Queenstown: Part One - The Big Tiki

Thursday 16th February - Monday 20th February 2017

On the way to Queenstown we stopped off at a beach and a few lakes. I can't remember he name if the beach now, but Hayley said that when the water is calm you can often see dolphins. So we all jumped off the coach excitedly hoping to glimpse dolphins, when all we actually got were bites from the copious amounts of sandflies around the area!

One of my favourite lakes we stopped off at was Lake Hāwea, the weather is still amazing so the lake really sparkled and the colours were also vibrant and stunning. 

For lunch, we stopped off at Eely point. I had a butter chicken pie. They sell pies at every bakery here, so I figured it was about time I tried one, and I was not disappointed! A few of us are down by the lake and the ducks attacked Tayla! It was pretty funny (I may or may not have egged them on by throwing chips near to her) I've never seen ducks this aggressive before, they were worse than the seagulls! 

Before we got into Queenstown, we stopped off at the Kawarau bridge bungy and watched a few of our Contiki friends do the jump. I feel like out of all the bungys, this is the one I could potentially do... I'll really need to work myself up to it though!! When we finally got to Queenstown I was taken aback. The mountains, lake and town make it look idyllic and the view from our hotel was awesome!

We all got the coach down to the lake to have a group photo, the sun was directly in our eyes so I'm not banking in the photos turning out to be any good! They were only $18 but I have such limited space and such a long time before I get home that I decided against getting it. Some of the others were going for a group dinner at the skyline place, but we decided to go to the famous Fergburger. I got the Bombay chicken and it was the tastiest burger I have ever had hands down! It was only $12.50 and it filled me right up..: still felt full the day after! We got there shortly after 7 and had to queue for about 40 minutes to order and then another 20 minutes before they were ready but it was sooooo worth it! 

After we got our burgers, we wandered around for a bit before going to Loco for drinks, someone gave us a voucher for free drinks so it would've been rude not to! And then we met the others at a different bar when they had come back from their meal. We also bumped into Rory and Hannah as well as Sid as they left our Contiki group before the South Island so it was great to see them again. After a bit, we went next door to Winnie's, but I didn't want to stay out too late so some point around 12:30 Tayla and I rounded up some people to get a taxi back to the hostel. 

The following morning we all went to shotover jet, the most exhilarating boat ride I have ever been on! Our group managed to get the craziest driver so when we all got off we were soaked to the skin, whereas everyone else barely looked damp. The spins were the most fun, but I thought we were going to die a fair few times when he drove it close to the rocks. It's a shame the video was so expensive as it was pretty funny! 

This afternoon Emma and I didn't have any activities planned, so we had a look around town for a bit before heading back to the hotel. I planned to have a cheap night in but then I got a message from Katie and Alec who were back from their hike so I walked down into town to meet them! But tomorrow we are going to Milford Sound and are getting picked up at 6:20am so I didn't stay out too late but it was so awesome to see them both! 

Anshun City. Part One.

Friday 14th September 2012

Today we all thought we were going on holiday to Anshun city to see Huangguoshu waterfall, the largest waterfall in China. 

We all awoke early to get to the train station, we were just given an address to show the taxi drivers and hope for the best. Trying to communicate with the taxi drivers is hilarious. They just chat away to us in Chinese and we're like uhhhh we don't speak your language? I wish we did though, it would've made our lives a lot easier!

The train ride took about an hour, and the seats weren't as uncomfortable as we thought they would be! We then arrived in Anshun, and were greeted by Humphrey, a CC English school teacher. We presumed that we would have these two days off, but as soon as we got there we were taken straight to another branch of CC English school. There seems to be a never ending amount of them!

Thankfully, we were in pairs again today, so I went with Georgia. Our first class were absolutely adorable. They can't have been very old as they didn't know much English, but they weren't as young as the kindergarteners. Naturally, as we are performing monkeys, Georgia had to sing 'Someone Like You' and I had to sing 'Baby'. We were told this, we didn't request this. As we're top friends, we decided to just sing them both together to ease the embarrassment. We ran out of dance moves by the time we got to 'Baby'. We proper went for the high notes in 'Someone Like you' though, and they seemed to think that we were actually good! God knows what they were listening to because I was hurting my ears with my own voice! They were probably just humouring us.

We then went for a little walk around the city. Anshun is a very pretty city in comparison to GuiYang my photo definitely doesn't portray that, but trust me it was! The buildings were not as modern, which brought about a more traditional community feel about the place. Eventually we ended up at a small all you can eat restaurant. We sat on little plastic stools and all crammed around one tiny table. 

 When we got back to the school, we all went into the main hall, which was relatively big, and split up into six groups, two of us to a team of about four. However, to get into the groups, we had to line up on stage and do a dance to which the students then had to pick who they wanted in their team. Thankfully I was one of the first few to be picked, probably because of my blonde hair, and Ollie then followed me onto team two. 

We then had a series of challenges to complete as a group. This included painting a chinese script, doing origami, attempting some sort of knitting thing and making an outfit out of bin liners and other random items we were given. This was highly amusing. After each activity we were given a score, and at the end the group with the lowest score had to do a forfeit. This happened to be Emma and Dan's group, and they did a lovely rendition of the Cupid Shuffle, this was now our go to song for forfeits. 

After we had finished the challenges, we gathered up our stuff and went to leave. However, before we could leave the hall, we were bombarded with the students asking for photos and autographs. I literally felt famous. It was so weird.

We then all scrambled into taxi's to get to our hotel, naturally Georgia and I were sharing a room again. interestingly, the ensuite was made from glass, with the bottom half frosted. So if anyone walks in while you're sitting on the toilet, then they can see you as demonstrated by Georgia in the photo below, I'm sure she will appreciate this. Delightful. We then dumped our stuff in our hotel room, then jumped back in the taxi's to go and get dinner. We hadn't eaten for ages. Starving didn't cover it.

We were told we were going to a DIY BBQ restaurant for dinner, so we let visions of hamburgers and hot dogs make up for the lack of food for the day. Unfortunately, we were disappointed once again by the lack of western influence on the restaurant. There were fridges full of different meats and vegetables which you put on your plate and then took back to your table, which had personal sized fryers on them. Oh, I forgot to mention, you had one pair of tongs to share between both he raw meat and vegetables. As most of us didn't particularly fancy the high risk of food poisoning, so we politely made our excuses, saying we weren't hungry and we wanted to have a walk around the city. 

Thankfully they let us go, and we managed to find a dico's. I have never been so thankful for chicken nuggets and chips in my life. We then met the others, and Humphrey gave us a tour of the local market we were hoping they would have a few good fake stalls. Unfortunately, there wasn't anything there that we couldn't get in GuiYang. The worst part of this little trip was that it was in one of the poorest parts of Anshun, and there were a lot of homeless beggars. It really hit home how lucky we actually are, and how ungrateful we were about dinner! 

We then said goodbye to Humphrey and went back to our hotel. As it was still relatively early, Georgia, James, Josh and I decided to explore the city a little more. We went for a long walk and ended up at a lake with a ginormous golden dragon boat there. It was incredible. Yep, my photo captures its beauty perfectly. This is what you get for taking photos on your iPod touch. 

At this point James was bored, and this never ends well for anyone involved. He thought it would be funny if he played football with a cup. This ended up with James misjudging how well he tied his shoelaces and a shoe in the lake. It was hilarious. Luckily he managed to fish it out the lake.  

Dat grammar tho.