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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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7NNT25: Day 37 – Singapore & home
Soundtrack: anything and everything by Lady Gaga; “Without a Trace”, Soul Asylum “Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,Do not go gentle into that good night.” — Dylan Thomas Figured I’d mix up the quote, as I know I tend to use the opening from Sylvia Plath’s “Two Lovers and a Beachcomber by the Real Sea” at the end of trips a fair bit. I’m writing this from the relative comfort of my home, over a day after arriving back in Noongar Boodjar, a contented dog snoring softly beside me. I say “relative comfort” as, after 5 weeks…
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7NNT25: Day 36 – Singapore & Monsterville
Soundtrack: “The Edge of Glory”, Lady Gaga Today is the most important day of the trip, because today I had laksa. Noodle 13: Katong Laksa (Sungei Road Laksa) Right or wrong, I’ve always considered laksa to be more of a malay/indonesian dish, so have not had it in Singapore (despite Singapore’s malay heritage, yeah, I know, I never said I thought everything through) but today I decided to change that. After reading several lists of the best laksa in Singapore, I found a place within walking distance of my hotel that is claimed to do some of the best laksa around. There’s no menu, all they do is laksa, though…
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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 34 – Singapore
Soundtrack: “Hotel Womb”, The Church While my last few days in Singapore were still fairly active, they weren’t nearly as exciting individually as the rest of the trip for at least a couple of reasons: it’s my 5th time here, so there’s less of the novel experiences to be had; and after close to 35 days living out of the same suitcase, the same 5 or 6 days’ worth of clothes, I was feeling a bit fatigued. I’m beginning to think there’s a pattern, where once my mind knows I’m in the last place before home, all of the energy reserves that I’ve been running on start to deplete, and…
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7NNT: Day 33 – Singapore
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 coin operated DIY facility, it’s sad that it’s come to this, no option to just hand my bag and some money to someone else, this load was all on me. Being Singapore, the coin laundry was clean, everything worked, there was a coin change machine, and the washing machines dispensed…
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7NNT25: Day 29 – Hong Kong
Soundtrack: “Kong Foo Sing”, Regurgitator Monday, time to wander, eat, shop. I’m not sure when the last time I managed close to 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep on this trip, but last night my body got the memo and came to the slumber party. I still felt tired when I work, but less tired than some mornings, maybe it was all the sichuan pepper coursing through my veins. I was alert enough this morning that breakfast was a no-brainer, and I chose a different place a little further away from the hotel that was similarly reviewed. I think it’s a travel dilemma: do you go to the same place again…
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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 21 – Manila
Soundtrack: “Abracadabra”, Lady Gaga The day started slowly, as I was still feeling the effects of the hike. I figured I should get out of the hotel room for at least a while, so after reading about the Legazpi Sunday Market, got a Grab and headed out. At this point it seems my bank with the nice card that refunds international transaction fees has developed issues with Grab, so I spent some time arguing with the app before choosing the cash option. Figured I’d be able to sort later. Legazpi Sunday Market isn’t huge, but has a bunch of great food options as well as some shops selling bits and…
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7NNT25: Day 19 – Manila
Soundtrack: “Don’t Stand So Close to Me”, The Police Bit of a catchup time, am pushing out a couple of days at the same time. We’ll see how it goes. Manila. It’s a big, tall, loud city. From my 9th floor hotel room I can hear all the sounds of Malati, cars, horns, scooters, trucks, people, machinery. I truly sympathise with any introvert who lives in this city, as it’s not a city for quiet spaces. My main mission for Day 19 (Friday 2 May) was to find the Australian Embassy and vote. I was still unsure of how Saturday would work with the booked tour, so to be safe…
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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 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 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 3
One day I’ll be too old to be standing on a couch in a drag bar next to a transgender cheering on drag queens at 1.30am. For better or worse, that time is yet to come. For all of the multitude of wrong that is the Hard Rock Cafe, the Singapore establishment has been hosting a regular Saturday night drag performance Riot! for some time. For 2-3 hours they close the main area and let Becca D’Bus and other queens take over the stage (while there are still diners upstairs, who are probably wondering what they’ve walked into).I’d booked a seat in the “nice” area, far enough back from the…
