Day 67, in which we decide we love Cambodia

After yet another session of fattening ourselves up at the Lebua's breakfast buffet, we gathered up our luggage and ran our final gauntlet past the hotel's beaming serving staff and out into a taxi for the airport.

Bangkok airport is one of the largest I have ever been in, and after checking in we walked for 15 or 20 minutes through the shopping mall looking for our gate. After our short flight over the border to Cambodia, we discovered a significant contrast at Siem Reap airport, where sheer walls of glass, concrete floors and thick steel frames were utterly eschewed in favour of the more traditional Khmer architecture, with a single-storey wooden framed building topped with a chirpy red tile roof and surrounded by flowers and ferns. It is absolutely the nicest airport I've ever seen.

Sadly, the entry process was less refreshing, and Cambodia proved again the rule that the poorer the country the more complex the bureaucracy. Cambodia is clearly very poor: we were handed four separate forms to fill out before arrival, and at the airport there were two men to process the application, a man to take payment, a row of five or six officials in military uniforms to process our visas, two men to hand back our passports at the other end, a man at passport control to ink five separate stamps on the visa, and three bored looking officials to wave us through customs. This was actually a great way to spend the time waiting for the luggage to be unloaded, and our bags were waiting for us as we left.

We soon found ourselves heading into Siem Reap city in an air conditioned taxi, passing seemingly endless rice fields and lush green palm tree plantations. We got chatting with our driver Panha, a chirpy young man with superb English, and decided we were unlikely to find a better prospect and hired him at a very reasonable rate to be our guide around the area for the next few days.

Siem Reap is far more impoverished than Bangkok, but I found myself liking it immediately. So far the people have all been extremely friendly and yet completely honest and pleasingly reserved, which makes them much more easy to like than the average Thai. We are staying in the Kazna Hotel in the centre of the city (well, village really), one road over from the high street, yet the moment we stepped out of our hotel we found ourselves effectively on a partially-paved dirt track lined with a combination of modern hotels and lean-to sheds verging on the shanty town. The streets are occupied concurrently by sleek SUVs, goats, stray dogs and – we saw recently – children urinating. However, oddly, it's all the more charming for it. Walking to dinner, I really felt affection for the place.

For dinner we walked to Cafe Indochine on the high street, which specialises in traditional Khmer cuisine. We ordered a range of dishes including caramelised pork, a sort of coconut chicken curry called Amok and a traditional Cambodian-spiced fish dish, all of which was very delicious washed down with a super bottle of South African sauv-blanc. The meal was extremely well priced, once you discounted the absurd cost of the wine.

Day 66, in which we are beleaguered by confidence tricksters

After stuffing ourselves silly at the breakfast buffet to ensure we wouldn't need to eat again until the evening, we finally waddled out of the hotel and into the streets of Bangkok proper. The difference was striking, not least as we accidentally went out through the back. Suddenly gone was the army of smiling Thai attendants in their smart white jackets who were paid to open doors, press lift buttons, carry bags and issue warnings as you approached steps, and in their place were people crouched in the street eking out a living peeling potatoes, frying chicken or just sprawled on the pavement asleep. In the street directly behind our hotel each lamppost had a bird cage swinging on it, and the sky was virtually invisible behind a thick matting of overhead cables and wires. The tumbledown buildings were all no more than two or three storeys high, and it was rather sobering to realise these people were literally living their lives in the shadow of our hotel.

As we walked through the streets towards the river, legions of tuk-tuk drivers fought over themselves to attract our business, and they didn't seem to like taking no for an answer. Even when we could see our destination – the ferry pier outside the Oriental Hotel – tuk-tuk and taxi drivers were eager to drive us there. We waved them away and struggled through the thirty feet trek on our own.

The Express riverboats ploughing along the Chao Phraya river are the quickest and cheapest way of getting around the city, costing just 25p each for the long journey up the river to the main attractions. Getting onto the right boat was more of a challenge however as we were beleaguered by tricksters trying to persuade us to spend £10 on tourist boat cruises. Even as we walked down the pier we met official-looking locals who advised us there wouldn't be another Express riverboat for an hour and we were better off going with them. We had been prewarned however and waved them all away, and of course the riverboats turned out to be very frequent, offering a somewhat scary Hop-On-Hop-Off Express service where the boat barely stopped at each pier for you to leap on before it powered off again up the river.

Our first destination was the Grand Palace, and we had been warned by almost everyone who had even heard of Thailand that this was where we would come across the greatest concentration of conmen, whose apparent aim was to persuade you that the Grand Palace is shut and that you should take a tuk-tuk to their brother's gemstone shop instead. We got past the first wave of attack quite successfully, only to almost fall to a very convincing young man who actually operated from the main gates of the Grand Palace itself – in full view of the guards – and carried a fairly convincing identity card. This man informed us that the palace was closed while the monks had their lunch (we later discovered there are no monks in the Grand Palace), and we were better off visiting some temple in the obscure northern suburbs for a couple of hours and coming back later, and by the way here is a tuk-tuk we could use to get there, only thirty baht.

Well thankfully we'd been to Japan and had absolutely no interest in seeing any more temples than we absolutely had to (if anything, I felt that missing the Grand Palace might even be a blessing), and the moment he summoned a tuk-tuk he stepped over the fine line between convincing facsimile of an official to blatant confidence trickster, so we effectively told him to F the F Off and made our way into the Grand Palace despite his protestations. While I can appreciate Thailand is a very poor country and these people are only trying to eke out a living to support their families, I have been to much poorer countries in the past where locals support their families by offering goods and services the tourists actually want. Conning tourists shows a remarkable lack of self-respect and a sad lack of national pride or interest in protecting the country's reputation. Most depressing of all is that it appears to be state sponsored, to the extent that the guards of the Grand Palace were happy for the confidence tricksters to operate on and around their grounds, when it would be a small task to clear them away.

