Mark's Travels

10 years of travel blogging from 35+ countries around the world

Lots of time off, looking for cheap holidays in the south pacific 8th June 2003 in Hannover, Germany


I can"t remember when I worked a whole week, I"ve had holidays and there have been 3 and 4 day weekends for a while now. Next week I get Monday off and Friday is the big company meeting. We"re going rafting, cycling and will being staying in a 4 seasons hotel overnight. Should be lots of fun.

I"m trying to find a cheap holiday package from Sydney to Fiji for 5 days in October. Hayley told me that there were packages for about 1000 Euro and I wasn"t sure if I wanted to see an entire month of spending cash go up in smoke in 5 days. Then today I talked with Scott, an Aussie guy in Bremen, he told me that I should just book something in Australia and it shouldn"t be more than 300 Euro to get there. That sounded pretty plausible, I remember getting a ticket between Sydney and Brisbane in Calgary for $190AUD and then getting to Sydney and seeing loads of Advertisements for Virgin Blue with flights from Sydney to Brisbane for $60. The cheapest between Sydney and Fiji I found was a package deal for about $1300AUD for 5 nights. I"m not sure if I"m willing to pay that regardless of how exotic it might be. But I can just imagine a pure tropical paradise and complete luxury and knowing that not many others will ever get to see the closest thing to heaven on earth, being a million miles from everything with beautiful surroundings..... hmmm.... :-)

Is being on one of the most beautiful islands in the world, in pure comfort, with a beautiful beach, gorgeous weather, amazing sunsets, crystal clear water with beautiful tropical sea creatures, delicious food, 1000"s of KM away from the world and perhaps have a friend or two if Hails can afford and has the time to come along, worth 121 hours of programming at work? Thats about 5 days of programming for 24 hours. The weekend is 48 hours long. If I started coding on Monday at 1am and went straight until Sunday at 4pm in the afternoon I would of earned my regular salary and got the extra money for this trip. I also would of broken a few German labor laws in the progress but those things are too nit-picky anyways ;-).

I wonder if theres a tropical Fijian Island thats a ghetto as well, perhaps I could save some money that way. At any rate, this is once in a lifetime opportunity so maybe I should start eating once a day and save my cash. Or perhaps sell a few more copies of Resource Booker {-- BUY THIS!!! (It"s under Services:Software)

Melbourne Cup sounds like a go, apparently it"s only about $60AUD to get in and loads of women dress up really nice for the event. $60AUD is what I usually spent in one night at the pub so that sounds like a really good deal. I hope the Australian Dollar starts falling against the Euro soon. I remember the CAD$ rising about 20% against the NZ$ when I was in Auckland.

I wish I could find it again. There was a bus tour that was pretty popular last time I was in OZ. It was in a bunch of the backpacker rags and there were people talking about it quite a bit in the lonely planet forums. I even found a web site with pictures of it. Basically loads of young people get driven around Australia to loads of different towns and bars for a really cheap price. I guess I"ll have to keep looking.

Btw, my 21st birthday is in about 3 1/2 weeks. I can"t believe I"ll be that old. I have no idea what I"m going to do, my social life is a bit crap here in Germany and my birthday falls on a working day. Oh well, I"ll think of something.


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