Arrival in New Zealand

On the plane approaching New Zealand the passengers were all informed about the very strict customs regulations when entering New Zealand. Food in particular was very tightly controlled. This was a bit upsetting because we had just bought some quite expensive goji berries and some other unidentified brown berries from duty free in Lanzhou. What was more, I had bought several vacuum-packed chicken feet, which are such a popular snack in China. It had been my intention to post one each to a few friends as a joke, but they had told me I wasn't allowed to send them to Britain when I had tried to post one from Shanghai, so my plan had been to send them from New Zealand, where I assumed you are allowed to wrap your own parcels and post them. I thought about sneaking them in and not declaring them, despite all the warnings about how thorough they are, after all I had them stuffed inside our metal travel teapot to save space, so they wouldn't show up on the X-ray. But, after reading a few leaflets about the unique environment which needs protected from biological contaminants guilt got the better of me and I decided we had to confess all.

Customs was chaotic: coming from Hong Kong, the plane was full of Asians who had transferred from various different countries but all ones, it seemed, where you cannot leave the house without packing enough homemade food to last a week. Indians and Chinese people in particular were having to give up about half of their luggage, handing over Tupperware boxes of sauces and flat breads wrapped in tinfoil. One family was repeatedly sent back from the X-ray by increasingly irritated officials. Our berries were fine, apparently, although I had expected to have to give them up. The combination of dried and vacuum-packed seemed apparently made them safe, but the same was not true for my amusing chicken feet, which I had to watch being thrown into a hazardous waste bin. Even the trusty chilli Bovril was allowed, although I'm sure there must be some mistake there.

Through customs, I thought Auckland looked like Scotland crossed with South Africa. The big colonial-style bungalows and two-storey buildings with wrought iron balconies contributed the South African part, but I'm not sure what made it seem Scottish; maybe it was the fact it was cold, cloudy, and wet. It was different from Scotland in that there were lots of churches – and they haven't been converted into bars and restaurants! What possible other use could they have for them?

It was cold and wet in Auckland (there's the Sky Tower)

At the hostel, we were delighted to find that Berghaus had done as they said they would and sent by courier a replacement rucksack for one that broke at the start of Japan. They had been slow to respond initially and changing countries twice had confused things, but once they got going their customer service was excellent and now Joanne had a lovely new model to replace the useless one still held together by dental floss (top tip, by the way). When we got online we discovered that Joanne's friend, Sharon, had sent an email to say she had received the guide books Joanne had arranged to send to her house, so it was all going smoothly.

We were very tired from our terrible flight, but we were keen to drink some red wine and went out to get some. Drinking the wine, we got talking to a middle-aged guy who commented or complained, I couldn't tell, that Auckland is like being in a different country, there are so many Asians here. He was from the south island in New Zealand and thought it was only a matter of time before the north island becomes completely Asian. I had been thinking how strange it was to see so many white people and hadn't really noticed how many Asians there were, because I was used to seeing Asians so it didn't seem unusual. He claimed that earlier in the day four out of five people he passed were Asian. I'm sure he was exaggerating here and the demographics don't support anything like that proportion but it is true that there are quite a lot of Asian immigrants, most of them students and their families. Maybe this was good as it would break us out of Asia and into Western culture gently!

After the wine we decided to go out an explore the nightlife a bit. After a very expensive mojito in a bar that was clearly too upmarket for us, we found a cheaper one where the Irish barman, hearing that it was our first night in New Zealand, insisted on treating us to a lock-in. It was not a good move for us: we stayed out too late and drank several Green Chartreuses each, which is never a good idea as everyone only ever drinks it because it's the strongest thing in the bar (they had no absinthe, thank goodness).

written by

The Happy Couple on August 12, 2009 from Auckland, New Zealand

from the travel blog: Michael's Round-the-World honeymoon

Send a Compliment

comment on this...