Auckland

After 5 days eating lots of veggies at the meditation centre Sam and Leon took me somewhere which served lots and lots of meat.

My past few weeks has been spent in the Auckland area eating far too much, watching far too much Netflix and planning and researching the next part of my tour, which has proven quite confusing. I had thought that after Australia I would fly to Indonesia, then Singapore, Philippines, Brunei, Borneo, Malaysia etc etc – quite basically EVERYWHERE in South East Asia. After SE Asia I would head up towards Japan and of course visit China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, South Korea on the way to cycle friendly Japan. In my initial planning I didn’t factor in rainy seasons, volcanoes and Ramadan. So for example the best time to visit Indonesia, Malaysia, Brunei, Borneo is from May onwards which would work perfectly as I need to leave Australia by the end of April as the days are short and flying to Indonesia in May would be ideal but Ramadan is Mid-May to Mid-June, so it wouldn’t be a good idea to visit Indonesia or Brunei, Borneo or Malaysia then. It’s rainy season in The Philippines in May and the weather isn’t great in the rest of the countries in SE Asia and also to fly North to South Korea to work my way back down to South East Asia doesn’t make economical sense as I would have to either fly or cycle back up North again once I get down to Indonesia (although actually having to cycle it all again in reverse sounds like a quite a good idea 😊). So I think that I may fly to Singapore in May, but this may still change in the next couple of weeks. To be honest the hardest part of my tour is having to make a decision in advance as to where I want to be and for how long, which is a luxury.

Auckland introduced dockless bikes to its streets last November and they are all over the place, which is great, they are being used. Unfortunately people don’t really think about where it is that they’re leaving them. So, for example, this one was left in the middle of the pavement which is pretty inconsiderate to other pedestrians.