Ampersand

Tag: Traveling

  • Circulation

    Last weekend I went with my friends Rachel, Angela, and Miriam for Circulation, a big ol’ circus festival down in freezing cold yet oddly sunny Dunedin. I have been super extra busy for the past…well, for the past forever, I guess, and since I haven’t been doing circus for months I just forgot about it…

  • How Was Your Trip?

    I’ve been back from the States a week—I got in off the plane last Thursday morning, paid an exorbitant cab fair home to Mt. Vic from the airport, fell asleep in my clean-sheeted bed, and woke up in time to have buddies over for tea and biscuits before work the next day. “How was your…

  • Confusion Re: The International Date Line

    The first thing that happened was that I thought the pilot had got the day wrong when he said, “It’s Saturday the 13th, 10:15 a.m.,” just as I was congratulating myself on a very easy trans-Pacific flight. “Wait, did he get that wrong?” I worriedly asked the guy sitting next to me. “Is that possible?”…

  • Riding Around On The 86

    Last weekend I went to Melbourne, Australia to visit my friend Theresa, whom I met in Wellington and who went across the ditch last September, much to the dismay of all her friends. I was just sort of keen to get out of town, I think—much as I love Wellington, I also think there’s a…

  • Notes From My Visit To Golden Bay With My Mom

    First Night After the ferry, after the six hours in the car from Picton to Takaka, after a dinner of goat cheese and crackers on the tiny little balcony looking out over the bay, I walk down past the outdoor tea house and the Buddha in its lavender bed, to the beach. It’s my birthday,…

  • Cambodia And Malaysia: Bits And Bobs

    I’m thinking about a lot of stuff lately—well, Egypt, obviously, and #dearjohn, and this huge hurricane in Queensland, and all sorts of other things happening in my friend groups in all hemispheres everywhere. I just signed up for a circus class and I’m going to be a maid of honour for the sixth time in…

  • Stuff I Ate In Malaysia And Cambodia

    More trip stuff. January is almost over and you have no idea of any of the other things I’ve been doing—don’t lie to me, I know you have been staring off into the distance when you should have been working, wondering if I’d been wine camping this month or if I’d been back to yoga…

  • Cambodia: Siem Reap and Angkor Wat

    It’s been several weeks since I got back from the trip, now, and it’s getting harder to remember it; like, I know I went, I know I was there (it was only a couple weeks ago!) but I feel like I’ve told all the stories and put away all the souvenirs and just slipped effortlessly…

  • Cambodia: Phnom Penh and Kep

    From Kota Kinabalu I flew to Phnom Penh, Cambodia, to meet up with my friend Katherine. Kat and I went to college together (I told a friend of hers that I ‘knew her from the nineties’) and I hadn’t seen her for four years, since our going-away parties when she was on her way to…

  • Malaysia: Borneo Dive Trip

    One of the funnier things about this trip was that I was either with a local friend who spoke the language and would take me to cool places, with whom I would have these very long and intense conversations, or I was super touristy and super on my own. I like both of those things,…

  • Malaysia: Melaka and Kuala Lumpur

    This time last week I think I would have been on the plane to Melbourne from Kuala Lumpur already, wearing my maxi dress and fuzzy socks that I now always bring with me on planes, watching 90s movies and zoning out but not falling asleep. I’ve been back home almost a week now and thought…

  • Everything Right Where It Belongs

    I got home from Malaysia yesterday around seven, on a perfectly blue and gold Wellington evening, coming down through the clouds over the harbour. I’d spent almost twenty-four hours in transit, on various types of public transport and on planes and in airport lounges and I was so tired and dirty and all I wanted…

  • See What I Can See

    It’s a gorgeous Christmas Day in Wellington: sun is shining, birds singing, all of that. My bag is packed, my house is clean, and all there is left to do is skype my various family members on the other side of the world, put on my travel outfit, and get on the first of three…

  • Somewhere Else I’ve Never Been

    I just bought the last of the four internal flights I’ll take during my upcoming trip to Southeast Asia, from Siem Reap in Cambodia to Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia. I’m going for just a little over two weeks, and I leave on Christmas Day. Something I notice as I get older is that I vacillate…

  • Tonga: Doing A Lot Of Nothing and Getting Home

    Whale swimming was probably the big huge major thing we did on the trip, the thing we talked a lot about and thought a lot about. We laughed a little, later, when we realized how actually active we’d been on our beach holiday, suiting up and getting on boats right after breakfast, when mainly we’d…

  • Tonga: Whale Swimmin’

    One of the many nice things about planning this trip (other than the decision to hold Bikini Meetings) was the happy discovery that we’re all dive certified, and that Tonga, has, like, coral reefs. Our mission was clear. We did four dives over two days and some snorkeling as well. The last time I tried…

  • Easter Easter Kayak Kayak

    I’d been talking with Theresa, kind of randomly, about taking a trip together somewhere for Easter weekend this year, without coming to much of a decision. I wanted to go to the top of the South Island, maybe to Shambhala again or something, but tickets to Takaka were sort of expensive and they close for…

  • New Year’s In Golden Bay

    I had only about twelve hours in Wellington between the Coromandel and going down to Golden Bay, where I hadn’t been since the tail end of my South Island trip in 2008. I was very keen to return to my beloved Shambhala because…well because my last New Year’s Eve was not that great, to be…

  • Natale A Coromandel

    I just got home from my summer holidays last night and it’s been a bit of a shock to be back in Welly, to say the least. Today it’s been all awful and stormy and sideways-rainy and I couldn’t sleep and I had to do a bunch of washing and food-getting and every time I’ve…

  • Rotorua Road Trip

    I was couching it all in super generous terms—my friend Eric from the States is in Wellington for a couple of months, and I was all like, “Girl, your experience of the North Island should not be limited to Cuba Street!”—but really I was feeling a bit restless and wanting to get out of town.…

  • Almost Done With The Waiting

    Okay! Well! Hi! I’m in California now, up ridiculously early because the paltry East Coast/West Coast time change is affecting me way more than it usually does, writing this from a bed at the ABL, where I arrived yesterday after a couple of days in New York. I’ve got all day today in Sunnyvale and…