Europe trip 2023

At stupid o’clock (4.30am) we got up and headed to the airport to depart Sri Lanka. The process was slow going, we arrived 2 hours early but only got checked into our flight 50 minutes before it departed.

We were happy to arrive in Dubai and celebrated that we had come so far under budget in Sri Lanka by getting a taxi to our accommodation. We arrived too early to check in, so we took turns staying with our gear and taking a kid exploring around the area.

Once we actually got into the accommodation, we dump our gear and go for a walk to the beach. On the way back home we see a very talented hang drum player. A beats festival had just started so even though we are hungry and thirsty we stand and watch for a good 10 minutes. (I’ll put video up on Facebook). That night BK cooked dinner in our apartment.

The following day was a Friday, we head to the MRT, only to discover that at 9.45am the trains aren’t open yet…how do you operate a city with no trains before 10am we think??!! Turns out their weekend is Friday/Saturday! When the trains start running we head to one of the biggest malls in the world, the Mall of Emirates. After a look around we head back to our apartment to get ready for the Desert Safari.

We are picked up right on time, collect two more passengers then head out to the desert. After a pit stop to give us the opportunity to ride quad bikes which we decline we head to some dunes for ‘dune bashing’. I enjoyed it for approximately the first 2 minutes but after that it wasn’t fun for me, we got stuck in the sand a couple of times and by the end I’m completely over it. All the others enjoyed it though!

We headed to our ‘desert camp’ to have a snack and we get to hold a falcon and ride camels. (On a side note, since we were ethically opposed to riding elephants I wonder if we shouldn’t have ridden the camels…) We watched a dance show and ate dinner both of which were amazing. We got back to our apartment at 10pm, fall into bed for two hours, then get up and go to the airport at 1.30am!

Our flight was meant to leave at 4am but ends up leaving an hour late. We originally had 2 hours to connect to our next flight in which I had great ideas of eating a Turkish Delight in Turkey and having a lovely time but in reality we now only had one hour and we’re tired so we speed to our gate instead. Nice to see you quickly Turkey! We stepped on your ground outside so you are officially in the country count!

We have a quick flight to Athens, check in to our accommodation with no issues and sleep the afternoon away. The next day we wake up and are ready to explore! We head to the Acropolis, to see the ancient sights. Our kids can’t understand how old all this stuff is so BK gives a small history lesson.

Bk also leans over a rocky wall at the top of a cliff to take a photo, at that exact moment a gust of wind comes and blows his (very expensive) sunglasses off his shirt and they join the ruins.

To be honest it was a little underwhelming for us. We only spent 2 hours there and everything is fenced off. I think we were a bit spoilt by the ancient temples in Cambodia which you can clamber through.

After a nap for R we head out to Plaka, otherwise known as old town Athens, we wander through little streets with gelato in hand. It seems that every corner you turn reveals more ruins fenced off. Lots of stores were closed as it was a Sunday. Even the supermarket was closed!

The next day everything burst into life. We went to the Acropolis Museum, there are no photos allowed inside so I can’t show you but take my word for it, it was AMAZING. The actual building was beautiful too. (If you’re reading this Rose, you would have loved it.) It has won many awards. The floor was glass and we looked down to the excavated ruins. Some were quite far down so it is not for the faint hearted.

We found a baby store and purchased two car seats ready to put in our car which we are leasing from Peugeot. The afternoon is spent resting, in hindsight we probably should have explored the waterfront or something!

Countries 11/12/13✔

One more flight, and then we pick up our Peugeot and start exploring Europe on 4 wheels! Hope we remember how to drive after 3 months of not driving! 😄

Till next time,

Claire

Budget update :
Dubai/Istanbul/Athens – $146 over!! (This was purely the Desert Safari pushing us well over)
Total budget – $508 under (Thank goodness for that buffer I’ve built up!)

We find out that social media has been cut off due to an incident in Kandy while we were there, a small truck knocked off a wing mirror of a tuktuk. The truck driver was very sorry and gave money to repair it, but one was Muslim and one was Buddhist, and so started riots and not very nice things. Therefore the government locked down social to stop incorrect info and scare mongering being spread.

At first I thought my phone was having issues so I updated my apps, I swapped wifi networks, then I googled and found out it wasn’t just me! Quite a step to take by the government, pretty much crippling us tourists connecting with home. Luckily my mum has an iPhone and the iMessage was still working so I could quickly inform the Mothership of happenings, and that we were safe. Fortunately email was also still working.

The social media drama aside, we still got out and about. We visited the Halpewatte Tea Factory where BK drew comparisons to how they process hops for beer brewing! It was very interesting to have just seen the tea being picked by the tea pickers to then see it get processed ready to be shipped out in big bags. The building was very tall, lots of up and down steps during our tour!

