-
Five flavours: Day 14 Chiang Mai
Soundtrack: “It’s Raining Men”, The Pointer Sisters One of the inconvenient things about going to the tropics during the rainy season is that, well, it will almost certainly rain. Totally inconvenient, who would have known that would happen. So, believe it or not, today it rained. In Thai food heat levels, it rained a little bit. It wasn’t tropical monsoonal downpour heavy, mostly just a drizzle or slightly above — I don’t know how to describe it in meteorological terms, it was less than the rain in a hard boiled detective novel, but more than a fine mist rolling over the moors. I managed to book the hotel breakfast, and…
-
No Tour: Naarm Day 1
Soundtrack: “Under the Clocks”, Weddings Parties Anything / “Reward” Teardrop Explodes Not really a tour, just a couple of days in Naarm/Melbourne to wander, shop, and celebrate old pals turning older. The day started in Perth, way too early, as I was on the 6am flight. As per usual I slept badly, but these days I have a monitoring bracelet/smart watch to give me a second opinion on this: it scored me a 57 “needs attention”. I’m taking that as it saying my sleeping needs to be better, rather than it being otherwise really shady. I’m likely to catch enough shade from the old friends, I don’t need a portable…
-
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…
-
7NNT-Day 0: Prep
Lagman, shivit oshi, khao soi, pho, banh canh, pancit, jook-sing, laksa, hor fun. It’s time to travel again. Case is packed, I know where my passports are, a new playlist has been synced to my venerable ipod mini, and the world awaits. Uzbekistan, Thailand, Viet Nam, Philippines, Hong Kong, Macau, and Singapore, 5 weeks of sun, fun, walking, touring, sweating, drinking, and of course, eating. Some of these places I’ve been before (this is my 5th time in Viet Nam) while others are completely new and unknown, places I’ve only seen on maps, or read about, or, in the case of the first stop, gone from almost zero knowledge to…
