The Emirates

Hello fans,

On Sunday we trekked over to Liverpool Street station area to check out another flat. The flat was OK, but the surrounding streets were not ideal. We did get the chance to wander past Megan's work though, which was nice. After some lunch we went back to the Oxford Street shops. Tim wandered around "Nike Town", which is slightly larger than the North Island. It has 4 floors and there is a DJ playing on one of the floors!!!

After a couple of hours in the shops, we met Shanan and Renee in a pub near New Bond Street to watch Arsenal v Chelsea. The atmosphere in the pub was awesome, with fans from both sides being very vocal. Chelsea had to win the game to keep their title hopes alive. It ended 1-1, which handed the title to Manchester United. The Arsenal fans took great delight in denying the chequebook champions another title.

Monday was a public holiday here. We headed over to Westminster way to see another flat. The flat was quite small, but very nice and warm and being on the top floor of a 4 storey block, it seemed quite safe. We decided to take it, and it was a big relief to have a flat sorted. However, the hoops we still have to jump through in terms of references, holding deposits, bond etc will still require a lot of effort...

Tuesday was Megan's first day of work. She met her team, had a bit of training and had lunch with a group of solicitors, all in all a good first day!

Meanwhile Tim was off touring the Emirates Stadium, Arsenal's new home ground. The tour was brilliant. He saw the directors' lounge, the players changing rooms (he sat in Gael Clichy's seat), walked down the tunnel on to the ground, sat in the player's dug-out, visited the media centre and then made his way through the Arsenal museum and the massive Arsenal shop. There was so much awesome stuff he wanted to buy, but he limited himself to an Arsenal training top.

Tim's friend, Simon, has managed to get two tickets to Chelsea v Manchester United at Stamford Bridge, so he and Tim are off to see that on Wednesday night. Not really Tim's favourite teams, but two of the best clubs in the world battling it out should make a great night.





Tower Bridge
all lit up



















































Arsenal changing room































Replica premiership trophy commemorating Arsenal's unbeaten premiership win in 2003/04

Tour of London

Fans,

Friday was a busy day. Anna met us at Oxford Circus and played tour guide all day, which was brilliant. While Tim went off in search of internet, Megan and Anna did some of the many shops on Oxford and Regent Streets. Megan is hooked and will be heading back there before long...

After a picnic lunch in Soho Square, we wandered through to Covent Garden, where they have more shops/markets and streets performers. Then after a quick stop at "the New Zealand shop", where Megan bought some marmite and Tim got some pineapple lumps, we visited Trafalgar Square, had a quick walk through the National Art Gallery at Trafalgar Square and then made our way down The Mall towards Buckingham Palace.

Despite the Queen not being in residence, a policeman holding a machine gun was pacing up and down on the other side of the gates. Bizarre. We had missed the changing of the guard, which was earlier in the day, but we will definitely be back at some stage to watch that.

On Friday night we met up with a good friend of Tim's from his St Bede's days, Simon Bradley, for a few beers across the road from Big Ben. It was great seeing Simon again, he has been in London for over 2 years now and he had plenty of stories and tips to share. It was also nice that our first English pub experience was right underneath Big Ben.

After a few beers, Simon took us round the corner to show us number 10 Downing Street. We had assumed that you could actually walk right past the house, but no such luck. Again big black gates and a policeman with a machine gun were blocking our way. We could just make out what may have been the famous doorway about 50 metres away...

Saturday was "flat hunting day". We went over to Putney to Anna's flat and started searching the websites. We visited a couple of flats in Putney and one was quite nice, but we are hoping to see some more today. It was nice having a few drinks and dinner with Anna in some of Putney's pubs, one of which was right on the River Thames overlooking Putney Bridge. It was beautiful.

Sunday has more flat hunting in store for us. But at 4pm we are meeting up with Shanan and Renee to watch Arsenal v Chelsea in a pub. Exciting times.