It would appear to be cheap to employ people in Thailand, as employers will rarely hire one person for a job when the task can be divided down into four separate tasks for four different people. We hadn't realised one could not wear shorts in the Grand Palace and so had to queue to borrow some more discreet trousers. This required three men to tell us to get the trousers, a long queue to see a man to pay a deposit for the trousers, a queue to see two women who handed out the trousers, a queue to later return the trousers and a queue to then claim back your deposit at the end.

It felt like a complete epic task just to get this far – and with the baking sun, humid atmosphere and polluted air I at times felt ready to just take the next taxi back to our hotel – but the moment we stepped into the Grand Palace we were pleased to find it was all worth it. I didn't bother reading the guidebook to find out what the palace is, but effectively we found a large complex of incredibly detailed temples and other structures which appeared to have expanded over time on the site, from those built in simple carved stone, to those decorated intricately with coloured glass and ceramics, to a single amazing gold-tiled prong which stood high above all else and glowed fabulously in the sunlight. All of the gaps between these structures were then filled with statues of lions, roosters, elephants, dragons, dancing ladies, roaring giants and the type of ugly demon we saw lots of in Japan.

The main draw of the Grand Palace complex was supposed to be the Emerald Buddha, who lives in a huge temple at one end of the complex. We dutifully took off our shoes and trekked in to have a look and were confronted by a huge pile of gaudy antiques with an absolutely miniature green statue balanced right at the top. There were almost as many 'No Photo' signs as there were religious artefacts, and during this holiday I've learned that the bigger tourist attractions are usually the ones less worth seeing so we nipped out and enjoyed the superb lion statues instead.

Next on our itinerary was the Reclining Buddha at Wat Po, and this time as conmen tried to distract us we simply smiled and waved at them as we strolled by, and so we arrived at the temple almost without incident. One particularly vocal man stood directly outside the temple and declared as we turned up “Hello! I am your guide for Wat Po!”. I don't think so, old man. “It's a hundred foot golden Buddha”, we explained. “We can probably find it ourselves.”

The Reclining Buddha is a 151 feet long statue coated in gold which – presumably due to the difficulty of building a 152 foot tall temple – is presented lying down on its side and gazing down serenely at the masses of people who stumble through the temple to peer at him. The huge pillars holding up the roof have been placed between the public area and the buddha itself, so as you stroll along the corridor you can only see him in small cross sections: his face, his shoulders, his tummy button, his crotch, etc. It is also possible to stand at either end and see his full length, however thanks to perspective he then either looks like he has a giant head or ridiculously long legs.

We raced back through the streets to catch a traghetti across the river to Wat Arun, a somewhat home-made temple decorated with pieces of broken shell and porcelain which apparently came to the city as ballast in the boats from China, but which is quite beautiful for it and the recycled materials are quite brilliantly used. The temple is a very steep pyramid (or mastaba, as archaeologists more accurately call it to anyone we think won't snigger) with three viewing terraces at various levels, each reached by a stone staircase which is steeper than the last. This was my favourite of the temples we visited today, probably because it's the only one you can clamber over and explore and it's also a lot less gaudy than the others and you get a super view up at the top.

All this time the sun had been baking down and the air thick and humid, and standing there on the top of Wat Arun we were seized with an urgent desire to get back into our air conditioned hotel and drink water we knew was safe to drink. We shoved our way down the three flights of steps, pushing the dawdling tourists out of the way, and stormed to catch the ferry home.

In the evening we took a dinner cruise in an old rice barge along the Chao Phraya, which possibly lost the element of surprise on account of us already having spent the day travelling along the river and seeing the same temples, but which nonetheless was a very pleasant way to see the city all lit up at night. Somewhat less pleasant was the mass-produced Thai food we received, which had either gone cold or only been half-warmed through in the first place, and comprised some very dubious pieces of meat. On the return leg we were also treated to some traditional Thai dancing, which was all very sedate at first – a lady bending her fingers back and hopping from foot to foot – and then a man dressed as a white lion entered the room and the performance suddenly became a coordinated bitch fight.

We considered going to the roof bar for one last nightcap, but we have an early start in the morning and so to bed.

Day 65, in which we take a massage to avoid the military coup

We woke up this morning in Bangkok (or, as the locals officially – and somewhat surprisingly – call it, Krung Thep Mahanakhon Amon Rattanakosin Mahinthara Yuthaya Mahadilok Phop Noppharat Ratchathani Burirom Udomratchaniwet Mahasathan Amon Phiman Awatan Sathit Sakkathattiya Witsanukam Prasit) and wandered 47 floors down to Café Mozu for our complimentary buffet breakfast.

When I think of a 'buffet breakfast' I think of sad scrambled eggs drying out under heat lamps, ranks of leathery toast and vats of congealing baked beans. Thankfully the Lebua Hotel does things in a bit more style, with four separate zones offering everything you could want first thing in the morning and plenty more you might not: steamed chicken & pork dumplings; fresh nigiri-sushi and maki rolls; poached eggs benedict; a mountain of smoked salmon and snapper; potato curry with soft rolls; salmon teriyaki and noodles; two long trestle tables of breads, pastries, muffins, waffles and pancakes; a wide range of cereals, juices and fresh fruits (some of which we didn't recognise and had to name ourselves, with one particularly faecal-smelling fruit now known lovingly as 'poofruit'); and a vat of baked beans. We sampled a little bit of everything and rolled out of the restaurant an hour later ready for a snooze.

We'd long been planning to spend today just relaxing in our hotel and this has proved a convenient decision as the Foreign Office emailed us a couple of days ago to warn that “The political situation in Thailand is tense and uncertain”, adding that it is probable mass-protests will erupt in Bangkok today – and could possibly turn violent – following a court ruling regarding the former Prime Minister's involvement in a highly controversial corruption scandal. Reading up on the case, we discovered that political commentators seem to think the ruling might even serve as a flashpoint for a military coup. What better way to stay out of trouble, we thought, than booking in for a 90 minute Thai massage on the fifteenth floor?

