Visiting around Te Puke

Have you stayed in a mobile home before? Yes, we did! And this was our first time staying in a mobile home or travel trailer which is known as Caravan in NZ. Caravan is like a room with 4 tires attached to it. Due to it does not have any engine, you have to connect it to your vehicle in order for you to bring it along with you as your room at the destination.

Normally, traveler will park the caravan at Holiday Park that near to the recreation area. It is a place which offers variety of accommodation options such as camping site, caravan parking site, self-contained motel and cabins. Each caravan’s parking lot has a faucet for water usage and electricity connector for you to connect electricity to your caravan. Public toilet, washroom and kitchen are available at there, too.

Our caravan was those which are already placed in the holiday park as a room, so we did not travel around with it. It was really a special experience for us to stay in a caravan for a week.

This is our caravan :P

Inside of the 3 people caravan. There are also caravan with smaller size available for 1 to 2 people.

Can you spot us? Hello~~

Opportunity shops are very common in NZ, we can find it in any town. It is a shop that selling second handed clothes, kitchenware, shoes, bags, bed sheets, curtains and etcetera. The price can be as low as 1NZD if there is a promotion. If you spare some time at these shop, you may get something nice and cheap, especially jacket or winter clothes.

Family Store is the biggest shop among 3 of them and the clothes selling at there looks nicer :)

Can’t find any night activity in Te Puke? You are definitely wrong. There is a cinema which open until late at night for mid night show in Te Puke.  The size of each show room is same as the smallest show room in those big cinemas. It is quite comfortable, new and clean inside. You can get to watch the international film as well as local firm at there.

Cinema main door

We chose to watch this local film called "My Wedding" and it’s very nice

 Snapped a photo before the show started

We have been drinking Comvita Manuka Honey for few years before visiting NZ, thanks Shirley for bringing it for us across the sea every time. It is really the best honey product which contains pure NZ Manuka Honey that good for health-maintaining. We used to drink UMF^® 5+ Manuka Honey from Comvita. You can take the higher UMF^® that provide better effects to your body with higher price.:P

It was so surprised to know that Comvita Visitor Centre is just location at Te Puke while we were on our way heading to the town from Maketu. It is just located near to KIWI 360 (one of the must-visit places in Te Puke).  So, we dropped by to pay a visit at Comvita Visitor Centre. You can find others products such as propolis, body lotion, omega and candies beside honey. (Click here for more information about Comvita)

Main entrance of Comvita Visitor Centre

Bee-lieve it or not!

Stay tuned for our next post, enjoy reading^^

Kiwi Country - Te Puke

Welcome to the Kiwi Country - Te Puke.  From Auckland to Te Puke, it took about 5 hours to reach there by Inter-City bus. You may get the bus ticket as low as $1NZD if you are lucky, but not for us because ours were last minute tickets. : P (Click here for InterCity website).

Te Puke is known as "Kiwifruit capital of the world" due to it's one of the main kiwifruit producers of the world. Yes, our mission getting to this small town is to search for a kiwifruit packer job during kiwi fruit season (March-June).

We stayed at Hairy Berry Backpacker house for a couple of nights as recommended by our friend due to its location is near to Trevelyan’s pack house, which is the pack house that we aimed for working over there. However, some people claims that Hairy Berry is a little expensive compared to others, you can get cheaper accommodation by staying at the lodge in town or caravan at Holiday Park.

We had no idea how to get to Hairy Berry Backpacker house from Te-Puke town although it is just a 2km-away-far distance. Luckily a kind bus driver offered to send us there, so we faster hopped into the "Not In Use" Bay Hopper bus.

 Hairy Berry Backpackers House

Our 4 people room

Living room with books, information, internet and TV for all backpackers

Kitchen for all backpackers

Our day in Te-Puke was going smooth with the help and kindness of everyone we met there, it was too warm for us. ^^ After we got a job from Trevelyan’s pack house, we paid a visit to the town centre. Although the town centre is just occupied by 2 rows of shops along the main road, but you can find any thing you need at there, such as grocery shop, book shop, photo shop, Post Shop(Post office), library, cinema, petrol station, workshop, restaurant and etcetera.

History of Te Puke

Church

Most delicious bakery in the town, our favourite Egg & Bacon pie is always out of stock, it's the best pie we ever had :)

Library

Post Shop (Post Office is known as Post Shop in NZ)

The road sign and sign board in this town are decorated with "Kiwi fruit", so cute^^

MCD for our lunch! The ice-cream tasted nicer than Malaysia. You may also try MCD Fish burger at NZ and you will feel the differences, it's fresher and thicker.

More to come about our life in Te Puke, enjoy reading ^^

Maori's Maketu

During the time in Te-Puke, we had a chance to stayed over a small town called Maketu which is about 11km  away from Te-Puke for a couple of weeks. Maketu is located nearby beach where it is predominant by Maori population.
Without any hesitation, we drove to the famous Maketu Beach for our first time ever PIPI catching session, and it's free.

Although the Pipi and Cockle are free, but there are daily limit for each gatherer.Tips: Remember to bring your own digger and pail or plastic bag to put the Pipi/Cockle

Look at the sky, the colour is so pretty

Nice beach

The beach is full of shells,and it's pain when step on it@@.

Ta-daa~~

Our naked leg with pipi shells

You can cook the Pipi as one of your dishes for your lunch or dinner, we cooks Pipi soup with corn and tomato.

Next, let's see what Maketu has to feed our hungry stomach. Yes, it’s the famous Maketu Pie!!! we picked a few flavour to try it out.

Yummy~~

Maketu Smoke Fish pie, tasted nice without fishy smell, I like it!

I believe most of the houses in Maketu have sea view because of its nice location. But I think our landlord's house is having the best view as its front door is facing the sea. We super-duper enjoy the sea view during our time at there.

View from our room.

View from another side of the room. Moo moo with green grassland and blue sky.

More to come about our life in NZ, enjoy reading^^