New Zealand - Arrival

-- 10/13 to 10/14/2016 - Written from Oaklands Backpacker Lodge, Mt. Eden, Auckland --


The flight to the Philippines was fine. It left in the early afternoon and arrived in the evening. I stepped off the plane into another humid climate, and noticed some immediate differences between Japan and Manila. Articulating specific differences would be difficult, but I'd say that generally there were many more kinds of people in the Manila airport than anywhere I'd been in Japan. A lot more people were wearing a lot more colors and patterns. 

The entire space of the terminal also felt somehow more cramped that I was expecting. There were very few stalls in the bathrooms, and long lines extended out of each one. Different gates were placed very close to one another, so it was hard to tell where one began and the other ended. Small stores extended out into the walkways from the walls, and it seemed like there was only one wall between the gates and the airport check-in. 

I hung around killing time, not able to get any food as all the stalls only took cash, I had no Philippine Pesos with me, and there wasn't a place to exchange currency. I couldn't get online either, as the login details that were supposed to work failed to get me onto the wireless network. So I typed up the first couple days of my Tokyo journal, planning to upload them to the blog whenever I got a free moment in Auckland. 

Eventually my flight boarded, and for the first time on this entire journey I felt cramped on the plane. It was a full flight, I was in the middle seat, and my knees were brushing the seat ahead of me. Either Philippine Airlines chooses the spacing for their planes based on a shorter average femur length than other airlines, or they just don't care and do their best to fit as many people onto their flights as possible. I put in earplugs and put on an eye mask and tried to sleep. 

A few hours later (maybe it was 3 in the morning? I didn't have room to get my phone out and check) they turned on all the lights and served a meal. I would have slept through it, but I was hungry enough that my desire for sleep was overridden. I wasn't really able to sleep after that.

We then landed in Cairns, Australia at about 7 in the morning, which I wasn't expecting. Fortunately it was a planned part of the journey. We all had to deplane, go through a security check and then hang around before we could board again. I thought about exchanging my Japanese yen and American dollars for New Zealand dollars. I had about
¥18,000 and $100 in my wallet, which would work out to about NZ$390 if everything was exchanged fairly. I went to a money changer and they offered me only about NZ$200, apparently because they would have to change everything to Australian dollars, and THEN to NZ$. I held onto my money.

We boarded, it was another full flight, and I stayed up watching Sing Street on the old fold-down screens that the plane still used somewhat effectively. The movie ended with our hero, a young musician, and his girlfriend sailing from Ireland to make their fortunes in England, ready to spend their future together despite all obstacles. It made me feel awful for deciding to go off to New Zealand without asking Jess to come with me. Thanks, Movie, for judging me.

I landed, and quickly got through the passport check, which was totally automated. Then I got held up in line for the bio-security checks, which the New Zealand government takes very seriously. There is a legend about how Shania Twain visited the country and was fined $250 for not declaring an apple core she had with her. The moral of the story is declare everything that might be considered organic, even if you're famous.

I almost got to breeze through the bio-security check, having declared everything I could think of and being told by the officer that what I had was fine. And then I realized that I had packed a set of juggling balls my mom made for me about 8 years ago, and that each ball was filled with rice. As soon as I told the agent he got very serious and moved me into the line for the highest level bio-security screenings. That line took another long time to get through. But I took the time to gather everything out of my bags that would be considered even potentially risky for them to look over so that I wouldn't have to totally unpack my bags to find them later.

When I met with the screening officer, she only ended up being concerned about three things: the omiyage that I'd bought as a present for Jess (it was food), a Hawaiian dream catcher my mom had given me when I was about 7 years old, and the juggling balls. She unpacked the omiyage, which had a surprising number of layers, peered in at the food, and decided it was okay. She took the dream catcher back to her boss, who said the feathers in it were not a threat. And then she took one of the juggling balls, opened a seam with her pocket knife, and poured out the rice into a bag to make sure there weren't any pests. With that, I was given the all clear, and the rest of my bags went through an x-ray. No threats detected.

Finally, I emerged from the security check and looked for my taxi. My advisor, Melinda, had arranged for a taxi to pick me up, and though it had already been about an hour and a half since my plane landed, I expected the driver would still be there. But he wasn't. I asked around with all of the taxi drivers that were present and none of them were there for me, or knew anyone who was supposed to be.

Stranded, I called Melinda, and she insisted on coming out to pick me up. I hung around in the Auckland Airport, quickly maxing out the time limit on my internet connection to publish and write up the first three days of my trip to Tokyo. While I was sitting around, I was approached by one of the taxi drivers who wanted to let me know that the guy who was probably supposed to have picked me up definitely left earlier. 

Then the driver looked past me, saw some Muslims praying, and swore. "What the fuck are they doing? They're gonna start a bomb scare!" I tried to be calm, and just replied that they were praying. There wasn't any problem with that. Not impressed, the driver walked away, and tried his joke out on another white driver.

When Melinda was getting pretty close to arriving, I went out to meet her in the pick up area, and walked past a giant Dwarven statue that was "on loan from Middle Earth." It took a bit before we found each other, and then we loaded into her car and set off for some Indian cuisine in her neighborhood village. We were immediately on great terms and made fast friends. We talked about where we both came from, our interests outside of archaeology, our common friends, and a lot about Auckland. We ate Indian food, and went back to her house where she invited me to stay for the weekend.