My mum had warned me that Thai massage is not like western massage, with the focus less on relaxing the muscles and more on pummelling the life out of them, I suppose with the aim of making you grateful when you finally get out alive. I somehow forgot this advice and signed up anway. I was led excitedly into a dimly lit room where I was told to dress in loose pyjamas and lie on the bed. The masseur asked whether I would like Light, Medium or Hard massage. Figuring there was no point paying $30 for Light when I could maximise my gain with Hard for the same price, I opted for the severest form of massage and I think this was possibly a poor decision.

The masseur was a tiny lady, but still she was not frightened to climb on top of me and dig her hard, bony fingers into my thigh muscles, rummaging around in there like she'd lost her car keys, clambering further up my body and wrapping her legs around mine in order to exert an impossible level of strength, stretching muscles I didn't know I had and popping each joint in turn. For a while she followed the Pleasure-Pain Method, with bouts of tearing muscle and snapping bones sandwiched between brief moments of quite pleasant massage. Things went really awry when she moved onto the spine, however, and the concept of pleasure went out of the window entirely, replaced with the sharp, bony point of her elbow being driven deep through my spine and out the other side. All of this exercise was conducted through the pyjamas with my body covered in a giant towel, the masseur only unveiling each limb as she came to work on them in turn, like a giant version of a child's memory game.

I suppose I felt more mobile and energised afterwards, although I also felt a dark and throbbing pain in my upper spine. It was in this mood that we took lunch at the Mozu Café again, where a vast Asian-themed buffet was presented for our almost exclusive pleasure. The range this time was stunning, but after breakfast we learned to push past the cheap, high-carb filler presented at the front of the buffet and push through to the richer and more expensive proteins at the back. This was a terrific strategy as we stocked up on huge amounts of sushi, smoked salmon, green-lipped muscles, octopus and king prawns.

The Mozu Café sits on the shore of the swimming pool, brilliantly positioned in the shadow of the 54 storeys stretched above it so you never get caught in the impossibly hot sun, and superbly placed ten floors above ground level so that – even though you're in a hot and dirty city – while dining you can only see two or three other buildings on the skyline and you think you might almost be somwhere nicer. After lunch we had a go in the gym and then a swim in the pool, and then already it was time for dinner.

We'd hoped to have dinner at the roof-stop Sirocco restaurant, but the maitre d' intercepted us and dragged us to the rather bland Distil bar on the other side of the building instead. Although Distil is also an open-air bar on the 65th floor and also has stunning views across the city, we were not content and had a quick beer while waiting until the maitre d' was distracted and then snuck out of Distil and round the reception into Sirocco's far more stunning Sky Bar. Although the bar is only five or six metres in diameter, it is suspended on a platform above the city with fabulous 360 degree views. We took some photos, but then vertigo got the better of me and we decided to continue our refreshments back in our room (where sadly we only have fabulous 180 degree views of the city).

Back in our room we discovered that the room service is disgusting and Terminator Salvation is even worse. The script was awful and Christian Bale delivered all of his lines in a gruff voice which left one wondering why his character's goal in the film was to bring down Skynet rather than, say, hunting for a stash of strepsils which had survived the robot holocaust.


Update: Thankfully there was not a military coup. The court came up with a compromise ruling that – although it pleases neither camp – thankfully hasn't enraged anyone enough to lead them to riot either. Phew!

Day 64, in which we ditch Auckland for the Big City

Today I got back seven of the hours which were stolen from my birthday in the time difference by travelling to Japan, but sadly I still just spent them sitting on an aeroplane. We boarded a plane in Auckland at 3pm and didn't stop travelling until we arrived at the five-star Hotel Lebua in Bangkok fourteen hours later (well, apart from a pit-stop in Sydney where we had a glass of water).

I'd expected Thailand to be a relatively poor country, but standing on the balcony leading out from our suite on the 57th floor of the State Tower it's hard to make out any poverty at all.

Day 63, in which we take a whistlestop tour of Waiheke

After a fortifying coffee and muffin from Starbucks we wandered down the street to Auckland harbour and caught a ferry east to Waiheke, a sleepy island popular for its beaches, vineyards and cute fishing villages. Paul tells me it is also beginning to become popular as a commuter town, and I can certainly see the appeal of waking up in a beach house and sailing across the sea to the office (well, the beach house and sailing bit sounds good, anyway).

Waiheke is also famous for its large community of artists, although in New Zealand there is a fine line between art and hobby craft and all of it is priced to make the artist rich overnight. We therefore politely looked around a local gallery, smiled at two or three things we could never afford and scowled at much more, then headed to a lovely seafood restaurant overlooking Oneroa bay for fabulously fresh fish and chips.

The weather was baking hot, Paul was still recovering from whatever bug drove him to his bed a few days ago and I'd started coming down with something similar so after a walk along the beach and a lengthy debate about whether or not our constitutions could stand a swim, we took a ferry home to the hotel and spent the rest of the day relaxing and preparing for our next destination. In scintillating news, this included doing the laundry, packing and repacking our bulging luggage and ordering some pretty grim room service.

Day 62, in which I dine on a bowl of smoke and forego the lychee air

We drove the last leg of our Aotearoan road trip today, back down the Coromandel Peninsula and up to the largest city in New Zealand, Auckland. It was very strange to find ourselves among motorways and traffic jams again after four weeks spent driving along the quiet roads which cover the rest of New Zealand. The guide book reports that Auckland is twice the size of London with just 6% of the population, and we found that this puzzle resolves itself in the form of a huge amount of suburban sprawl.

The city centre itself comprises some fairly low-rise buildings choked by an orbital motorway, with just one small cluster of high-rise buildings serving to create the iconic skyline which is broadcast each week – repeatedly and from different angles – on The Apprentice New Zealand. Our hotel, the Mercure Windsor, is right in the middle of town (next door to Deloitte, conveniently enough) and after checking in we wandered around the town to buy some long sleeved shirts and sufficient insect repellent to permanently clear Cambodia of malarial mosquitoes. We found that most of the historic buildings still survive, now housing trendy shops and cafés, and the result is big city streets with a friendly small town feel.

