Arrivals and Other Things

On September 3rd, I arrived in the largest city in New Zealand: Auckland, which still only has 1.2 million people living there (a far cry from the 12+ million I dealt with daily in Seoul). It is a quaint place, very reminiscent of Sydney, actually, in terms of architecture and the way the city has been planned.

After securing a room for myself at City Lodge (it's a subdivision of YMCA) which is very clean and offers good service ($65/night), I walked into town. City Lodge was a good choice because it was far away enough to not have to deal with any real noise, but only 5 minutes from the center, where there are tons of shops and restaurants.

Auckland Tower

After living in Seoul for two years, I've been pretty spoiled with the restaurant scene. Many places are open 24hours so you are never at a lack for food. I was expecting restaurants and little sandwich shops to be open around 8pm here, but most of them closed around 5 or 6, their day-over (very quaint- reminds me of France).

I found everything so incredibly expensive, but after having converted some prices, hotels and restaurants were pretty average when compared to Montreal prices.

Some astronomical prices that I must warn about are the cigarettes and the taxis. Cigarettes cost $10.80 a pack. Insane! I've never seen such a thing. I think Montreal is still way below that price.

I had to take a taxi from City Lodge to Star City Bus Station. It is literally less than 5 minutes from the hotel but because my bags were really heavy and it was uphill, I opted for a cab. It cost me about $8! Can you imagine! That would have cost me less than $3 dollars in Seoul. Ah, I will miss the cheap transportation, that's for sure.

Anyway, soon after arriving in Auckland, I headed out to accomplish my most pressing goal: shaving my head. I've been thinking about doing it for the past year, but didn't want to do it in Korea because it is still quite the conservative place. So I waited until I got here and Neil Seck, my hairdresser, in a state of shock and horror, hesitantly agreed to cut it for me.

Below, a video of the process. Thanks for the digital camera Seung Ah, Jong In and John. Because of you, I get to show you this.





The final look #2 cut. I love it! Now it was time to start afresh.

Me and Neil