pretty cool, her narrating the intro like that since it was based on a book. Took me about 20 minutes to realize that everything was being narrated this way. "Christopher Robin stands outside with his father in an open field on clear cut grass, Christopher Robin takes two steps forward and turns towards his expressionless dad." Then Christopher Robin says something. This wasn't part of the movie, this was a blind person verision of the movie where they narrate the details of where they're at and what they are doing in between the characters dialogues. I've never seen anything like it, at first it was pretty cool to watch, but then of course it got pretty annoying. There was no way to turn it off, like this is the version that the airplane got and I was already invested in the movie by the time I figured all of this out so I had to finish it. Pretty good movie.

We get to Australia, and this is where Eric and I separate from Aura and Jordan. We have our usual Quantas flight, whereas they go back to the US in American Airlines again. We say our goodbyes and leave. Only to meet up again in LAX to get our luggage and split from there.

A few honorable mentions about Australia. After noticing the cars going the other way, I made a joke that we need to stand on the left side of the escalator because they drive like that whereas in the US they stand on the right. Turns out it wasn't a joke, people were actually standing to the left instead of the right to let people pass! This was also a rule of just plain walking, I felt like I was bumping into people in the mall or the wharf where it was crowded because I didn't know which way to pass. Also here is a water experiment to see which way it whirls while we were in Cairns.

All in all, a great trip. It would have been better if there was no rain, but it was worth it when we were skydiving and the rain didn't really stop us from doing anything we wanted which was nice. Also the boat ride during the crazy rain was amazing. I'm kinda sad I didn't get to use my Quantas app and I'm sure I'll need another app to use on another airplane and I'll figure it out too late, such an inconvenience. People in Australia are super nice! Thank you Eric, Jordan, and Aura for the trip! I look forward to our next adventure and Jordan, please don't forget to call me when you move out to Australia!

Hawaii, here we come!

To see all the pictures click here!

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Australia/New Zealand 01/31/2018 - 02/13/2018

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