After that we transferred to Tangalle, on the south coast. Our driver, Saman, was very informative and stopped to let us see a waterfall, a pepper tree, get some curd and honey, and a bathroom/iceblock break. He also drove us through a ‘nature road’ where we saw lots of wildlife. Finally we were at the coast and glad to be even further away from Kandy. We settled in and went for a walk.

We were staying right by the beach so the next couple of days included walks on the beach, laundry, supermarket, buying new jandals for me since mine broke, plenty of local food and generally lazing around.  We had a particularly good lunch experience at a place called Dream Family restaurant. The Dad catches the fish, the Mum cooks it, and the son serves it. The food was delicious, and they gave us free ice cream to finish up, ice cream always goes down well!

Another fun experience I had, when going to the beach to look for the rest of my family who were, supposedly there, was getting convinced to help pull in fishing nets with the fishermen, there were 8 guys tugging, and weakling me it was quite fun, but I was too preoccupied in my mind looking for my family to fully engage and see the net 100% pulled in.

We tried to see turtles but the only option was going out in the dark at 8:30pm, to hope to see a Mummy turtle lay eggs somewhere between 9pm – 11pm, just too late for us so we skipped it.

Then it was time to move on to our next stop. We went by public bus. Bus drivers here are crazy! But we loved being with the locals and R had many admirers. All up travel cost NZ$11 for all of us to travel 2 hours west along the south coast.

We all still had energy when we arrived so BK and C went to the shop and little R and I had a swim at the beach. That evening BK wasn’t very well so not much sleep was had!

After a quiet morning and afternoon, BK felt well enough to go out so we chose to go to a turtle hatchery. It was amazing to learn about the different turtles, we saw some injured ones that fishermen had brought to hatchery to recover. Then we got to release a baby turtle which was only 1-2 days old! I placed it on the sand and it found its way to the water and a wave came and scooped it up and pushed it out to sea! He was so little I didn’t dare ask what the survival rate was…

After a good solid sleep by everyone we were picked up by our driver and taken to Galle Fort, it was so interesting to see a museum full of Portuguese, Dutch and English artifacts. We saw the wall that was supposed to have stopped the Tsumani in 2004, but the waves came through an open gate and flooded the place out anyway.

Our final day in Sri Lanka was spent on a 2 hour train trip beside the ocean to Colombo, we got a group of 4 seats together but a few stations later a monk got on, and it turns out the sign on the wall above R’s seat says its for ‘clergy’ and he wants to sit there, so we all reshuffle and then the monk gets a lesson on hatchimals, care of little R and her toys! After getting off the train It was a bit of a mission to get to our accomodation. Our host had told us to ask the bus driver to drop us in a particular, random, place. Several people around us tried to speak to us in their language and make sure we were sure that’s what we wanted, once we were dumped on the side of the road with our gear we realised what they were trying to say! Fortunately I was in constant contact with our host who within a few minutes came and got us and took us to where we were staying. When we got there we realised how much we had been compromising on our accommodation in Sri Lanka. This place was lovely and the attention to detail was much appreciated. Even though we were only there 13 hours it was the best place we stayed at in the whole country! It was NZ$33 per night, and we got two rooms so a total cost of NZ$66. We had a lovely dinner by the lagoon as the sun was setting which finished off the day perfectly.

We did awesome on the budget. The only thing we didn’t do which would have taken a big chunk of money was a safari, but after reading you ‘only’ see elephants, birds and lizards we decided a safari could wait for an African trip. Also our Thai experience with the elephants was more than enough to help with the wait.😎

Sri Lanka – $435 under

Total budget – $654 under

Now we head North West, one more stop then we arrive in Europe!

Till next time,

Claire

P.S. Social media still wasn’t back on when we left, lots of embassies were making noise about it damaging tourism and business etc. so I think it was due to come back on in the next couple of days. I was very thankful for our VPN that allowed me to tunnel through the Internet and make it look like I was in Australia, therefore staying in sporadic contact as I had to be on reasonably fast internet to get the VPN to connect. All a bit of a challenge!

Leaving Hong Kong was an experience.

We found the same express bus back to the airport, got our transport cards refunded then checked in. I was given a map of some kind with my boarding passes but took no notice of either the map or the boarding passes. We then proceeded to try to find our gate…

Turns out Hong Kong is a massive airport. We cleared immigration then found ourselves in an underground train station, um? Is this where we are meant to be? We didn’t miss a turn did we? We got on the train and went to the next station to find it was another terminal which still didn’t have our gate number, so it was back on the train to the next station/terminal. Yes, gate 203 was here, a very long walk away, we walked, and walked! When we finally got to our gate we discovered the seats all have plugs and USB ports so we pulled out all of our electronics and topped up their charge. Very handy.

