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SG24 – Day 3
One day I’ll be too old to be standing on a couch in a drag bar next to a transgender cheering on drag queens at 1.30am. For better or worse, that time is yet to come. For all of the multitude of wrong that is the Hard Rock Cafe, the Singapore establishment has been hosting a regular Saturday night drag performance Riot! for some time. For 2-3 hours they close the main area and let Becca D’Bus and other queens take over the stage (while there are still diners upstairs, who are probably wondering what they’ve walked into).I’d booked a seat in the “nice” area, far enough back from the…
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SG24 – Day 2
The Swan Song bar is the wonderfully eclectic result of three very passionate whisky people. Since discovering this place in 2020, in their old location neat the Auld Alliance, I’ve had the pleasure of going to their current place last trip with L, and being back in town, went their again last night. I say eclectic as the whisky on offer is definitely not the standard bottlings, I’m not sure they even have any whiskies on offer that you could just pick up a bottle at a local outlet, instead there are rows of independent bottlings, limited releases, and single cask offerings. They might not have a single Ben Nevis…
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SG24 – Day 1
Flight was fine, boring and smooth just how I like them. Caught a couple of movies, Oversteer, a Singaporean movie set in Malaysia (I thing it was Singaporean, it was in the Singaporean Showcase tab) about families and street car racing, and The Roundup Punishment, a Korean cop movie starring Ma Dong-seok where he goes around and punches people (it’s possibly a sequel to others I’ve seen, as a lot of faces looked familiar). Took a Grab to the hotel, apparently it’s school holidays this week so things will be a bit quieter with families going away. Hotel is okay, good location, room is a little small and lacking in…
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SG24 – Day 0 Transit
July to September is the worst. Southern hemisphere winter, the cold, wet, dark, and no public holidays as far as the eye can see. Get up in darkness, go to work, go home and by the time the dog is walked it’s dark again. Five hours away sits Singapore, that Disneyland with the death penalty, lit up brighter than every xmas tree, where there’s almost always 12 hours of daylight, and while it might be wet, at least it’s warm. It’s a land where some happiness is guaranteed: just join any queue for food that has 10 locals; or take in an evening dram or three at the Auld Alliance…
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Baltics24: Day 16 – Istanbul
I’ll write the second half of day 15 after this, but figure I should get today down while it’s fresh, a few extra hours won’t hurt my memory. I’m also distracted keeping one eye on the absolute shitfest that is England vs Slovakia, it’s currently half time in extra time and JFC it seems that England have finally managed to turn up and remember what that funny white framed net thing at the other end of the pitch is for. It’s been painful to follow. Istanbul (not Constantinople — I promised that would get rehashed often once I got here), or Byzantium if you’re really really damn old. Probably one…
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Viet Nam the fourth: Day 12 Hoi An – transit
A fairly quiet day really, as the plan was that I’d get picked up around 4pm at the hotel for my flight to HCMC then home. I’m writing this at Da Nang airport, after my flight was due to depart, as VietJet have been sending me updates all day telling me my flight is delayed. In theory I’ve got about an hour until I board, in practice who knows. It turn out that while VietJet are cheap, they aren’t actually that good. Despite booking a two stop ticket, I’ve been told that they can’t check my bag through to destination, so at HCMC I get to pick up my case,…
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Viet Nam the fourth: Day 11 Hoi An
My last full day in Hoi An, and also L’s birthday. After breakfast we went to pick up our laundry, things sure are fierce along laundry street. once we’d got our clothes we walked the length of the street, and no less than two other locals, looking at our bag (and assuming it contained dirty clothes) gestured for us to come to them for laundry. Once they realised we were carrying a bag of clean clothes they went back into the shadows, watching, planning, scheming. If not today or tomorrow, some day soon laundry wars are coming to Hoi An. We checked out a different massage place this morning, one…
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Viet Nam the fourth: Day 10 Hoi An
Coffee. Viet Nam is one of the world’s largest producers of these wonderful beans, though they rarely get recognised for this as the majority is robusta, not the better marketed arabica variety. I’m not even sure many self-proclaimed coffee snobs know much about robusta beans, as these tend to form the backbone of the instant coffee market. Kind of like grain whisky, it’s the bulk of all of the popular scotch blends, but only a big whisky nerd could name any of the grain distilleries. Robusta beans are higher in caffeine, generally more bitter, lower in sugar, higher in anti-oxidants, and are more resistant to disease so need less pesticides.…
