Top tens

Kia Ora,

Normality is finding it's place again in my life, whatever that means. One thing's for sure, I'm back on UK soil. I've seen a lot of my friends and family again and been integrated back in to life. Although after three weeks home I'm definitely missing my life in NZ and the people still there. Still, what I've done and what I've learned has come home with me. Here's to the next set of adventures! :-)

To round of my unforgettable journey I've essentially made some lists. But it's more exciting than it sounds. I know for sure that everyone loves a top ten, so here's mine. This has been in the making for a few months now and sums up my year in list form. A quick and easy summary if you like, including lots of things never before mentioned in my blog.

Songs

1. Haddaway- What Is Love
2. Taylor Swift- Blank Space
3. Mark Ronson ft Bruno Mars- Uptown Funk
4. Ed Sheeran- Bloodstream
5. The Madden Brothers- We Are Done
6. Brenda Lee- Rocking Around the Christmas Tree
7. George Ezra- Listen to the Man
8. Maroon 5- Sugar
9. Chuckie- Who Is Ready to Jump
10. Hozier- Take Me to Church

TV Series

1. Game of Thrones
2. Suits
3. The Walking Dead
4. Brooklyn Nine Nine
5. The Big Bang Theory
6. My Kitchen Rules: Australia
7. Masterchef: Australia
8. The Inbetweeners
9. Flight of the Concords
10. The Bachelor NZ (for Marion) / Neighbors (for Soph)

Films

1. The Hobbit: The Battle of Five Armies
2. Les Intouchables
3. The Theory of Everything
4. The Avengers: Age of Ultron
5. The Hunger Games: Catching Fire
6. Sunshine on Leith
7. Social Network
8. Before I Go to Sleep
9. Now You See Me
10. Bad Boy Bubby (for Romain)

Best Meals Out

1. Fergburger, Queenstown
2. Orejano Platter + Grilled Provolone Cheese, El Sizzling Chorizo (the definition of gluttony. The biggest meat platter with a second main course at an Argentinian BBQ restaurant, happily shared with Adrian in Ponsonby, plus a side order of chips!)
3. Half meter pizza, Dunedin
4. Hunger Buster Burger, Tongariro pub, with friends
5. Ice Cream, Giappos, The best ice cream ever!
6. Sals Pizza, Auckland, every time
7. Mexacali, Auckland Docks, with friends
8. Vegan meals, Tuesdays and Thursdays
9. Penne Con Pollo, Elliot Stables
10. The Ultimate Seafood Bouillabaisse, Princes Wharf, a treat from Dannii

 Best Meals In

1. European Christmas dinner, Coromandel
2. British/NZ Christmas dinner, Coromandel
3. Roast Dinner, Ellas Grandma
4. Butter Chicken, 2E, cooked by Ella
5. Haggis Lasagne, 2C, cooked by Soph
6. Thai curry, 2E, cooked by me
7. Chicken Pie, 2E, cooked by Dannii
8. Cinnamon Rolls, Carlaw, made by Hanne
9. Lamb leg, Carlaw, cooked by Thomas
10. Korean Stew, 2E, cooked by Ella

Some Surprises

1. Helicopter rescue ride at Mt Cook
2. Haddaway coming on the radio returning from Taranaki!
3. Seeing Dusky Dolphins in Kaikoura
4. Sunset near Mt Cook
5. Waking up in the car for the sunrise at Lake Tekapo
6. The Southern hemisphere stars at Henderson Bay
7. Discovering luging in Queenstown and Rotorua- so much fun!
8. A surprise meal on Auckland coastline, courtesy of Dannii
9. Brandi Dog is an amazing game!
10. So is Goucha!

Tips for others coming to NZ

1. Eat at Fergburger whenever possible. Its worth an extra flight
2. Do not book a return ticket with your initial flight
3. If flatting, keep looking and wait for the right one!
4. But don't live in Auckland if you don't have too!
5. Be prepared for Germans EVERYWHERE!
6. Make the most of Tim Tams! I'm going to miss these back home
7. Leave plenty of time to explore random avenues across the country!
8. Make the most of the summer by tramping, using tents often or the huts built!
9. Keep meeting people. They are amazing! Easy going and diverse.
10. Seriously everybody, eat at Fergburger!

