Nov 3rd

The flight from to Singapore was rather uneventful. Singapore Airlines however were absolutely amazing though. They were so polite, and they all wore cool little Asian uniforms and kept on calling me ‘sir.’ It pwned. Seoul was cool, but they made us basically walk in a big circle while they replaced the air crew. I guess at least it got us exercising. We arrived in Singapore at 11:30 on Halloween night, and then after wondering around the Airport for a while I eventually realized my hotel was way out in the city and I had to clear customs. I arrived at the hotel around 1:30, and thus way able to get about four hours of sleep, though I kept on jerking awake from dreaming about bed bugs! Bus was late in the morning leaving me thinking I would miss my plane, but I sailed through immigration and even had time to buy a thirteen dollar watch!

The flight to Auckland left around nine, and I was seated next to two rude Chinese men who slurped their food and only grunted when spoken to, and generally ignored everything the stewardess told them. Mothballs too. :p You know what I mean…

. I got in at 11:30 on Wednesday but didn’t actually get out of the airport until 12:30 due to the random lines that airports make you stand in just for a bored looking customs agent to stamp or sign whatever piece of paper they’ve deigned it necessary for you to fill out (/rant). Alyth immediately recognized me and we started off to her place which is by Waihi. The truck started making a funny noise from the back but we put it down to the exhaust and Alyth arranged for it to be looked at the next day. Got back to her place around 2:30 and promptly fell asleep.

The next day, after waking up at around 10:30 we decided to go into Waihi where they have a huge open pit gold and silver mine which is really quite impressive. Eventually they are planning on filling it with water once it’s been mined out, so it will be quite a nice little lake. On the way to town though, the noise that the wheel had been making became worse, until you know… the entire wheel fell off. Luckily it didn’t completely roll away, and the truck came to a rest on it, but it was still a frightening experience. What it turns out has happened is that in the airport at Auckland while Alyth was waiting for me, some punk kids must have come up and tried to remove the wheel, because they are chrome. The locking nut however stopped them from being successful though, so they left two nuts on, which slowly wore away over the drive back from Auckland. So it was an eventful day!

Everything here is so colourful and absolutely contrasts with each other. It’s beautiful. I don’t know if the pictures I will eventually upload will do it justice, but it has left me speechless on more than one account.