Landing on New Zealand

27 April 2011

Today is the day we are flying to New Zealand for a 6-month working holiday. I am greatly thankful to all of them who went to the airport for me. Not only my parents, grandma, brother, and sister in law, but also my colleague (Jason and Siew Kim) came to the airport after work as they promised. As usual, I hug everyone whenever before I am leaving.

We checked in at around 9pm and we were asked for travel documents by the ground Airasia staff. The flight departed at 11.40pm, and surprisingly this time, we are flying on a big Airasia aircraft, with 9 seats per row.

We arrived at Christchurch airport at 1.40pm (NZ time) which is equivalent to 9.40am in Malaysia. We passed through the immigration counters without any hassle and proceed to the baggage claim. There were some guards carrying dogs to inspect if there was any drug in our baggage. When we reached the custom checking, we were asked if we brought any food, fruits and etc. We saw a couple’s bag was opened by the staff and they found dried mushroom.

pic: The first sun rise and scenery of NZ viewed on flight

Once we exit to the arriving hall, we urged to the toilets and washed up ourselves. Then we went out to grab for the first deep breath in New Zealand. To our disappointment, there were constructions around the airport after the earthquake. And the weather was so much colder than I expected too.

Before we fly to Auckland in the evening, we went to a café, called FLYTHRU for our dinner, or probably lunch. We ordered two bread, smoked salmon bread (NZD 7.50) and chicken patinini (NZD 8) and shared among three of us. I like the patinini very much. It was very chewy. But the smoked salmon bread was too hard and dry.

Once we arrived at Auckland airport, we took supershuttle to our hostel, Pentlands Backpacker. It is a door-to-door service which saved us from walking if we took airbus.

I have heard how good Pentlands is before I came. As expected, it is a quiet and clean home. I have no complaint at all except for the limited space in the room. I loved to take my meal at the opened barbeque area.