Unsung moments

1. Living at 2C and 2E!
2. Learning French
3. Casual Football and Ultimate Frisbee matches
4. Going to the gym with Snore
5. Running along the Auckland shoreline
6. Haircuts from Kelly :-)
7. Romains theories!
8. Pauline trying to convert me to One Direction
9. Photo-bombing everybody!
10. Head changing on the Bachelor 

Games

1. Goucha
2. Brandi Dog
3. Wearwolf
4. Yahtze
5. Marens Christmas Party Extravaganza
6. Ring of Fire
7. Risk
8. Cards Against Humanity
9. Snakes and Ladders
10. Sevens

Quotes

1. "Well this is shit." Five minutes later of awkward driving... "This is amazing"
   Dannii, Comments on the weather on the drive to Hobbiton
2.  "Salope"
   2C, A favourite insult
3. "Hi I'm Kelly!"
   Kelly, rolling in drunk, not recognizing Pauline and introducing herself
4. "Did you know I'm from Africa"
   Adrian, announcing his heritage as everyone else went quiet
5. "Never trust the French bro"
   Skydiving Instructor, his advise on learning it was Paulines idea to do the jump
6. "BRIDGE!"
   Adele, shouting every time we crossed a bridge in the south island
7. "Ella with a fella who likes to eat Nutella"
   Me, deciding to come up with some rhymes
8. "Sweet as bro. You've got the whole of NZ to reverse in to bro."
   Me, Being useful as Pauline reversed throughout the south island trip part II
9. "This is Kev"
   Kev the Kea, Liams discovery of a video in Franz Joseph spoken over with the best kiwi accent
10. "By the end of the year you're gonna like One Direction"
    Pauline, Her least accurate prediction but something she tried to make happen up to the last week

University Moments

1. Submitting a semester-long project on the Ports of Auckland with Sam
2. Vegan lunches
3. Meat club
4. Revision in the Law library
5. Maori welcome
6. SPIES BBQ
7. Lighting project for a building
8. Ports of Auckland Systems project
9. Getting audio for the first time out of wireless headphones
10. Being FREE to travel!!! 

So this is it. My time in NZ is over and similarly my time writing blogs must also come to an end. But it's been great to tell my story and great to have so many amazing experiences to share. I am very grateful to have had this experience, to have seen what I have seen and to have met so many amazing people.

Thank you for reading my blog. It will live here forever as a reminder of how lucky I have been. So, for one last time,

Kia Ora,

Ben

Bens World Tour: Hong Kong

您好

23 hours in the air is a long journey home and despite the perfect excuse to just watch films all day, it can be monotonous. To spice things up a bit, me and Dannii decided to get our first flavour of East Asia by spending a few nights in Hong Kong. It also worked well in reducing those undesirable effects of jet lag.


We spent our first full day wandering the busy streets and endless arrays of high rise buildings. But this was good as they provided not only shade from the 33°C plus temperatures, but every building had high powered air con; every door felt like an entrance to a fridge. We also found lots of weird statues, a very impressive skyline across the river and so many Indians who tried to sell us suits.

We found loads of statues from apparent comic books

Turtles in the park

Giant Duck!

Hong Kongs skyline

Asian Selfie on the ferry!

The Two International Financial Center

Hong Kongs One Direction equivalent which Dannii spotted on a water bottle

Noodle soup!

Hong Kongs skyline in the evening

In the evening we were on the river again to experience the Hong Kong light show: A Symphony of Lights. Every night at 8pm, 47 buildings from each side of the river tell the story of how Hong Kong came to be today. It is the worlds biggest continuous light show and basically shows off the cities most impressive buildings.

Hong Kongs Light show from the river

Begin day 2, and what better way than finding a stunning spelling mistake. Me and Dannii had secretly been hoping to find one as brilliant as this! Haha.

Spelling mistake found! And it's a great one haha!

Now back to normal stuff. It was time for us to get an eagle eyed view of the city from Victoria Peak. We had to take an incredibly steep climbing tram to the top, at which point we found a huge shopping centre and an observation deck. We had never seen a city as huge or as highly built as Hong Kong before, so to be above it all gave us incredible perspective.

Ascent in the tram to Victoria Peak

That view! And the background is ok too

The city is big, aye?

And then the other side of the hill hosted a complete contrast, with a less spoiled terrain and smaller islands just visible amongst the mist.

The other side of Victoria Peak, with islands amongst the fog

We found a cafe on Victoria Peak dedicated entirely to Forrest Gump. How great is that! Well, it certainly got our attention anyway, so we went for a drink whilst admiring a vast collection of memorabilia from the film.

And other than more walking, eating and general exploring that pretty much sums up our quick trip to Hong Kong. Well, not entirely true. I will mention that we spent an extra unplanned day in HK as the travel agents inexplicably changed my flight the night before I was due to leave the country. My new flight was the following day, 24 hours later than planned. Thankfully, the airline were sympathetic and changed Danniis flight to match mine free of charge. We're still unclear as to why they did this, but we'll find out pretty soon!

Riding the bridge back to the airport

But there were no hiccups on our second attempt to leave the country. We were all done and ready to move back to home 1 to see family and friends for the first time in 12 months. England, we are coming!

Our plane arrives!

