Shit Holidays Newsletter #5

New Zealand

Mar 15, 2022

Welcome to another edition of the Shit Holidays newsletter. This week, we summon the spirit of our banned Facebook page Shit Towns of New Zealand with an in-depth anal-ysis of Aotearoa. We have a lot to say about a place that’s close to our hearts, so this week’s newsletter is a big one.

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New Zealand

New Zealand’s main claim to fame is its stunning natural beauty, which it is currently in the process of disappearing due to over-farming, over-tourism and over-exposure. In fact, the only thing more full of shit than the country’s ‘100% Pure’ marketing slogan are the rivers, which have been filled with gigatonnes of effluent. Unfortunately, the ‘clean, green’ image has proven immensely popular with overseas travellers, so anything resembling a tourist spot is jammed ankles to arseholes with an armada of Euros, Yanks and Ockers scrapping for space to get the perfect Instagram selfie of an unspoilt wilderness.

Stranded somewhere between Australia and Antarctica, New Zealand is the perfect destination if you feel like forking out a fortune to sit on a plane for an entire day only to go and stare at a lake or some hot mud or a bit of snow. The only thing more certain to bring tears to your eyes than the scenery is the horrendously high price of accommodation, entertainment and anything else that can be used to bilk tourists. The cost of visiting is so exorbitant that the most popular tourist activity is jumping off a bridge — which is also bloody expensive.

New Zealand is a nation with a fragile national identity, a large portion of which seems to be based on a mediocre trilogy of children’s films about medieval midgets. The main national pastime is rugby, a minor sport that New Zealand happens to dominate mostly because the only other places that take it seriously are Wales and the white bit of South Africa. New Zealand is also known for its sheep, a versatile beast used for everything from fashion to cuisine to romance. The small nation has six sheep for every person, which would be handy if not for strict bigamy laws.

All New Zealanders suffer from a crippling lack of self-esteem, which will invariably result in you being asked by every single local if you like the country in an accent that sounds like a South Australian with brain damage. Although insecure, Kiwis are fiercely patriotic — just not quite enough to stop them all moving to Queensland. Many disappointed visitors to New Zealand end up taking the same route.

New Zealand Facts

Population: 5 million.

Founded: 1840.

Currency: Sheep.

Language: Mispronounced te reo Māori, mispronounced English.

Demonym: Hobbit.

Also known as: Aotearoa, the Shaky Isles, Nu Zillund, East Australia, Tasmania II, New New South Wales.

As seen in: The Lord of the Rings trilogy, in which an elderly loner lures a group of child-size people into a cave, and The Hobbit trilogy, in which an elderly loner lures a group of child-size people into a cave.

Most famous resident: Kim Dotcom, celebrity fugitive and budget Bond villain.

Did you know? In recent years New Zealand has been invaded by an army of American billionaires trying to escape Trumpageddon and Coronapocalypse by building extravagant doomsday bunkers in the most remote (English-speaking) place they can think of.

Top 10 New Zealand Adventure Activities

Tramping - Get lost wandering in dense bush and trigger a search and rescue operation costing hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Snowboarding - Hurtle down a mountain on a flimsy sheet of fibreglass.
Skiing - Hurtle down a mountain on two flimsy sheets of fibreglass.
Jet boating - Careen down a rapid-filled river at high speed until you collide with a rock.
Whitewater rafting - Careen down a rapid-filled river at low speed until you collide with a rock.
Whale watching - Cram into an unseaworthy vessel alongside some suspiciously sweaty Japanese tourists to watch the obese shut-ins of the ocean loll about like the long-term unemployed on benefit day.
Bungy jumping - Confront the spectre of death by leaping off a bridge, platform or tower with a giant rubber band tied around your ankles.
Skydiving - Confront the spectre of death by leaping out of a plane with nothing tied to your ankles, you absolute fucking maniac.
Skyline Gondola & Luge - Get tugged up a hill in a glass box before rolling down again on a plastic cart that goes just fast enough to make crashing into a tree a reasonable possibility, but not quite fast enough to actually be fun. Despite the name, there are no canal boats or toboggans.
Zorbing - Bounce down a hill in a vomit-filled bubble until you pass out.

From our book Shit Towns of New Zealand: The Great Kiwi Tiki Tour, available in stores and online.

Top 10 New Zealand Activities for Boring Cunts

Look at a sheep
Touch a rock
Stare at a tree
Eat some plain white toast
Go to a museum
Take a walking tour
Go to an art gallery
Read a book
Sit quietly and wait for your holiday to end
Do a Lord of the Rings tour

From our book Shit Towns of New Zealand: The Great Kiwi Tiki Tour, available in stores and online.

