NZ Trip #2: House Tour

So immediately after checking out of our one night stay at Columbia Apartment, we went to Tai Ping Asian Market to buy groceries. Since we came in a large group, cooking seems like the more likely option during our stay. Ofcourse our tongue and throat still desire asian style cooking and where else can you get it other than cooking by yourself, and to get all the cooking stuffs luckily there's Tai Ping Asian Market (I think they have a lot of branches all around New Zealand, seen some of them in our travels).

Figuring out is the wheat starch they sold and wheat flour back at home are the same. Not too sure but our home made 'cekodok' turned out hard :/

Their album; coming soon to a store near you :P

Shy birthday girl Yash who's birth date fells on our second day in New Zealand. Still waiting for that birthday party hehe

On our way to Karekare, crossed a beautiful bridge overlooking these scenic views.

Before we arrive to our holiday home, we made one more stop looking for halal meat. Luckily Yash has already made her research and we went straight to the halal meat factory in Avalon city! LOL! Ofcourse we were directed to Muhammeds Halal Meat Shop after that because for obvious reasons we can't purchase the meat from factory. The reason we're purchasing halal meat was that we were planning to cook rendang and have our own raya di perantauan moments! Although that plan didn't fall through just as much because we didn't really change into our traditional baju kurung and baju melayu due to the cold weather but we did cook rendang, have ketupat and lemang too! Pictures of that later ;)

After about an hour journey from Auckland, we finally arrived at Wharepuka! Trust me the road was long winding but scenic and lovely, it was also quite fun to see the farms by the road side all along our neighbour houses. We rented a house on top of a hill in a private farm. Pictures!

Those lil' white things on the grass are actually daisies :))

The farm view from our patio. Look at those tiny lil sheeps!

What else that's good to eat in a cold windy Spring day that reminds you of home? Maggi ofcourse!! Haha we had an impromptu small picnic at the patio while the boys were resting. In all honesty it turned out to be too windy and cold outside as the day was closing in to night *_*

Love our cosy living room!

Grown-ups had good ol' Maggie and kids had their own porridge :)

My favorite spot, the golden sun mirror :)

Random pics outside;

Say hello to our neighbour's sheeps! The house has 4 rooms and even an outdoor hot-tub. At night we needed to light up the fire at the fire place or else the temperature would be too cold to sit in. Love the place though and our land-lord was more than accommodating. If you are planning to visit Auckland in the future, you might wanna check-out this holiday home! The rent was about NZD1.5k for a whole week and I think it was really worth it compared to living in a hotel! But the price might be lower if we didn't come during Rugby World Cup season, some say it should be half the price! But anyways it was all worth it and even till this day we're still reminiscing about our moments spent at that holiday house.

More pictures of the trip in the next post!

By the way have you heard about Giuliana Rancic being diagnosed with breast cancer?? It's one shocking and devastating news indeed. She only found out about having it when one of her doctor pushed her into doing mammogram before she does her 3rd attempt in IVF. Good news it was detected at an early stage, even Giuliana didn't expect to do a mammogram not until she turned 40 which is in 4 more years.. And her family has no history of breast cancer. All I can say is be strong Giuliana, I really do admire you seeing that you're such a hardworking, open and inspirational woman. Such a huge fan of Giuliana & Bill reality show by the way. I hope all will go well for you G ♥