Thank you Hong Kong for your brief hospitality. It was perhaps a good flavour of another adventure I hope to have in the future. But now we must move on. Homeward bound!

再见

Ben

Goodbye NZ

Kia Ora,

Well it's hard to believe that a year has gone by so quickly and my time in NZ has finally come to a close. 12 whole months have been and gone, just like that.

I had exams in my final week of NZ, so the majority of my penultimate week was spent with my books. But not all of my time. Apart from casual evenings seeing friends, a small group of us went to the FIFA U20s World Cup as it was being hosted in NZ! We got tickets to the semi-final: Serbia vs Mali.

Serbia had a good section of support and went on to score pretty early. But because of this and Mali's flamboyant style of play, the rest of the stadium was soon cheering for Mali and when they scored, everywhere erupted!

The game went in to extra time, a rule explained by Beni to Ella very well. He had been very informative all night, but for some reason Ella did not seem to appreciate this too much ;-) Serbia scored again in the closing minutes to win. It was a good game and both teams went on to win their final matches for 1st and 3rd place overall.

National Anthem time!

Semi-final selfie!

My leaving week was very sad, but for all the wrong reasons. I came down with a stomach virus which completely ruined me. I was bed-ridden, and yet still in need of sitting exams and making the most of my time with friends. Neither was done very well unfortunately. I have special considerations for my final exams, but even so I'm very disappointed as I had worked really hard this semester. But we can't control everything, and things will be what things will be.

On the plus side, it was proved to me once again that I had great friends. My flat mates were so kind looking after me all week, putting up with my lack of energy in the process. Dannii especially looked after me and also lost sleep through the nights as I did, but still did her best to make me feel better. Thank you so much all :-)

And then Lolo even came to visit on his last night, understanding that I couldn't come to his leaving party. Another sad moment, he was awesome. I mean, so awesome. He told me this when he lived with us the week before and I've believed it ever since. I see no reason why Lolo would lie about such a thing. He is awesome after all ;-) haha. Ah goodbyes...

Despite all this, I was determined to sit with friends in the Sky Tower after my exams were finished. As a leaving meal, our flat decided it would be perfect to overlook the entire city one more time. It was a great venue and everyone enjoyed what they ate.

Dannii, Scott and Harbour Bridge in the background!

And then too soon after was our last night in NZ. Me and Dannii went over to our old flat to say goodbye to Soph and Kelly :-( and then returned to 2E to share our last night with this crazy bunch and a Sals pizza or three. I'm missing you all as I write this back at home...

F(l)atties! A pleasure to live with!

And then before we could digest the situation, we were done. Tommy came over to see us off, and Liz just made it with a bit of running. We had just enough time for one last selfie, and then we were taxied off to the airport to begin the long haul home.

The final NZ selfie #NZForever

I was still on meds and hoping they would see me through the long journey home via a 3 day stop in Hong Kong. I had lost a lot of weight and wasn't feeling my strongest, but I wasn't going to let that ruin the journey!

An so now I need to say a few words. I really am not sure I can wrap this up cleanly. In all honesty, my time in NZ has just been the best of my life. It's been life changing, personality defining and eye opening. I have seen everything I wanted too in such an amazing country and have left with a wetter appetite to see more of the world. I've learned so much not only through uni, but through the people I've met and the experiences I've had.

And there are just too many people to thank. To those who gave me the opportunity and helped me seize it. To those who gave me help or advise whilst here, or just casually kept contact. To those who ran errands for me and others who lived happy memories with me in NZ. You have made my year so amazing and or that I am forever grateful.

And of course, thank you NZ for being the amazing country you are. You will be missed!

The final head change of The Bachelor NZ. I think it's forever improved :-)

For one last time

Kia Ora,

Ben

The South Island Road Trip: Part VII: There and Back Again (FLASHBACK)

Kia Ora,

This is a flashback from December. I have written this once before, but somehow the post got deleted and I can't retrieve it, so I'm going to do my best to remember what we did and share the highlights of our five days in Wellington after our epic trip in the South Island!

16/12/2015 Wellington

We very quickly said goodbye to Liam when we arrived. He was going to stay with some family friends for the Christmas period. But he would be around and we'd see him again soon.

So that left me, Dannii, Pauline and Adele to explore Wellington. On night 1 we found ourselves on Cuba Street (ah Cuba Street) for Malaysian Cuisine. Cuba Street has a little bit of character, with a variety of art, restaurants and pubs. We'd be back here quite a few times yet! But in need of an easier night to begin with we returned to the hostel. We found Cards Against Humanity stored away in their game section (no Snakes and Ladders this time) and introduced Pauline to the game! She (of course) loved it haha!

The following day we were set to see Wellington from up high at Mount Victoria. We took the scenic route up and I got split up from the others along the way. My route took me through some great houses with some great views across Wellington Bay. I've seen so many houses to be jealous of across NZ!

