Matt and Kat Brown

Yes, it’s official – we are now registered as immigrants, officially allowed to live in Dublin.

On Thursday afternoon we went into the Gardai National Immigration Bureau to register ourselves. We waited for about 20 minutes in line just for our ticket to get into the actual cue to register. After about two hours waiting on Thursday we got Matt registered but then had to go back again on Friday to get my registration completed as we hadn’t brought all the papers they wanted to see on Thursday!
After braving the bureaucratic system I now have a shiny new immigration card complete with photo, immigration number and computer chip.

Most of this first week in Dublin for us has been spent doing not very much. We have been relaxing and venturing out every now and then to see bits of the city. I think this week has been a bit of a pause before we rush head-on into life in Dublin next week.

I’m pleased to annouce that we’ve arrived safely in Dublin after 3 weeks of travel and are being very well looked after by Google.

We arrived on Sunday afternoon and were picked up at the airport and driven to the apartment that Google is putting us up in for the next month. Along the way the driver gave us a short introduction to the city and the current events (including NZ’s win in the Rugby U19s that day which I was completely ignorant about!). The apartment is very nice and is only a 5 minute walk from the Google offices. Click here to see a map.

On Monday morning another car and driver arrived to take us on our city orientation tour. This was a four hour trip around a good portion of Dublin, focussing mainly on introducing us to the various parts of the city and giving us a feel for the housing and rental prices. Some of the prices to purchase property here are ridiculous, we drove down a street full of nice houses that apparently sell for around 45-50 million euros!! (that’s close to 100 million NZD). Needless to say we won’t be renting anything like that and luckily rental prices for 1 or 2 bedroom apartments are much more sensible (about 1400-1500 euros/month). One thing that I did find interesting is that rental prices don’t really decrease as you head further out of the city unless you go a really long way out.

At this stage our list of desired suburbs looks a bit like: IFSC, Blackrock, Sandymount, and the Rathmines/Baggot St area. We can’t really look seriously for somewhere to live for a week or two yet as we’re still waiting for our shipped things to arrive and most places are rented within a day or two of being put on the market.

I start work on Monday with two days of Noogler (New Googler) training! I’m looking forward to it.

All of the monopoly game place names come from London and every time we walk past another one here I get a small buzz. Silly? Perhaps – but still kinda fun Yesterday we went shopping along Oxford St, Bond St and Regent, we walked along Pall Mall and had lunch in Trafalgar Square before catching a movie in Leicester Square and taking the tube via Piccadilly to get back to our hotel.

I’ve really enjoyed London and found it to be a beautiful city to visit. One highlight for me has been visiting the art galleries. We have been to the National Gallery, National Portrait Gallery and the Tait Modern. Admission to all 3 galleries is free (a donation is still appreciated) and there is plenty there to look at for hours and hours. The Tait Modern has the more contemporary art – as its name suggests, whereas the National Gallery has a very large collection of old, traditional paintings – old landscapes, fruit bowls and biblical scenes. What I enjoyed more were some of the later paintings. It was exciting (for me at least) to see paintings by some great influential artists like Van Gogh, Cezanne, Manet, Picasso… Just like with the monopoly places, there is a little buzz in seeing the real paintings that I have previously seen in photos and studied in school.

Another highlight of London was the Portobello Market. Held every Saturday on Portobello Road this is a huge and very popular market. Primarily this is an antique market but there are also plenty of stalls selling clothes, jewellery, tourist knickknacks, baked goods and fresh produce. There were lots of interesting and obscure things for sale – old maps, fur coats, old-fashioned cameras, vintage boots and bags… We both had a great time perusing the market and though there were plenty of great bargains to be found we bought only a punnet of strawberries, coffee and some yummy almond danishes.

Why does everyone complain about London so much? We’ve had a great time here over the last three days and we’re looking forward to finishing off our holiday tomorrow before leaving for Dublin on Sunday.

The highlight of London for me was definitely going to see to The Phantom of the Opera at Her Majestys Theatre in Haymarket (right next door to New Zealand House!) last night. First thing yesterday morning we went along to Leicester Square, where there is a booth that sells last minute theatre tickets and picked up two cheap tickets for some excellent seats. We were 10 rows from the stage, right in the middle, you couldn’t really ask for a better position! The singing, sound and special effects were amazing, Her Majestys Theater is the original home of The Phantom of the Opera and it has been playing there since it debuted in 1986! I would highly recommend seeing this show when you’re next in London, even if you’ve already seen it before.

On Wednesday we went to vist the Queen and watch the changing of the guard. I never knew she was so popular! We arrived right at 11:30 to be greeted by a sea of people amassed in front of the gates which meant that there was very very little that we could actually see! We eventually made our way up on to the raised statue right opposite the gates and from there we were able to get a good view and some photos as they were leaving. Half the Metropolitan police force and the British Army appeared to be waiting on the sidelines in armoured vans etc which made it hard to believe that the men in funny hats are actually anything more than actors these days. While we were milling around here we bumped into a TV crew from channel 9 in Australia, who interviewed me (Kat ran away from the camera) about my impressions, they asked before I’d actually seen anyone marching, so I said it was a complete let down! Hopefully it doesn’t make it to TV.

