Hello 👋🏻 My husband and I got married back in 2019, but we haven't really went for our honeymoon until late last year. We were super excited for the trip and the first thing we did was to get the car from the car rental company at the airport. Our first stop was Queenstown and we tried to find our Airbnb first to check in. I was initially really stressed about packing for the cold weather, so I think I kind of overpacked and it was a bit heavy to bring the luggage up. Throughout this whole tri
p, we tried to book places with en-suite bathrooms and for this one it's quite near the town center and we chose to do without a view in exchange for the more affordable room. The moment we went out, we realized that it was a mistake to not pack any sunglasses for the trip and the sunlight was really, really very strong. We didn't have anything planned for our day of arrival so we just randomly jalan jalan around and went to this tacos place that my friend recommended. Although we felt a bit sad
for our budget, but the food here was pretty good. It was a little bit too salty for our liking because we are used to eating at home and my cooking is usually a bit more bland. But other than that, it was a great first meal in New Zealand. I told my husband to film me during our first grocery trip here, but I'm not sure what he's trying to do. We're gonna be spending about two weeks here and we wanted to cook as much as we can to save some cost. I was also very nervous and also impressed about
using digital payments overseas. After walking around for a bit, we googled ice cream near me which brought us to this place that was pretty packed. We took our cones outside to breathe in New Zealand air and freeze in the cold. My husband got hungry again after going back to our Airbnb, so I made some soft boiled eggs for supper. I was super excited to try out this brand of oat milk and it turned out to be my favorite drink throughout the whole trip. We were both super tired after a long day o
f traveling, so we went to wash up and rest early in preparation for our next day. I was pretty ambitious and I wanted to see the sunrise so we went out the very next day at about 06:00 a.m. It was so much colder than expected and we both tried our very best to enjoy the free outdoor aircon. We could already see the sun while we were on the way there, so our plan kind of failed but we still decided to go there anyway since er, ya we're already on the way, so might as well. We drove by a few beau
tiful houses along the lake and it was very serene and unreal thinking that there are people who live beside scenery like this. We ate plain bread for breakfast and tried our best not to freeze and there were ducks that were just there in the water like it's not cold at all. And there were also more ducks that were roaming around on the grass. I was initially very ambitious about taking nice videos or photos throughout the entire trip, so I brought along my huge tripod, but this is the first and
the last time that I've used it because it was just a little bit too cumbersome and we just wanted to focus in being in the moment and make the best out of our trip. After that, it got too cold for the shot so we just left. We still had some time to spare before our next activity and decided to explore around the area. Maybe it's because we live in Singapore and there's a lot of buildings around so when we see mountains and landscapes like this one, it was very breathtaking and made it a very m
emorable first morning in New Zealand for us. We waddled our way back to the car because it was too cold and because we still had some time to spare. We dropped by Kmart to see what type of containers are available in New Zealand as well as just do some random shopping around. I didn't really need this, but I really wanted it because it's very cute and it turned out to be a very useful purchase for the rest of the trip. I also bought some pretty but not very user-friendly hair ties for my family
and because we came out quite early, most of the shops are still closed and we had some time to spare, so we dropped by this cafe for a short breakfast to supplement our plain bread. Our free time finally ended and we went to our next place, which was on Onsen Hot Pools. There is also a complimentary shuttle bus service we can opt for when making our reservation, but we didn't need that since we drove. We parked somewhere nearby, but do take note that there's a series of steps to go through bef
ore reaching the actual place. After choosing our complimentary snacks and drinks, the staff show us where the changing rooms were and brought us to our reserved hot tub. Having a hot soak in this cold weather was very refreshing and it was overall very relaxing to soak in a hot tub while looking at scenery like this. Unfortunately, the relaxing moment didn't last long because I dropped my camera into the hot tub and while I still had cameras left because I was very kiasu and brought three camer
as or maybe four including my phone, I was still very affected because it was my very first vlog camera. While I was trying my best to recover from the incident, our skydiving trip got cancelled due to weather conditions so we went grocery shopping instead. We drove back to our BNB to cook lunch and we chilled there while thinking of what to do next. We are both not picky eaters but this pasta was really bad. Since my usual vlog camera couldn't be turned on, we decided to drop by Harvey Norman t
o get a spare micro SD card for my DJI. It costed about 120+ SGD which was very expensive and about 3x the price of what you can get from Shopee. So I highly recommend getting your spare cards here before setting off. Being a professional passenger princess, I have a lot of time to scroll when I was in a car so we decided to go for this at the very last minute. It was about 6:10 PM which is quite close to the closing time so we managed to have the whole cabin to ourselves. Although we get to spe