For lunch we went to a food market described by the Rough Guide as 'salubrious', but after our meal arrived we both wondered whether we'd misunderstood the definition of 'salubrious' – confusing it with 'salacious', perhaps – as the atmosphere and food were both dreadful, with light relief provided only by the indoor sparrows (in New Zealand, sparrows play the role which Europeans reserve for rats and pigeons). The ginger chicken and summer rolls made up what was without doubt the worst Vietnamese meal we've ever eaten, and I doubt the honesty of the waitress who recommended it by claiming she eats it every day (if this is true, I am surprised she is not dead – by suicide if not food poisoning).

After a nap we went to the Tepid Baths down by the harbour for a spot of exercise. This pleasingly old-fashioned swimming pool was built in Edwardian times and reminded me of the Goose Green baths I used to visit in Dulwich, although we were less pleased that the majority of the lanes were taken up by a women's polo team, with the paying public left only to choose between the 'Aqua jogging' and 'Slow' lanes.

We wanted an extra-special blow-out meal for our last big dinner in New Zealand, and so ended up at Simon Gault's restaurant Euro on the Princes Quay, which in London terms is like dining at Claridges (or for New Yorkers, equivalent to three Russian Tea Rooms). We were very excited since for the past three weeks we've been following Mr Gault's superb new television programme Masterchef New Zealand. However, while the food was delicious the restaurant concept struck us as a rather muddled experience. A good example is my starter of tuna tartare, which was served with a plume of wood smoke. Heston Blumenthal might have served the smoke under a silver cloche to be whipped away as served, or at El Bulli they would perhaps have served it in a hollow ostrich egg, to be cracked open by the eager diner. Mr Gault, alas, just poured the smoke into a bowl and then stretched cling film over the top, balancing the tuna tartare on top of the cling. It was all rather cheap and, as the waiter didn't explain the dish, I didn't even realise at first that there was smoke inside the bowl and so went to great lengths to eat the tuna without piercing the plastic, figuring it would be unpleasant for my meal to tumble through torn plastic into the bowl below (which Mr Gault should appreciate, especially as next week's episode of Masterchef apparently includes a contestant berated for getting shreds of cling film in their food). When the smoke did finally come out at the end I felt as deflated as the cling film.

The relaxed atmosphere was also inconsistent with the fairly formal service – more fine French dining than relaxed Italian socialising – and this formality all clashed with the upmarket pizza chain décor and 80s-cum-Spanish-cum-Grace Jones soundtrack. We also struggled to understand why the menu emphasised local produce and sustainability, only to be told overly-laboured stories about ciabatta bread flown in each day from an artisan baker on the South Island (I suppose we should be grateful Simon stumbled across this apparently unbeatable baker, otherwise he might have had it all airlifted in from Umbria). The 'good food served well' concept was also lost in the complexity of the dessert menu of which we only understood about 30% (“Spoons of 2012” was especially esoteric, comprising “mascarpone ice cream w feijoa jelly, organic yoghurt & gorgonzola honey egg, berry fizz & honey sphere w lychee air”).

However, we can't dis the poor man too much as – despite his fame and fortune – he was still there at the rock face running the kitchen, and even had the good grace to send us a complimentary portion of garlic fries when he saw us waiting at the bar for our table. I might even go so far as to recommend Euro to friends visiting Auckland, even if Simon did betray me on Masterchef this week by eliminating handsome Andrew Spear merely for making a duff meringue.

Day 61, in which we elect not to sit in a tepid puddle

In need of breakfast, we decided to give the Luna Café a second chance and they sank to the challenge by serving the worst poached eggs on toast I've ever eaten. Still, fuelled for the day ahead we hired snorkelling gear from the second most relaxed man in the world (who seemed largely uninterested in deposits, identity or contact details, simply repeating the Kiwi phrase 'sweet as' whenever the world struck him again as a particularly wonderful place) and walked around the coastline from Hahei beach to the small haven of Gemstone Bay.

It turns out Hahei beach is part of the Cathedral Cove marine reserve, of which Gemstone Bay has been turned over entirely to snorkelling and diving, with buoys outlining the key underwater landscapes. We slipped on our masks and flippers and pootled out into the bay. It was initially rather disappointing – comprising a range of seaweeds in slightly different shades of green – and we made the mistake of exploring a cave in the rocky edge of the bay where the tide played with the idea of smashing us against the rocks. However, after a while we stumbled across a school of large fat stripy fish who didn't seem to mind a spot of company, and they led us across the bay to a larger school of thin shiny fish, deeper down, who also didn't seem to mind humans at all.

Less common was a stripy orange fish (which only Paul saw) and some ridiculous fish with very long noses, as well as an assortment of snails and spiky sea urchins which made me wonder whether I'd ever be able to enter water barefoot again.

We climbed out of the waters with the intention of walking further round the coast to Stingray Bay, but sadly some miscreant (I used a different word at the time) had stolen our sunblock and – in a country in which you burn after six minutes – we were unable to press on without it. We retreated to the village to buy more sunblock, and it was a short step from that to a quick nap out of the sun.

Before handing back our snorkels, we decided to try wearing masks and flippers on Hahei beach. We found that the seabed is peppered with tiny shellfish who live on the sand, poking their heads out of their shells to grab a drink of water. The flippers were a terrific accelerant for riding on waves, and I've started to wonder whether there might not be something to the idea of surfing after all.

Next on our itinerary was Hot Water Beach, which sounds superb on paper but turned out to be a bit of a bun fight. Two kilometres under the beach is a vast chamber of magma super-heated to 175 degrees and directly above this is an underground lake which heats up and flows up to the surface, where its reward is to be trapped in a shallow puddle dug by a rabble of tourists, who then take great pride in sitting in their individual inch of tepid water until it cools down again. We had expected to take part, but as we pulled up and saw how many others had the same idea we just left our yellow spade in the boot and decided to treat the wallowing tourists as the spectacle. This was a much more rewarding experience.

