It doesn't take long

to get fully bored of being at home, does it? I even have a tidy room and organised belongings.

I need to get a job :(

Hong Kong Burger King

An interesting little side story.

I was very much impressed with the price of a large BK meal in Hong Kong airport. I bought a large Chicken Royal for HKD44. That's £3 to you English folk. Now a meal of that stature would cost the average Brit around £4.54. So I sat there thinking I bet others would love to be able to enjoy their burger King meals for less.. and then I realised, you all can!

The cheapest return flight I can find to Hong Kong is £769. At a saving of £1.54 for each meal, it therefore makes economic sense to fly to Hong Kong to purchase your large Chicken Royale meals when you are ordering more than 500 of them in one go. This does of course ignore the potential difficulty of exceeding your luggage limit on the return flight home, presuming you don't intend to eat all of the meals before you depart.

If you are interested even further, on a philosophical level the problem becomes more complex. I was in Hong Kong airport as a coincidental result of my travel route. I was in no way there for the purpose of buying a burger King meal. In this light I feel I could appreciate the saving I had made as a full £1.54. If you were to travel to Hong Kong specifically for a BK meal, then the effort required for this trip reduces the savings you have made, not just on an economic scale but spiritual also. Do you disagree? The same savings and satisfaction would not have resulted from a purposeful "BK run".

Still not convinced? I bought one meal and saved £1.54; the purchase of my meal was separate to the purpose of my trip. To save £1.54 per meal on a BK through the means of a BK run, I would need to buy an infinite amount of BK meals. Until this amount is bought, I am only saving a proportion of the £1.54 top limit. For example if I bought 500 meals, the breakeven point based on the Chicken Royale example, I am actually saving only a fraction of a penny per meal, and it is the total cost that is just less than if I had bulk bought from BK over the road from the cinema.

We all know, to buy an infinite amount of Burger Kings (with the exception of the appearance of Rick Waller) is impossible.

ps. One other thought, why don't they call it "Burger Kong" over there? That would be really funny.

NZ

Right, I'm a little bit behind on what's happened. In fact I have a little surprise for you all at the end! How exciting.. But no cheating, you must read through this first..

Neighbours night was the final night for me in Melbourne and so I bode my farewells to my traveling compadrés and headed for the airport. After narrowly making the check in time I flew out to Christchurch, one of the main towns of the South Island. A little bit of banter with the [lovely] stewardess and a few drinks later, I were quite pissed! I met a couple of girls on our flight through discussing the lovely family in front of us (they were threatened proper infant school style with being left behind if they didn't stop causing problems. I think the steward might have been gay, he had a stern but camp tone about him) and that was the start of the most awesome 2 weeks of solo adventures...

Christchurch has a very similar English feel to it. But, as one would expect, it was far nicer: Weather, people, buildings. We should learn from this! But there isn't much to do there so I booked a Kiwi Experience tour of the South Island. This is a bus full of like minded individuals! 'nuff said.. Traveled down the East coast doing some cool things - for example, we learnt about the NZ method of catching deer (the country was once overrun with them) by jumping out of helicopters and tackling them to the ground! And I fed a BIG pig (see pics): a very scary moment for me.

Also, during this time I had left my wallet behind in Christchurch so thankyou to Laura for getting it back and Laura and Tracey for being my personal bank for 3 days! I would have been done for without ya help.

Queenstown, the centre of Extremeism in NZ. Was our next stop. Cos I'm your typical no messin' type of fella, I jumped the Nevis bungy (134m, or 440ft, whichever sounds more impressive (feet I reckon)), a lovely leap from a cable car into a huge valley. Surprisingly this was not as intimidating as I had anticipated. I think the pig actually takes the biscuit (geddit?). I also rode a motorbike up and down muddy hills for a bit, then hopped back on the bus to CT to fly to Auckland on the North Island.

There I stayed with Adam Griffiths' Mum and Sis for one night (thankyou people!) to be shown the sights and eats of the Capital city. (I had the nicest eye fillet steak, gorgeous). Thus proceeded my longest journey of all: the trip back home...

Yes, it's time for my surprise....

I'm back home! In Gloucester. One serious conteding city for the centre of the chav world. It took 22 hours of flight to get here and by 'eck was it worth it.

A perspective..

So I have done some cool things since leaving the UK. Trekked through rainforests in Thailand.. Danced for hours on a beach at the Thailand full moon party.. Lived in tents for nigh-on 6 weeks in Western Australia.. I even made a Formula One Grand Prix. We've met cool people too. If any are reading this, then hello - It was undoubtedly a pleasure!

But, not to offend, it all feels insignificant since Monday night when we all met....

Toadie, aka Toadfish, birth named Jarrod Rebecki, in Melbourne's Neighbours night. It was a moment in time unrivalled by any others.

We've watched the guy grow up from a troubled school kid into a flourishing lawyer. There he was, greeting me with that chubby grin. I was weak at the knees! Magic.

And we met others too. No girls, unfortunately, but Stu (one for the girls, instead) and Connor - who seemed like a good bloke, incidently. Dr. Carl rocked the party for a good hour with classics such as Wonderwall and Brown Eyed Girl. All the stars take the time to individually meet every single person in the room (a good few hundred) which is nice. What with drink flowing all around, it made for a merry time and some good fun was had with Stu who didn't really know what he was doing all the time hence the very many piccies. And Toadie really does say that line if someone asks why he is so fat. We have video evidence. Hahaha....

I have since escaped the clutches of Australia and now I have 2 weeks to enjoy the South island of NZ all on my own. Tomorrow I get on the Kiwi Experience, a party bus that takes you to all the interesting spots around, and some uninteresting ones. It will be great! Then it's bollocks to all this and I'm coming home. See you soon my avid reading fans!

Oh yeah, and I bumped into Woody and Will from School in Christchurch Airport as I arrived. What a freakish coincidence.

ps. New phone number: +64211394523 - Get textin'!

Sydney

We arrived in Sydney a couple of days ago and are in the process of seeing all the sights. It's a smart place, especially in the centre. It feels like what New York might feel like. And we made the wise choice to stay in the Red light District of town to save a couple of dollars. The "working girls" are out of order! Why people would pay for such service I don't know.. There are proper screaming arguments behind our hostel everynight. I guess it's the pimps and hookers.. They're quite fun to watch - like Jerry Springer without bodyguards. I might get a video of it tonight.

The two week tour rocked. Sailing was wicked, 4WD was wicked. Airlie beach was wicked, and Byron Bay was also wicked. 'Wotcha' to everyone who we met en route.

Going to walk around sunny Sydney now and have a look at what's what. I've only 3 weeks left. WTFuhh.