Top 20 Most Overrated New Zealand Photo Ops

Kent Road (Taranaki) - Blessed with the backdrop of a perfectly aligned Mount Taranaki, Kent Road is an irresistible photo spot for numerous nitwits who think that plonking themselves in the middle of a 100kmh highway makes them look cool.
Infinity Pools (Anawhata Beach) - Located on clearly marked private property, these clifftop waterfall pools are a popular spot for intrepid trespassers to photograph themselves swimming, pissing or fucking in the local residents’ water supply.
Giant L&P Bottle (Paeroa) - A corporate advertisement commonly mistaken for a tourist attraction.
Hundertwasser Toilet (Kawakawa) - Normally, taking photos of a public loo would get you locked up.
Bra Fence (Cardrona) - Normally, taking photos of women’s underwear would get you locked up.
Mud pools (Rotorua) - Come to New Zealand and let steam fuck up your camera lens while you risk third-degree burns to get a photo of some hot mud!
Aeroplane McDonald’s (Taupo) - This fast food joint partly housed in an old aeroplane proudly proclaims itself the ‘World’s Coolest McDonald’s’, but looks more like the aftermath of an Al-Qaeda attack.
Cardrona Hotel - It’s just a decrepit building that looks like an old shed.
Glenorchy Shed - It’s just an old shed.
Mosgiel Sign - A cringeworthy copy of the Hollywood sign which only serves to remind everyone how dull and pointless Mosgiel is.
Hokitika Driftwood Sign - A tangle of twigs contorted into the word ‘Hokitika’, which no one has gotten around to clearing away.
Direction Signs (Cape Reinga and Bluff) - The famous yellow multi-pronged signposts at either end of the country point to every location they can think of - a not-so-subtle hint to leave immediately. The arse-end version at Bluff gets bonus shit points for being wildly inaccurate.
Giant Sheep and Dog (Tirau) - A selfie with the supersized corrugated-iron sheep or dog is a surefire way to confuse the shit out of your friends and family back home.
Blue Spring (Putaruru) - Once a semi-secret swimming spot, social media made the Blue Spring so popular that pollution from bathers left it in danger of becoming the Brown Spring. While you’re no longer allowed to dip your disgusting bits in the freezing water, you can still get your car broken into while taking a selfie in front of the weedy waterway.
Lake Tekapo - Famous for its weird sky-blue hue, Lake Tekapo looks like it’s filled with something gross and toxic like Toilet Duck or Gatorade.
Mount Maunganui summit (Tauranga) - Because we haven’t already seen enough photos of that exact view.
Onsen Hot Pools (Queenstown) - Re-enact a cliche by getting someone to take a photo of your back while you stew in a big barrel of hot water. Bonus points if you’re flashing your norks at a mountain.
That Wanaka Tree - Girt by lake and framed by Alps, ‘That Wanaka Tree’ might be the most photographed plant in the country. Not even the recent castration of its lower branch could dampen the insatiable demand for selfies with the sickly old shrub.
Roys Peak (Wanaka) - What the carefully cropped Instagram/Tinder/Grindr pics don’t show is the huge line of lemmings queuing for their turn to pose, having just slogged up a mountain for half a day for the privilege.
DEKA Sign (Huntly) - The last remnant of a defunct department store chain that went out of business some time when the current prime minister was in primary school, Huntly’s derelict DEKA sign is only popular among celebrators of shitness.

From our book Shit Towns of New Zealand: The Great Kiwi Tiki Tour, available in stores and online.

Rooting in New Zealand

If someone in New Zealand offers you a ‘root’, don’t be alarmed—they’re not trying to make you eat vegetables, they just want to have sex with you. Living in one of the most sexually liberated nations on the planet, New Zealanders are famously free and easy with their affections. If you don’t leave the country with a couple of truly filthy anecdotes, a new sexual manoeuvre and at least one new STD you’ve done something wrong! Whether it’s just Wakatipu to see how it feels or the full Anal Tasman, don’t leave the Land of the Long White Stain without sampling some of the sexual smorgasbord on offer.

Local Lingo

Trying to hook up in a new country can be intimidating, so here are a few handy phrases that should get the locals wetter than a Wellingtonian in a weather bomb.

‘Sweet as, bro.’ = ‘I’d like to watch you have sex with my wife.’

‘National is the natural ruling party.’ = ‘I’m a bottom.’

‘Ian Foster is a better coach than Scott Robertson.’ = ‘I like to wear nappies. Sexually.’

‘Let’s slap on some jandals, grab the chilly bin, get a hokey-pokey ice-cream and head to my bach.’*
*[Unfortunately the translation of this particular phrase has been deemed too risqué for Facebook. Suffice to say you will simply have to use your imagination, but we can tell you it does involve a Slip ’N Slide, 100 litres of baby oil and several farm animals.]

Rooting Hotspots

Dogging
Dunedin is New Zealand’s dogging capital. If fogged-up windshields or being impaled on a handbrake while attempting ‘reverse cowgirl’ in a Suzuki Vitara are your thing, then you’ll love Dirty Ol’ Dunners. Don’t be concerned if you hear a polite tap on the window—that’s just a friendly local offering some encouragement!

Cottaging
If you are rolling through the inner North Island and feel like having a portly truck driver’s pot-belly slap against your buttocks in one of the country’s cleanest public conveniences, then make a pit stop at Cambridge!

Group action
Oxford is the orgy capital of New Zealand. The open-minded Cantabrians of Oxford are open to almost anything—except interracial!

MILFs
Blenheim is MILF central. If peeling yoga pants off a woman old enough to have given birth to you is up your alley, then give ‘Beavertown’ a go!