Fly Dubai

The Fly Dubai trip is a helicopter scenic around Dubai. Rob organized a trip while his Mum was over visiting for a few days. It was an awesome flight and I had both cameras clicking away the whole time!! We flew out over the 'World' development, round the Burj Al Arab and the Burj Dubai as well as across the Palms and down the creek. Had a kiwi pilot so was pretty good to us.  Anyway here's a couple of photos. Haven't sorted them properly yet, surprise, surprise..

HNZ's new AW 139

HNZ have a new machine that was being ferried from Italy to Australia. (what an awesome trip to be on!).  A couple of Robs old workmates from NZ were on the trip so we caught up for a couple of beers and cokes with them on their way through.  Unfortunately the trip was cut short as Pakistan couldn't get it's s..t together after 3 months notice to issue the machine clearance to fly through the country, or get the boys visas.  Italy, Greece, Crete, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, India, Oman, Burma, Malaysia, Indonesia, all managed to, however not Pakistan. So they ended up back at the Aerogulf hangar waiting to try and work some other form of transport for the machine.  

The World.  Crazy. Never thought I would fly around the World in a helicopter in one day, but we managed. haha.  Yeah but this truly is an interesting sight.  I will have to upload a pic of the ship thats building the islands. Pumping the sand up and making these man made islands, in the shape of the World.  A few of the islands have been purchased already however there is only one place built which you can see in the foreground here. 

Dubai of course is currently building the tallest building in the world.  This is it. You've got to see it to believe it. It just towers above everything else and you can see it from miles away.

The Palms.  You may have seen the $20 million fireworks display for the opening about a week ago.  About 4 mill for a place out on the Palms. That's US dollars too, which is about double NZ these days.

The Burj hotel. 7 star. Will do a seperate post on this place. Looking down towards the city

Laos 2008

The last and rest of Laos, just a couple more photos...next stop Bangkok again, then Dubai. 

It hosed down(again) just after taking this photo, was a good half an hour on bike from accomodation, so got pretty drenched and muddy!

Didn't hang around to see the fate of these ducks.

Pancakes, Laos style. Yum o. The young girl was supposed to be eating her dinner at the table in the background!  Good old wide angle lense!

Heading home

Vang Vieng, Laos

I then jumped on a 'VIP' bus to Vang Vieng. I love the term VIP in some of the countries I have travelled to.  VIP on an internal Laos bus means overcrowded, taping plastic bags to the roof to catch all the rain coming through, etc, etc.  However it did have chandeliers the down the aisle which was rather special!

Anyway I made it safe and sound and checked in to Vang Vieng for a few days.  If you can get away from the strange amount of backpackers who would rather watch 'Friends' in the open restaurants along the main drag than check out the local area, it's a pretty cool, chilled out little town.

Vang Vieng

Nam Song River.  Tubing Laos styles

2 Chileans, 1 Frenchy, 2 Laos/French, 1 American and a Kiwi made up our river crew

So for those that have 'tubed in vang vieng' you will know what I am talking about.  I didn't spend all day doing it thank goodness and instead opted for a day trip. This involved some crazy caving (not too sure about the theory of paddling against the current), strolling through villages a long way from nowhere and climbing over many slippery fences & creeks to get to other hidden caves.  

The torrential downpours, lightning & thunder was nothing short of impressive!

Anyway after all of that and splitting our crew into kayakers and tubers (I just wrote another sentence then but deleted it) you may guess what lines it went along, haha! we were off tubing!

 Tubing seems to be a bit of a 'must do' on the backpackers SE Asia trip and I can now see why!

The river is lined with bars serving cheap whisky buckets and beer Laos predominantly.

Add to that a bunch of zip lines, flying fox's, massive slides into the river, loud music and you have the tubing scene.  

I wasn't actually expecting it to be as much fun as I ended up having.   I guess it's the old "not expecting to have a good time- end up having a great time, talking a night up - turns out not to be as good" scenario!

Unfortunately this site doesn't want to upload my video for some reason so none of that to share. Will try and sort that one out.  Anyway it was good times on the river.  

The trail to the cave walk. My jandal lasted all of 200metres.

Vientiane, Laos 2008

After Siem Reap/Angkor Wat I headed for Laos.  Now I have one of those "NZ is a small place" stories for Laos.  On the Lao Airline flight from Pakse (small village, southern Laos) there was a guy sitting opposite & behind me wearing an HNZ hat.  Hmmm, I guess I better say something I thought.  I don't always talk to strangers.  Spent the next 40minutes having a few laughs about a bunch of mutual people we know. Turns out Angus (the pilot) is mates with Rob and they spent '04 season at Terra Nova (Italian Antarctic Base) working together! Small world!

