Vagabonding in Southeast Asia and elsewhere, without plan or destination.

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,…

Sidi Bou Said is a village east of Tunius, the capital of Tunis, easily reachable by light rail. It’s a sparkling white and blue village right at the Mediterranean sea, with great views of the coastline and the sea. Carthage is an ancient kingdom, the archenemy of the Roman republic. Three wars were fought until…

This is the first time after my escape from Bangladesh in March 2020 that I ventured outside the EU. Tunisia is inbnorthern Africa, on the Mediterranean coast roughly south of Italy on the other side. I had to go in early January because I had four unused weeks of vacation left from 2022 and HR…

Rügen is Germany’s largest island, off the northern Baltic Sea coast. It’s a major tourist destination, but it was late in the year and not during school holidays, so it was not crowded. We stayed in the seaside village of Binz for a few days, and visited various other towns by bicycle. Straw-thatched houses are…

Everyone knows the fjords of Norway. The fjords are long, narrow inlets from the Atlantic, bracketed by steep mountains. We went on a boat tour – electric of course! – on the Gudvangen fjord all the way to Flam. Once again, perfect weather. Most of nature here is untouched but there are a few villages…

Bergen is Norway’s second-largest city, after Oslo, It’s the gateway to several very scenic fjords at Norway’s Atlantic coast, but it is a very pleasant place to spend a few days in itself. The fish is fantastic, my best salmon ever. There is a mountain with great views, reachable with a short cable car ride.…

Oslo, like all of the Skandinavian capitals, is a beautiful, well-organized, friendly, exceedingly civilized, and restrained city. Nobody has anything to prove here. It’s a pleasure to stroll through the avenues and streets, enjoy the sights, and relax. They still have a king and queen; their park and parts of the palace are open to…

I spent about two and a half years living in Marseille, at the Mediterranean coast, at the boundary between the Côte d’Azur and the Côte Bleue (which both mean blue coast). Beautiful place, We had no time to hike in the Calanques, the Côte d’Azur’s most stunningly beautiful limestone min-fjords in the mountains at the…

The Luberon is a hilly region in France, southwest of the French Alps. It is stunningly beautiful and captures everything you have read about France except the Eiffel Tower. Very green, ancient villages built from rough rocks, cobblestones, flowers, Lavender. We spent two days traveling to the villages of Lourmarin, Saignon, Roussillon with its ochre…

There hasn’t always been a single pope. On occasion they couldn’t agree who gets the hat and ended up with multiple popes fighting each other. During this period, from 1309 to 1376, when they had up to three popes and they clearly couldn’t all be in Rome, Avignon was a papal seat for seven successive…

There really are remote places on Tenerife. One is around the Taganana mountains in the northeast. Getting there isn’t easy – a bus from Puerto to San Cristóbal, then an hour-long taxi ride up the mountains. The taxi ride was ridiculously cheap so I had to over-tip. The forest is occasionally steep and rugged, with…

Tenerife is a island, one of the Spanish Canary islands, off the Atlantic coast of Morocco. In March, northern Europe is cold, but the Canaries are always warm. Corona isn’t quite over yet so I still don’t want to leave the EU. The south and east coast of Tenerife are very touristy, but the north…

Malta is an island in the Mediterranean sea, between the Italian island of Sicily and the African coast. It is a member state of the EU. Its location was strategic, it controlled trade between the western and eastern Mediterranean. It was under the control of the order of the Knights of Malta, which were involved…

Brelau is in the south of Poland, and rivals it’s more well-known, and much more crowded, neighbor Cracow. Since 2016, when Breslau was culture capital of Europe, a “culture train” connects Breslau to Berlin, with presentations and talks on the train, so it’s easy to reach. Breslau has been completely restored since my first visit…

Another sunny weekend in the winter 20/21, in Little Venice. That’s a neighborhood in the east of Berlin, just east of Berlin’s largest lake, the Müggelsee. It’s called Little Venice because it’s built on a system of canals, all houses have direct water access. It was unusually cold this year so most rivers and lakes…