Flying high across Lesser Sunda

We didn’t have much time this morning before our 1140 flight from Bali to Labuanbajo. We walked out of our hotel to grab some breakfast. Unfortunately at 8am, there was not much choice. Kuta is rather touristy and it was only pricey cafes or McDonalds and KFC … nothing cheap or local. Our Lion Wings […]

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Power sight-seeing

Due to the 5 hour time difference we woke early and walked to the airport for some breakfast before our 3 hour flight to Bali. We essentially had had an afternoon and an overnight in Bali for all the things I had in mind. Lengthy immigration queues ate into this time.   We headed out […]

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Multi-level marketer on board

Departing Christchurch at 1610, the 11h15 hours on the super-quiet AirAsia X flight went reasonably quickly.  That was even without in-seat personal entertainment. These were all removed when they realised people weren’t paying to use them. I managed to catch-up on some reading and planning for next year’s travel! Just before landing, the crew gave […]

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Early birds and angry birds

This is the cheap trip that we had been looking forward to for about 10 months. When AirAsia X first opened up their sales for the new route to/from Christchuch we snapped up some tickets to KL for NZD58 plus airport taxes, coming to NZD99 … add to that luggage at NZD1 per kg and […]

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Daging Masak Hitam

  While I've made this dish before, this time I took note of the tip I had gotten from a friend … add in blended… Posted by Alex Chan on Saturday, May 1, 2010

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Penang Laksa and more

Several homemade meals including the famous or infamous Penang Laksa or Assam Laksa. It is so fishy that some of my… Posted by Alex Chan on Wednesday, October 12, 2011

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Eating in Mexico

The food in Mexico was great until Kim developed some kind of intolerance … perhaps to the beans if they're whole and not refried. So that put an end to our Mexican culinary adventure. Posted by Alex Chan on Thursday, August 25, 2011

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Back home

We returned to Christchurch in the afternoon in time for an evening flight back to Auckland.  It was a short getaway squeezed into a standard two-day weekend, but it was worth it!

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The TranzAlpine

Today we took what was described as one of the most beautiful rail journeys in the world … the TranzAlpine from Christchurch to Greymouth on the West Coast, passing through the Southern Alps including Arthur’s Pass. As it was spring, we could see the mountains were still beautifully snow-capped.  It was sunny and the snowy […]

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Devastated beauty

The heart of Christchurch is one of few places in New Zealand that looks old … this is a fairly young country compared to, say, Europe.  The city centre had a good collection of buildings that made New Zealand look like it had some architectural history.  Unfortunately a lot of this was destroyed in the […]

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