nd less time overall at the attraction because we started pretty late, we got to see this beautiful lighting because it was relatively closer to sunset time. Some parts of the attraction were under some construction and we had to walk quite a bit to get to the luge. We were very familiar with the entire setup because it's very similar to Sentosa but replace that with a beautiful scenery with blue skies at the back. It was still very bright and nice despite being about 7:00 p.m. at this point, an
d we went to take our luge rides. Thanks to our extensive training back in Sentosa, we passed the driving test with flying colors and enjoyed the rest of our ride. It had kind of same same but different kind of vibe. Luge rides are familiar but the outdoor aircon, the blue hues that surrounded us, it was a simple and healing experience for us. The backdrop peeking out of this tunnel is so pretty and my husband is the real MVP here for tailgating me skillfully and filming me while I was enjoying
my ride. After that, we went back to our Airbnb and had a simple dinner with maggi mee along with the other foods that we bought during our grocery trip earlier today. We woke up to some rain the next morning and it's time to leave our first BNB. We are going to drive from Queenstown to Te Anau and have some stops along the way. The weather had a huge impact on our mobility and we are not too sure whether we could go on those walking tracks that we initially planned for. The day started a little
bit gloomy and we hoped that the weather would clear up slowly. We passed by this place called Jack's Point and saw some nice houses so we decided to make a stop there while we had our breakfast in the car. We had some kombucha together away from the rain while looking at some mountains. I cut up some apples to help us stay awake during the long drive today. Our journey from Queenstown to Te Anau will be about 170+ KM, which would take about 2 or 2.5hours without any stops. Before we moved on t
o our scenic drive along State Highway 6, we took one last look around the estate and admired these beautiful landed properties. My husband is the main driver of the trip so I had a lot of free time like look out the window at sheep, and mountains and clouds and the sky. It was also quite easy to drive because it's mainly a straight road with the next turn being in like 100+ km so it was relatively straightforward. We passed by this walking track but couldn't get in and it was too long for us an
yway. Throughout your drive it's good to take note of stopping bays or road shoulders like this one so that you can pull over and park there while you take some photos or just take a rest. We stopped by a little bit further down the road and went out of the car to get some fresh air. After our short break, it was my turn to drive while my husband caught up on his sleep. The scenery along the way was entertaining enough to keep me awake and my mood brightened up slowly together with the weather t
hat cleared up at the same time. We made a stop at Garston for lunch and a toilet break. It's also useful to take note of signs like this to maintain an optimal bladder health during your long drives. We plotted a stop in Garston because we wanted to visit this honey shop we read about on the website and honey made for very nice gifts for our parents. I fell sick right before the trip and had high fever with lots of ulcers, so we also got this honey spray along with a few tubs of honey that we c
hose. It has been about two days into the trip and we have been missing Raito a lot. My cousin is taking care of him at my mum's place and it seems to be a one-sided love because he's having a lot of fun together with Lilo. We didn't make any specific plans for lunch and there was this burger truck around the corner, so we decided to eat here before we go. I think we ordered one venison and one beef burger and both tasted pretty good. It was a quiet and quaint little neighborhood and we enjoy ex
ploring so-called off the beaten track places like this while just chatting and taking it slow. After lunch my husband had a lot of energy to experiment with my camera and here I was driving for the second lap. Our car was actually quite messy throughout the whole trip because we had to check in and out almost every day and there were a lot of barang barang to move around. Plus we also aimed to cook our own food so we had to manage our groceries too. After don't know how long, I woke my husband
up to take some pictures at this rest point and after that we drove straight to Te Anau. This was a room in the backpackers hostel, so we didn't expect the room to be so spacious and clean. There was also an en-suite bathroom for this unit. The accoms had an (h)erb? or herb garden that we didn't use and the first thing we did was to label our groceries and place them into the fridge. We only had one scheduled activity planned for the day and the meeting place was a five-minute walk away from our
accommodation. We had to take a ferry to the gloworm caves and the ferry was very similar to the one we take from Harbourfront to Batam. We managed to get a window seat which I was very happy about, but I got bored after looking out for a while. We learned about the life cycle of a glow worm and went around the cave using the constructed steps. Photography and videography are not allowed inside the caves, but it was still a good experience exploring them. The tour guide will also point out any