Awesome sunset over the Mekong, had just got off the bus from Vang Vieng after 4 hours, grabbed my camera and ran down to the river.  Okay, I didn't run all the way, I did some fast walking. 

Riverfront, Vientiane

Cooking up a feed

Well earned Beer Laos after another BIG day. It's been a BIIGGGG day.(funny joke that I'm sure some of you know!).

So met quite a few other people in Laos, followed the directions Rob gave me one night, sort of got lost, but saw a 'Tiger beer' sign in the distance, so headed down the dirt road aiming for that. Turns out it was where my directions had told me to go! Ended up at a great wee local bar and spent the night firstly having a couple of drinks with some kiwi drillers and their Ops Manager of SE Asia sites. 

Then finished my night sharing a couple more drinks (not from the same glass) talking to a  World Economist and getting a run down on the global economy, very interesting and I learnt a lot! Amazing what you can learn when you just keep on walking down a long dirt road in the middle of Laos and come across a bar by the Mekong!

Angkor Wat, Cambodia '08

Angkor Wat. I guess no visit to Cambodia is complete without visiting here.  So back to Cambodia I came to check it out, very pleased I did. Hard to sum the place up in a few photos, but won't bore you with hundreds, so here are just 5 of Angkor Wat.

Even travelling by Tuk Tuk between the temples there are some impressive sites. 

Ta Prohm

Ta Prohm would have to be my favourite temple in Cambodia. This is probably the case for a lot of folk that have been here.  The trees are so cool the way they have grown and made themselves at home amongst the ruins of this temple. I went back here on 2 seperate days and managed to see really cool new things I hadn't seen the first time around.

Taking a break from selling souvenirs, unfortunately not a break from the heat.

I tried to pick my arrival times at the temples for when the big tour groups weren't there. Definitely paid off as it meant I managed to get some shots without hundreds of people crawling all over the place.  It just happened to coincide with the mid-day heat of the sun, but sometimes you just have to put up with that to get better photos I guess!  Nothing a cold beer at the end of the day won't fix anyway!

Awesome ah!

Inside the ruins of Ta Prohm temple

'The Tree', that everyone who has been here has their photo taken under!

That is until not sure how long ago when they roped off a few of these areas. Probably a good idea I guess.  There was a bit of work going on around the temples with crews doing various conserving of the ruins.  So if any of you AHT (Antarctic Heritage Trust) read this blog and want to go there you could probably get some work helping out!

Hmm...speaking of AHT, I guess the fact I have a blog now might mean some time for blog revenge? I hope not, I was just trying to keep things interesting for you!!  

Anyway, will try and sum up the rest of Angkor Wat and surroundings in one more post! Harder done than said!

Siem Reap, Cambodia

October 2008.

After a great couple of weeks in Indonesia/Thailand I jumped on a plane and headed over to Siem Reap.  Once I had checked out Angkor Wat and this area then I have been to both the south of Cambodia, Phnom Penh and now further North.  A visit to Cambodia I guess isn't really complete without visiting Angkor Wat.

Then it comes down to how to sum it up in a few photos after taking a few hundred!

At the same time I was in Laos and Cambodia, Northern Vietnam was suffering from their worst floods in over 20 years.  That made it a bit clearer as to why all the streets were flooded in Cambodia also.  Looks like I am in a boat in this picture, but it's actually a tuk tuk on the main street.  Nothing to the extent of the rains that Vietnam is suffering from.

I went on a trip out onto Tonle Sap lake (largest lake in SE Asia) and had a look at one of the floating villages.  School, church, shops, houses, everything built on boat or floating somehow on the lake. Quite impressive. Above is some of the accomodation.

Snake anyone?  His friend doesn't look extremely impressed at his new found pet!

Bangkok Adventures...

After arriving back in Bangkok much browner and not looking so much like another white pom we had a night before Rob departed to head back to Dubai for the next 6 week tour.  The original plan was for me to stay on for the weekend so I could catch up with my mate Lara who is now working and living in Bangkok.  So after Rob departed at the fun hour of 430am I got a couple, okay 4 more hours sleep before heading round to the Chatrium Apartments!