As I was walking toward the plane I finally bothered to look at the boarding passes and map, ahh I see why they gave me a map now, but why are all 4 of us sitting in random spots and not together? I complained to the flight attendant and she managed to seat one child with one parent.

We had a few hours in KL to eat and mill around before we boarded another Air Asia flight, the final flight I had booked with them and had a great flight to Sri Lanka. We got a visas on arrival which was not a speedy process, found our luggage (hurrah it did it’s transfer in KL), made it to our accommodation, checked in and fell into bed, our bodies thought it was 2am 💤

The following day was pretty much a write off, we were staying by the beach so we had a small walk, ate at the same restaurant for lunch and dinner and were early to bed. After a day of rest we were ready to move inland. A NZ$2 Uber to the bus station, a NZ$4 bus to Colombo, and a NZ$5 train to Kandy, we’d arrived at our next city. NZ$11 total travel cost for all 4 of us for the day wasn’t bad. It was mine and BK’s 11th wedding anniversary so that evening we went to a cultural dance show and had paninis and chips for dinner.

The following day BK did some work and I took the kids to the botanical gardens. We saw a tree that had been planted by NZ’s Former Prime Minister John Key in 2016. We also saw the largest fig tree in the world. The gardens were really impressive to me but the heat got too much after an hour and the kids weren’t having fun so it was back to our hotel. The kids then proceeded to play quietly on their beds for an hour+ (!!!???) maybe drawn to the cool air conditioning? Maybe still tired? We’d later be thankful we stayed away from the city centre that day.

The next day it was up early and on the train for one of the most beautiful train rides in the world. We had a plan…I’d get on with R and find us seats then BK would ferry the luggage between C on the platform and me. The train arrived, I threw R on the train, uh oh, no seats!!!! Not even one! Back on the platform, BK wants to bail, he can’t even get our gear on. Someone tells him to go to 3rd class. I get on to the 2nd class carriage with R and sit on the floor, (this is becoming a pattern I think to myself). The train departs. I hope like heck BK got all our gear and C on.

As the train goes inland we all find our space, a few people get off and it becomes a little easier to move.

We meet a French family, a Chinese couple, 2 young female British doctors and have plenty of chat. R likes the two doctors and sits between them on their seats and plays games on her tablets. R also sees a little Sri Lankan boy get on the next carriage at some point and waves at him as he stares at her. She decides she wants to give him some stickers (I’d purchased kiwi pens/pencils and stickers for each of the kids to share during our trip) so cue me opening my big pack in the middle of the carriage to make this happen. She walks over gangway to the next carriage (I hold onto her firmly, Mum!) and he receives the stickers with a smile. Love our girl’s kind heart! He gets off a while later and furiously waves at us as the train pulls away from the station.

The train comes to a stop a while later, 40 minutes pass…one of our new friends asks a train guard why we are stopped, apparently a tree fell on the track. We eventually start going again.

Our new friends watched ‘the baby’ (little R) while I had 5 minutes to myself. I spent some time hanging my legs out of the carriage door watching the views go by.

The seeing tea plantations and watching the tea pickers was amazing. The 6 hour journey turned into 7 hours thanks to that tree so we are glad to arrive in Ella. (Train NZD$4 for all of us). We walk in the light rain to our guest house and dump our gear and go out for dinner, showers, bed.

The following day our host cooks us the most amazing breakfast, we eat a days worth of food then set off on a hike up ‘Little Adam’s Peak’ we wind up through tea plantations and up some stairs to the top. It takes us about 45 minutes. The kids are excited to see a snake charmer along the way! Beautiful views and drinks of water at the top, we also see our Chinese friends from the train. We find a light lunch and have a rest.

That afternoon Facebook, Messenger, Whatsapp and Instagram stop working…

To be continued…

Our time in Hong Kong started with a very smooth travel day from Taiwan. We took the train to the airport, checked in (both very efficient) found our gate, sat around, loaded onto a plane, ate lunch (thanks Cathay Pacific!) arrived into Hong Kong, processed through customs, got cash, got a SIM card, found a bus that was express into the city, got dropped on the side of the road (got to love those times when we land on the side of the road with all our gear), walked 4 mins to our hostel, the receptionist/owner gushed over our kids and gave them Chinese New Year ‘lucky money’ each (HK$20 = NZ$3.50), were shown to our room and wondered how the day had been so simple!

