City of night, city of night, city of night, woo, cmon

"[Los Angeles] is Big. Really big. It may seem like a long way to the corner chemist, but compared to [Los Angeles], that’s peanuts." -Douglas Adams.

Everything in America is bigger and louder than we're are used to. The people, the cars, the food, the cities. For your convenience here's a picture of LA next to Wellington at the same scale. The red X is my cousin Mike's apartment, and the Mickey silhouette is Disneyland.
This means from Mike's to Disneyland was like going from Wellington to Featherston, except, all the way to Featherston, there are a whole lot of people in your way (13 million).

Due to Mike being such an excellent host we ended up staying for an entire week (coincidentally Mike's job is being a 'host' at LA clubs). Mike is half American and half Canadian, and I think shows the positive traits that one associates with each country (confidence and friendliness). All Americans seemed to speak loudly and often, and I have found myself speaking quietly and infrequently to try and compensate.

Mike's apartment was in West Hollywood, right next to Santa Monica Boulevard. Here is a picture of Mike and Alana:
The last time I was in LA I was 13 and I remember Disneyland being lame and Universal Studios being cool. I'm not sure who's done the changing, but this time around it was the complete opposite. Universal Studios seems to be struggling (for the price of 1 ticket, you get a year long pass), and Disneyland was great.

One of the worthwhile moments at Universal Studios was seeing a set from War of the Worlds. Alana has a fear of flying, and if you watch closely, you can actually see Alana's soul quiver with fear:


Disneyland was great.
Pictures:

Tahiti and stuff

So, this is our blog. Please, sit down. Make yourself at home.

It has taken us a week to decide what to call it. Alana vetoed Shampoo Mohawks (which was timeless and totally sweet):










We've opted instead for Alana's Bill and Ted theme (less timeless, but slightly sweeter than the 'Poo'Hawks). This is an alternative to us bombarding you with group emails-you come here to read what we're doing at your leisure. But, as ironic as it has been, enough blogging about blogging.

We left Wellington on the 13th to catch our plane from Auckland the next day. Turned out, due to a mixture of the dateline and me being dumb, the plane didn't actually exist. So, after an extra night in Auckland we were off.

After spending 4 nights in French Polynesia, I can now confirm that it is great (the most expensive place on Earth, but great). We got to swim with sharks, dance with angry natives, and I even got to enjoy the local food poisoning.

Papeete, French Polynesia's capital, had been described by Lonely Planet and others as scummy. Lonely Planet and Others were right, but it wasn't even scummy enough to be remarkably scummy, just plain-regular scummy.

We stayed on the island of Moorea, a half-hour boat ride from Papeete:


...which you will all notice bears a striking resemblance to the Wu-Tang Clan's coat of arms:


We stayed in a bungalow right on the beach at the top-left edge of the 'W' in WU. Prices in French Polynesian are so expensive, and the conversion rates are kind of weird, so I ended up actually writing IOUs for the soul of my first-born child to pay for the accommodation.

Turns out sharks are just as scary as you always thought they were (they had terrifying manic grins), but lack the cunning and taste that I had thought they had. They failed to work out how helpless and delicious Alana, myself and some other tourists were when swimming with them, which was slightly offensive but mostly relieving.

Pictures:
1. Alana trying hard to be eaten

2. Me terrified of the puppy-like rays

Next stop: America.