Dunedin - The Big Tiki

Monday 20th February - Tuesday 21st February 2017

I was sad to leave Queenstown this morning, it is truly one of the most beautiful places I've ever been to. Hopefully I'll be able to get a job here, but if not I'll be back to do a swing (and maybe a bungy if someone bullies me into it!). We also said goodbye to a few more of our Contiki fam sadly.

When we arrived at Dunedin, we had a few hours to use up before going out for he evening. So we had a wander and, much to my excitement, there was a Cadbury factory! I immediately booked on to the factory tour for the following morning... it only worked it to be around £13 so I couldn't resist!! Kirsten and I shared a galaxy cake and I got a hot chocolate - honestly the nicest hot chocolate I have ever had in my life!

We then went to find Kathleen and Emma, who we expected to find with a pint of beer at a bar somewhere. Instead we found them with a tasting rack of 6 half pints! They had also been talking to two American couples who had come here on a cruise. It was so hot and I ended up burning a bit typically!

After gathering at the hotel, we all got the coach up to Speights brewery for the brewery tour. The tour guide cut it short so we could have more time at the bar... not that I'm complaining at all! I tasted all the beers and poured my first (half) pint successfully!

Following this we had a group meal at the alehouse. I had tomato soup then a chicken salad and it was one of the most delicious meals I had had in a while.

As I didn't want to spend more money on going out, me and some of the others went back to the hotel. Some of us went back to a room to play heads up and drinking games, but after a while Asha, Ashna, Tayla and I decided to go back to the room to watch Insidious. I've seen it before so spent most of the time scaring Tayla haha.

The following morning it was time for my Cadbury factory tour! Tash and I were the only ones who wanted to do it so we had quite a small group which meant more chocolate! In the chocolate tasting room I waaayyy over did it with white chocolate so spent most of the tour feeling super sick... it was so worth it though! We saw how most of the chocolate they made at that factory was made, and more importantly got free samples along the way!

After getting on the coach, Hayley and Ricky spent a few minutes trying to locate the student house that six sixty started out in. 'White lines, blue skies' by six sixty is our day song, so we listen to it every time we get in the coach in the morning, so it was a special stop for our group!

Our final stop in Dunedin was to the world's steepest residential street: Baldwin street. It was a right trek getting to the top and the views weren't even that good but I guess we can say we've done it now!

Tour of GuiYang.

Monday 3rd September 2012

Today we were due to go on a tour of Guiyang and had to be at the CC experiment centre by 10am, so I thought I would get up at 8am to make sure I wouldn't be late. However, when I got up to go to the bathroom, my chum sent me back to bed to go back to sleep for another hour... I was OK with this!

She then got me up at 9am and, as soon as I finished my breakfast, she pointed at the door to go, so I had to rush to get ready in just under a minute! We took the bus to the experiment centre, all the different places I had seen whilst in taxis started to join up in my mind, so I felt like I was getting better at navigating thank goodness! When we reached the bus stop we were getting off, Josh was there with his chum so I had a friendly face to enter CC with! 

We got given our sim cards when we reached the fourth floor so it was finally time to put my sexy new phone to use! After everyone else arrived, we went to a traditional chinese building where you can also watch them do arts and crafts, like fan making and painting. 

Then we went to get phones for the people who thought the sim cards would work in their english mobile phones but unfortunately didn't. The phone shop we went to was huge, and sold pretty much every mobile you could think of. Pretty much everyone stuck to the cheap basic phones though, as it was coming out of our own precious money!

Afterwards, we had KFC again and then went to a seriously dodgy looking market to try and get some cheap fake items, gotta love shopping in foreign countries! The place was a maze, we were taken around quite a few shops, but all the decent looking bags were well out of our price range. Being in that place made me very glad I opted to bring a bum bag with me. All my money and my phone was safely tucked away! 

We then went to the same shopping centre I went to yesterday with my chamily. Obviously I had to brag that they took me to the cinema. Half of us decided to stay behind in a tea shop, they didn't want to go shopping, and the other half of us decided to look around the shops. There were loads of shops, but they were mostly all brands we had never heard of and were about the same price as clothes are in England, so we were reluctant to spend any of our money on new clothes. However, we were more than happy to part with our money when we spied a Dairy Queen that sold Oreo ice cream. Definitely worth the money.

We then saw an advertisement for a 5D simulator. Most of us had been in a 5D simulator before so were particularly interested in what made this so spectacular that another 'D' needed to be added. This was still back in the part of the trip when we were naive and took everything literally. We had to pick a movie off of the sheet, there were a lot of different choices. I can't remember which scene we went for, but i remember that it was so bad, that it was actually quite funny. The thing that we were all sitting on moved around a bit, but other than that it was barely 3D let alone 5D! 

To make things even funnier, when we got out of the simulator which, by the way, left us on a cliffhanger despite the fact we had been in there for about 5 minutes, a man tried to sell us a live rooster! This was whilst we were still in the simulator's shop. The shopkeepers then decided to take a photo of us to put on their wall... hopefully we are still there now!

We then went to find everyone back at the tea shop, to which we found them all using the free WiFi. As soon as we realised this, we jumped on the band wagon and immediately started sky ping/ FaceTiming family and friends from back home. We were also introduced to bubble tea, which is basically different flavours of tea with black squidgy ball things in the bottom. I opted for a watermelon flavour and it was genuinely one of the nicest drinks I have ever tasted! Although I was rather unsure about the black balls, I was never sure whether the things we were given to eat were actually edible or not! James decided it would be funny to shoot them across the room at each other with our straws. This seemed absolutely hilarious until we were all told off by the CC English teachers we were with. Oopsie.

We then travelled back to the CC English experiment centre and, when we got there, my chum was the only charent there! I felt so loved! And unbelievably grateful that I didn't have to make my way around GuiYang on my own. We had a quick meeting about the T.I.P training for tomorrow, and we were also told that we will all be sharing one big twelve man apartment with WiFi. At this moment in time this was all we needed to hear. Our hopes were lifted at the thought of the team being reunited again!

Here are some photos of the day, none of them relate to a particular section so I thought I would just bung them all in one place! They are not in chronological order because Blogger is doing my actual head in... they need a better system to add photos into a blog!

      

Thanks for reading!