A couple of other mates, Nat & Drew also timed their passing through BKK to coincide with the weekend, so it was a great catchup!  Lara's friend Jemma, who is now my Facebook friend and real friend was also in town for the occasion!

We headed to the Chatachak weekend markets in BKK for a bit of shopping and looking.  Spent a good few hours here, so a game of frisbee and competitions in the pool was well deserved after that! Followed of course by Pad Thai lady for dinner. (not actually Pad Thai lady), but the Pad Thai that she cooked...)....delicious!

And for 30baht! Can't go wrong!  Coke next door...20baht.  That's a damm good meal for just over $2 kiwi!

It was hard to see when I was putting this on if the crab was in the pic or not, unfortunately I got the wrong one, this is on one of the beaches in Thailand! Again Rob and I both took pics, his one's are probably better so credit to him again.

I decided while in this part of the country it would be silly not to go back to Cambodia and get up to Siem Reap/Angkor Wat.  Being the main drawcard of Cambodia and I didn't go there last time, so I booked a flight and headed for Cambodia for round 2 !!!

Thanks Lara a million for letting us leave some gear at the ***** (that's 5 star) accomodation so we could travel down south nice and light, and of course for having me stay on my way to and from Laos/Cambodia...Cheers! Hope I can return the favour somewhere down the line. 

In case I don't repost on Bangkok, I went to Lara's class at school and did a talk on Antarctica for the kids, showed a few pics and answered I think it was 121 questions.  Great kids though.

Nearly had a career change after going for the staff lunch. WOW.  Talk about a buffet 3 times the size of Skyline buffet and 4 times the quality of food! (before Sarah did her stint as manager!).  So if anyone wants a really good lunch in BKK, find something really interesting that Lara's class may like to hear about and study and then call Lara.  0800 Pad Thai #1 fan.

Koh Phi Phi/Krabi/TonSai.....

More photos from time spent Southern Thailand, out on the islands..

Pretty good self-portrait from Rob while I was off exploring elsewhere

yeah I'm white. I have come straight from a winter

we both took good photos of nemo fish, so I'm not sure who the credit goes to for this one, I will give it to Rob for now!

We did an awesome Thai Cooking class, one of the coolest things I have done in Thailand. Learnt to make some great dishes (we got to choose 3 dishes each), so chose different ones of course, so we could learn even more!..

Food tasted delicious and we learnt a lot of important info for cooking Thai Cuisine.

Have tried recreating some of these dishes since arriving in Dubai a few days ago.  The Thai Green curry is hard to get as good, but we did a great job and it was still delicious!  Vegetable with cashews, chicken with cashews were equally as good. But as for the Pad Thai, let's just say I will stick to buying my Pad Thai from the Pad Thai lady on Choeng Krung Road, just down from Laras apartment!

Thailand 2008

Must try and find some photos of Thailand '05 I think it was? Maybe '06?  Good trip with about 8 of us!  But Jeremy was so homesick for Jane the poor boy!

Anyway, Thailand 2008.. 

Spent a night in Bangkok then headed down to the west side of Southern Thailand, an area Rob has been before but I hadn't. We both however had not spent much time out on the islands on this side.  So a night in Phuket which ended up in 2 terrible headaches the next day! Then we were off to Koh Phi Phi island, which was just idyllic as they say.

White sand beaches, crystal clear water and nice cheap private boats to hire for a few hours.

We found some great bars on the island for our post adventure drinks and had some great time snorkelling, swimming and discovering new places. 

Indonesia after Winter '08

Time to go on holiday!  Yahhhh! Drove up to Chch to watch one of Pauls rugby games for Canterbury 'B', however due to a broken cheekbone against Auckland 2 weeks before I ended up watching him run water onto the field instead!

Flights to the Ice were all backed up and delayed, so caught up with a few of the crew heading down again over a few beers at the dux!

 Left NZ near the end of the Winter season and headed to Indonesia to meet up with Rob who had been doing some diving back on the Gili Islands, just off Lombok. (see earlier post).  I have wanted to try and learn to surf for ages, so did a few days of this in Bali.  Spent plenty of time getting smashed out in the big waves, a bit of time actually riding some smaller waves and had a great time allround.  We had some good nights drinking Bintang and cocktails.  Apart from the cocktails at the 'birthday' bar (can't remember real name), as Josh and Sally will confirm.  Luckily we moved on to a really nice restaurant where we proceeded to drink a few Baileys Comets and eat one of the best steaks ever!

Me getting smashed again!