The city and its harbour

That afternoon we were in Te Papa museum. Perhaps my most favourite museum in NZ. It covered all sorts of areas: Maori, kiwi history, nature, sealife and more. It was great and far to big to include much detail here!

LOTR Elf armour

Te Marae. A Maori wharenui (meeting house) still in use today

Our following days were spent experiencing typical Wellington weather: wind and rain. It wasn't a time for outdoor activity, but thankfully there was plenty to do indoors.

We took a tour around the Beehive, AKA NZ parliament, visiting key rooms used by MPs such as the debating chamber. We then took a gander around St Pauls Cathedral and then Old St Pauls, a much more traditional Cathedral and actually much more attractive than it's concrete replacement.

Old St Pauls

Still avoiding the rain we also visited the Wellington Sea Museum and learned about the Wahine disaster. In 1968, a ferry came in to trouble in the harbour during bad weather and 52 people were killed. This sad event wasn't just remembered in the museum, but their were memorial statues around Wellington to remember its darkest day.

Wahine Memorial

And then it was time for the group to split :-( Me and Dannii had a couple of spare days yet to do some more exploring, but Pauline and Adele were all packed up and ready to fly back to Auckland. Time to throw in one last selfie!

Goodbye (for two days!) :-(

The next day me and Dannii did a little shopping and by chance bumped in to Liam. He also met us later on at the night market. It was so captivating we found ourselves moving on and playing pool very quickly haha, and then moving on to eat at a Malaysian restaurant. This was great practice for Liam, who would be spending his next semester studying in Malaysia- I guess there may have been a problem if we discovered that he didn't like the food here... Haha.

Random artwork, there was so many in Wellington!

And then time for highlight #3549 of the trip; it was time to watch The Hobbit: The Battle of Five Armies. Right in what is considered to be the films home, we were going to watch the final installment of the films we loved too much! And it was pretty decent too! I remember me and Dannii being so happy afterwards!

A happiness which continued in to the next day as the three of us went to WETA Studios, the production studios of everything Lord of the Rings plus some other great titles.

They were happy to showcase their extra works in the WETACAVE too, however photographs weren't allowed in here. But we did get to see props and current workings on films such as Planet of the Apes, Avatar and Thunderbirds. Liam even got to sit inside a vehicle built but never used (as the film was cancelled) for the Halo films. I wish we had a photo of this, because I had never seen him so happy! So instead me and Dannii spent the rest of the day pretending it didn't happen as there was no photographic proof haha.

But more importantly we got to hold Sting! Bilbo's sword in the Hobbit. It had some weight on it. Aaaaah! The nerd in me was so happy!

Trolls outside the WETA Workshop!

Gollum!

What the hell is going on over there...

After spending the rest of the day at a Christmas market (wow Christmas doesn't feel so long ago to me) and drinking at the oldest pub in New Zealand, the Thistle Inn, we said goodbye to Liam. But he had time to photobomb my photo of floating orb before he left ;-)

The following day was our last day in Wellington and we'd be landing in Auckland late that night. We had time to revisit Te Papa museum as they had just opened a new Air New Zealand exhibition. Included was a virtual reality section. This idea will allow films to be watched, to see the outside world as if the plane was moved from glass, or to place yourself in a new environment such as the jungle or a beach. It was pretty groovy!

Dannii wearing her virtual reality headset

Aye aye, Captain. Dannii the pilot

We then retuned to Mount Victoria one last time to try and find a film location from The Fellowship of the Ring. It was filmed a long time ago and damn nature changes around a bit, but maybe you can see where Frodo, Sam, Merry and Pippin hid from a ring-wraith.

GET OFF THE ROAD!

And our LOTR adventures continued in the airport as this giant Gollum oversaw everything! Not only that, but Gandalf, the Eagles and Smaug were even around, all curtsey of WETA Workshop. Absolutely amazing! :-D

A great wrap up to one of the most awesome adventure I had whilst in NZ. Great to throw in the LOTR and Hobbit moments!

We must also remember the two songs of the trip. They featured much more heavily in parts I - VI, but I can't stress enough how heavily they actually featured. And yet I don't think any of us thought they were overplayed. Isn't that right, Dannii? These glorious songs were:

• "We Are Done"- The Madden Brothers
• "Blank Space"- Taylor Swift

And of course we had the Joker Card being passed around. Well actually it probably didn't swap hands in Wellington, so that means it remained with a class member of the group. Who exactly...?

LIAM! Congratulations on winning the prestigious award and being confirmed as an absolute muppet. It was a very close three horse race between yourself, Pauline and me (damn Dannii and Adele being too good for this kind of thing), but you snatched glory at the most vital moment. Well done you. You truly deserved it ;-) haha.

Kia Ora,

Ben