Despite breakfast, we had dinner at the Luna Café since on Mondays The Grange is shut. We were served by a somewhat hysterical waitress who demanded that – as we had not reserved – we should order food as quickly as possible. She explained that the restaurant was about to be deluged by responsible customers who had taken the trouble to reserve and who would of course be given priority over us. We ordered two green curries as quickly as we could, but no one else seemed to bother coming in and the kitchen still moved at almost a glacial pace.

Day 60, in which Paul takes to his bed

Paul woke up feeling dreadful this morning and was largely unable to get out of bed, so we kept the curtains shut and spent the day snoozing and watching Jessica Alba in The Eye and Steve Carrell in Get Smart. Although these were both good choices, the twenty minutes we were able to stomach of Anne Hathaway's Bridewars proved significantly less rewarding.

For lunch I wandered down into the village and discovered that the food market in Hahei is pretty much sewn up between The Grange (where we ate last night) and a grim little place called the Luna Café. Since I only wanted a sandwich I tried the café, but when I asked the lady behind the counter if they did sandwiches to take away she pulled a face which implied she would have been happier working in a morgue where the customers don't ask questions. Alas, Adam Smith would have had a fit as the usual rules of competition have broken down and the Luna Café still thrives, simply because there are only so many times in a row you can eat at The Grange before you become weary of their menu. I certainly still bought us a couple of sandwiches there, once I overcame the waitress's absolute abhorrence of human contact.

By early evening Paul was feeling more mobile so we climbed into our swim shorts and wandered down to Hahei beach. I am running out of superlatives for beaches to use in the blog, so please just apply all those I used yesterday for Ocean Beach. The beach is soft and sandy – I mean really soft, your feet sink into it like snow – and the sea warm and welcoming. There are however very few big waves here, thanks to a row of tiny forested islands lurking far out on the horizon, so opportunities for wave diving were limited.

A dip in the ocean proved to be just the tonic and Paul was soon feeling his old self again, so really it's lucky we came to New Zealand instead of staying in London as god knows what a dip in the Thames would have done. Facing severely limited dining options we returned to The Grange and this time ordered from the pizza menu, sitting outside to create the illusion of being somewhere completely new.

Day 59, in which we are hit by a ten foot wave

Our goal today was to drive north-west from Ohope onto the Coromandel Peninsula, a huge jutty-out-bit of North Island which is jam-packed with spectacular beaches. Our particular destination was the spectacular beach of Hahei, but on route we also popped in on the spectacular Ocean Beach, just outside the gold mining city of Mount Maunganui. The guidebook says Ocean Beach is the safest ocean beach in New Zealand, but thinking about it I may have misheard the caps and Paul may have said that Ocean Beach is the safest Ocean Beach, which would be an unhelpful truism. Whatever the case, it is certainly a glorious stretch of soft golden sand and iridescently blue water.

We decided to swim opposite a fat little island opposite the beach and discovered this is absolutely the best place for frolicking in the waves, as the island breaks the waves in two, bringing the two halves together in a V-shape, cross-cutting each other and making for especially turbulent waters. The waves rolled in ten feet high, and we had superb fun diving under them, riding on top of them or simply letting them strike us face-on.

As we stepped out of the Pacific Ocean onto almost unbearably hot sand we decided it was time for lunch. I wish we had dined in Mount Maunganui, but we decided that was too industrial and drove on to try the small town of Waihi instead. Although Waihi is described in the guidebook as a small mining village, during our visit it seemed more like a ghost town. It was Saturday afternoon, yet most places seemed to be shut and of those which were open we wrote off a pizzeria (because the waitress was busy doing the hoovering) and a bakery (because they didn't appear to sell any baked goods at all - it didn't help that when I asked for directions to the toilet, the baker indicated the back door, which then led me on an excursion to some public lavatories in a park two blocks away).

We ended up in Waihi's branch of Subway, the sandwich chain, and even that was shambolic as the man behind the counter explained they had entirely run out of bread. Four people walked out from the queue in front of us but when we got to the counter I spotted a shelf full of freshly baked bread behind the counter. “It's hot” he explained when I pointed it out. It did not take much effort to persuade him we did not mind.

We drove out of Waihi as quickly as the car would carry us, and didn't stop driving until we reached the small beach town of Hahei. Thankfully, Hahei is a little more switched on than its landlocked cousin and we were checked into the Tatahi Lodge by a very enthusiastic and friendly receptionist who provided us with everything we needed to enjoy our stay, including information on cheap snorkel hire, a jug of milk and a small yellow spade.

Our 'studio lodge' is possibly the nicest accommodation yet, a lovely and spacious wooden cabin with plenty of natural light and a set of double doors leading out onto a charming little communal garden. Better yet, dinner was just round the corner at The Grange, a trendy but cosy bar/restaurant which specialises in serving up North Island-sized portions. Paul's salad came in pieces so large that – as he struggled to get any of it into his face – he compared the effort to a task on the Krypton Factor, while my burger was so large you could have hollowed it out as a comfortable home for an Eskimo. We later saw a couple of old timers from out of town laughing about the size of their fish and chips and taking photographs of their plates.

We slept poorly, not helped by a resident moth the size of an eagle.

Day 58, in which we wear no comedy gas masks

The weather has been very erratic lately, and today our much anticipated boat trip out to the active volcano of White Island was cancelled, which means that long standing plans for this blog entry to contain photos of Paul and me wearing ridiculous hard hats and comedy gas masks have been shelved. We apologise for the interruption to our usual service.

We only discovered the boat tour was cancelled once we were about an hour's journey out at sea. The trip had started pleasantly enough, bouncing across the waves in the sunshine, but it was only once the waves started bouncing over us and there wasn't any sunshine that the skipper figured something was up. I had by this point become so seasick I had to go outside into the fresh air, but at times it was difficult to distinguish the fresh air from the sea, and instead of my stomach lurching with every wave I found my entire body lurching across the deck, clinging to the narrow metal railings for support and refusing the crew's kind offer of a cup of fruit punch.

