-
Buns2025: Days 14-18 – Belfast > Singapore
Soundtrack: “Departure”, R.E.M. Filling in the last few gaps from a couch in Nyungar Boodjar, home at last. My final morning in Belfast was full of rain. I had a plan: check out of hotel, take my case down to the Central Train Station and store it for a couple of hours, go get breakfast and last minute souvenirs, then head back and take the bus straight from the station to Dublin airport. Nothing that a little rain would affect. Belfast Central Train Station doesn’t have luggage lockers. Nor does it have a nice and easy ramp to get to it, just steps. For all I know the lack of…
-
Day 13: Islay
First full day on Islay, an island of whisky, peat, and history. We did a bit of all three. We kicked off the day at Ardbeg, a distillery currently thriving but went through some challenging times through the 1970s to the late 1990s. Last time I was here they had not long restarted distilling, and I bought a bottle of their Very Young for about 25 pounds. I’ve had a lot of Ardbeg since then, of many expressions, and while I’ve enjoyed some more than others I’ve never had one that I haven’t found something good in. I’ve also never had an Ardbeg like the 4 that I tasted today.…
-
Vietnam the third: day 19, Singapore
Our last full day in Singapore, and, weirdly enough, according to our various step trackers, our most walked day of the trip. We kicked off with the Gardens by the Bay, that wonderful Singapore landmark with the crazy artistically fake trees that you see in all the tourist videos. Our rideshare driver taking us there was a hoot, had lots of interesting knowledge to share, including apparently Singapore has a bit of a fresh chicken shortage at the moment, due to borders opening and closing with Malaysia, which is affecting the quality of that Singaporean icon, Hainanese chicken rice. Singapore’s main source of chicken now is Indonesia, which is great…
-
Vietnam the third: day 17, Singapore
It’s kinda weird to be back in a place where people speak English, signs are in English, cars drive on the left all the time, intersections are controlled, people queue in an orderly fashion, yet at the same time looks and feels foreign. Singapore, somewhere I’m yet to spend enough time in to gain anything but a surface understanding of: organised yet still South East Asian; both incredibly multicultural with multiple significant minority populations, yet to a degree lacking integration with each population having their own little enclave, and it seems that the upper-echelons are confined to a single group; a somewhat progressive country yet also quite conservative. The contradictions…
-
Day 22: Hoi An we’re flying
Sitting in the business class lounge at Changi’s terminal 3, we’re half way home. One more flight, one more lot of customs, one more car ride and that’s it. Our own house, out own beds, doing our own washing and cleaning. Three weeks doesn’t seem like a long time in the whole scheme of things, and there are times when it certainly feels longer than others. It’s been a great trip, but we’re also glad to be heading home. Today started way too early, we had a car to the airport booked for 8am, so of course we slept badly. From around 6am there was music coming in from somewhere,…
