Ashita no Kioku~: Alluring New Zealand, North Island

June 12, 2016

Alluring New Zealand, North Island - Part 1

It's been a while since I last visited here it seems... Lots of things happened, been up and down in my real life, changed this blog's layout for easier navigating and I've decided to post regarding our trip to North Island, New Zealand first - simply because it's still fresh in my mind and I'd like to upload the pictures here - before the short Singapore and Penang trip last year. And maybe if I have some time I'll post about Egypt trip as well

This post is more for my documentation and future references, not for those planning on budget trip in NZ. This post will be divided into 3-4 entries for the next few weeks, as to not to clog everything into one post. And I'll be posting not according to dates like I did for Japan, but rather on places we visited. Enjoy!

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New Zealand was a rerouted holiday for the 3 of us, under certain circumstances. Yup, this time around it was only the 3 of us apparently. I decided on the destination but really the mastermind behind the journey was Zeti. We took off on May 15^th, the night flight (celebrated Mom’s birthday in the morning) and surprise surprise! We met an ex-college mate who was also taking the same flight with us! We flew with Air Asia, which had a 75-min transit in Gold Coast; bought in-flight meal and baggage so our total ticket price per person was roughly RM 2100.

The flight from KL to Gold Coast Australia took about 8 hours and another 3 hours from Gold Coast to Auckland. Time-wise Gold Coast is 2 hours ahead of KL and Auckland is 4 hours ahead of KL.

We reached Auckland at around 4 pm local time. Since we would be traveling by car, we brought in prepacked food (Brahims and Maggie). Do take note to declare the goods that you brought in to the customs as you arrived, okay? You can check out the items here:

As you can see, I checked with a few resources because I’m OCD like that ^^;

Zeti rented a car with this company: Go Rentals

We paid total of NZD 384 (~RM 1060) for a total of 8-day car rent. Just make sure you got a valid driving license, and yes you can use Malaysian driving license (changed mine to the new license). Once you landed, you just give them a call via a public phone service (it’s free of charge) to inform them that you have arrived and they’ll come and pick you up from the airport to the rental place and walla! You’ll get your car for your traveling!

Meanwhile, I went to buy a travel simcard from a nearby Vodafone booth at the airport. It’s NZD49 for 3G dataplan with 200min-call and 200-text for 60 days. You can check the rest of their offer here : http://www.vodafone.co.nz/travel-sim/ Basically we use the internet mainly for GoogleMap to maneuver our ways around.

Since we reached late in the evening and it’s nearing winter hence shorter daytime duration, we stayed one night at a hotel (Airport Gateway Hotel for NZD 115/night) and departed to Matamata the next morning.

But we learned later that there’s also another option for Muslim tourists, do check it out here: Mesra Homestay or mesrahomestaynz@fb

Matamata
Why Matamata? Because Hobbiton movie set is located there! It’s about 2 hours away from Auckland and Zeti booked us a guided tour at 12 PM so that gave us ample time to get to Matamata. Entrance is NZD 79, and we do recommend booking in advanced in case it’s peak season. The guided tour took about 2 hours and it comes with free drinks at Green Dragon. They'll tell you the history of the movie set during the tour and if you're lucky enough to be in a small group (ours was 12 people pack), you'll get more time for pictures! And let me tell you, you would WANT to take photo with every Hobbit door that there are, even though they look the same! XD

Visit : Hobbiton Tours
It was such a lovely day for a drive too so I’ll just let the pictures do the talking ok?