While the skipper thought we might make it to White Island alive, he didn't think we'd be able to leave. As the island is entirely toxic, with a lake more acidic than sulphuric acid, he sensibly decided this was not a place to seek refuge. We thus sailed back and in our two hour boat trip saw only Whale Island – a conservation centre where they killed all of the rats and stoats and introduced 37 very happy little kiwis – and a somewhat workaday statue of Wairaka (pictured above, with hat). Wairaka is a local Maori heroine who – improbable legend has it – saved the lives of all the women in her tribe. According to hearsay, the women were left in the tribal canoe while the men went ashore to forage. Women are not allowed to paddle, so when the canoe started to drift out to sea they all resigned themselves to death and got on with their knitting ... all apart from Wairaka, that is, who declared “I shall be the man!” and single-handedly paddled them all back to safety. Apparently this all translates as “Whakatane”, the name of the town where the statue has been erected, but I find the whole thing very dubious. For one thing, it seems unlikely the Maori men would so proudly embrace a name and legend which immortalises their neglect of one half of their entire tribe, as well as their misogynistic approach to kayaking.

To fill our suddenly empty afternoon, we returned to Ohope beach in the car and then walked along the coast back to Whakatane. We had not expected the walk to be much more than a sunny diversion, but ultimately it took us through some stunning terrain to a hidden beach inaccessible by car and only accessible on foot during low tide. At times we found ourselves clambering around the coastline over shelves of narrow rock while the sea pounded against our feet, and at one point my interest in a hole in the rocks was neatly rewarded when a surging wave simultaneously revealed it to be a blow hole, which dutifully erupted in my face. The walk also offered stunning views across the ocean to White Island, and ultimately we figured we've seen so much geothermal and volcanic stuff in recent weeks that this was enough of a look at White Island to satisfy our interest.

After a spot of cake in a Peejay's Café in Whakatane, a taxi drove us back to the motel (although it is possible to make a return walk through subtropical bush, we've by this point learned that subtropical bush isn't alone worth the diversion). In the evening we dined at The Quay on Pohutukawa Avenue, where I was served steak frites large enough to fill a family of four, while Paul ploughed his way through duck breast swimming on a sea of cheesy risotto. The Quay's portions were absolutely huge, and during dinner we enjoyed the floorshow of a lady shovelling what amounted to two separate platters of fish and chips into her mouth over the course of half an hour. I guess northern Kiwis have giant appetites.

Day 57, in which we head north to bag our next volcano

Today we tidied up the bach, handed back the keys and drove up to Ohope on the north coast. Ohope is a long, narrow settlement pressed between steep rainforest on the one hand and a long golden beach on the other. The beach is supposed to be one of the best ocean beaches in New Zealand and – although it's only the second we've visited in the country – it certainly knocks the socks off Brighton beach.

We're staying in Jody's Motel, where we were grateful to finally find a large and comfortable bed and fully no flea-infested blankets. Dinner was fish and chips from the other end of town (a twenty minute drive out onto a narrow peninsula, from where you can see huge crashing waves on the lefthand side of the road and peaceful harbour waters to the right).

We stayed in to watch rubbish on the television and allowed ourselves to relax after a week of guerilla warfare against an onslaught of fleas, mosquitoes, wasps and sandflies at the Smokehouse bach.

Day 56, in which we shelter from Rene

Today is our final day in the Smokehouse and our final day of pottering around and unwinding before we get back on the road to See More Stuff. We'd imagined we'd be able to spend every day swimming in the lake, but in truth it's been raining so much it has been hard to build up the willpower to brave the stormy waters. We also thought we'd be able to visit the toilet freely, but as it's about ten feet from the back door we've learned to hold it in during the storms.

Apparently the storms are a by-product of something called Cyclone Rene, who is coming to visit over the next few days after tearing apart Tonga. Thankfully it sounds like most of his rage was used up in Tonga, but it still doesn't bode well for what we hoped would be a week spent exploring the sunny beaches of North Island.

Day 55, in which we peer at Mabel's Paint Pots

Today we drove north to explore the geothermal wonders of Rotorura, halfway between Mount Doom (which marks the south end of this particular stretch of volcanic activity) and White Island (which marks the northern end, which we're due to visit in a couple of days time).

Our first scheduled stop was Wai-o-tapu, one of the top geothermal visitor spots on the North Island, and we had to floor it (while safely comfortably within the legal speed limit) as I had taken too long over breakfast and the illustrious Lady Knox Geyser only shoots off once a day at 10:15am sharp (this is not an example of Mother Earth's wonderful time keeping. The geyser erupts when a bored looking man pours some soap flakes into the crater, breaking the surface tensions sufficiently to let the super-heated gases below escape. The guidebook reports that this is a tried-and-tested method first discovered by some presumably very surprised female prisoners who had been clearing bush in the area and had stopped at the geyser to do some laundry in the hot spring).

We got there with only seconds to spare. There were about three hundred people straining to look at the geyser, and room for about fifty to do so comfortably. I peered over the shoulder of one man and saw the back of the head of a Japanese lady, and when she bent over slightly to adjust the bag over her shoulder I could see the base of the geyser bubbling as it prepared to erupt. The anticipation was everything, and the power built up slowly – the crater spitting and frothing violently – until finally a seven metre plume of steam erupted from the ground, at which point all three hundred of us had a pretty good view.

Once in full flow, the geyser can keep going for an hour. Figuring there wasn't much more to see, we were first back into the car park and back down the hill to Wai-o-tapu proper. It took a couple of hours to stroll around the 'geothermal wonderland', which presents examples of the different ways the pressure inside the Earth can force its way out to the surface, including a series of huge craters which pockmark the park at random, where acids have eaten away the ground underneath; mud pools and mud volcanoes, which bubbled and spat with varying degrees of violence; and a series of mutli-coloured acid lakes. The latter were the most picturesque, and best of the lot were the Devil's Paint Pots and the Champagne Lake, two huge adjoining lakes streaked in different colours which change everyday according to the minerals which have welled up inside them (for example, sulphur makes yellow, iron makes reddy brown, orange is antimony and purple is manganese). Today the Champagne Lake was vivid orange at the fringes, turning into deep blue abruptly after that, while the Paint Pots were daubed in blots of green and yellow.