More pictures from London

Megan and Anna
at Heathrow












Tower Bridge
from London
Bridge



















Tower Bridge















Tower of London
























Queen's Guard
at Buckingham
Palace



















Buckingham
Palace

Pictures from London

Megan on Oxford

London Eye

London Eye again

River Thames from up the London Eye

Parliament buildings from the Eye

Megan and Winston Churchill

Big Ben

Big Tim and Big Ben

Big Ben close up

Westminster Abbey

Westminster Abbey

London, England

Fans

We got up early on Thursday and ventured back to the underground. Tim had an appointment with First Contact to get a bank account sorted out, a UK SIM card for his cellphone and some handy tips for insurance, tax, etc etc - all very useful stuff. Who should be sitting across from Tim in the seminar room but Matt Sanders from Russell McVeagh. Tim summer clerked with Matt in Wellington and he then worked in Brendan's tax team until recently. Small world.

Meanwhile, Megan went to the Bristish Museum just down the road and spent an enjoyable couple of hours being drowned in history. We met up at 12pm and caught a train to Westminster, where we both marvelled at Big Ben and did the tourist thing, snapping photos left right and centre. After queuing for almost an hour we finally hopped on the London Eye. This is a must-do for new tourists in London. It was a great way to get our bearings and see a few sights from high above London. Money well spent.

After that we wandered back across to Westminster Abbey. We must have spent around two hours inside the Abbey, although you could spend all day there. It was absolutely staggering. We had no idea how many famous people were buried under the Abbey, not just monarchs, but poets and literary giants, religious ministers/bishops etc, politicians and many other important people in Britain's history. We were particularly impressed to discover that Isaac Newton and Lord Tennyson (Megan's favourite poet) were buried there! There are also statues and other marks of respect for people like Shakespeare, Winston Churchill, Franklin Roosevelt, the list goes on.

The stained glass windows, carvings, statues and beautifully crafted ceilings are just amazing. We were blown away by the coronation chair, which was made in 1301!!! This wooden chair is about 4 times as old as New Zealand! Ha ha. Equally impressively, evey monarch since the Norman Conquest in 1066 has been crowned in Westminster Abbey and those crowned since 1301 have sat in this coronation chair. Tim was tempted to jump on to it and shout "King of the castle, king of the castle, I have a chair" Borat styles, but we reckon he probably would have been shot.

London is just so cool, there is so much to see and do. Tomorrow Anna has taken a day off work and is going to act as travel guide/shopping buddy and show us around some more!

Ka kite
Tim and Megan

Goodbye Asia, Hello Britain

Fans,

On Tuesday we got up very early and flew from Ko Samui up to Bangkok and then on to London. It was a massive day as we were awake for something like 23 hours. Our flight to London was smooth and the 12 hours actually went quite fast. However, we did have a screaming baby right next to us and she had two absolute outbursts (we had never heard a child scream so loudly or as high-pitched and for so long as she did).

Megan's sister, Anna, kindly met us in London and we stayed the night at her flat in Putney. We were fortunate enough to not only have a bed for the night, but to also see Liverpool beat Chelsea on penalties in the Champions League semi final, which was very exciting, as all of us at the flat wanted Liverpool to win.

After a very good sleep, we got up on Wednesday and managed to find our way across London on the underground train (aka the tube) to our temporary accommodation. We have a place right near the Tower Bridge in central London for two weeks. Brilliant. The rest of the day was spent getting all our things sorted. Our freighted luggage turned up all in one piece which was great and then we went off in search of banks, dry cleaners and the internet. We managed to do a (very little) bit of sight-seeing and got some photos of the Tower Bridge and London Bridge, which we will post shortly.

Ko Samui and Ko Tao, Thailand - Part 2

On Saturday Megan went on a snorkeling trip (Tim wasn't keen - lazy!) which went out to Ko Tao, another small island near Ko Samui. Snorkeling off the boat at Ko Tao was unreal - it was as close to Finding Nemo that Megan had ever seen. There were iridescent rainbow coloured fish, dragon fish with big long whiskers and little electric blue fish...Megan was quite jealous of all the Japanese people and their underwater cameras.