So, still having energy and with dinner time approaching, we went for a walk, and found a park with a lovely aviary. Then we kept walking and found the ocean! It had been 6 weeks since we’d seen the ocean so we just stood and smelt it. Ha!

The following day we spent the morning resting while BK worked across the road at Starbucks. We were staying next to a school so we spent a lot of time peering out the window at it. Turns out a school is a school is a school. School Mums stand at the gate with their Mum friends chatting, little boys come up with crazy silly games and there are after school activities galore.

One thing I noticed about this school that kiwi schools don’t do (as far as I’m aware), is take all the kids temperature (by zapping their foreheads with no touching of the child) as they enter the gate, then gave them all a squirt of hand sanitiser. It’s winter in Hong Kong at the moment so every second person is coughing or sniffing. Anyway they processed the kids really fast and I think it would be an excellent way to attempt to keep the school as bug free as possible, catching out those ‘she’ll be right’ parents.

**I know you’re reading this Marcus, I thought it was an excellent idea for terms 2 & 3! Difficult to manage the 3 entry points to our school though.**

That afternoon we did some more exploring and I got distracted at the Sketchers shoe store…Budget? What budget? 😛 New shoes for me and little R ✔ My runners were falling apart and her feet are growing! Funnily enough R is able to walk much further in her new shoes without complaining so maybe I was a bit slow in realising she was growing.

Wednesday was spent waiting for BK to finish off some work and calls in the morning then it was off to Hong Kong Island. We crossed on the star ferry which had been operating for 100+ years, cheap too! 50 cents for each adult and 30 cents for each kid (NZD). It was fun to get out on the water and see the city from a different angle. We then found the central mid levels escalators, which are 800m of escalators! No, not all one escalator, wouldn’t that be an engineering feat if it was. Lots of separate ones that all joined together by 2-5 metre gaps. Fun times!

Up up up we went!

Then along to the Hong Kong Zoological and Botanic Gardens, which were beautifully maintained and free! I saw my fave scarlet ibis birds again, they had a lovely enclosure there. Also there were very active monkeys! Then it was onto the Peak Tram, us Kiwis would call it a Cable Car, it works exactly the same as the one in Wellington, but it is twice as long, and much steeper. (If you’ve been to the Blue Mountains and seen that tram/cable car it was almost that gradient!) We were propelled up the hill to ‘the peak’ which had magnificent views of the whole city. We found a playground and had a nice sit in the sun.

Back down the cable car and MRT’d back to our hostel but not before stopping off at a ‘Mammys Pancake’ for a bubble waffle. Yum is all I have to say, I’ll put a photo up on Facebook to show you what it looked like, but let’s just say I didn’t share very much of mine with the fam.

On our last full day in Hong Kong we took a ferry (Kiwis – think those fast/comfortable/look like an aeroplane inside ferries to Waiheke) to another country, Macau. It was meant to be a 50 minute dash but due to very thick fog it was more like 90 mins, which obviously we were fine with, preferring to be alive and not in a ferry crash!

Once we got advice on which bus to take from the ferry terminal we were off to the Main Street, it had beautiful Portuguese architecture which was lovely to see. Also there were a lot of Catholic Churches rather than temples, a nice change! We went up to the fortress, where I had read there was meant to be 32 cannons, but we only found 23 so that was a fail! We also saw China mainland. I couldn’t quite believe it so asked a security guard and yep that was definitely China. We would have popped across if it wasn’t for the NZ$160 visa cost, each! Under the fortress we went to the Museum of Macau which had free WiFi (our HK sim didn’t roam in Macau) and aircon…oh and some interesting things to look at. We also attempted to go to the Grand Prix museum, only to turn up to find it’s closed and has been since July 2017. That’s the second time this year we’ve tried to go to a museum only to find out its shut indefinitely! (The King’s residence in Bangkok being the other one)

I had also read that egg tarts were a must try in Macau so we scouted out the best price and got a couple to share, very nice, it had something like baked custard on the inside and lovely fresh flakey pastry on the outside, it wasn’t sickly sweet either.

Then it was back to Hong Kong, we caught the ferry with a minute to spare. This time it took about 70 minutes as the fog had lifted on the Macau side but still a bit low in Hong Kong.

So Hong Kong, you’re expensive but a great stop over, you’ve got some good free things to enjoy. I enjoyed Macau a lot, it was $221 for all 4 of us (return), not cheap but worth it I think 🙂

But we managed to scrape in just under budget! Whoop!

Till next time!

Claire

Budget – $11 under!

Total budget – $219 under

• Disclaimer – Does not include $160 spent on shoes 😎