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

The winter in Berlin was unusually snowy. We normally don’t get much snow, or when we do, it melts quickly. This year winter looked exactly like winter is supposed to look like. The photos are from Grunewald forest, one of largest and forested parks in Berlin, between the Havel lakes and the western suburbs. At…

Spreewald (river Spree forest) is a large region in Brandenburg, southeast of Berlin. The river Spree widens into a maze of small rivers and canals in the forest. There are a few villages where small hand-rowed boats run tours, or kayaks are rented. It’s incredibly scenic and calm. Most families here have lived in the…

Saale and Unstrut are rivers in Sachsen-Anhalt, a few hours southwest from Berlin. The main city is Naumburg, best known for its Unesco-listed cathedral. From here, the countryside with its vineyards and numerous castles can be explored by bicycle. We even brought a tent to extend our range.… Read the rest

Southwest from Berlin, a short train ride away, is the town of Beelitz with its Heilstätten hospital. It’s like a lost place, except that they have built a skywalk over it and do tours. Trees now grow in buildings and on partially collapsed roofs, and much of the facilities are open to the public. In…

This blog is about traveling in Asia, but Corona makes travel abroad impractical, as my difficulties escaping Bangladesh have demonstrated. So I’ll be traveling in the EU for a while, where I cannot get stuck. First was Sczczecin (German: Stettin) in western Poland, close to the Baltic Sea. It’s a pleasant city, beautifully restored yet…

I have visited most east Asian countries, but not Bangladesh. Dhaka, the capital, is the most crowded, busy, and poor place I have ever been to. The old town is a maze of winding alleys, packed with colorful rickshaws and crowds of people. It was so crowded in some places that I could not move,…

Final stop Bangkok. Good place to replace the polarizing filter I broke a few days ago. Bangkok is into refrigerated malls bigtime, perhaps no surprise in hot and humid tropical weather. Traffic somehow managed to become even more dysfunctional than last year, and pedestrians have no rights even at zebra crossings and the rare pedestrian…

To hours west of banglok is a historic village that shows life in Thailand at the time of King Rama IV. The entrance is a wooden covered bridge with rows of stalls on both sides. Everywhere are costumed people doing period things, like theshing rice, and selling period products. They even have their own old…

Hua Hin, the beach town favored by the Thai Kings… I fondly remember a sleepy white city with wide boulevards and sandy beaches, where a rickshaw once took me to the train station. Well, no more. It’s a crowded mess of traffic and tangled power lines, and the beaches are mostly private and difficult reach.…

Ko Payam is one of the northernmost Thai islands off the west coast. It’s a little difficult to reach, which may be the reason why it hasn’t really been discovered yet except by Westerners who spend the winter here. No hordes of tourists, no fancy hotels, just a few quiet beach resorts. There isn’t much…

Change of scenery… I am following the sun and went to Ko Lanta. That’s an island south of the tourist epicenter of Phuket and Ko Phi Phi, and far quieter than these. The beach resorts are widely spaced along its west coast, and it’s all sand and not paved. To get there I had to…

It happened that the hall of the my chosen villa was full of French and Quebecois people, including a couple who live nearby. They know all the best restaurants so we got on a flock of motorbikes and had an excellent lunch. Much of the afternoon we stayed at their place, a big house filled…

I seem to be having a lot of connectivity issues… Catching up. Diving on Gili Air, and enjoying the mellow atmosphere of the island that is so sadly missing on Gili T. Then on to a couple more days on Bali – but not in those frenetic southern towns, but in a villa out in…

The idea was to head east, but since the weather is turning rainy (and tropical rain means serious business) and the forecast east is just awful, I am turning west. When my connections didn’t work out and I got stuck in Lombok for many hours, my moto driver turned out to be a professional guide…

It takes time to reach Sumbawa – a boat from the Gilis to Lombok, the crossing Lombok to a harbor on the other side, then a ferry to Sumbawa. I arrived at the Yoyo’s Resort at 2 o’clock at night, after many hours in a very crowded minivan. A guy with a flashlight was waiting…

The Gilis are three small islands off the coast of Lombok,a few hours east of Bali. All three were badly hit by a magnitude-7.2 earthquake seven months ago. All cement structures collapsed, no building on the beach survived, and all three islands had to be completely evacuated. But now you can barely tell. There are…

Nusa Penida is another island near Bali, easily reachable from Lembongan. But the infrastructure is virtually nonexistent. A few villages, a few deeply rutted roads running up and down steep hills, and almost no people. Motorcycles are the best way to get around. The views down from the limestone cliffs and and a deep lake…

Plenty of dive centers on Lembongan. The highlight is Manta Point, a place some 15 meters under water where mantas come for cleaning. It’s essentially a big manta car wash where mantas wait in line, slowly circling, for their turn to be cleaned by several types of small fish. So you hove there and watch…

Off the south-eastern coast of Bali are three small islands, Nusa Lembongan, Nusa Ceningan, and Nusa Penida, that are said to be like Bali was 20 years ago / will be the next Bali. Quiet villages, white beaches, people who have time, no traffic, and no concrete resorts anywhere. From Bali’s Sanur harbor, Lembongan is…

The trouble with revisiting places, years later, is that they invariably have “improved” – more traffic, more noise, more concrete resorts at the beach, and more plastic garbage in the sand and the water. Some hotels have sewer pipes that color the water greenish brown. But people are still as friendly as always, and away…