We also saw the Devil's Bath, which is a vivid pond which glows a surreal and even shade of Gatorade green. I've noticed it's all Devil's This and Devil's That in places like this, and I wish the early explorers could be more imaginative when naming the things they discover. At Wai-o-tapu we saw the Devil's Paint Pots, the Devil's Bath and the Devil's Home, and we've previously seen two Devil's Staircases, a Devil's Pond and Devil's Bridge. Could we not have, say, Mabel's Paint Pots, Geraldine's Bath and Leslie's Staircase? Hopefully the New Zealand Department of Conservation is reading.

We drove further north to Te Puia, which is technically a Maori culture centre although we skipped all the anthropological nonsense to eat cake and admire more geothermal stuff. This included a geyser which is active 80% of the time and also more powerful than the Knox Geyser, and while this sounds more impressive it did mean the plume was barely visible though the thick steam and mist. We also saw some very neat mud pools which grew in concentric circles, and the usual range of bubbling cauldrons and steaming pits. We also tried to see a kiwi bird, which was housed in its own special aviary, but I guess he was out doing its laundry as it was a very small aviary and we still couldn't see him.

It had been drizzling all day, so we drove home to Taupo to eat pizza and make a sterling effort finish off all of the cider we'd bought earlier in the week.

Day 54, in which the ducks eat our breakfast

Today was another quiet day, which we spent pottering around the lake and then popping into town for lunch. We ended up in a Japanese café – eating things like sushi, teriyaki and tempura – and were delighted to find it was all delicious, although Paul couldn't quite bring himself to touch the boiled white rice. It seems our appetites may in time tolerate westernised Japanese food again (but certainly not Japanese western food).

We also fed the ducks some breakfast. They went totally nuts for raisin bran and trotted up onto our lawn to introduce themselves properly. Although they appear to be a rather dull brown colour, when they lift a wing you can see a jaunty row of bright green feathers. Paul later tried to befriend three black swans who live among the rocks to the right of the bach, but aborted on the suspicion that the larger of the birds wanted to test the rumour that a swan can break a human arm with its beak.

I also had to email work today to confirm that I'll be returning in one month's time. Boo.

Day 53, St Valentine's Day, in which we follow in Frodo's footsteps up Mount Doom

We were due to get up at 5:30am today to walk the Tongariro Alpine Crossing, however neither of us could get to sleep so we got up at 2:30am instead and watched Swimfan (on the one channel in New Zealand that still operates at that hour) before having just a big enough nap to be irritable once the alarm finally went off. A bus collected us from central Turangi and – after a strange briefing from the driver, in which she explained this was really quite an ugly place to walk – dropped us off at the start of what is widely regarded as the best one day trek in the country. About two hundred other people also appeared to be doing the walk, but once we got going we all distributed out nicely along the path. We saw plenty of people on route, but it wasn't so packed you could start a conga.

The walk started at the foot of Mount Ngauruhoe, a huge conical volcano which is now better known as 'Mount Doom', thanks in part to Sir Peter Jackson using it in his popular series of hobbit movies but mostly because no one really knows how to pronounce 'Ngauruhoe'. The sun was still low in the sky, so this part of the walk was relatively cool and we enjoyed an easy hour's hike through the volcanic wastelands, crossing old lava flows and following a soda stream up to the base of the volcano.

The track then turned abruptly uphill, up what the guidebook referred to as the Devil's Staircase. I'd expected this to be a natural formation – say, layers of limestone lying in fractured strata to form a natural flight of steps up the mountain – but it transpired to be just a series of man-made pine staircases which looked no more than ten years old, winding their way up the side of the mountain. This was all a bit blah, although as we climbed higher we were rewarded with stunning views out across the North Island, including lakes, forests, meadows and a very distant snow-topped mountain.

There was an option here to ascend Mount Doom itself, however that track is not really defined and our guidebook contained a series of warnings to the effect that climbing the volcano is an act of suicide (and requires long trousers) so we dismissed the idea. There was also a sign which advised on the correct course of action should Mount Doom start to erupt. Most of these involved advice along the lines of “Try not to let any flying rocks hit your head” and “Try not to get engulfed in a sudden lava flow”, so I suspect there wasn't really anything we would be able to do if it did explode.

We crossed a ridge, descended into the South Crater and then crossed the flattest terrain I have ever walked across, which was so flat it confused my brain into thinking we were walking on water. The crater appears to have been filled with clay and then perfectly levelled off, and while this might sound quite dull we did get some superb views of Mount Doom, which was far more colourful from this angle and appears to be topped in rich deep red.

Also looming on the horizon was the Red Crater ridge, which I particularly feared as the guidebook warned that the track there follows a narrow ridge with long drops on either side. We first climbed up to the top of the ridge where we found a stunningly desolate wasteland on the other side, with volcanic rock formations even more twisted and bizarre than during our initial walk from the drop-off point. We then followed the track along the top of the ridge, which was quite very scary and whenever I slipped and lost my footing I figured I was a goner. When we got to the top at 1886 metres – and enjoyed our sandwiches overlooking stunning views of the way we had come – I was justifiably very proud of myself.

Alas, it transpired that wasn't actually not the scary part of the Red Crater Ridge. After a cheese and jam sandwich we followed the route towards the Red Crater proper and I was confused to see that the path suddenly stopped. As we reached that point I saw why: a couple of feet in front of me was a sheer drop down into the heart of the active volcanic crater, with the pathway skirting left along the lip of the crater (I was petrified, but I postponed hysteria sufficiently to observe that the crater was an unexpected and breathtaking shade of red, cross-cut with bands of black volcanic rock). The guidebook here had a wonderful piece of advice: “Please do not walk too close to the edge of the crater because if you fall in you will not come out.” If this were the UK, they would have ten foot high fences around this sort of hazard – but then, if they did that it wouldn't be worth coming to see.

