My Summer Holiday – Part 8 (Dunedin - The Edinburgh of NZ and chocolates…)

The seedy backpacker...

The cute guys...

If you happened to visit Dunedin, steer clear and stay away from Law Courts Backpackers. This miserable accommodation is located in the same building that hosts Law Courts Hotel.

Our “marvelous” organisers thought that would be a good idea to stay there for the night because it was dirt cheap (NZD 20 per bed). As though that the hotel management were ashamed of hosting us, we were told enter the backpacker via the back door. I felt we were like a bunch of burglars where we sneaked through the creaky old stairs and narrow dark corridors to find our rooms.

At the first look, the backpacker looked like a cheap rated and seedy brothel. The beds were old and worn, the furniture and fittings in the common kitchen look rickety and disused. The toilet and shower facilities look tired and dilapidated. The rooms filled with a stale and mouldy stench. The paint seems to peel off from the walls and the door in my room even had a long crack on the panels. For one split second, I thought Jack Nicholson would appear, hack the door with an axe and then stick his face screaming "Heeeere's JOHNNY!"

Well we decided it was too late to change venue, so we mustered up all the courage to spend the night at the backpacker. When we woke up, we realised somebody have rummaged through our pile of food placed in the kitchen. Thankfully, we only lost a couple of hard-boiled eggs.

We had our breakfast hastily and checked out as quickly as we can. We walked around admiring the buildings in the city and stay there until midday. Dunedin is a very beautiful city and filled with architecture masterpieces. I managed to check out a few cute guys at the railway station.

The city is also famed for the Cadbury Chocolate Factory as well as Otago University (where the unruly and drunk university students staged a riot earlier this year). The university is situated right in the heart of the city and it blended so well with the rest of the buildings that you hardly notice that you are walking in the campus ground.

By the time we wanted to leave for Twizel, one of the annoying co-driver decided to visit the Otago Peninsula at last minute. We had no choice but to grudgingly sit in the van as he drove us. At first, he wanted to see the haunted Larnach Castle but when we reached the entrance, we were told to pay NZD 20 per head. The cheapskate co-driver decided it was not worth it and we turned back.

Then he irritated us by insisting on driving down the one lane gravel road to the other side of the peninsula because he wanted to watch seals and penguins. When we reached the entrance of the reserve, we discovered that we had to walk 45 minutes to the beach to view the animals. So again, the plan was dropped. Had other travel companions not restraint me, I would have strangled him on the spot.

We finally left Dunedin after 3 pm, almost 2 hours later from the original schedule all because we wasted so much time driving around in the peninsula for nothing. We thought we would head straight to Twizel, but our annoying co-driver has other plans…