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Buns2025: Day 5 – Paris
Soundtrack – anything but “Candles in the Wind” It never fails to amaze me how badly the worlds of accommodation and travel fail to to be in sync. Flights arrive all the time, but most hotels only let you check in between about 2pm and 1am. You might be able to store your luggage, but I’m yet to find a hotel that will let me check in at 8am or 9am, even if I do offer to book a full extra day (I won’t rule out that there may be places of the 5 star variety allowing this, and if I ever get to the point of being ablke to…
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Buns2025: Day 3 – Melbourne > Sydney
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 it comes to coffee so wherever he picked to meet would be good. He’s also vegan, so while I was guarded about any food recommendations, at least the coffee would be good. His pick was a little coffee and bagle place called Five Points, where a large coffee comes in…
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Buns2025: Day 2 – Melbourne
Soundtrack: “Under the Clocks”, Weddings Parties Anything Finally made it to day 2. Currently sitting in the airport departure terminal, watching a dog get unloaded from a flight and I’m only a little damp around the eyes. Day 2 kicked off with heading to my usual cafe, Euro Lane I think it’s called, tucked away in a little alley between Flinders and Collins, that for a number of years now have done some amazing middle-eastern/spanish breakfast options, piles of turkish bread, spicy beans, eggs, and the like. It’s been the staple for a few years now. I last enjoyed their wonderful plates of goodness when I was here in June.…
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Buns2025 – Day 1.1 Melbourne
Soundtrack: “Pink Pony Club”, Chappell Roan Mick Thomas wrote, “There’s no point writing postcards on your bad days” (and I probably owe him a fiver for the number of times I’ve quoted it) and as far as bad days go, today is on the list. But I have time to spare, a need for a distraction, so I’m going to write this about yesterday instead. Welcome to Buns2025, the next trip. Perth > Melbourne > Sydney > Paris > Dublin > Belfast > Singapore. A trip of much food, music, sights, sounds, smells, and much entertainment as I attempt the French language. In looking for a theme to tie it…
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7NNT25: Day 35 – Singapore
Soundtrack: “Holiday”, Madonna Waking and checking social media, it turns out that if I’d stayed in the basement parking lot of the first venue for another hour or so, I’d have spent all that time sweating and queueing but at least seen Lady Gaga, who turned up and did a few minutes in the club. I still probably wouldn’t have got in, but I could have done the star spotting thing. Oh well. My body really didn’t like waking up today, but I’d arranged to meet Singaporean-native pal D and have lunch and catch up so out I went. Lunch was at Pizza Express, the Singaporean version of a UK…
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7NNT25: Day 28 – Hong Kong
Soundtrack: “Sunday Morning”, The Velvet Underground Sunday, day of rest, day of recovering from two very long days with late nights. Despite hoping that my body would step up, do the right thing and grant me many hours of sleep, it didn’t, and I was awake again and thinking about breakfast earlier than I hoped. It shows how tired I was, as it took me at least 10 minutes to work out what I should have for breakfast. Hmm, what do folks eat for breakfast in this part of the world? When the Hong Kong Dollar finally dropped, those two words fell into the part of my brain I could…
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7NNT25: Day 22 – Manila
Soundtrack: “In These Shoes?”, Kirsty MacColl Shoe day. Older folks, such as myself, will remember legendary First Lady of the Philippines, Imelda Marcos, who in western media at least was portrayed as liking the luxuries in life, including shoes. When the Marcos dictatorship was ended, the western media was full of stories of the hundreds and hundreds and thousands of custom and designer shoes she owned, this was part of the claims of excess that the ruling family indulged in. Successive Philippine governments used the shoe collection, among other things, for their own marketing/propaganda purposes until earlier this century, when a part of the collection was put on display in…
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7NNT25 Day 16: Chiang Mai > Bangkok > Ho Chi Minh City
Soundtrack: “Khe Sanh”, Cold Chisel Having left day 15 on a cliff hanger, I can reveal that I was able to get up in time to head out and get my laundry just after 9am, so I won’t have to buy any new clothes anytime soon. While I’m travelling with a few treasured items, my green The Clouds t-shirt that I got at a gig the night before I last came to Thailand, which has travelled a bunch since, was recognised by a friend of the band in Fort William, and was also photographed in the main court of the Rijksmuseum (two of us have now done this, so it’s…
