Road trip in the Balkans - part 8

My arrival in Poljanak was a bit early today. But I felt a little tired from lack of good sleep the last two nights. My right leg and right shoulders were pulling me at night, and I woke up in the middle of the night both times. After taking a paracetamol, I fell asleep again.

This afternoon I almost took a nap, but then decided to arrange and prepare some stuff. I also took the opportunity to sort out my day's photos. 

The cat jumped on my lap and stayed there a while

Road trip in the Balkans - part 7

Either I need to listen better, or I need to think better of the latter day's discussions, because I ended up on a gravel road again. After turning my bike around twice on a narrow hilly dirt track, I decided enough was enough and drove back to Gorazde. There was a point in leaving early. It's cooler.

Road trip in the Balkans - part 6

Now you will tell me, but what about the heat. You say it's hot quite a lot, but you still drive around on your motorcycle. Are you just plain old nuts or what ?

Gear drying after the day's driving is done

Road trip in the Balkans - part 5

After a couple of days with only picture sharing, here I come again with an article.

Bunk'Art Tiranë, meeting hall

Road trip in the Balkans - part 4

As soon as I left the port town of Igoumenitsa behind me, I started feeling that my adventure had begun. I was driving in a northeastly direction towards the hills, and finally, the border town of Kakavijë.

In northewestern Greece

Road trip in the Balkans - part 3

I woke up at 8, had breakfast, packed my things with stuff I wanted to use in the backpack, forgot the cold pack in the freezer, packed the bags on the bike and headed off to the port about 3 minutes away. I had to circle around a coupe of times to get over the roads and structures. 

Latest check in time was 10:30. Not knowing how much queue I was going to find, I decided to be there early enough. I must have been there around 9 or 9:15. The I was directed to go towards the pier 13 to wait flow embarkation which by then already was about one or two hours late. 

Road trip in the Balkans - part 2

The first leg of the trip was going to be mostly highway, autoroute or autostrada in the local languages. 

I had asked a friend to sleep over in Bex on Thursday evening, but he ended up having an afterwork so I decided to sleep in my own bed before leaving, which probably was the better choice anyway, given my current quality of sleep. 

In the morning I packed the final items, like my pyjamas and some food from the fridge. I ate a healthy and full breakfast consisting of a lamb yogurt, granola and fruits mixed up. I thought I'd be good for most of the day with that. 

Road trip in the Balkans - part 1

My trip was due the following day and I was still thinking about the items to pack and take with me. It was Thursday July 13th and it was quite hot. But I was still in shorts then.

I went outside to swap space between my car and my motorcycle, so that the car would be parked adequately during my absence. The grass underneath where it was of the paved space was long dead. 

Something must have enticed me to do this, because when I tried to start the bike, there was only a slight nagging engine sound coming from it. I got it quickly: the battery was dead. Well, with all the thinking I did about going or not with my leg hurting (sciatic issue for two months now) and my sleep going from bad to worse, it started to get a little messy in my head. Am I really going to subject myself to more hardship, knowing that I will pay for it dearly with being more tired for weeks thereafter? 

Indonesia recap and mountain hiking in Switzerland

It's been a while since I wrote a real post. The last during my first days of my trip in Indonesia was done from my mobile, which is a pain to write long texts on.

After reaching Brünnihütte from Engelberg

Travel within

Quote

“East, West, South or North makes little difference. No matter what your destination, just be sure to make every journey, a journey within. If you travel within, you’ll travel the whole wide world and beyond.”

Elif Shafak, The Forty Rules of Love

Bagan, Burma, 2018

Eastern Europe trip by train

This article is more about the discoveries and the people met during the trip. Less about the trains.

Yeah, that's a train ride alright. In Bulgaria. Shaky.

Interrail in the Balkans

This time, I thought, let's try something new.

So after quite a lot of evaluating and contradicting, I finally gave in and bought an Interrail Global Pass for two weeks consecutive. This means, I could ride trains every day using all the Interrail member companies for two weeks. There are plenty of different types of passes: single country, multiple days in a definite time span, etc. The most common thing they have, is that they are not valid in your country of residence, except for going out and coming back in once (only for some passes). I chose a global pass because I wanted to cover multiple countries and wanted to cover the way out of and back into Switzerland.

Diving in the Red Sea - Golden Triangle

Diving in the Red Sea was an exceptional experience the first time, so I decided to go again, on a different trip, during my off month in-between jobs.

Needless to say, it was another exceptional experience.

Romania 2018

So I went to the airport one train earlier than scheduled. You never know, quite a few have been cancelled in the last few weeks. It was running late a few minutes, as was the airport connection in Geneva. So far, so good.

The man in the chair

A text composed while sitting in a road-side café in Nyaungshwe.

Diving in the Read Sea

It was my first time in Egypt, my first dive in the Red Sea and my first live-aboard diving cruise. I went there in June 2017.

The luxury of the boat struck me from the first moment when I set foot on it.
Seeing the boats next to it, with their small kit-up spaces for the divers, the impression of having made a good choice only grew.

A wedding (or two) in India

Taj Mahal

What I kept repeating to local people, is that I was quite astonished that India was not at all like I expected it to be. And people told me that they knew the world had a bad image of India. After seeing movies like Slumdog Millionaire and hearing a lot about the overwhelming poverty in India, I arrived there positively surprised.

The Philippine Islands - Part III

El Nido was again rainy as in rain season. But this was also because it was not only rainy season but also typhoon season. We had a typhoon sweeping by over Manila towards Japan rippling some rainy effects upon us.

The view from Aquanaut and Camembert rocking the rain

The Philippine Islands - part II

In Puerto we stayed in Villa Travelista Travel Lodge, a small homestay type of accommodation run by the family living there. We stayed there for two nights with the husband and wife and their latest daughter. If I remember well, they had 4 daughters and maybe even a son. Two of the daughters were Miss Palawan at least. The latest was more interested in watching TV at home. The lodge is located out of tourist's way. I quite enjoyed it, although it was full of mosquitoes.

The Philippine Islands - part I

What about the Philippines? Not much to say, except that it's a great country, with great people (is it me, or do I say that about almost any country I visit?).

Despite planning the trip in the wrong season due to heavy rains, we had a blast. Being low season as well as rainy season, we could negotiate good deals for transport and accommodation.

Our plan was very simple: we had none.