Getting back to Ko Samui in a thunderstorm was one of those experiences that Asia throws up now and again - overcrowded boat, rolling seas and slow to pass out the sick bags. We think the locals find such things hilarious. Luckily Megs got on to the boat fairly quickly and saved a seat with a towel before a quick trip to the toilet. On her return, she found some English couple eyeing her seat up. When she reclaimed it the girl said "its a f*cking joke, you can't f*cking save seats on a boat." Who knew? Awesome - can't wait to get to the land of Poms!

Tim decided to give the snorkeling a miss and hang out at Ko Samui. After a bit of a sleep in, Tim checked out the shops along Chaweng Beach and got a combo from McDonald's (the upsize of the coke and chips was absolutely enormous - for an extra 50 cents NZ you can get your chips delivered to your table on a dump truck and drink your coke from a trough). The combo cost about $NZ5 in total. Then it was time to laze on the beach again.

Tim got a couple of hours of really hot sunshine before another black storm cloud rolled in and dropped about a month's rain on the island in six minutes. Once Megan returned from the snorkeling trip, we played some pool and got some kai at our local pub across the road and watched the English premiership (perhaps) be decided by two stunning comebacks. Exciting times if you're a fan of the beautiful game, if you're not, you're probably sick of us talking about it.

Sunday started full of hope, but turned out to be about as useful as our toilet was a couple of days back. Having pre-paid for a return ferry to Ko Phan-Ngan, the actual ticket debacle that unfolded was astounding. There is just no logic or common sense in a lot of the tours etc around here. We bought and paid for our return tickets in a travel agent. We hopped on the bus at our hotel and the woman on the bus took our receipt of payment and gave us each one ticket. We asked how we get back and she told us our ticket was good for both ways, then she disappeared.

The guys at the ferry terminal tried to take our tickets and told us we would have to pay for the return leg, but we just snatched them back and got on the boat, which seemed to be fine. Then in Ko Phan-Ngan we had to exchange the tickets we used to get there for new tickets to get back. But then when we got back to Ko Samui, it was a game of "guess who wants to take you back to your hotel?" And it seemed we were no good at the game. Until we got stroppy and then got a bus to take just the two of us back to our hotel, special treatment for the crazy Kiwis who were probably about to snap and kill a few Thais.

That is partly because our day trip to Ko Phan-Ngan was a dog-ball (for those who don't know this term, it was complete and utter arse). A few minutes after we arrived it started to rain and didn't stop until we were back on the ferry to Ko Samui. Plus there were 6 billion flies for every person, and loads of tiny frogs jumping all over the road and getting squashed by pedestrians, which was kinda gross. We had decided to visit Ko Phan-Ngan for its beautiful beaches, but they were crap because it was raining. Oh well, win some lose some. At least we have finally gotten some use out of the Kathmandu poncho bought in NZ - love the 50% sale.

Monday, our final day in the Kingdom of Thailand, was rather uneventful. Although the rain had stopped, we decided not to go on a jetski as the water was still quite choppy. We did wander round the shops of Chaweng Beach, however, and we picked up a few bargains: Megan got some jandals for $6 and Tim (even though he doesn't smoke) bought an Arsenal cigarette holder and lighter in one for around $9. It fits his credit cards/ID cards etc in perfectly and also makes for hours of fun.

Highlights of our Asian trip: boat trip to Halong Bay, seeing the body of Ho Chi Minh in his mausoleum, our time in Hoi An (especially Megan's bargains at the tailors), Nha Trang (jet ski, beach and dodgem cars), visiting and crawling through the Cu Chi tunnels, Tim firing an AK-47, wandering around Ho Chi Minh City, the beach in Ko Samui (when the weather was good) and Megan's snorkeling trip around the islands.






Ko Tao
snorkel
trip











Ko Tao














Ko Phan-
Ngan












Rather
gloomy...











Flying
lamps on
Ko Samui
beach