Hmmm....out I head to get pummeled again!!

All photos taken by Rob. Thank youuuu. 

So that's a few pics of the surfing side of things, I'm sure we took more of all our other activities, maybe not? Ah well. 

On to Thailand for the 3rd time next...

Mt Cook, July 2008

When Rob came over on his time off we headed up to the Hermitage at Mt Cook for a few days. 

Got a $300 room for $65 which was a pretty impressive deal, same company that I work for in Qt, so a pretty good benefit there.  Took a few photos of course. 

Mt Sefton. Aoraki National Park.

Pretty lucky to get a few shots of this avalanche, had my camera pointing that way at the time, heard it and then snapped away! Mt Sefton again.

Looking up the hooker valley towards Sefton & Footstool on the left and Mt Cook up the end.

With our new Canon timers we set up a few time lapse's with the camera.  Unfortunately the first day/night the cloud didn't really lift about 600m so not the greatest time lapse. On our way back from Wellington driving past Lake Pukaki it did look like the weather might clear, so we decided to head back up to Mt Cook for another night.  Lucky call, as it cleared up. Rob was quite a bit more committed than me to the cause and got up at about 4am in the morning, went and got in the car, drove away from all artificial lighting and set up a 20minute long exposure shot to get some photos of Mt Cook, the valley, the moon and stars.  So the credit for this photo must go to Rob.  I stayed tucked up in the warmth in my duvet and it was worth every second.(at the time!).

Winter 2008...

North Shoulder skiing

Sandman on our Toilet Bowl run

Another morning at the office

Heliworks slinging the weather station up to East Knoll for us

Michel cutting cornice, Mid Station Bowl. Skied it from this point on

Winter 2008

Back to NZ for Winter 20 in Queenstown.  Back to Remarks for my 3rd season working there, and now onto my 7th season  ski patrolling.  I seem to have been rather slack on the old photo taking this season, now that I look back on it I should have taken many more photos.

Here's a few...

Sandman 'working'.  Toilet Bowl, Remarkables

Actually we did deserve this run after skinning up and spending an hour or so searching for a live round after an Avalauncher shoot..

Cool clouds, on the way down the hill after another day at the office

Double Cone, Grand Couloir & Lake Alta.  From the top of the chutes

Early season medi-vac with THL. 

Start of the season started off nice and promising, followed by Coronet opening, then closing then reopening again.  Nice early season snowfall here, practicing "winter driving in winter conditions" outside Kellys Bar in Frankton, while awaiting pick up for an early shift up the hill.

Oman..

My mate Miffy is also living in Dubai so she planned a weekend excursion over to Oman as she had a couple of other friends staying also(Sophie & Neil).

So we cruised over to Oman, managed to live through the 45 degree heat. It was ridiculously hot. ( I think it was 45, or was it just 40?). Anyway, it was ridiculous all the same.

We went on a big boat cruise right up the coast for some snorkelling one day, then checked out the locals bringing in the fish from the ocean the next day. A great trip away. 

Whoops, so this photo is actually on the Sinai.

Directing the fish to swim in to the net....Oman.

Hmm..maybe more Sinai.  Chilling with the camels. 

Unfortunately I took all my photos in Oman in RAW format on my camera, which is making it too big to upload onto here, will try and desize some and get them on here. So a bit of a lack of Oman photos for this post. Sorry. 

Dubai..

Back to Dubai as Rob started his next tour. I stayed in Dubai for a couple of weeks before returning to NZ to start work.  For my birthday Rob got me a Fly Dubai trip with his company which was awesome!  (The perk meaning he could make sure the airconditioning worked in the machine!).  I can't find my photos from the trip at the moment, so the first 2 photos on here are Robs.

Above picture is 'The Palms'.  The man made islands of Dubai.  I took lots of photos of this as we flew over so will update later with some more pictures of that...its' a pretty crazy place!

We went out on the creek for a bit of a cruise one night and some dinner, the last few photos are from that night. 

Also went skiing at Ski Dubai of course, I did lots of shopping and just enjoyed having some time off work!

Red Sea Diving...

The Diving in the Red Sea off the coast of Sharm/Dahab was awesome. Such great vis, and tonnes of different fish and coral and underwater treasures. (not real treasure). 

So thought I would just put a couple more pics on...

We got this boat and went over to this island that is pretty close to Saudi, apparently still a few landmines on this island, so we stayed on the beach only. Had this wee beach to ourselves, spent an hour snorkelling, then on the way home a whole pod of dolphins cruised up next to the boat for quite a while. It was sooooo cool!

