A month ago I went travelling with my friend to Bay of Plenty Region. It's located in the south part of Auckland. It takes around 4-5 hours by car. It was my second time to visit the region. I went there for the first time last year, during summer holiday. Unfortunately, my HD external broken and all the pictures are there. I couldn't post anything from that trip. Anyway, during this time, we went to Tauranga and Mount Manganui. Tauranga is the name of the suburban town in the region, and Mount Manganui is also the name of the suburban town. The name comes from the name of the mountain that located in that town. 

Good Morning from Tauranga

There is a super delicious fish and chips restaurant in Tauranga, very close to the beach. Yet, when we got there, it's still closed. So we couldn't have tried. The good thing is, it can be a reason to go back to Tauranga again in the future :p 

That mountain is Mount Manganui

Actually, the mount Manganui is a small mountain if compare to other mountain in the world, such as Krakatau Mountain in Indonesia. From the picture above, we can see that the mountain it's small. There are some options to hike up the mountain, by bike or by walking. Even, there are different paths that we can choose to hike up, the short or the long path. The short path needs around 30 minutes. The path is really easy to walk in, everyone can use it even for beginner. When I went there last year, during summer, a lot of people were jogging around using the short path and some of them bring their kids as well. It means, it's safe for everyone. However, most of the people got mistaken that Mount Manganui is part of Tauranga, because the location. Indeed, it is very close between Tauranga and Mount Manganui, but it is totally different area. 

My breakfast, pancake and cup of tea

Since the restaurant that we want to go was still closed, me and my friends decided to have a breakfast in Mt. Manganui. There are a lot of small cafes in the seashore, and our choice fell on Dixie cafe. Most of the cafes only provide a beacon for the breakfast menu. Dixie provides other options, a pancake with an ice cream on top. I am not eating a beacon, so I choose pancake over that. It was really yummy and the tea was really good enough to warm up during winter. 

It's a good start for our trip and I will post our next destination soon.  

Since there's no transportation that I could use to wander around, I only spent wandering around in the town center. Walking from one park to another, enjoying the air, the hush, and the beautiful weather. I am definitely going back again to this town later, because I want to go to the Hobbiton. 

Hi everyone, it's been a loooonng time since I posted in this blog. Well, so much things happened in the past months, I moved to the new apartment (which is closer to uni and located in the city center - literally), preparing for the research proposal (can't believe one year already passed and one year more to go to finish my degree), applying for a new student visa, and I got a part time job in a new place (it's waroeng legianz and their website is here). 

Thankfully, my research proposal got approved (super duper thanks go to my favorite program leader, Hammish and my supervisor, Charles), and my student visa is extended. Oh, my new workplace is an Indonesian restaurant, which open from Monday to Saturday during winter season. Most of the customers are new Zealanders who work close to the restaurant.

The restaurant is located in victoria park market, right in front of the victoria park. The most popular meals among customers are Mie Goreng (fried noodle) and Nasi Goreng (fried rice). They have five types of it, with chicken, with beef, with lamb, with seafood, or only vegetable. Even, if the customer wants it pure vegetarian, no fish oil and no egg, they can make it special for them. The restaurant wants to give their best for the customer, they try to understand what the customer wants. For Muslim, don't worry all the ingredients are halal, because they only use halal meat. 

Well, that's all so far from me, cheers!