I focussed my mind on survival and marched up the ridge and back down the other side. The path on the far side was about two metres wide with sheer drops on either side, but worse was made from a sort of volcanic sand and scree which slipped from under you as you walked. Everyone slipped and slid down the ridge, but surprisingly no one toppled off into the volcano and died. Looking back you could see into the rich red heart of the crater, while down below sat the Emerald Lakes, a group of fabulous blue ponds. The eggy stench of sulphur was thick in the air so we assume the ponds were filled with sulphuric acid, although the guidebook only offered the hint “No swimming!”

We trekked down through the flats of the vast Central Crater and then climbed up the ridge on the far side. We were supposed to be admiring the Blue Lake (“No swimming!”) here, but in the opposite direction was the much more beautiful view of the vivid red crater snuggling up against the red-tipped Mount Doom.

It was all down hill from here, in every sense. We endured a long and tedious trek down through the grassy hills of the Rotopaunga Valley into a winding pathway through bland forests which seemed to last absolutely forever (but was in fact only two and a half hours). Despite this, seeing Mount Doom and the Red Crater so close up is definitely yet another Top Ten highlight of the holiday, our pleasure only marginally diluted by the return journey. This was the closest we've been to the heart of an active volcano and we were surprised by how beautiful something so desolate and destructive could be. Although this was called the Tongariro Crossing we didn't actually notice Mount Tongariro at all. It wasn't any particular colour and didn't belch smoke or threaten to erupt, and so went pretty much unnoticed.

We had planned a big dinner with champagne when we got home, but were too tired and dehydrated so we only had toast and champagne, and then bed.

Days 52 and 53, in which we do very little at all

We've spent the past few days just lazing around the house, reading and snoozing and attempting the odd swim. The beach is made entirely from extremely sharp volcanic rocks so getting into the water for a swim is a bit of a challenge, but once you're in its surprisingly warm. There are also super-aerated volcanic rocks on the beaches, which is a bit of a surprise when you swim along and bump into one floating the other way.

As with much of New Zealand, the whole of Lake Taupo was created by volcanic activity. Apparently, we're sleeping on top of a theoretically dormant super-volcano, which exploded so viciously a few thousand years ago that even the Romans on the other side of the planet saw the sky go red. The magma that emptied out into the world on that day left behind a huge underground void, which then collapsed and created our lovely lake.

We share the waters with some very tame ducks, black swans and some black-and-white birds which spend their days sitting on a nearby rock looking for fish. We no longer share the beach house with insects, thanks to a new insect management programme which involves regular blasts of Raid into the rooms we're not using and a 24-hour Raid plug-in.

Our only trip out was to stock up on groceries in Taupo, and we took the opportunity to have dinner out at the Lotus Thai restaurant opposite the supermarket. Unfortunately we didn't get much of what we ordered and so dinner only lasted twenty minutes. Attempts to find out what had happened to the rest of the meal only led to the waiter repeating the word “okay” (the second most widely understood word in the English language, after “Coca-Cola”), so we drew a line under the experience and paid the bill.

Day 51, in which we fly to Taupo and meet an insect or two thousand

This morning we drove to Nelson airport, handed back our car and checked in for our 10am flight to Wellington. Being used to international airports, we arrived two hours early and so she checked us on the 8am flight to Wellington instead. We panicked a little about getting through security in time and high-tailed it round to the security desk, where a bored looking man explained “the plane has to be here before you can board it”. Paul asked what sort of security procedures they undertake, noting that in the UK you have your photograph taken, your shoes x-rayed and occasionally a full body pat-down. He frowned. “No,” the security guard said.

Sure enough, the plane arrived five minutes later and a bunch of people got off, and then they opened the doors at security and herded us through unchecked onto the plane. We were carrying bottles of water far more than 100ml in volume and at no point had anyone checked our identity. It is funny how quickly you get used to extremely convoluted administrative procedures.

At Wellington we had to wait several hours for our connecting flight to Taupo, but at least this airport had shops and caféto while away our time in. The plane from Nelson was tiny, but the plane to Taupo even smaller: the passenger cabin was the height of one person and about half as wide, with a direct view into the cockpit. We were delayed for several more hours, as planes this small cannot take off in the fog and – once a strong breeze had blown away the fog – we found they cannot take off in such a strong breeze either.

Taupo airport was the smallest yet, comprising a field and a building only slightly more imposing than a portakabin, so it was not difficult to find Michelle, the chatty lady from Rent-A-Dent who gave us our car for the fortnight. We soon found ourselves motoring down to the Old Smokehouse, a lovely old beach house on the shores of Lake Taupo, the largest freshwater lake in New Zealand. We have fabulous views and the sunset is amazing, but the house is rather run-down and the evening was an endless battle against an onslaught of insects. We've realised that the rules for dealing with insects at night are the same as for dealing with a zombie apocalypse: close all windows, seal off all entry points, close curtains and blinds and keep lights off. We ended up having a romantic bottle of wine by candlelight, while watching a tv show about a 'family wipe-out' murderer.

We've stocked the house up with food and wine from the supermarket in our nearest town, Turangi, but we don't intend to ever go back. The town was built as a temporary settlement while a nearby hydroelectric scheme was built, and is now severely neglected and strikingly different to the wealthy and tourist friendly Taupo in the north. We went to the local fish and chip shop – Grand Central Fry – on the recommendation of the guidebook, and while the food was really very nice the rest of the customers all looked so emotionally and/or physically broken it was a thoroughly depressing experience. The town as a whole seems to have the highest proportion of broken people we've seen yet in New Zealand, which is a great shame but we will still be going the extra 30km next time to shop in Taupo instead.