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Day 7: Inverness, Culloden, Dufftown, Speyside
“A short trip to Dufftown”, words that will live in infamy almost as long as the Duke of Cumberland’s orders of “No quarter” at Culloden. Travelling with a member of Clan Donald, a visit to the battlefield of Culloden was on the itinerary. You won’t get a history lesson here, as a chunk of what I know is derived from reading the Dr Who novelisation of The Highlanders as a pre-teen. The visitor centre was a decent experience, more balanced than I expected, but I guess we’ve got to a point in time where we can interpret events like this with a more nuanced view, looking at world context, the…
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Day 6: Glasgow – Inverness
Writing this two days behind, while G, who has been part of the team keeping me up drinking some quality drams, complains that I’m not up to date. Last morning in Glasgow was uneventful, I did the usual wake up too early so was left with a bit of time to wait before I could check out of my room (they only had part-time reception and wanted to make sure I checked out properly). Turns out no one turned up at 9am so ended up lugging my bag in one hand up Bath St and calling them to let them know I was checking out. Met the gang at the…
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Days 4: Frankfurt-London-Glasgow
Early start in Frankfurt, as my flight to London was a 7am departure. I figured if I got to Frankfurt Hbf a little after 5am I’d be fine. It took me a little while longer than expected to get everything together, not helped by a crap night attempting to sleep while my brain kept poking me to make sure I didn’t oversleep and miss the flight, so I got the the station around 5.15am, still a comfortable amount of time in theory. I hadn’t accounted for the happens-more-often-than-expected thing that German trains sometimes do run late. Germans will joke about this, crazy as the concept seems. So I board the…
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Day 0: Hello transit my old friend…
So it begins, another trip, another opportunity to see the wonders of the world. This one may well end with a blown out liver or blown out ears, we shall see. Welcome again to the world’s least read travel blog, the random ramblings of a semi-entitled white guy who should know better than try to make sense of anything, let alone anything different or cultural. But that’s where we’re at. It’s looking to be a very “white” trip this time, taking in a little of Germany, a chunk of Scotland, and a swerve through the Netherlands. First world problems all the way. Expected highlights of this trip are expected to…
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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…
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Mambo de la luna: Day 1+, the longest day
I’m a little bit north of the Aleutian Islands, a little south of the Bering Strait, the International Date Line is possibly somewhere below me, and am just over halfway through the longest flight of my life. And not just my life, many lives, as I’m on what is currently the longest non-stop commercial flight in the world, heading from Singapore to Newark, approximately 16,700 km. It’s been a while between trips, and without going into it, between KL and now I have just been working far too hard. This is just to put things in perspective: I’m way out of practice at putting my thoughts into words, so apologies…
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Day 3: Little India and a lot of walking
Sometimes I really suck at this travelling thing. Those who’ve travelled with me will know that I can be prone to indecision when it comes to picking a place to eat, so that a small hunger pang can often be a tired and hangry by the time I do find somewhere that’s just right. And I’m only marginally picky: I usually want somewhere that isn’t a chain or franchise, is serving a local cuisine, and looks like it won’t give me some sort of internal upset. This morning I ended up walking way too far, got way too hangry, and missed breakfast entirely. I did discover a bunch of interesting…
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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,…
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Day 14: Hanoi, a noisy day
By the time I finish this post it’ll have gone midnight at home, banishing 2017 and starting 2018. Hanoi, an hour behind, will still be partying, the streets below will still be packed with revellers, and fireworks yet to start. The bit I’m still not sure about is that Vietnam has it’s own lunar new year, this year it’s 16 February, yet they are certainly turning it all on tonight. There are huge stages set up, lots of events, streets around the main lake are closed to traffic (other than little electric cars driven by kids, and I thought dodging scooters was bad enough). I just hope that when Tet…
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[NY Day 7ish] World Fantasy Convention part 2
WFC Day 3 Brought to you by a travel grant from the Western Australian Department of Culture and the Arts. There’s no hiding from it: the dealer room this year is quiet. Too quiet. The talk around the room is that it’s among the quietest ever. It’s not that people aren’t buying, more that people just aren’t coming into the room to browse. I’m told that this con has full attendance, so around 1,000, but I’v seen busier rooms at cons of 200. The crazy part of the low sales is that, comparatively, we’re doing okay. We’ve sold out of a couple of titles that started with 6 or so…
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[NY Day 4] World Fantasy Convention part 1
Day 1 of the World Fantasy Convention, brought to you by a grant from the Western Australian Department of Culture and the Arts. Itwould be fair to say that I was alittle slow this morning. Late night + alcohol + early morning = not the best start. It toof a full breakfast, with extra bacon and a very deep bottomless coffee to bring me to some semblance of life. Day 1 of the convention was a little slow in trading, but was marked by higher value sales. We sold almost all of the limited edition hardcovers I packed, making me wish I’d paced a few more. Sales of the standard…
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[NY Day 3] Heading upstate
Today’s the heading out of NYC to Saratoga Springs Day. Go north young man and all that. I didn’t necessarily feel so young dragging all my suitcases across the road to Penn Station, and through the crowds to where I had to board. When it comes to finding and boarding cross country trains, I think the UK does it better: their stations are better sign posted, and platforms are more easily found. I managed to walk past the right queue while I was looking for where I had to go, because a random queue next to an escalator going down doesn’t immediately say “this is where I board the train”…
