Soundtrack: “Best Years of Our Lives” – Richard Clapton Day started on too little sleep, what a surprise. At least part of the late night was me packing, so there would be no last minute panic there. Fortunately the reason for the early morning was to catch up with one of my oldest pals A, who is very particular when […]
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Soundtrack: First full day in Singapore, and first priority is sorting laundry so I have enough clean clothes to get me through. I failed to find a laundry service nearby (a mall might have one but I walked around it and couldn’t find the place, I did find a second hand bookshop to check later). Instead I headed for a […]
Read moreHome. Not Istanbul, nor Constantinople, nor Byzantium. Not Vilnius, Riga, Tallinn, Helsinki, Stockholm. Just a couch with a dog that has mostly forgiven, and the heater on, because we’d certainly acclimatised to 30 degree weather and are feeling the chill of an otherwise mild Perth winter. The journey home was uneventful, Singapore Airlines generally took care of us well (except […]
Read moreI’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 […]
Read moreA full day in Tallinn. Started with the hotel breakfast, which was okay, a bit chaotic as breakfast buffets go, but I was introduced to the Estonian “superfood” kama, a mixture of different flours (generally barley, rye, oat, pea but others could be involved) which was mixed with milk like a smoothie. So a grainy super smoothie or something. We […]
Read moreA 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, […]
Read moreWelcome to day 18, basically where the Scotland part of this trip starts to wind down, with Edinburgh being the last stop. It kicked off again with waking a little too early, even with the hill the room got bright quite early. Snoozed until it was time to pack and do all the showering things, before heading down to one […]
Read moreIt’ll likely be a short post today (I can hear the sigh of relief over the rain and the rampaging children from here) as, well, we didn’t do much today. Managed 14,500 steps of not much, somehow. We kicked off with the hotel breakfast, nothing too fancy but al least this way I get my daily ration of pink dragonfruit […]
Read moreCoffee. Vietnam grows and exports a lot of this, though it’s over 90% robusta, the unfashionable cousin to arabica. It’s also starting to drink more of it and develop a bit of a coffee culture, with all manner of chains and little cafes springing up around Hanoi. I don’t recall seeing so many on previous trips, my impression from the […]
Read moreOur last full day in Cuba. Another wonderful breakfast at the casa before we hit the road. I don’t think I’ve described the breakfasts we’ve been getting, which have all been both substantial and great quality. The usual starter is a bowl or plate of fruit, which has consistently featured mango but can also have guava, pineapple, rock melon, orange, […]
Read moreHistoric Camaguey, or Port Principe. The tour started with an old church, including an offer to tour the crypt. I took the tour, hoping to get a glimpse of some relics, maybe a body part of a saint or two, or a chunk of the true cross. Sadly no such luck. They had three rooms open, each with some interesting […]
Read moreCuba, like many nations, could use a good highway system for the 1000km from Santiago to Havana. Maybe one day, if a method of recycling plastic drink bottles into roads pans out, as there is plenty of the former and less of the latter. They have a plan, and the first few kilometres out of Santiago de Cuba is a […]
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