Author: thomas

I have lived and worked here for many years, and I always enjoy visiting again. Due to an orange president and Covid it’s been seven years since my last visit, way too long! Much has been built in those years that is new to me, like the leaning tower and other highrises downtown. The historic…

The British have Dover, Ireland has the cliffs of Moher, an hour’s bus ride from Galway. The area is very sparsely populated, with a few small villages and remote farms, and small castles that dot the coast. Lots of sheep though, it is said that there are three times as many sheep as people in…

Kerry is an Irish county in the southwest. Lots of rugged coastline with fjords and small villages, and Ireland’s highest mountain at 1000m. For once, the weather was excellent (by Irish standards) – some rain in the morning but later mostly sunny at a sweltering 17 degrees C.… Read the rest

This is one of the top attractions in Ireland, a short bus ride from Cork. It was built in 1446 in the most impractical way possible. It’s very tall, and most rooms are small and stacked atop each other. There are two very narrow and steep spiral staircases. It’s all exceedingly gloomy and medieval. You’d…

This town does not only have a super Irish name, it’s also very pretty and feels much more Irish than the big cities. Pubs everywhere, with doors and interiors painted black and bright red, locals who have clearly had too much Guiness, and very few tourist shops. If only there were fewer cars clogging the…

Since Northern Ireland is part of the UK, I expected an ID check, but there was no such thing on arrival in the train station. They do control access to the platform though, and the seat displays show the name of the booked passenger. The Irish were always applying EU privacy regulations loosely. Belfast has…

Mission accomplished – I have officially been to all 27 EU member countries now. Dublin is the capital of Ireland. It’s cool and cloudy; Irelandbis known as the Green Island and that means it rains a lot. It’s a surprisingly compact city with a limited number of sights, like Dublin Castle and St. Patrick’s cathedral.…

Ivan of Rila needed time to himself back in the middle of the tenth century, so he became a hermit in a mountain cave near Rila. That attracted acolytes and soon the cave became a little crowded so they founded a monastery nearby. In the 19th century this grew into a huge complex with a…

Plovdiv is Bulgaria’s second-largest city after Sofia, two hours by bus and three by train. Depending on whom you believe, it’s been settled 4000 or 8000 years ago. The Thrakians were here, the Romans (who left two amphitheaters of course), the Ottomans and apparently everyone in between. It’s very green with many beautiful and lush…

First time in Bulgaria! I am on a mission to see all EU member countries and two were missing on my list. The capital, Sofia, is quite impressive. Very green, with beautiful side streets shadowed by huge old trees and churches and sculptures everywhere. Not so much the spotless gentrified buildings that you find in…

Back home now, sorting my photos. Got much better manta videos:… Read the rest

My return to Asia was brief but wonderful, modulo Bali’s traffic on the last day. Covid is just a memory now, Indonesia at least is open and welcoming visitors. I’ll be back! I write this in the departure lounge of Denpasar Airport. The picture above is actually a swing over the beach in Lombok, I…

Can’t put it off any longer, my vacation is nearly over and I need to get back to Bali. I don’t like Bali much. The Gilis have no motor vehicles; Lembongan has scooters; Bali is an unmitigated traffic hell. It’s so packed with scooters and cars that scooters sprint on sidewalks to get ahead. But…

My reason to return to Lembongan, and in fact Indonesia, is diving with mantas. There is a place south of Nusa Penida where mantas come to get cleaned by cleaner fish, which even enter the mantas’ mouth to remove remains of food and parasites. The mantas patiently wait their turn. However, mantas cannot stop in…

Nusa Lembongan has a mangrove forest in the northeast. The trees trunks are not rooted in the ground, but sit on a dense tangle of air roots that filter the water below. They run boat tours there; I found a tour guide with a boat on Lembongan’s sparsely populated north coast. Quite unlike the mangroves…

Time to get back into Bali’s neighborhood. Nusa Penida is the largest of the small islands east of Bali, and the least developed. I had previously visited its southern attractions like stunningly beautiful Kelingking Beach – I’ll include a photo I took in 2019 below – but now I wanted to check out the northern…

Gili Meno is a small amoeba-shaped island between Gili Air and Gili T. It’s the quietest of the three. The map shows a road that follows the shore, but it’s really just the beach and occasionally a sandy trail. Most relaxed road ever. They put some planks on the deep spots so the horse buggies…

Last day on Lombok, as usual visiting waterfalls. They have a lot of those on the slopes of the Rinjani volcano. The attraction is not just the water, but also the trek through the jungle to get there. This one, in the Geopark Rinjani, is exceptionally hilly, my poor guide (who cannot drink water due…

The southeast of Lombok is a peninsula with many perfect beaches that somehow no-one, not the tourists and not the developers, have discovered yet. There is almost nobody there. Maybe it’s the single narrow road with problematic pavement, but elsewhere such things get fixed with a four-lane freeway in no time. Well, I enjoyed it…

This was supposed to be an easy walk to a nearby waterfall, in the foothills of the Rinjani volcano. It turned out to be a hair-raising trek on steep hillsides, on slippery bamboo walkways high above the water with more gaps than steps, big wet boulders, and through streams, all in a narrow dark and…

Lombok is the next large island to the east of Bali. The Gili islands are just small specks right off its coast. A small boat got me across, and the driver whom I had booked was waiting for me. I had previously been to the touristy west and south coasts of Lombok, but never to…

There are a number of reefs north of the Gilis known for their abundance of turtles. They are huge, nearly a meter long, and some have cleaner fish attached to their backs. Lots of other wildlife, lionfish, muraines, sea cucumbers, clownfish, and more. Walked to the more remote parts of the island, had lunch at…

Gili Air is full of demon refugees from Bali and its near islands. You see, tomorrow the demons will inspect Bali to look for people. So if everyone stays home and there is nobody to be seen, the demons will be disappointed and leave the island for another year. Balinese demons are not very bright.…

The Gilis are three small islands off the coast of Lombok, the next large island to the east of Bali. Gili Trawangan is the party island, Gili Meno is boring, and Gili Air is the perfect balance between the two. The boat takes three hours and was packed, due to the demon situation on Bali.…

There are coral reefs all around the islands, some shallow and some on walls that fall off steeply. Global warming is bleaching corals everywhere, but here they are still mostly intact. There is a strong current, it’s like idly watching the sea life from a moving walkway. We stayed mostly in shallow waters, much of…

Finally, after three years of Corona, I am properly back in Asia! Back home we still occasionally get snow at night but here it’s 30+ degrees C. The taxi driver who took me from Bali’s Airport to the ferry harbor knew what snow is but has never seen it. I felt his hesitating curiosity at…

Monastir is a tourist town at the sea close to the center of Tunisia. It’s known for its Ribat, an enormous fortress, and for being the birthplace of modern Tunisia’s first president, Habib Bourguiba. There is plenty to see here for a day; exploring the endless ramparts, tunnels, casemates, and exhibitions in the Ribat takes…

Tunis is the capital of Tunisia. I ran out of my all-inclusive hotel and got myself a hotel in the old town of Tunis, the El Jeld. This turned out to be a true palace, with courtyard gardens, mosaic rooms that would make a mosque proud, rooftop terraces, and a quite good restaurant. Food in…

Bizerte is a harbor town at the northern tip of Tunisia, two hours north of Tunis. I got myself a taxi to take me there and back. Like everywhere in Tunisia, it seems that every available space is filled with markets, covered or out on the streets. They also have a fort on a hill,…