clusters of glow worms that he or she spotted, so you'll definitely see some. The most memorable part of the tour was riding a small boat down a small stream inside the cave and there were so many glow worms when you look up, just like stars. A small downside was that we couldn't really hear the tour guide because the water gushing sounds were too loud, but I think it can't really be helped. We went grocery shopping again back in town and there was this cookie that was apparently quite famous in
New Zealand, but we didn't really like it because it was too sweet. It was also very nice and quiet here and we caught a double rainbow on our way back. We visited last November, which was about spring summer and it's a good time to visit because the days are so long. As usual I went overboard and spent too much time cooking. But at least my husband's craving of having fried eggs was satisfied. The stoves here didn't heat up as fast so moral of the story is to just cook something simple and don
't be so extra. The next morning we woke up even earlier at about 04:30 a.m. to catch the sunrise. And it was about 05:00 a.m. when we checked out. We rushed out of our Airbnb but only to see that the sun has already started to rise. I tried my best not to be too disappointed because I really wanted to see the sunrise and I'm not very sure how long we can do this for because our stamina was running low. We placed our key into the key return box because we did a super early checkout and grabbed o
ur food items from the fridge. Here's one last look at the communal kitchen that we cooked in last night and cooking here made me feel like I'm in a master chef competition. My husband tried to cheer me up by doing everything for me and after packing up some of our stuff in the car, we started our early morning drive to Milford Sound. Over here, we kind of made a mistake by not stopping by the petrol kiosk before driving off all the way to Milford Sound. We wanted to reach as early as possible f
or the sunrise or what's remaining of it so we decided to move on, but there are no petrol stations all the way up in the mountains. It was quite stressful for me to see the gas tank slowly depleting while we go up slow and I was just very scared that we will be stranded halfway in the mountains. At this point. my husband had to drive, take care of the petrol consumption by not accelerating or braking too much and also take care of my feelings. I tried my best to not be a nuisance and distracted
myself by trying this honey propolis spray that we bought yesterday on my group of ulcers. It was slowly getting brighter but we could still see some sun rays on the other side. We reached the spot, scrambled to get parking, ran down our car and got to see this magnificent view. Maybe because I'm biased and I really like sunrises. I think this is one of the best views that we have seen throughout our entire 14 day trip in New Zealand. The orange hues of the sunrise was just so pretty on the sno
wcapped mountains on the background together with all the greeneries that's around and also the outdoor aircon - everything was just wonderful. We spent some time chilling and breathing in the fresh air. It was 06:40 a.m. when we left and we had a lot of fun playing with our breaths. We parked here right beside the mirror lakes and it looks like a really spacious road shoulder. We wanted to answer our nature's calling but the call had to be made in a phone booth like this. This would be the form
at of the toilet near nature walks or in those conservation areas. I wasn't very used to it at first but it got okay after a while. The toilets were also surprisingly not smelly, presumably due to the cooler weather. This was a little bit further down from the mirror lakes and following the footpath we got to enjoy an unobstructed view. I don't like chocolate but I saw my husband eating it so I wanted some and I gave it back to him after I lost interest. I brought my favorite oat milk along and
we had a simple breakfast in the car. While planning our itinerary, we catered about 20% extra time for our driving. This is so that we can stop whenever we want to and when we pass by those scenic viewpoints. This way, I find that it's easier for us but mainly for me to enjoy the drive without feeling overly stressed about following my schedule. Another tip is to download the offline maps before setting off because there's not much reception in the mountainous areas so sometimes your GPS signal
will be lost. We also couldn't access Internet to check where was the nearest petrol station so I was getting more nervous. We had to wait at the traffic light before entering the tunnels and these Kea birds came to say hi. They were nibbling away at the rubber linings of the car and we were quite worried that they would damage them. It started to drizzle and get foggy so we hoped that the rain wouldn't get bigger so our cruise won't be canceled. I asked my husband to stop again, probably for t
he third or fourth time this morning and went down of the car to enjoy this beautiful view. Before going for our Milford Sound cruise we stopped by this cafe to get some hot chocolate. We were also very excited to meet a fellow Singaporean here who was on a working vacation and we had a short chat about her experiences in New Zealand so far. She was also a lifesaver for telling us that there's a petrol kiosk here. And so about three and a half hours after starting our drive we found what we have
been looking for. At this point, despite reaching Milford Sound early, we are actually gonna be late so we started running to the cruise center. Because there was no Internet or wifi, I couldn't access my booking and I couldn't remember which operator I booked with. Just as I started to panic, they managed to figure out which one we are going for based on the cruise timing that I booked and I'm very, very grateful for the kind ladies that helped us that day. For the entire trip, we used Klook t
