Waiheke - island of wine

Take the time out to analyse Auckland and, in terms of the central city, it really isn't very big at all. In fact, it's probably on a par with somewhere like Amsterdam, with a few more hills, of course. You can easily walk from one side to the other in an hour, crisscrossing through funky areas like Ponsonby and Freeman's Bay, down into the rather soulless CBD, and back up into Parnell via The Domain. Why are we telling you this, we hear you ask. Well, unlike a London or Singapore, sometimes it's necessary to escape the hustle and bustle of central Auckland - it gets a little claustrophobic at times, people drawn to the same bars and restaurants.

Imagine our joy then after learning of the comprehensive ferry service that links Princes Wharf, downtown, with the beautiful islands scattered across the Hauraki Gulf - the water way that feeds into the Pacific. The Gulf is a magnet for summer-holidaying Aucklanders, travelling a few minutes to Browns Island (a low volcanic hill of 60 hectares) or for a few hours across to Colville and northern tip of the Coromandel. For us though it was the lure of Waiheke, the largest island, with its beautiful sandy beaches and, most importantly, booming vineyards. Yep, believe it or not, just one hour's boat trip and 90km from Auckland is a little slice of paradise that boasts some of New Zealand's most coveted wineries. Perfect place for a day trip then!

Aptly named the ``island of wine'', Waiheke is home to, at last count, nearly two dozen vineyards. Small, family run businesses such as Kennedy Point (fantastic 05 Sav Blanc, we stocked up) right through to the hugely commercial and popular Stonyridge and Passage Rock estates. It really is difficult to describe how good life can be when you can bomb around an island in a rented car slurping top vino everywhere you stop. Given that there's hardly a living soul on Waiheke the chance of hitting a pedestrian or fellow motorist is small. Good job too!

We opted for a rusty old Toyota manual - nothing like tryna drive an automatic pissed behind the wheel, they have minds of their own do autos - which provided just enough room for the two of us and a few crates of purchases, should we chose to dabble. And we did. First stop was Kennedy Point. Set back in a wee cove this idyllic spot was as good as it gets. The wine and views alone make the 12,000 mile trek from England to New Zealand worthwhile. Seriously though, the wine is f**king ace! Being a family owned and run vineyard the measures take some beating too. Three towering glasses of different drops for $5. That's two quid and a bit of change to most of you.

Not sure what went down best, the 05 Sav Blanc or 06 Malbec mix (the climate here, coupled with rolling green hills, makes grape growing and mixing a piece of piss, hence they're always trying new things). The Shiraz was a little on the zippy side - we could still distinguish between wines at this point - so we gave it a miss and loaded up with a bottle of each to takeaway.

Goldwater estate came next. Founders, Kim & Jeanette (idle chit chat helps the slurping) pioneered winegrowing on Waiheke Island when they planted the island's first Vinifera vineyard in 1978. Their wines are consistently regarded as among the best in New Zealand gaining international recognition for their intensity and ripe fruit flavours. If it was down to me I'd have given them another award - most booze in a single taster session. We were steaming after slugging back six glasses - the 05 Chardonnay the pick up the bunch (no pun intended).

Next up was Stonyridge, perhaps the island's most commercial. Mind you, the setting is stunning, a beautiful open planned bar (complete with lounge-cum-club feel) sits opposite a, funny this, stony ridge. This place is all about Cabernet blend wine (Cabernet Sav, Merlot, Cabernet Franc, Malbec and new kid on the NZ block Petit Verdot). It's also one of the few places where you can accompany booze with food. So we did, and plenty of it! The wine wasn't the greatest, perhaps it was a bad day for tasting. but there's usually a silver lining in every cloud, Stonyridge's being that it's flanked by two more, smaller, wineries. 'Hicup.'

We could bore you with, 'hiccup,' anecdotes and soundbites from the afternoon's revelry but we imagine you're getting the drift now. For the record, we managed seven vineyards, I think, ending up in the stunningly located Mudbrick Estate for our grand finale, 'hiccup.' Billed as "one of the most picturesque in the world'' it's home to the deliciously good Shepherds Point Cab Sav Merlot blend - a couple of bottles of which were added to the growing collection in the back of the car, 'hiccup'. Here we toasted absent friends and rolled around in laughter as drunken wedding guests (what a place to have a stag do) joined us for "one more tipple''. What a shame the day's action didn't stop there, 'hiccup'. Instead, I had to reverse the pissing hire car into the back of a stationary ute in front of said wedding party - I was shamefully w**kered by this point - and stagger off in search of the owner, who I, for some strange reason, never managed to find.

