Cambodia was one of the earliest countries to reopen without quarantine in Southeast Asia, and I just so happened to need to do a visa run from Thailand. That was enough reason to pay an overdue revisit to Phnom Penh. This trip to Phnom Penh was in December 2020, and I saw in the new […]
Notes on Ko Samet – The closest beach-break island from Bangkok
Ko Samet is an island on the Eastern Gulf Coast of Thailand, approximately 220 kilometres southeast of Bangkok. It’s technically not the closest island to Bangkok, but it’s the closest nice island to Bangkok (and much nicer than the closest beach to Bangkok). It’s this proximity that has made Ko Samet synonymous with boatloads of […]
The desolation of Khao San Road
Khao San Road is the famous backpacker street of Bangkok. This road and surrounding streets is the budget travel hub of Southeast Asia. In normal times it is a spectacle like no other place in the world. When the Covid-19 virus reduced travel to a trickle in March 2020, Thailand closed its borders to international […]
Notes on Bangkok – Thailand’s cautious reopening
On November 1 2021 Thailand reopened international travel with the Test and Go scheme. This system offered entry for select international arrivals with one day quarantine before being allowed to travel freely in the country. I waited a month for the system to be running before returning, and these are my notes from one month […]
Notes on Dubai – Expo 2020, South Asia food paradise, Dubai Marina, Palm Jumeirah and more
Dubai is a place I’ve wanted to spend more time in to have a proper look around, so I got that chance in November 2021. I have been to Dubai twice before on brief stopovers. Both of those visits were in the summer when the city is practically uninhabitable (45c days), and a one day […]
Notes on Istanbul
“Why did I take so long to come back?!” This is what I exclaimed to myself after my refamiliarisation wander through the streets of Istanbul. The last time I was here was in 2013, and I think I said the same thing after returning from my first visit in 2011. My original plan was to […]
Notes on Tirana
Tirana is the capital city of Albania, and it has a population of about half a million in a country of about 2.8 million. A small city in a small country, and yet I felt compelled to spend two weeks here without knowing much about it. I arrived at the bus station outside of the […]
Notes on Coastal Montenegro – Bar, Budva, Tivat, and Kotor
Montenegro is positioning itself as a destination for digital nomads, and it was until recently offering citizenship through investment. It has since scrapped this program in order to prepare to apply for EU membership. It already uses the Euro, so it already feels like its on the way. Most international interest in Montenegro is along […]
Notes on Podgorica – From provincial outpost to nation’s capital
Podgorica is one of the world’s youngest capital cities. Its relative youth as a seat of power goes some way to explaining why Podgorica feels more like a provincial outpost than the nation’s capital. Montenegro became a new country in 2008 after seceding from the union of Serbia and Montenegro. During that time, Belgrade was […]
Notes on Sarajevo
Sarajevo is the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and apart from the siege, the assassination, and the Winter Olympics, I didn’t know much about the city. For my generation, the name Sarajevo is probably as synonymous with conflict as Saigon is for a Boomer. I visited Sarajevo without researching what to see so I could […]
