More Chiang Mai

More pics than words cause I don't have long, but you can see some of the things we've been up to!

Nick & Cath on one of our Elephants
Getting wet!


Suits on their way!
SOOO many cool insects!
Waterfall swim
Down the river on boats

Heaps more, so much to do!!

Chiang Mai

Wow, this place is amazing!

Done HEAPS already, but here are a few pics of some things so far...

Our first tuk-tuk ride

Cath and me having a 'Fish Spa'. They eat all of the dead stuff off our feet and it tickles!

Almost every shop seems to have some sort of water feature, normally containing lilies, LOVE IT!

HEAPS of temples

REALLY good food, which is of course so cheap!

Tomorrow we're doing a day of Thai Cooking School, learning 7 dishes. All for NZ$35 each :)

Then a 2 day trekking tour into the rain forest, which I'm really looking forward too :D

Singapore airport

Lots of awesome koi in a pond surrounded by orchids, I won't show you the dead one though :P

one with my camera :)

Next, Thailand!

Avatar

WOW...

This movie really does kick ass! So far we've been to see it 3 times (in 3D) and we're going to go again tomorrow to see it in 2D at the Embassy, it really is that good!

Every time I watch it I find another sequence which I find totally mesmerising - I just can't get over how amazing the effects are!

The cover of the next Cinefex mag - it's going to have lots of Avatar stuff in it.

Make sure you go and see it soon as I can guarantee you'll want to go a few times!

Tomorrow we're also heading off to Thailand for our big trip, so watch out for blog posts as we go. Saying that they'll probably be fairly simple till we get back and I can make decent ones in my own time :P

Wee Mantis

This wee dude is the smallest mantis I've ever seen - REALLY small!
No the best pic as he would not sit still at all...

Fun at the District Court

After 23 weeks of waiting, the case against the guy who caused my motorbike crash finally went before the judge on Friday. The thought of getting it sorted (and therefore getting my insurance money) had become a bit of a dream due to it taking so long, but the time had come and I went along to the Lower Hutt District Court to play my part as a witness.

After my jury duty last year I've spent a bit of time in the Wellington District Court, but the one in the Hutt is (I guess not surprisingly) a lot more grotty!

The cream of the crop who frequent this place seem to enjoy taking out their frustration by 'bashing' the bins

And of course the toilet doesn't have much space that isn't claimed by someone with a vivid
Not a very nice place to hang out for a few hours!

Then came the case - I was a witness, even though I have no memory of what happened. Even so I wasn't stupid enough to fall for the defense lawyers predictable attempts to entrap me:

Defense lawyer: "I put to you that it's possible you had crossed out of your lane and into the flush median at the time of impact"

Me: "No, that's not possible"

(repeat this 3 time's until the judge told him to drop it!)

The eyewitness was very clear in describing what he saw, he did a good job :)

The judge then made the clear decision that actually the kid who had pulled out right infront of me did cause the accident. WOW, what a surprise!

THANK GOD IT'S FINALLY OVER!!!!!

:D

NOOOOOooo!!

Kevin... Is dead...

I found him this morning. Instead of being creamy and smooth, ready for us to eat from him with our morning muesli, he was lumpy and well - gross.

We flushed him.

He lived 3 months, almost to the day, and provided us with many tasty breakfasts. For this we thank him!

Thankfully once we get back from Thailand we can just buy a new one :)

Two tone

I'm not sure how common this is, but I think my dog has the coolest claws!

She posed for this pic today as I was trying to write my thesis and she was trying to get me to come for a walk with her!

24 hours in Nelson

Nick and I went over to Nelson for a quick 24 hour visit to see family and friends. It was all very rushed but managed to get lots done :)

We arrived on Saturday evening and had dinner with Nick's family, all very nice. The next morning with breaky with both families but first we took Meg for a walk. She's 14 now but still very spritely!


The walk was in the local cemetery. All very relaxing except the local PD workers were out in force, mainly just smoking and spitting, with the occasional sweeping of leaves. For those not in NZ, PD stands for Periodic Detension - they've basically doing community service for being bad!




We saw a Kingfisher on the way back from the walk which is always nice




After breakfast we went into town, bit of shopping and caught up with Michelle, Simon and Penguino's ice cream.

After more discussion about stuff we need for our Thailand trip we headed to Mum's for fish and chips, and a few games of whist (cards) before heading to the airport

We had AWESOME views from the plan on the way home :)
And some turbulence just before we landed in Welly too :D

Great trip to too rushed really - next time will be longer

Native... stuff

I was at work on Saturday and noticed the alpine coprosma's were fruiting!!

Before you say anything I'm ok about the fact that I'm a geek...

These plants produce tiny (7mm ish) berries which can be some quite out there colours as well as often being translucent. At the moment we've only got one that has blue fruit.

FYI they also taste pretty much like grapes :)

When I saw them I of course ran and got my camera from the car to get a few pics, and kept it on me for the rest of the day to see what else I found in the way of native flowering things.

Lots of our hebes are flowering now, with a few bees visiting them


The manuka's are looking great, and even though you can't see it in the pic, the sun was reflecting off the nectar they were producing, and lots of flowers had ants in them making the most of it


My favorite native ground cover plant - Pratia angulata. This plant really is THE BOMB! Grows really well in Wellington and looks awesome :)



The native Fuchsia procumbens is also flowering and I saw two tui's visiting our plants for a feed - the first time I've seen Tui's doing that it was very cool!

Breaker Bay

Can you guess why it got it's name??


ooOOOoooo
gravel bouncing in the wave


ooo look, so serious and yet arty! :P








And this photo has some hidden meaning, I'm just not sure what it is...

Whangarei and Waiheke

I had a date to present at a science conference in Whangarei, and we decided the best way to get there would be to fly to Auckland a hire a car from there.

Once my presentation was done (which I won the award of best student presentation for, yay for me!) we decided to head back to Auckland early, due partly to the fact we were flying out from there the next day, and partly because the hotel room we'd booked turned out to not be a friend of the gays!

This meant we got to check out this cool waterfall on the drive back though
And also go to Waiheke Island the next day!
It was my first time there and I wasn't disappointed - I just wish I had my togs, snorkel and underwater camera... Well I have to blame some of that disorganisation on myself but it was a last minute idea to go so never mind
We spent most of the time at Onetangi Bay
First Pohutukawa flowers of the year (that I've seen)

View from Auckland from the boat on the way home

It's been a busy week but at least we're home for a while - oh - wait, we're off to Nelson on the weekend!

BTW Nick can be credited for most of these pictures :)

Proper post from Aussie

I wanted to share a few, nicer, pics with you from our quick trip to Aussie, now that we're home and I've got a spare 30 mins...



So here is our hotel, the Crown Plaza. We were on the 12th (I think) floor. They have an AWESOME buffet breaky that even includes self-serve eggs ben. Wow!







"Danger, rip tide capable of snatching camera from your hand, even when it's strap is round your arm" is what the sign should have read! Oh well, got a new one with the insurance now :)
Oooooo
Bluebottle on the beach, just wee ones this time of year
Washing off the squeeky sand (I have no idea why the sand squeeks when you scuff your feet on it but its very cool!)
The Q1 - highest residential tower on the planet
We couldn't quite see home, but knew which direction it was in!
We had a quick walk in a park near our hotel before we had to head to the airport, and found where all of the local Fruit Bats hang out during the day




Interesting sign on the train to the airport...

We got home at about midnight and then had to catch a plane to Auckland at 7am the next day... urg!