Returning the car was a sobering affair - have you ever tried to plead innocence in a drink drive related incident with blackberry coloured teeth, rocking from left to right, with eyes, 'hiccup', staring in the opposite direction. Nor had I till now. F**k! Needless to say we lost the best part of $500 in damages (wrecked the rear bumper and managed to, 'hiccup', mangle some body work - reversing, in neutral!). Have to say though, it was worth every f**king cent!

Bigger and better!

After six months on the road living in hotels, guesthouses or wherever we could find a bed and two months living in shoebox in Auckland's trendy Newmarket, we finally moved on to bigger and better places!

We just couldn't resist. The temptation of having four bedrooms, a dining room, lounge, an entrance hall bigger than our previous flat and not one, not two but THREE fireplaces was too much for our travelled out minds to turn down.

So here we are.... Moved into our own villa with Kyle and are slowly but surely making it homely. That takes some time considering all we had two months ago were two backpacks filled with dirty clothes, but we're getting there.

And with Kyle as a flat mate and Johnny as our temporary house guest we never feel lonely. Even Mister Puss adds to the bliss when we enjoy a glass of wine at night by the fireplace.

Home sweet - choice, bro, cuz - home!

And so to Auckland....or Ākarana for our Maori hosts. The end of one great adventure but the start of another. It seems like yesterday we were last here. Seven years has flown by. Little has changed. And the world's largest Polynesian city is as cool as ever.

Departed customs with a "good luck" from our charming immigration officer. Two minutes later we were emptying our stinking bags in front of an over vigilant environmentalist. New Zealand, you see, is very anal with what's allowed in. Dirt on boots, for example, is a definite no no. So, in our efforts to avoid a hefty fine - people have been hit for $500 for forgetting to declare innocuous items like apples! - we simply declared everything and sat back while it was all scrubbed and polished. Bonus!

First few nights were spent downtown. We quickly came down to earth with a bump. Accommodation here is not as affordably priced as Asia. In fact it's bloody expensive - $50 a night for a double room. Still needs must! Set about visiting a few old haunts and exploring what is a really cool city. Karangahape, known to locals simply as "K", Road takes the biscuit. Easily the funkiest street in Auckland, bristling with off-beat cafes, ethnic restaurants and chic bars. Ponsonby Road too is great - Auckland's premiere "eat street". Down by the newly developed waterfront you're treated to a fantastic mish-mash of bars, restaurants, clubs and designer shops. All the above are a million light years away from the downbeat, dare we say boring, thoroughfare that is Queen Street. Auckland's answer to London's Regent Street is dull. Packed solid with banks, offices, Vodafone outlets and flight centres. Avoid it like the plague!

Greater Auckland, in the north of the North Island for those without knowledge, is the largest urban sprawl in the world - bigger in area than Los Angles - and home to some 1.3 million, a little under a third of the country's entire population. It's beautifully located. Flanked on the west by the Waitakere Hills and on the east the Hauraki Gulf and surrounding islands, including Waiheke and Rangitoto. North is Devonport and the North Shore. South is Manukau and its habour. It's strange too, that only a couple of miles of land separate the Pacific from the Tasman. A strong cricket arm would clear it on a clear day!

We were lucky to be guests of Femke and Richard. Fem is a friend of Marit's aunt. We'd never met but they were fantastic. Living in the heart of Devonport we were given a room of our own and initiated "Operation: Get a Job!" For days we scoured the newspapers and websites. Signed up with temps. And hammered out countless covering letters! At night we made our hosts the guests - cooking up some real treats. Roast lamb! Oh was it heaven. Think we average lamb three times a week. Our lamb and mint burgers washed down with an ice cold Monteiths Golden. Perfect start to the weekend. Sorry, we digress. Fem and Richard were superb. Their house was our house. They drove us here, there and everywhere. Introduced us to their daughter who introduced us to her friends. It was all good.

