Hi, Carotte. Good to hear from you. We’ve just had the hottest day of the year so far. Amazing weather for mid April. To Durham soon, for a couple of days. I’m going to buy a chainsaw at Lidl and cut one of the yew trees down. Mama and I went jogging. Ta ra …

The blog might be a bit dodgy. Mainly because i broke it. I think I’ve fixed it tho.

verily, copy your text into notepad before posting. or something.

I’ll have me a t-shirt pls Also any other classy stuff.

I recommend using jul as a sort of glorified suitcase – for transporting goodies back to the homestead!

I vote fruit-picking.

Dod suggests the weekly rate might be cheaper.

Watched another eight hours of 24 today and yesterday. much good. eight more to go.

hail all,

just spent a couple of pleasent hour crisping up nicely on the beach!! pretty nice place here and shall be sorry to leave. well, we are getting a night bus in an hour or so which will be most enjoyable i’m sure. ed and nikki have chosen to take the day bus in the morn and fry in the heat of the day. Madness!!!!

I would just like to add my vote to that poll!!! try it out you moron, and if it is really festering you can leave, but it has got to worth a try for a couple of weeks. Just join in with soemone who is already doind it. I mean. when i get to nz it will be toil all the way for me. Geoff is even thinking of taking his suit and getting a posh job in an office of something. I’m sticking to the old picking!!!

When we got to the beach on the bikes we had spent all morning bartering over, (that was after spending a goodly few hours haggling over a couple of crappy bags to put new purchases in!!) we were understandably not a little cheeses of with the chizling nature of the yocals round here. Needless to say as we drew up to the glistening sea, and officious blighter indicated the bike parking lot to us. It appears that foreigners have to pay to park their bikes, but locals can park them on the beach. We cick up a fuss about this, but then remember reading that the general prectice round here is to wait until you leave your bike someplace, leg it over and steal variouse bit of it, and then when you find it broken, charge insane amounts to fit them back on for you!!!!! we pay up grudginly and head for the beach and a bit of relaxation. But no, we are accosted by many and umbrella walla, each clamouring that his umbrellas are the beast on the beach. It is very hot, and we have decided to have a brolly, but we are so outraged at the extortionate prices that we stomp of down the beach to find cheaper shade!!!! Edd, who crispd at the very sight of sun is getting a bit hot under the collar by now, and frothing a bit at the mouth, but geoff is in fin form, and head of to do a bit of bartering, and gets us a brolly for free provisding we buy drinks, and he also got the drinks half price!!!!! Noty be going, and we all settled down for a swim and read. Biked back to town on the pleasent dod still bikes which go easy on the back, and after a shower, headed here. Geoff is making marmite sarnies for the journey. Any chance of you bringing any from nz jul???? also many a chocky bar????

geodd got a chineze lantern (more baggage, but we figure we will just hand everything to jul!!!) .

Anyone interested in a vietnam teeshirt with a hude yellow star on the front?? Think it’s the flag, but they look quite good. not geoffs style, but edd got two.

Well, best be off, will mail from nah trang, which is were we are of to now.

Love tanya

Go easy on the “executive decisions” this time, Solid. A bit of mind numbing never did anyone any harm. Eight weeks sounds good to me. Remember, you only have to say that …

He can’t be picking many tangerines if he’s only making 15 quid a day. I have it from the horse’s mouth that: “Most people earn over $90 per day and some earn double this.” That’s £30-£60.

I just took a poll in my vicinity; and a full 100% of those polled voted you get onto an orchard, fast!

Johnny English is essentially a remake of Inspector Clouseau (sp) rather than a take off of Bond.

aha! good old seiken densetsu that was an epic game.

not emily at all really, the kiwi girls name was amanda. gods curse my demented memory. i took the bus to auckland and managed to locate a backpackers that was evan further from the town centre than the last one. insane. quite a neat place, villa type with resident nutter. consumed some fresh fish and chips-you actualy see the slabs of fresh fish getting dipped in batter and whatnot- which was nice then slumped in front of the tv all evening. me and a canadian guy called ryden ridiculing such classic programs as “american idol”(pop idol) and joe millionare. quite terrible. an american guy potted in and asked to see the news at some point, so we reluctantly switched over. rydan happened to mention something about the insanity of the war to me. this seemed to excite the american guy no end. he went bright red and fixing us with the gleaming eye of a fanatic he lounched into speech about the dastadly anti-americanism and the benerfits of the war. he had obvously said it before in many diferent hostels. we gave as good as we got utilising basic comman sense and his contradictions against him. but he stonewalled us the line the we couldn’t have an oppinion becouse we “never watched the news or read the papers. ever.” he gleaned this infomation from the fact that we were reluctant to watch the news earlier. “i meet loads of morons-” he yelled gesturing at us and frothing slightly. “-who don’t know the first godamn thing about war, but they’ve all got damn oppinions.” we pointed out that just becourse our oppinions differed from his didn’t make them anyless valid. and yes, we do watch the news and read the papers. and could you explain what the actual purpose of the war was, seeing as they have not killed saddam, found any weopons of mass destruction or any evidence that links iraq to the terrorist atacks against america. he answered this by telling us that france and russia should be punnished for there lack of support in the war and that british support was asentually pointless etc. and so the long night wore on.
today i got the plane and arrive i kerikeri. i went to the aranga holiday park as advized but it seemed that all the single rooms had been taken. crud! i got a dorm room for a couple of nights while i thought about things. talked to a guy in my dorm who said that the kiwi harvest is on hold becouse it has been rainng nonstop and kiwis need four days of continues sun to ripen. he has been doing tangerine picking in which he makes 15 pounds a day. it is apparently mind numbing work. they want you to work for 8 weeks he stated. it all seems a bit dicey to me. if i made my flight to tailand soon i wouold be saving an ingot of gold and thus efectivly makeing the same amount of money but for no actual toil! bonus. also i had better go before the sars virus gets any worse and they ban flying.

oh well, the die is cast.

julio