I only realised just how damp Hanoi was when I arrived in Bangkok and opened my suitcase and everything felt soft and moist. I draped all my belongings all over the flat, and thanks to the heatwave it didn’t take too long. Well I suppose I should have realised it – my hat, bought in […]
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Unimpressed
With the great burden of my life these days being the GF’s arrant vegetarianism, I decided to do something unprecedented and signed up for a food tour. There is an entire industry of these in Hanoi, but the one I picked was one of the oldest and definitely the most expensive, with ecstatic accounts in […]
Water
The GF and I met at the baggage claim in Hanoi after rather a long time apart. Our flights came together, as did our luggage, and so we left for our flat together. The flat is in an old workers’ dormitory on the edge of the French Quarter. It is just by a busy road […]
Longing for laksa
Took a car down to an old haunt, to Limapulo in Chow Kit, which was once a step away from my flat. I arrived just as it opened and placed my favourite order, a bowl of their nyonya laksa with barley water. There were were any number of other things I’d have liked to have […]
Ill-gotten gains
Met someone who works in the palm oil industry and is very dismissive about biodiversity loss – not that it’s unimportant but that it doesn’t happen. Not so sure myself. They had just returned from a reception hosted by a major European palm oil user and returned with two large gift bags full of their […]
Back to Bangsar
Went there for a quick lunch with my host, an excellent dosa and average ice cream. It looked more or less the same, did Bangsar, though I got a bit confused as we approached it from a different direction. The old DVD shop is long gone, I’m sure, but I couldn’t work out where it […]
Hornbill
It was a very busy Sunday. We were supposed to go for dosas, but I kept having meetings piling up, from an early morning one which needed over an hour of post-meeting work, onwards. I didn’t get to really leave the room except for meals. I fell asleep working, woke up long enough to turn […]
Back to KLCC
This afternoon, my hosts drove me down to KLCC, itself a dislocating experience as we, the GF and I, went about it on foot so nothing seemed quite recognisable, even aside from the five years away. The Petronas towers themselves were instantly familiar though – among my favourite, perhaps my favourite skyscrapers, and well positioned […]
Back to KL
I landed at 3.15 in the morning at KLIA2, which in itself was unfamiliar as these early morning arrivals had always, in the past, been to KLIA on my trips back from Pakistan. Familiarity returned, though, with the passage through immigration, collecting the luggage (as always arriving commendably fast) and walking out of the terminal […]
Bush walking
Well, that is not quite accurate. This morning I went off with one of my hosts to the botanical garden where we had a pleasant lunch and then strolled around through all the different Australian ecosystems, from a small, red outback bit to various eucalyptus/gum tree forests, to a ravine which was a rainforest. Extremely […]