On your rental scooter, that is. You never know what might be coming up from behind.

See full article for an intriguing picture.

When they can’t be bothered with sound discipline, it’s customary for parents to scare their children with fantastic lies.

In Brazil, for example, children are told that if they play with fire they will wet their beds, or that cockroaches will lick their mouths at night if they neglect to brush their teeth.

And there’s the mammoth childhood lie, one that crosses many cultures and is so ridiculous that its survival is nothing less than a miracle: that a fat old man in the North Pole is monitoring every child and delivers obedience rewards on a sleigh pulled by flying reindeer.

After a few days in Auckland, I started to suspect a government conspiracy with the hostels.

Grim, dreadful things, they are. Entirely practical without the slightest attempt to make guests feel cozy. The rooms are barren white with little ventilation, no curtains and the smell of feet baked into the carpets. The guests look like they’re serving time in juvenile detention. No one makes eye contact or says hello, as though doing so would make them someone’s bitch.

It’s like the hostels were purposefully built to keep people the shortest time possible in Auckland and go spend their tourism dollars in New Zealand’s isolated regions.