Then the house. After ten days of Devonport we found a place in Newmarket. A wee studio on the edge of Broadway, Auckland's shopping central. Unfortunately the vast majority of the outlets are designer and thus we never enter! But there's a "Warehouse", the kind of place where you can kit out your entire flat for 270 bucks. Noice! Five minutes walk from the train station, surrounded by cool bars and restaurants, ten minutes walk from the 50m pool (yes can you believe we're exercising again!) and The Domain - a beautiful parkland topped by botanical gardens and museum. With a view across the harbour. Noice! Shame to part with Fem and Richard but the chance of being so central was not to be missed.

The taxman's come back with our numbers. The bank manager's welcomed us with open arms. They always do don't they. And with the fakest of smiles. Bastards. Actually, to be fair, the lad that set us up was superb. Had everything done for us in minutes. Even our new cards were handed to us then and there. No ten day wait for pin and card to arrive separately. All we needed was that friggin job. And then, just like that, the phone started ringing.

Choose Travel:

Choose travel. Choose a country. Choose a trip. Choose a top heavy stranger for a shag. Choose a fucking cheap bar. Choose beaches, waterfalls, mountains, and diving with big scary fish. Choose bad health, heaving lungs and piss smelling sweat. Choose twenty hour journeys on puke stained buses. Choose a budget airline. Choose your travel mates. Choose cheap threads and matching backpack. Choose a six bed dorm on cheap low season rate in a variety of fucking hostels. Choose weed, hashish or charis and wonder who you are on a Sunday morning. Choose sitting in that dorm watching stinking dreadlocked wankers – often Israelis, stuffing cold fucking McDonald’s into their mouths. Choose wasting away at the end of it all, shitting water in a sorry disgrace of a public loo, nowt more than a dirty, smelly embarrassment to the fuckwit public servants who berrate travellers and declare “we paid for it all”. Choose your own path. Choose travel.... But why would I want to do a thing like that?

Nanny State

There’s a reason why Singaporeans are so efficient, so meticulous and so fucking straight – it’s coz they live in a nanny state!

Since its foundation in 1954, Lee Kuan Yew its godfather and long serving Prime Minister, the socialist People’s Action Party has strived to industrialise – westernise is more befitting – an island severely lacking in natural resources. More than half a century on the same party continues to live out a kind of socially engineered dream – British textbooks on social ideology are to blame, apparently – through strict rules and regulations that seemingly strip Singaporeans of all independence and identity. Hence its reputation, and rightly so in our opinion, as a nanny state!

Sure it’s a safe country with negligible crime, but who’d want to fall foul of the law when such harsh punishments are dealt out. Is it any wonder – no! – why the place is so clean? Smoking in a public place carries a penalty of $500. Get caught littering and you should expect to be hit with a $1000 fine (now we know where the anal British council’s get it from). Christ, you can’t even buy a pack of chewing gum – it’s outlawed!
And the list goes on. Decide to partake in a spot of jaywalking and you’ll be clobbered, on the spot, with a $200 fine. There’s no point in cycling to work, most of the thoroughfares are bicycle free and to break the law is to break the bank - $500. Only the stupid, or perhaps suicidal, should consider smoking a joint with the possession of any drugs resulting in instant death – the gallows would you believe!

Yet, for us anyway, the most outrageous of rules is the one that prevents Singaporeans from snacking on that well loved Asian fruit Durian. For to expose others, while travelling on the city’s metro, to this weird smelling fruit carries a bank busting fine of $2000! Whoever said fruit was good for you?

Singapore

And so there we were. Six months after falling onto an Airbus bound for Mumbai – Dad, Hol, Zo, Simon, Mark and Mark, you know you’re at fault for that “one for the road” – we were down to the last weekend of our trip. How time flies eh. But one thing was for certain, regardless of the states we found ourselves in Tioman, we were going out with a bang – this is Singapore after all!



Ditch the image of a Singapore as boringly sterile – sure its laws are absurd – as far as we’re concerned this city/country ranks highly on our “top ten cities to get pissed in before you die”! Sure it’s expensive, but isn’t everywhere these days?! But this place oozes class, far more so than Amsterdam, Bangkok or London.


