Central Auckland, part 3

Sorry for the ultra long delay. I only got broadband speeds back on tuesday, but this was assessment week, so i was snowballed with a ton of work. I felt sick and I think I got a bit of food poisoning on Thursday, and now I'm a bit sick! But rejoyce! For the weekend is here!

Anyway, pics:


This, my friends, is the sky tower. From the base, this is how it looks like. At 328m above ground, its VERY tall! It looks quite nice from far, but at the base, all you can see is just concrete, more cold concrete and steel.


I was lucky enough to see someone jump off the skytower. Dont worrk, its a common thing. At a rate of, maybe 10 people jumping off the tower everyday. :P

Seriously through, its real. People are mad enough to pay to jump from the top of the tower and live to tell the experience. Its controled through, so the string by the sides makes sure you fall at a straight line. With the pecutan at 9.8ms/s, it takes just under 12 seconds to fall from the top to the bottom. I know, coz I timed it. :)


A self potrait of me before entering the base of the sky tower. I must admit it came out quite good, randomly hitting the shutter like that.



Its not cheap folks, to enter. There are a few prices, all depending on how high are you prepared to go. Even with a student card, which I did not have at that time, its a whopping $15 (RM 39) just to get to main obversation deck. Needless to say, I passed on. My wallet was crying just looking at the prices.


So I chose the next best thing: taking a pic with the tower! Well, a replica of it at least. This was taken with the help of a middle aged Korean tourist, which had a bit of trouble using a digital camera. Still, I it came out fine.

What is missing from these pictures is the casino! They stopped me from taking a picture of even outside the casino, which is public to all. I could walk around, but obvously not enter (minimum 20 years old earning 7 digit salarys first). Dunno why the dont allow me to takes pic of even outside of the casino; do I look like someone who's taking pics to plan my big casino robbery?

But really, there is nothing much in the skycity. Its just a posh, high class restaurant, the casino, a 5 star hotel and the Tower itself. If you dont have money, you can only look around. I was finished with it in 15 mins!

Part 4 coming up! Oh, and there is a part 5 in the works. There is too many things to see in central Auckland.

The thing is through, my mainland chinese friends find Auckland boring! Well, coming from a 17 mil population city (shanghai) and 15 mil population city (beijing) makes Auckland (1.5 mil) like a kampung. But for a guy from the cat city( 0.5 mil), Auckland is like a first class KL, with amazing, free, clean public toilets, VERY realible bus service, Auckland is like a dream come true.

Another thing: NEVER TRUST MAINLAND CHINESE!