o book our activities as much as we can because it's just easier to have everything in one place. For this cruise, we booked the Milford Sound Boutique Small Boat Cruise, which is not the popular one by Southern Discoveries. Not sure whether it's cos of the timing, but there were fewer people on this boat and we really enjoyed the small and cozy trip. The tour guide was pretty funny to me and we also had access to free flow coffee, tea and also some cookies. The guide was quite playful and drove
us all the way to the base of these two waterfalls and got really near to them. After the cruise ended, we went back to our place of comfort, which is the petrol kiosk. We didn't want to pump full tank because petrol was more expensive in this ulu place here, so we just set it as $60. We are not too sure what this message meant, but after checking our statement, we realized that they made two charges but refunded one of it so I guess it's some sort of a holding amount. We started to make our wa
y down and stopped by this bridge to take a look at the stream. It was about 12:00 p.m. at this point and there were more and more people coming in in tour buses and caravans. So we highly recommend you to come early if you are planning to visit Milford Sound. Looking at myself on video, I realized how annoying I can really be while filming something so hats off to Raito for always being so patient with my filming. And here this bird is judging us for being in a car. There were more and more car
s waiting at the traffic lights to access the tunnel and we didn't want to pay for an expensive lunch at the cafe, so we decided to cook our own food outdoors. It never really stopped drizzling, so it got very cold and the wind was very strong and our seasoning just flew away instead of landing into the pot. It might seem very romantic to do this, but at that time we really felt like losers 'cos husband was trying to protect the flame and I'm trying my best to cook as fast as we can and we are b
oth shivering outside. I think DJI camera has some sort of in-built beauty filter that I didn't turn off, but both of our faces were really red at this point and we were both super cold. but maggi mee never tasted so good. Looking back, this was probably also one of our fondest memories of our New Zealand trip. And next comes one of the most yolo moments of our trip, which is to attempt the Lake Marian hike. We initially sat in the car to wait for the rain to subside and it didn't so we wanted t
o give up on this walking track, but told ourselves that since we are here, might as well just walk the first part and go back after that. But we didn't just walk the first part. We walked the entire part........ I'm not sure why eating maggi mee gave me courage and strength to say yes to walking this track, but over here you can see that it's manageable. Then after that there were some rocks and we realized that we were going in the wrong way. Then after that it was like a 90 degree incline whe
re we had to get down to all fours to climb over the wall. After about one and a half or 2 hours of torture, we finally arrived at a lake. We had about 15 minutes to stay here before we had to go off because the sun was going to set soon. We also left our food, water and camera in the car because we didn't plan to conquer this track so we were feeling really hungry by this point After repeating the same torture during the return trip of the Lake Marian track, it was about 08:00 p.m. and this is
where we realized that we might have screwed up........ The next Airbnb I booked was in Cromwell, which is about 300 km away and takes about 4 hours by car if we don't stop. We still stopped anyway to get petrol from a small town called Mossburn because we read that it had the cheapest petrol in New Zealand. The rain got heavier, the weather got colder, and I got sicker as an unfit person who just completed a hike in the rain for 3 to 4 hours. My husband saved my ass again by running around and
pumping the petrol for us while I just sat in the car away from the cold. You can't really tell from the DJI footage here, but from the iPhone video that specializes in low light photography /s, you can see that it's pitch black dark. We would be surrounded by darkness all over if we turned off our high beam and we saw the most beautiful star-studded night sky that night. We finally found some civilization at 11:00 p.m. and we were back in Queenstown. The only thing that was open at that time wa
s macs, so we had no choice but to eat that. Despite what it says on the packaging, it didn't taste nice. I didn't feel feverish anymore after taking a nap in the car while my husband drove us to the BNB 🥹💕 It was about 01:00 a.m. when we checked in and thankfully they had a self check-in so that we didn't have to bother anyone. We were quite surprised at this BNB because apart from this main room that we were staying in as well as the en-suite bathroom, there was also an entertainment room or
games room that was for our exclusive use. It seemed to be newly renovated and was very clean. The only gripe is that the shower cubicle drain was a bit blocked so my husband couldn't shower properly. after a long and tiring day. We couldn't get any help because it was already 1 plus a.m., but the BNB owner responded really quickly to us the next day. That's all for the first three and a half days of our trip where we explored Queenstown, Garston, Te Anau and Milford Sound. Hope you enjoyed thi
s vlog and if you'd like to see more, please stay tuned for part two 😘 As always, thank you for watching and bye 👋🏻
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