After Buckingham Palace we wandered down through Westminster and Downing St to Trafalgar Square and then along the waterfront to Parliament Buildings where we took a few photos of Big Ben and the Parliament buildings themselves. We paid and went inside Westminister Abbey for a look around. The scale and age of these huge buildings is hard to take in and comprehend, so I’ll let the photos do most of the talking when I get them uploaded.

After buying the theatre tickets on Thursday we spent the entire rest of the day looking around the National Gallery and the National Portrait Gallery. Lots and lots and lots and lots of paintings which Kat will no doubt be able to tell you more about than I can. Apparently I’m meant to be impressed by strange pictures of Sunflowers and the like…

It’s tiring just recounting all of what we’ve been up to! It certainly has been a busy few days and you certainly wouldn’t want to spend any less time looking around. Luckily we won’t be too far away if we want to pop back one day and see something else.

While in London we are staying at Blue Bells Hotel in Notting Hill. (Yes, Notting Hill like the movie with Julia Roberts and Hugh Grant).

The Hotel is nestled in a row of gorgeous classic old white stone buildings. Notting Hill seems to be an area equivalent to Remuera or Ponsonby in Auckland. Trendy boutiques and antique shops, million dollar villas, and private schools where the kids wear little straw hats and blazers. It’s a cool place to stay with plenty of eating options, shops and still quite close to the center of London.

Our room at Blue Bells is old and small but serviceable. There’s only just enough room to walk around the double bed and not really any space to put suitcases. The only other negative would be that there is no lift and we are on the 2nd floor. Oh, and the window in our room is an old one that you lift upwards to open and fasten in place by wedging a plastic fork in the gap to hold it. Ha, yes… as I said it is an old building! Overall though, Blue Bells has been fine for a short stay and the free wireless internet in our room makes up for any… quirks… of the old building.

Really nothing to write home about. Neither Kat or I found any aspect of the city that appealed to us, or would entice us to want to go back there.

I think it suffers from over promising and under delivering, especially having just come from Singapore, which is definitely an example of a beautiful city.

We’re now in London (despite a 2.5hr delay leaving Dubai while Emirates tried to fix the plane we were flying on) and are just about to go down and have some breakfast before starting our first day in Europe.

Photos are up in the gallery for the 2nd week of Malaysia and Singapore. Didn’t see anything worth a photo in Dubai!

We were in Singapore from April 13th – 15th and had a chance to look around the city, do some shopping and catch up with some cousins of mine who live there. Here are the highlights of what we did during our stay:

Singapore by night:
On our first night in Singapore we had dinner with my cousin Elian and her husband Teng Huat. We ate some great Thai food and then walked through the city to the waterfront. There are some beautiful buildings to see. Some are old and ornate and others big, new and contemporary. One particular building is fondly dubbed the ‘Durian’ by Singaporians for its round spikey shape that looks like a Durian fruit. The cityscape by night really is beautiful and was worth the long walk and the tired feet.

Excellent shopping:
On our second day in Singapore I took to the streets and the shopping malls to shop shop shop. There are something like 70 shopping malls in Singapore, plenty to keep me occupied all day. I started my morning by bargain hunting around Bugis St – a giant rabbit warren of covered stalls and little shops. In the afternoon Matt and I headed to Orchard Rd, the main shopping hub of Singapore. By the end of the day my feet were aching from walking around so many shopping malls!

Singapore Zoo Night Safari
Even though half the population of Singapore seemed to be at the Night Safari on the Saturday we were there it was still an enjoyable evening, The highlight would have to be watching the Lions pace around and hearing them roar to each other.

Eating yummy food
What can I say? There are cheap, tasty meals on offer everywhere you turn! On Sunday night before we left Singapore we had a meal with my cousins. We ate satay and prawns in an open-air food market and the food was delicious. Another favourite treat of mine that we ate here was ice kachang. Ice Kachang is a dessert with sweet red beans, corn, fruit and jelly cubes covered in a large mound of shaved ice drizzled with sweet syrups and coconut milk – it’s perfect when sitting outdoors in the hot and humid weather. mmm, yum.

Sentosa Island
We spent Sunday on Sentosa Island. We enjoyed the cable car ride there and relaxing beside the beach for a little while.

Saturday the 7th found us again at Miri airport (5th day in a row of flying in/out of there for Kat and I!). This time bound for Sibu in central Sarawak as the transit point for our stay in Sarikei.

Sarikei is where Kat’s father, Alfred, grew up and many of the Yii family still live there alongside the family farm. It’s a much, much, much smaller placevthan Miri and we found the pace quite slow for the three days that we were there. However after the busy week we had while in Miri, a bit of downtime in Sarikei was not at all a bad thing!

Kat’s Uncle Q is building a large bird house, 3 stories! so that he can start up a new business selling bird nests. The birds that will be attracted to the bird house build nests using their saliva and a considered a delicacy in much of Asia, fetching close to NZD$300 each! We had a look around his partially constructed birdhouse and also drove past a few existing bird houses around the town.