The clubs are breathtaking, each with their own theme (we particularly liked “The Clinic”, its chill out lounge decked out like a morgue – stiffs not included). Zouk seemed to epitomise Singapore’s clubbing scene, its post 1am playlist littered with some of Europe’s biggest DJs and rooms boasting everything from hip-hop to techno. Liquid, surely the city’s most progressive club, is a tiny place, but don’t let that put you off – f**k no! Ah, the list is endless, and we haven’t even mentioned the bars!

Despite high bar prices the drinking scene is huge! Given that most Singaporeans aren’t built to wallop down ten jars of Tiger the booze menus boast more pages than a Parisian restaurant. Cocktails, mocktails, beers, shorts, shots....need we go on!? To attempt a pub crawl in Singapore is like signing a suicide note – just don’t do it! Best off staying in one of the countless “districts” and exploring it for what it’s worth. The best bars, we believe, can be found down at Boat Quay and Clarke Quay. Here the night starts early and finishes late, very late! The Pump is worth a good drink (it’s a micro brewery after all) and it’s within staggering distance of The Highlander – never in my life have I seen more whisky, or whiskey, under one roof – magic, pure magic!


Shit, we could go on all day raving about this place. But there’s so much more to tell. I mean if you think the bars and clubs are good wait till you hit the restaurants! Sure this is Asia so there’s a Maccy Ds or Burger King on every other corner (it’s all about real estate with these two as globally all their restaurants are franchised, but enough of the nerdy stuff) but forget fast food – unless you’re in Chinatown or Little India where the quick eats the hawkers serve up are as good as anything in their respective countries – the restaurants is where it happens!

Some would say that Singapore’s mouth watering food scene is its biggest draw card – we prefer pubs – but that’s down to the individual. Yet there’s no denying that this city plays host to a mind-boggling variety of dishes, non light on the wallet and all heavy on the stomach! You only have to pick up one of the numerous “what’s on” guides to realise that any chef who wants to make it big in Asian cuisine is heading for Singapore, their signature dish in tow. So where to eat? F**k knows! It’s all good. African, American, Australian, Brazilian, Chinese, French, Indian, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Peranankan, Spanish, Thai, Vietnamese....shit, then there’s the fusions!

Don’t get us wrong though – there’s far more to Singapore than stinking hangovers and shitting triplets! This home to 4.2m isn’t known as the “garden city” for nothing. Greenery punctuates every street corner. Contemporary architecture holds hands with colonial, and in such a perfect way a simple strole is blighted by double takes. Sure, Singapore is a city of shopping malls and high rise splendour. No more so than around the CBD where city banks have taken penis envy to a level only surpassed by KL. Yet British colonialism – Rule Britannia! – lives on. Buildings are magnificently maintained. By night these 200 year old edifices are illuminated with such welcoming subtlety that Sir Christopher Wren would approve.

But Singapore boasts, and might well it do! The biggest this, highest that. Shit, you name it this city can trump it. The “Fountain of Wealth” – world’s biggest. DHL Balloon – world’s highest. They’re even in the midst of building a feress wheel twice the size of London’s! 23,000 taxis roam the city. $10,000 a day is spent on road cleaning. More than $1m was spent on trees lining the spotless expressway, each flown in from Indonesia and hand planted.

The world’s most efficient airport, Changi International (it’s a dream come true to travellers). And, can you believe, no residential building is more than ten years old – a cunning way of keeping the economy ticking over and keeping thousands in work.

So where does all end? In Raffles of course – it’s a Singapore institution. Hard to believe this regal edifice started life as a ten room bungalow. It epitomises colonial luxury ($700 a night and it’s easily worth it when compared to the faceless hotels that blight the vast majority of western cities) with its timber floors, lofty ceilings and countless bars. The place even offers its own dentist, doctor, florist and tailor. Not to mention the fact its spawned countless shopping arcades and sister hotels – all way out of the league of the average tourist. Still, where there’s a will there’s way. It’s worth calling in to crack a few nuts and slurp a “Singapore Sling” – a bargain at $20 a pop. Well, a beer’s $18 a half so you can forget that!