Some photos from our recent trip to the Gold Coast. I do have to recommend Towers of Chevron as a perfect base – for a 2 bedroom apartment wich was huge, it ended up only costing us $155 AUD per night. not bad for a family of 5 with some hanger-ons 😉
As you might have seen looking at my twitter feed, we’ve been pretty damn busy. Firstly it was an awesome 2 weeks on the Gold Coast staying at Chevron (which is fantastic value). We were on the 13th floor, and on the final night had to move up to the 49th floor – as I neglected to actually get a room for our final night – long story, won’t bore you with the details.
As it so happened, we ended up at Movie World about 5 times, Sea World a couple of times, and caught up with both my family in Brisbane as well as Lesley and Peter (with kids) a couple of times. One thing about being an expat (esp here) is that the friends you make, are friends for life. We would do anything for our friends here, you have to – in order to have something that may resemble a family for support…. The kids loved the Gold Coast, Jacinta loved being able to walk around, I loved coming back to Port Moresby 🙂 Holiday’s I find relatively difficult, I like my own space, and I really needed to relax and unwind – but didn’t really do that.
ON getting back to Moresby, we found our apartment completely full with mould – which of course triggered off Xavier’s asthma – and it’s been a neverending battle since. Word for the wise – don’t shut your place up when you go out, leave some windows open for circulation, or set the AC on a timer….. I have (fingers crossed) approached our compound owners to see if we can move into a vacant apartment as it will be better for the kids – unit 1 rather than 7, so we’ll see I suppose..
So back into Moresby, where the elections were in full swing. Pictures in the papers of children voting, reports of ballot boxes missing, or burnt. Generally, an election nightmare. But at the end of the day – if the country can get a stable government for the next 5 years, that will really assist the economic growth that we are having, I just wish that electoral reform could happen here to weed out all the dodgy shit going down… As it stands now, Peter O’Neill looks like he has the support of most MP’s including Sir Michael Somare – and with that – it looks like the elections here are a success.
A few days after getting back to PNG, and I was off again – this time to Bangkok, via Brisbane and Sydney – for a day, then back via Manilla to Port Moresby. Yes – a huge tip and not one I would like to do again in a hurry – especially just for one day. But required nonetheless….
Back in Moresby and Elections still going on, this is the problem with the LPV system – you aren’t just counting the winner, you need to count every mark – so of course it takes bloody ages.
The last two weeks, we finally went to the Aviat (which we like as it’s pretty casual), and happened to only spend one friday night at the Yachty (I know – what is the world coming too!!). Managed to spend some more Kina at the Ela Beach craft markets – and then took Adam and Jenny up to the PAU markets on Sunday 🙂
phew.
Give me a few more days and I’ll get some more pictures up 😉
Aaron
Just back from a few weeks on the Gold Coast, will need to blog about the current election and the state of PNG soon, until then 🙂
The worst thing here in PNG is having to put up with bloody Aussie TV… Really, I don’t get The Block, Home and Away should have been canned many years ago, and Aussie’s funniest Home Videos??? C’mon Australia – where the bloody hell are ya! You’ve copied US, British and Kiwi TV and quite frankly done a shit job at it.It’s sad – that we have to watch it here…. And so, TV ends up revolving around Discovery, Discovery Turbo, emtv, and the movie channels.What we want to see: Outrageous Fortune, Sparticus, you know – tv shows that are different… Poor PNG having to put up with this, and c’mon Aussie’s if you think I’m being harsh – let me know the best TV shows so that I can actually get entertained….And onto the biggest rant ever: the All Blacks vs Ireland rugby test this evening isn’t on free TV in Aussie (or PNG). wtf!! Union is bigger than AFL, or League – and only fox sports (which we can’t get here) is showing it… Wouldn’t be so bad if I could stream it, but with the cost of Internet….I always thought that kiwi TV was backward, until your only selection is 20 odd Australian channels… I’ll take tv1, 2 & 3 any day now 🙂
Today we had the Kiwi Club Hangi that was meant to be held on Waitangi Day, but due to bad weather was canned. Last night we had a torrential downpour which filled the pit up and meant that today dragged a bit with the food out about an hour later than it should have. Although both Jacinta and myself (being the Hangi experts we aren’t) would have put it down late last night rather than this morning…
It turned out to be an awesome day, however turned into a disaster at home with everyone tired, server problems at work, and both Xanthe and Xavier vomiting. I think the lollies might have had something to do with the vomiting…
I was one of 3 meat carvers for the day, so once the food started coming out – I was full on carving the pork and lamb. I’m not a chicken person so left that for Neil 🙂 I think that when you are busy carving meat – you do miss out on a lot, and by the end – I really wasn’t hungry, and was pretty knackered. Jacinta had a hard time looking after the kids, but at least we had lots of friends around, with both Jane and Ian, Liesa and Matt, and Sharon and family coming out to enjoy the day. I think we might make Kiwis out of those aussies yet 🙂 I only took a few photos and thankfully Jacinta did too – so here is the day out at the kiwi high comm in pictures:
A Kiwi Expat in PNG 