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Five flavours: Day 6 Hoi An
Soundtrack: The Hoi An Memories show music Today started way too early, as I’d booked us into a tour of My Son Sanctuary and surrounds. There were two choices, the 5am start to beat the heat, or the 7.30am, so I went with the 5am. FYI My Son is pronounced “mee son”. Our guide had the indecency of being on time. I’d managed to quickly drink a can of coffee so I was vaguely conscious for the drive through Hoi An picking up the rest of the tour. Then is was about an hour out to My Son via the local twisting roads. For part of this our guide gave…
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Five flavours: Day 3 Hue
Soundtrack: “Khe Sanh”, Cold Chisel Today I’d booked us into a tour of a number of significant sites relating to Viet Nam history, reunification, and of course the American War. L isn’t a fan of war tourism in general, and while I wasn’t looking for some sort of huge glorification, I’m fascinated by significant places of all stripes, and with Hue being so close to the former Khe Sanh AFB, it seemed an opportunity I couldn’t pass up. After another hotel breakfast of soup, ca phe sua dau, and assorted other bites, our guide H met us in the hotel lobby. Once the group of 5 tourists were all in…
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7NNT25: Day 17 – Ho Chi Minh City
Soundtrack: The Vietnamese National Anthem / “50 Years”, Uncanny X-Men [Disclaimer: I’m writing this entry a day after the events, and am a bit tired and headachy, so if I fail to capture sufficiently in the words below the sheer wonder I felt all day, well that’s on me.] If we want to go with the idea that there are two types of people defined by some arbitrary criteria, then I’m definitely the type that doesn’t like waking up at 530am. There have been times in my life where I’ve had to wake up at that time consistently, but given any choice or wiggle room, I’m sleeping more. So, regardless…
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7NNT25: Day 6 – Samarkand to Bukhara
Soundtrack: Having hit peak Timur, it was time today to leave Samarkand and head further down the Silk Road to the old capital of Uzbekistan, Bukhara. I keep remembering and then forgetting that these are kind of the footsteps of Marco Polo, who came through here 800 or so years ago. Would have been cool if he’d been like the Vikings, and left some graffiti behind, but can’t have everything. I can safely say that he never took the fast train and watched the countryside scroll at 159 km/h. Though the fast train didn’t have the same level of service today, there were no free pastries or tea, boarding was…
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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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Baltics24: Day 7 – Tallinn
A 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 then headed out to the Balti Jaama Turg market, probably Tallinn’s largest daily market, three floors of food, clothes, random stores, and weird bric-a-brac masquerading as “antiques”. The antique corner had a number of crowded stalls, jammed high with everything you could imagine: every shape of glassware, badges, soviet army…
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Baltics24: Day 4 – Helsinki
A full day in Helsinki. With the weather forecast promising sun, we took one of the harbour tour boats for a bit of fresh air and history. People have called Helsinki home for thousands of years, but it’s first major development kick was thanks to the Swedish occupiers in the 16th century. They turned Helsinki into a major trading hub, set up boat building, and probably imported meatballs, along with building some impressive forts among the islands that are scattered around the harbour. The forts didn’t really help when Sweden and Russia had a war in the early 19th century, which sent the Swedes packing (leaving their meatball recipe behind).…
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Say it slowly tour Day 19: Warsaw, old town, the ghetto
Spent a good chunk of the day wanting to cry. Warsaw hasn’t had the greatest of pasts, and I’m here just in time for the place to mark 70 years since first the Germans, then the Russians, took half of Poland each. I’m in the right month, too. There are a bunch of exhibitions, displays and other informative bits all around the place. Not too surprising, really, given that between 1939 and 1945, the place was practically levelled, a whole lot of people died of very unnatural causes, many more disappeared and most of the population displaced on numerous occasions. Poland got it as bad as anyone during the war,…