Wednesday (11th Apr) morning we got up very early at 4:30am to catch a taxi at 5am to arrive at Sibu airport for our 8:30am flight (it’s 120km from Sarikei to Sibu airport over one of the worst roads I’ve ever driven due to the new road construction happening alongside it). We got to the airport at 6:30 only to discover that Air Asia had retimed our flight to 11:50am! Luckily I had a book to read, but waiting 5 hours in an out of the way airport, with no WiFi or other entertainment options is not high on my list of must do holiday activities.

Eventually we arrived in Kuching, the largest city in the Malaysian half of Borneo. While in Kuching we caught up with Aunty Lang and stayed in an apartment owned by one of Kat’s uncles from Miri. The apartment complex had a great view out over Kuching city and a very nice pool.

Friday (13th Apr) ended our Malaysian holiday with another early morning flight from Kuching to Johar Bharu, and a short taxi ride across the border to Singapore. The immigration officer coming in to Singapore was the most officious women I have ever met, taking about 10 minutes to check our passports against our faces and then insisting on seeing our onwards air tickets! She
eventually decided we were worthy to be let in.

3 highlights from our Malaysian trip

• Meeting Kat’s extended family and putting names to faces
• Visiting Mulu caves and Kota Kinabalu
• Sweet juicy tropical fruit like pineapple and dragon fruit

3 not-so-highlights from our Malaysian trip

• Heat and humidity. Makes my glasses fog up every time I step outside!
• Not being able to speak Chinese, and therefore not being able to communicate with most of the extended family I met
• Strange (hot, spicy) food and Durian

The day after returning from the Mulu Caves (Thu 5th), we found ourselves at Miri airport again, this time bound for the tourist mecca of Kota Kinabalu. Kota Kinabalu, named after the famous Mt. Kinabalu (the highest peak in Southeast Asia), is north of Miri, in the state of Sabah.

Kat’s Uncle Louis and Alfred came with us on this trip, and Kat’s uncle generously booked us all into the Sutera Pacific resort, part of the magnificent Sutera complex (5 star), which appears very similar to something like Golf Harbour in New Zealand. Our room looked directly out onto the 27 hole! golf course. The course was perfectly maintained and was certainly well used. I had lots of fun watching the water hazard in front of our window eat about 50% of the balls that tried to nagivate past it.

After arriving, checking in and cooling down for a few minutes we wandered down to the resort jetty and boarded a boat that took us out to two islands for the day. The trip came complete with snorkels, and we spent a good hour in the water at the first island, watching all the technicoloured fish that were swimming around close to shore. We even saw Nemo.

Eventually we hopped back on the boat and transferred to Manukan Island, about 500m away for a BBQ lunch. The lunch was spectacular, as many BBQ kebabs, roast lamb, seafood and tropical fruit as you could eat all while seated under mature palm trees and looking out across the crystal blue water towards Kota Kinabalu and Mt. Kinabalu in the distance. We spent another hour snorkelling here, which although spectacular was also to our detriment as we both got quite badly sunburnt on our backs and shoulders! Ouch. You would think coming from New Zealand we would know better…

Day 2 we were up at 6am for a quick buffet breakfast at the hotel before being picked up by our guide at 7am for a trip to Poring hot springs, a 3hr drive away from Kota Kinabalu on the other side of the mountain. The drive was very interesting, through lots of borneo countryside, slowly winding our way up the foothills. We stopped at a little village right under the base of Mt Kinabalu
took some photos and spent some time at their market.

The highlight of Poring Hot Springs was the treetop canopy walkway, a series of Aluminium ladders, suspended by ropes and mesh in the jungle canopy about 40m above the ground. The walk was very impressive, although quite wobbly. The guide cheerfully mentioned to us that we were lucky to get on, as the walkway was closing in 2 days for repairs and maintenance which very obviously required at a few points!

We passed up the opportunity to swim in the hot springs due to the heat, but we did take a refreshing dip in the cold water pool. Our van overheated half way back while we were stopped at a fruit and vege market. The tour company had a replacement van to pick us up about 10 minute later, and we were introduced to the driver who’s nickname was “Michael Schumacher”! We made it back safely, despite gripping the seats a few times, checked out and flew back to Miri.

All in all, an action packed two days.

One of the things I enjoy when coming back to Malaysia is the food. There are lots of things that I only eat on a trip back to Malaysia and many that you just don’t get in New Zealand or most other places in the world. I enjoy things like tropical fruit, satay, red bean desserts, little layer cakes and bbq pork buns… mmmm yum.

There are more tropical fruits here in Malaysia than I can count. Some are fairly well known like pineapple or papaya but others are completely foreign to the average Kiwi. Dragon fruit, lycees, jack fruit, innumerable other wild fruits straight from the forest. I love them all except for the Durian which smells of rotten eggs and tastes just as bad (in my opinion).

One thing that has been particularly fun on this trip to Malaysia is introducing all the weird and wonderful foods to Matt. I can happily report to all those in doubt that Matt has been willing to try almost anything he is offered here. Matt has put on a brave face for many meals of beancurd, seaweed, mushroom and fungus while we’ve been here and has become quite good with a pair of chopsticks!