This pic is at the notorious Blue Hole. There was a rock wall with a LOT of memorial plaques up for people that had been killed while diving the blue hole. We hired a car and drove up here for a day as it's a bit off the beaten track. 

Warm weather time! Egypt for May!

So after leaving the ice after a 6 month stint, it was time to go and meet back up with Rob and get some warm weather! We spent about a week in NZ first, down in Queenstown, had some pretty sweet weather for that week too. Then it was back on the big bird and off to firstly Dubai to drop some gear off at Robs apartment, a quick nap and then off to Egypt.

Diving in the Red Sea,  just Rob snorkelling here by the looks of it.

 

Diving in the red sea, off Sharm El Sheikh, Sinai Peninsula.

More diving..

Pyramids of Giza.  Amazing. 

Rob showing how small they really are..

We spent a few days in Cairo, checking out the sights and of course the pyramids.

Then we caught a bus over through the Sinai Peninsula, about 5 checkpoints later, a toilet that was on both Rob and my 'Top 5 worst toilets ever' list and 5 hours or so later we arrived at Sharm El Sheikh which is the area we stayed for the next couple of weeks, diving, windsurfing and generally having a well earned holiday! Rob had gone straight from the ice to the new job in Dubai within a couple of days as well.

So on the trip over to Sharm we passed a burnt out bus that had gone off the road. Not nice. Next thing we see on CNN a few hours later is a news report saying this accident had happened a few hours before we drove past. Quite a few foreigners killed and a lot injured. There was footage of tourists that had recently had amputations.  Full on. 

Buses going off that road seems to be a regular occurence.  Another one about a week ago killed another dozen people.  They just drive far too fast for the conditions.  (like most places in the middle east).

So that was a bit of  a sobering start to the holiday on the coast.  We then had a few drinks and weren't so sober after that.

Took HEAPS of photos in Egypt, yet to go through them and select the best, one day, one day. 

So just a couple of random ones on here, yet again. 

Last extended season post...

A couple more photos from the extended season.  I do seem to have so many...

Not the best photo of an aurora, but I did see some all the same. Photos can't really begin to show how special it is to see this.
I went on a great mission with a few of the boys one Sunday.  The only day off in the week, some great fun was had.  Skidoos, powder and other toys that remain nameless. Good times!  In the shadow of Mt Erebus and Mt Terror.  Out on the iceshelf.

Another trip to what we named the pinnacles, part of the Pressure Ridges. Dan in action

Heading out to the pressure ridges, testing the thickness of ice in the meltpools.

Now I can't seem to find the photo that I took anywhere of the winter crew.  Was quite a good one out the front of the base, drinking champagne to celebrate the end of summer and the beginning of winter.  

After my 2 months down here it was time to leave, after a great night in the bar breaking in the new shotski that my workmate for the last 6 months - Dan, made for me it was time to depart.  

The shotski will forever remain a part of my life and I hope to see many of the original shotski drinkers from that night drink from it on another occasion.  I also hope my shotski that I lovingly made and kindly donated to the Scott Base bar is still in operation, and hasn't been banished to the upstairs area like so much other memorabilia from the past.  Can someone let me know the fate of the shotski?

Working...

During extended season it was also a job for Dan and I to go and check the recreation routes around the area, make sure the routes were well flagged and scope out any trips that we could do on the weekends.  The highlight would have to be the Cape Crozier/Igloo Spur weekend trip that we did with 10 of the base staff.  It was great to get the go ahead to do this trip after a hell of a lot of preparation and time involved in getting permission.(nice one Dan).  I should probably put some photos on here of that trip.

One of the more local trips that is done is that of the climb up Castle Rock. Normally done in Summer.  We thought we should go and check it out and see what the possibility of taking the rest of the crew up at the start of winter would be like.  Proved to be a bit icier and committing than we thought.  A great trip though, nice to get out and freeze your hands and toes, remind us where we are!

After we decided that it would probably be a bit sketchy to bring base staff up we started scoping it out for a possible SAR training day. However seem as Castle Rock was closed for recreation purposes and climbing in Winter it was figured the training would be better off elsewhere. 

Freezing cold, but knowing a cup of tea and some of Chef Gorons chocolate caramel slice is only a couple of hours away means it's much easier to smile.  Just after defrosting the eyelashes so able to blink again without getting eyelids stuck!