We started the day early today as we have 7:10am flight to Auckland. I woke up at 4:45a.m to clean myself and prepare simple breakfast - fish fillet and tomato sandwich. The motel owner had already help us to arrange for SuperShuttle to fetch us in the morning the day before. I prefer to reach airport earlier just in case, so I asked for 5:30a.m shuttle. But the owner thinks it will be too early and we should leave at 6a.m instead. We settled for 5:45a.m shuttle.
5:40a.m, we were already at the car park waiting for the shuttle to come. 5:45a.m... 5:50a.m... 5:55a.m... gosh... where's the shuttle? I was already worried [thanks to the Pisces in me] since the check in should be done 30 minutes before the scheduled departure. And it takes 30 minutes from our motel to the airport. Was the booking in order? Will the shuttle come? Will we be able to make it on time?
The shuttle finally came at 6a.m.. phew.. yet, will we be able to make it? There are 3 other people in the shuttle, two of them wanted to go to the train station, that means an extra stop! I was going dag dig dug in my heart. But alhamdulillah we finally arrived at the airport at 6:32a.m, 8 minutes before the final check in time and I ran to do my check in and everything.
We flew via Jetstar at 7:10a.m, reached Auckland at about 8:20a.m. Straight to Avis to take our car. It was a hatchback Toyota Corolla, the boot is so small that 2 luggage fully occupied it. We drove to the town, initially I wanted to go to Skytower but the parking was so full around there, so we decided to go to the museum domain instead to visit the Auckland War Memorial Museum as well as The Wintergarden.
There's no entrance fee for the museum, it is by donation. We donated NZD10 per pax at the entrance. We also bought tickets for the cultural Maori performance, at NZD25 per pax. It was a very simple performance, but I do love it anyway.
The Museum itself has nothing much to look at, I was hoping for a more historical data to be displayed but was so disappointed for the lack of it.
After the Museum, we wanted to go to The Wintergarden. So we went to our car which was parked not far from the Museum, in between the Museum, the rugby field and some colleges. OK, first, I want to show where we parked our car, judge for yourself how public the area is :
Second, I want to show what happened to our car :
See the quarter mirror? Uwaaaaa.... our car was broken into!! I saw the back seat folded down, back door no longer locked, and all our luggage were gone! Panic.. panic.. panic.. I have my knapsack with me, so that means all the money, passport, credit cards, and all our tickets and booking information are safe with me. But Mr D's passport was in his knapsack, which was in the car. Hey you man, since when you don't carry your passport with you??
Mr D called 111, detailing the incident, together with the details of the bags and what's in it for insurance purposes. Meanwhile I sat down on the parking lot thinking of what to do next.. practically everything was gone, except for our money and credit cards [and my passport]. Mr D will have a bit more problem because his passport was also gone. Then I opened my knapsack to get my netbook since I saved some important details in the netbook as well such as what if our passport get lost or something.. and only then I realized.... gosshhh!! This morning I transferred the netbook to Mr D's knapsack because I need to put in our sandwich in my knapsack so taknak sandwich penyek with the netbook. Uwaaaa... the netbook was gone as well... I think that's why the guy broke into our car.. it was the netbook!! THE NETBOOK!! He detected that! I am always very careful about stuffs like this, netbook and handphone always with me and not left in the car. But today? Uwaaaaaaaa!!! I went like "why did you leave your knapsack in the car??" to Mr D a few times. Hahahaha.. pity him.. the truth was, both of us forgot that the netbook was no longer in MY knapsack, where it was supposed to be.
Now that I don't have the Malaysia High Comm details anymore (gone with the netbook), we need to find somewhere we can log to internet to get the details. But first, we need to go to Avis to change our car. Lucky I bought the insurance, so it took only 3 minutes to replace the car. We then cross over to the domestic terminal to log into the free internet.
Mr D called Malaysia High Comm in Wellington and was told that if he comes on Wednesday, Thursday or Monday in the morning, he can get back his passport in the afternoon. Today is Wednesday, but it was already 3p.m so definitely couldn't make it. We discussed whether we should drive down to Wellington the next morning instead, but driving down to Wellington will be too far and it will waste a lot of time. So we considered to take a flight down to Wellington from Hamilton [because we were supposed to go Hamilton today].
Mr D then thought that we will somehow ruin our schedule if we fly to Wellington the next morning when we originally supposed to be in Wellington on Sunday. He thinks there's no point going down to Wellington and then up again, so he thinks since he still have his I/C and international driving license with him for identification, and report to both NZ police and Malaysia High Comm for the lost of his passport, the replacement for the passport can wait till Monday. But we originally didn't plan to stay in Wellington on Monday, we just thought to just drop by Wellington on Sunday and took Interislander ferry crossing over to Picton on Monday morning. Now that we need to be in Wellington on Monday, we have to reschedule our South Island trip. I logged into Interislander website, change our crossing date from 12 September to 13 September. But the price is already expensive, initially I booked for Kaitaki with Kaitaki Plus at NZD250 for 2 pax. But now even Kaitaki, without the Kaitaki Plus cost us NZD240 for 2 pax. So we decided to drop the Kaitaki Plus, otherwise we will incur another NZD90 for that. It is OK.. with or without the Kaitaki Plus, we are crossing over insyallah. We also have to cancel our accommodation booking in Kaikoura, since we will have to stay a day longer in Wellington for the passport replacement. I was sad, because Kaikoura is one of the places I really wanted to go. But it is OK, we can later drop by for a while on our way to Christchurch.
Now that we have no mood to continue our short visit in Auckland, we decided to head straight to the next destination - Hamilton - the centre of our visit, because this was where Mr D did both his bachelor and master degree long time ago.
Next : What happened in Hamilton?
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