San Francisco turned into a college town

First day in AUCKLAND NEW ZEALAND! Yeah, I’m saying that out loud :)

What a journey but I’m finally here after all the waiting. It was a rocky 10-hour flight but I made it without a fuss. Well, almost. The MAS agent disallowed me from flying without a return ticket to NZ, but fortunately I was able to proceed with an advanced booking without payment.

First impressions of Auckland? Well, it’s kinda like San Francisco turned into a college town. The cool weather is refreshing but the frequent and intermittent rain can be a bother. Mother Nature is playing weather-swap during the winter period – it’s sunshine bright in one minute and raining the next.

There are quite a number of convenience stores on Karangahape Road where my hostel’s located. Now imagine the fact that almost all of them have Asians tending the cashier. In addition to that, they’re at all the bank branches. Yup, lotta Asians here.

Here's a picture that I took during the descent into Auckland. 'twas a cloudy day so didn't have much luck with the camera. Enjoy!

First notes!

Howdy people...I've finally decided to start a blog to document my travels, mainly for the following reasons:

1. To help fellow travellers to find their way - where to find good food or internet access, or both at the same time
2. Saves me the trouble of telling the same story via 10 different emails to 10 different people (plus I'd feel really guilty doing the copy-paste thing)
3. Keeping in touch with friends & family (my brother did remind me that my retired parents would be cyber-stalking me everyday from now on)

Yeah, I've plenty more other reasons but let's start with these :)

*note that some of the next few posts will be backdated, mainly because I'm copying from my real-time private journal entries...