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7NNT25: Day 10 & 11 – Somewhere in Uzbekistan
Soundtrack: any song about waiting in airports… Writing this in the Pie Republic outlet at Tashkent International Airport, consuming an overpriced chicken caesar sandwich and a cappucino, which in these parts is the same as a flat white. Also, the chicken caesar sandwich has tomato. Also also, the Pie Republic doesn’t sell any pies (though they do have meat filled somsas, which I guess comes close). That’s probably a metaphor for something, I don’t quite know what. In the lst two days I’ve experienced Uzbekistan airways, had actual gluten-free Uzbek food, walked a bit, sat around waiting a bunch, shopped for trinkets for the folks back home, and made sure…
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7NNT25: Day 8 – The road to Khiva
Soundtrack: “Wide Open Road”, The Triffids Somewhere on the road to Khiva, with no other people in sight, the only signs of civilisation being the power poles and the road itself, my phone showing no signal, I glanced at the dashboard and the realisation kicked in: the damn fuel light is on. I don’t know when it came on, but I figure that if this car is like most, that means it has at most somewhere around 50km worth of fuel. I start doing the maths, if we’re doing just over 110km/h, that gives us maybe 30 minutes. I’m not panicking yet, afterall the driver seems quite calm about it,…
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7NNT25: Day 5 – Samarkand
Soundtrack: “Sugar, Sugar” – The Archies Today was mostly a make our own fun day, so we used the opportunity to have a bit of a stroll around the city, mostly in the Tsarist Russian part. We’d noted a couple of shopping malls within walking distance, so thought we’d check them out. The first excitement in the walk involved a chicken. It may have been trying to cross the rather busy road, or it might have just wanted to loiter under a parked car, I don’t speak any language of chicken so I couldn’t ask. A couple of Uzbek gents appeared to be trying to direct it or catch it,…
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7NNT25: Day 4 – Samarkand
Soundtrack: “Turn! Turn! Turn!” – Pete Seeger/The Byrds A more sedately paced day after yesterday’s hustle. We kicked off with a late hotel breakfast, our Samarkand accommodation is smaller than Tashkent so the selection was scaled down considerably with only a few types of cheese, limited hot foods, fruit etc and some local options like samsa. First stop was a traditional crafts village on the edge of Samarkand. The Uzbeks have a long history of making paper, having obtained the knowledge from the Chinese — according to some folklore by force, where captured Chinese soldiers gave up the knowledge in exchange for their lives. Like many things, the knowledge was…
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7NNT25: Day 3 – Tashkent to Samarkand
Soundtrack: “Know Your Product” The Saints One thing that Uzbekistan has that Australia doesn’t is fast intercity trains, the sort that do the 300km from Tashkent to Samarkand in just over 2 hours. We were a little unsure at what economy class would entail, but need not have worried. As economy rail goes, it’s one of the best. There are comfy seats with a decent amount of leg room, the baggage space was a little tight but not as bad as some, and they provide free snacks and drinks. The snacks included a little bag with a pastry and a sachet of 3 in 1 instant coffee, icecream, and fruit…
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7NNT25: Day 2 – Tashkent
Soundtrack: “Going Underground” The Jam Our first full day in Uzbekistan was spent exploring the old and new parts of the capital, Tashkent, with our driver and also a guide who tried to take us through 15 centuries of history in 6 hours. In summary: most of the cultures that have dominated Uzbekistan over the centuries have had a mix of good and bad elements, except the Mongols, who were all bad. Seems like the Uzbeks still have a bit of a grudge from the days of Ghengis Khan, which I’m sure would make an Uzbekistan Vs Mongolia ice hockey game rather interesting. So here’s the non-wikipedia version: the Uzbeks…
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SG24 – Day last
“Cold and final, the imagination shuts down its fabled summer house” are as true as any other words by Sylvia Plath and, metaphor or not, they are as good as any to kick off the last leg of this short sharp sweaty taste of Singapore. Caught up with N last night near Farrer Park, where we caught up on how the world is treating us and had some excellent vegetarian Indian food at a place where tourists don’t go on the corner of Racecourse Rd. Wonderfully thick palak paneer, flavourful palak tikka, creamy yellow dhal, rich and well spiced aloo gobhi, and cheesy naan that was so good to be…
