Blog posts from 2019

Day 18 – Rotorua

The first thing we do in the morning is take another shower, hoping to get rid of that rotten egg smell. It only worked a little bit. We head out to this museum type place. It’s like one of the Maori tribe have turned their land into a tourist attraction. Our ticket includes a welcome […]

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Day 17 – Auckland to Rotorua

The car rental dealership was a half an hour walk from the airport hotel, we got small silver Suzuki. We drive three hours to Rotorua to our Airbnb to drop off our stuff and head to Hell’s Gate. As someone who has seen Old Faithful in Yellowstone and been to several thermal hot springs in […]

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Day 16 – Cairns to Auckland

We woke up early and get to the airport 3 hours before a domestic flight so we cannot go in yet BECAUSE ANTOINE IS PARANOID. We get to Sydney with no problem. Their main McDonalds has two levels, the top level is the kitchen and they have this machine that rotates, and the kitchen would […]

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Day 15 – Cairns

FINALLY A DAY TO RELAX. We find a brunch place to get fruits and smoothies, and a local market with Boba and local art pieces and vegetables. They sell bok choi and white Chinese cabbage at their farmers market, all we have in London are various potatoes and bad avocados. After we get back to […]

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Day 14 – Great Barrier Reef, back to Cairns

Antoine and I signed up for an adventure dive with Jen because with my PADI license, I can only go up to 18 meters deep, where as I would like to go deeper. One of my options is to get the advanced PADI license like the one Antoine has, or go on an Adventure Dive, […]

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Day 13 – The Great Barrier Reef Day 2

I have the option to do the early morning dive with Freddie and the other German girl or sleep, but since Antoine was doing a morning dive for his class anyways I got up to go with them. We get our gear on and jump into the water, something is wrong with the German girl […]

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Day 12 – The Great Barrier Reef

This is the big day, I do my first dive in the big ocean water, and we see the Great Barrier Reef. We pack up our stuff and walk the one minute distance to the office. We were early. The van eventually shows up and we hop in, it takes us to a boat. Because […]

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Day 11 – Cairns

The AirBnb was right next to where the office to the dive company. It is called Diver’s Den. It was a one minute walk, basically 2 doors down.  I went to pool and learned her Closed Water Dive skills There were supposed to be four people in my class, one didn’t make it and one […]

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Day 10 – Arlie beach to Cairns

We woke up for a seven hour drive to Cairns, but for some reason Waze tells us it’s 15 hours. The main highway seemed to be shut due to the fires and we would have to go back the way we came for a few hours and go inland for another few hours until we […]

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Day 9 – Whitehaven

The next morning we wake up and we wait at a neighborhood sign as instructed by the boat company. A van eventually shows up and picks us up to drive us to the local port. We get on a boat that is ran by Scottish men, it is a supposedly a pirate boat. At first […]

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Day 7 – Noosa

Antoine woke us up bright and early for a drive up north for about an hour for a “surprise”.  He refuses to tell me what it is. When we arrive at the port, there are three buildings, and Antoine leads me to one that says “dolphins”. A man asks us if we are there to feed […]

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Day 6 – Australia Zoo

Once again, we wake up at around 5am. Antoine opens the door to go to the bathroom and Mr. Fluffypants runs in again. We just let him. While Mr. Fluffypants stares out the window dramatically, we gather ourselves and head out. We drive for an hour, Antoine planned for a two hour drive as he […]

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Day 5 – Surfing in Byron bay

We woke up at around 5am to drive three hours to our surf lessons in Byron Bay. We get there and wait to get picked up. A white van pulls up in front of us and a quintessential super surfer comes out of the driver seat and says “G’day mates” unironically. His name is David. […]

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Day 4 – Blue Mountains

All I knew what was happening today was that we were going “canyoning”…whatever that meant. We drive about two to three hours inland to the Blue Mountains and stop at a hostel. We are greeted by a man named Aidan. He gets us to sign some forms and goes through the day with our guide. […]

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Day 3 – Sydney

The alarm was supposed to go off at 8am, I was awake by 5am and very very hungry. We try to sleep some more, but it doesn’t work. I decided to look for a breakfast place. Using TripAdvisor, I pick a place called Two Ant Café. It was about a 10 minute walk from where […]

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Day 2 – Guangzhou to Sydney

Waking up in GuangZhou at around 5am, we get our stuff together and head to the free continental breakfast buffet. Chinese breakfast. Yes. We have our breakfast noodles and tea, and head out to the free airport shuttle and arrive at the airport. We then realized that neither of us brought hats or sunglasses. We […]

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Day 1 – London to Guangzhou

We flew out from Heathrow to GuangZhou, China, their airport is called “BaiYun” which means “white cloud”. We thought that we would have to sleep in the airport for the 14 hour layover, especially since we would have needed a visa to leave the airport. Once we landed, we followed the sings to transfer and […]

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