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Viet Nam the fourth: Day 9 Da Nang – Hoi An
The historic village of Hoi An sits about 25km south of Da Nang. Even 10 years ago, there as a definite undeveloped space between the two. These days, the coast south of Da Nang is full of new resorts, and resorts under construction, so it’s hard to say where Da Nang ends and Hoi An begins. If you want something made, go to Hoi An: clothes, shoes, glasses, jewellery, you name it, they can probably find someone who makes it. Las time we were here, not long after VN opened up post-covid, it felt like we were almost the only western tourists, many shops were closed, and street vendors made…
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Viet Nam the fourth: Day 8 Da Nang
Viet Nam: beautiful one day, invisible the next. Well, if you head into the hills anyway. The regular reader may recall our experience on the last trip when we summitted the highest point in VN, Mt Fan Xi Pan, where we found ourselves well and truly in the clouds, ensuring the view was John Major grey all around. Today’s adventure was the Sun World Ba Na Hills resort, about 40 minutes out of Da Nang, location of another of Vietnam’s world record cable cars, and the often stunning Golden Bridge. After a decent breakfast at the hotel we summoned a Grab and headed out. Our driver was lovely, warming to…
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Viet Nam the fourth: Day 7 Da Nang
A day of exploring the strange wonderland that is Da Nang. After an okay hotel breakfast we took a stroll, the first stop being the Da Nang Cathedral, otherwise known as the pink church. Why is it pink, I don’t know. A quick google didn’t tell me either. It did tell me that the church is around 100 years old, built by the French, and on top of the cross is a chicken weather vane, so the locals also call it the chicken church. Around the walls are a number of images depicting JC in action, and if you thought that western churches had whitewashed his image, in these he…
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Viet Nam the fourth: Day 6 Quy Nhon – Da Nang
We said goodbye to our slightly unusual, partly deserted hotel early in order to catch the 7.07am train to Da Nang. I’m sure the hotel means well, but with various oddities in the room design, few of its additional facilities being open, and staff who were very friendly but didn’t really know how to recommend places to go to around town, it wasn’t quite all that 4 star. Its final goodbye involved a poor staff member having to try to go to our room three times to check the minibar, as the swipe cards weren’t working, while our car waited outside. They did manage to sort it but it was…
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Viet Nam the fourth: Day 5 Quy Nhon
Happy New Calendar Year. It’s a good thing that the Vietnamese seem to be happy celebrating every new year, be it calendar, Chinese lunar, or their own lunar (which may or may not coincide with Chinese lunar) as around 1140pm on New Year’s Eve the heavens opened up and it rained a bit for at least the next hour. Fortunately we were safely tucked up in bed, but I wonder how the outdoor concert fared. We did see some of the fireworks from out window. It’s now 2024, crazy. The only resolutions you’ll see here are to travel more, eat more, walk more, and try to judge the world less…
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Viet Nam the fourth: Day 4 Quy Nhon
It’s new year’s eve, and from the 15th floor of the Odin Hotel we can clearly hear what sounds like the strains of a passionate karaoke singer, while out the window the Grand Hyams Hotel is one big light show. The streets of Quy Nhon are full of families on scooters, but its not the same dense throng we saw in Ha Noi a few years ago. We didn’t hotel breakfast this morning (generally L will go the hotel breakfast as she’s more likely to get gluten free options this way), instead heading out into the streets to find something. We didn’t have to go far to find a little…
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Viet Nam the fourth: Day 3 – HCMC to Quy Nhon
I neglected to mention that there was also dessert on last night’s food and scooter tour, wonderful milk puddings, basically pannacotta/creme caramel (something else the Vietnamese kept when they sent the French packing) in three flavours: matcha, cream cheese, and caramel. Quite delicious. Started with a decent breakfast at the hotel, noting that their banh canh is quite different to the one last night, and is more like pho ga but with prawns, quail eggs, and banh canh noodles. Sadly, the very delicious meat on a lemongrass skewer wasn’t present, and not because we ate all of them yesterday. We took a wander down the street, noting that yesterday’s lunch…
