I came to Europe via Finnair this year as usual. This year’s transit was in Seoul. I worked late the night before – replying to all emails, finalising jobs as much as I could and posting my timesheet, so i slept so well in the flight to Seoul and also the first half of my flight to Helsinki. When I woke up, I was very surpruised to see this flying route

What on earth happened? The plane was heading to Alaska first, crossed the North Pole then headed down to Helsinki – this was an interesting route.

From Helsinki to Asia was once a shortcut – for some reason it’s a lot quicker than other cities, so I know some Germans even travel to Helsinki first rather than taking direct flight. Due to the war, Finnair couldn’t take the Russian route, so the travelling time was a lot longer . Last time when I travelled with Finnair early this year, it took a strange route below Ukraine, not a direct line just to avoid the war zone. But this time it took a step further to North Pole!

Many years ago, when I was travelling with Air China from Beijing to New York, it also took the North Pole route. Not for Russian reason, and I think it crossed Russia. So I guess it was not the first time I went to the North Pole.

In the end I received a certificate from Finnair showing I took the North Route – no name on it of course. It doesn’t even mention the other side of the city, so I guess it can be issued for all Helsinki to Asian flights!

I was on the way to Israel via Bangkok. The original idea was to stay in Bangkok for half a day and see a friend.

So I arrived on Wednesday and then saw Nick, had dinner. Then I went back to the airport. To my surprise, I couldn’t find my flight. I checked again and again, in the end I asked the airport people and realised that my flight was on the second day. So I booked a flight with a transit of 30 hours. This never happened to me. I didn’t plan to do anything and I felt I wasted a day. Also why did the airline allow me to have a stop over of 30 hours? I felt embarrased to be told my the airport staff.

Anyway, if I knew I had a day in Bangkok, I would book a tour to the floating market but I lost the opportunity on the day before, so it’s going to be on my list for the next time if I take a transit in Bangkok.

I had a short holiday in Honolulu over the Australia Day long weekend. I stayed in Waikiki island which was full of tourists and close to everything. I took Uber three times to go to the supermarket and restaurants and I met three Uber drivers.

The first one was a very nice lady. Her car was right next to me when I made the order, so I could not even tell the direction on the map. This lady was from New Jersey and moved to the island five years ago when she retired from a job in Newark Airport. She bought one bedroom flat in Waikiki and worked as a Uber driver. She said she took it easy, started late and finished early, so she would not see those drunkies but all nice tourists. She said people in the island were quite different from the big city, so early today she took an old couple from NY and in order to make some conversation, the gentleman asked her some simple questions, then his wife said: why did not ask those questions if you already knew the answer? Typical New Yorker, the lady driver said, and they made awkward conversations not even behind you, like all old and young people who always do the wrong thing. I laughed hard with her and I thought she had a wonderful retirement.

The second guy was an angry man. He didn’t allow me to touch the boot as someone broke it, then he yelled at the red light as it was too long. Anyway, he was from CA, moved to the island when he was 12. He was running a limo company for tourists but it didn’t not run well at the moment so he had a bit of time to do Uber. He had a bad experience in hiring someone to drive his limo as the employee would not treat the car and the passenger in the way as he did. Despite his busy life, he would go golfing in an hour after dropping me. What a nice island life, I said. Yeah, he laughed.

The third guy was a military guy. I was a bit surprised military people are allowed to have a second job but he said it was common. He moved from Atlanta to the island with the job and then settled here. He would retire in 4 years and he was planning his own charted boat fishing business. Currently he was in the process of getting the captain licence and also studying part time with the support from the government. Everything went so well. He was the first person asking me about the bushfires in Australia and I couldn’t believe someone in the island would care about what happened around the world.

The Uber drivers I see in other cities are mostly Indians who can’t get another job but in this island, all Uber drivers have their stories and they like to share with other people. For me, it’s a great experience to know the island a little bit more.

I recently had trip in Central America, starting from Panama, then Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, and finishing in Cuba. It’s a lovely Christmas time.

Panama and Costa Rica are relatively rich countries in the region so nice food and nice hotel and everything was alright. Once I stepped into Nicaragua on a bus, I could see the difference – there was no infrastructure. Even at the border, there was no road or car park for the bus to stop and pick the passengers. The driver just dropped my backpack to the dirt road for security check. and it seemed fine for everyone. I had a chat with some friends in the hostel and realised for the first time that this country was under dictatorship. Soon I realised this was true when I went to the city and saw a square of Chavez.

I had a particular interest to those countries who maintained the diplomatic relationship with Taiwan. Because of the one China policy, Taiwan does not have many friends in the world without diplomatic tie with China, but there are quite a lot in this region. I had a special visit to Taiwan’s embassy to Nicaragua and Honduras and took some pictures. You know there are only less than 20 embassies in the world, even less than the quantity of Disneyland.

The highlight of the trip was Guatemala. I would like to spend a few years there because of its nature and culture. In this trip, I missed a tour to the volcano as the tour was full. Instead I went to a local football game between Antigua and another club. The level of the game was so so but I liked the passion of the fans. It’s a 10 thousand people stadium without proper seats but most people stood there and watched the game to the end like me, supporting their team. The hosting team lost the game in the end but I will still support it.

Cuba was nice but o be honest I don’t like the idea that people had to pay a lot more than local people for everything. China used to do that in 1980s, so for me it’s so old fashioned, communist and ridiculous. It was an experience, but put it in this way, at least Cuba is not a backpacker friendly place, so bring lots of money before entering the country.

Am I coming back? Yes, I think I will learn a bit more Spanish next time. Also I would like to have more adventures in Guatemala.

The old town of Zagreb was small. The cathedral was very tall and from the hill, there was a very beautiful view of the city. However, there were not many tourists compared to Italy, which was great for me. As it was Christmas I went to the mass in the cathedral. Although I did not understand the language, I really enjoyed the music and the atmosphere. I noticed the top part of the cathedral was under maintenance but probably because no one could figure out how to fix it, they used a painting to cover the tower and it looks like it’s been there for a while.

As a vegetarian, I found it hard to live in this part of the world. There was a kebab restaurant next to the hostel but there was no vegetarian option. Interestingly, there is a veggie option for kebab shops in Australia, but they never refer to the final product as a veggie kebab. Instead, they call it a veggie wrap so that the name of kebab cannot be messed up with non meat stuff. As no supermarkets were open on Christmas Day, I had to buy a beef burger and got rid of the beef by myself to change it to a veggie burger. I remember the situation was the same in Poland or Czech when I was there a few years ago. I don’t complain about it. As it was so cold here in winter, people need the energy from the meat.

One thing I do want to complain is that people have to pay a luggage fee for buses in Croatia. I was surprised when the bus driver asked for cash for my bag. Later I googled and found an article on the website explaining the reason for the fee – they argue this is similar to the extra luggage charged by budget airlines so that people only pay what they need – this is just bullshit as there are a lot places in a bus. Basically, I had to get some Euro coins just for the luggage and most of my other expenses could be paid through credit card. The exception of the luggage fee is the the company called Flex which is associated with MegaBus. Flex had wifi on the bus and the check in was via my mobile phone. I guess Flex was considered as non-budget bus company and much better than the others.

My Yugoslavian trip started from Slovenia. This country was known as the first one to be independent. I was a little surprised as Slovenia was part of European Union and Euro was also used.

I took the bus to Ljubljana but did not know how to pronounce its name. In Milan, the bus driver asked me “where do you want to go”? I said “Slovenia”, he asked “Ljubljana”? I said yes. Then I knew how to pronounce it – sounds awful.

I stayed in the “new” part of the town. My check-in was pretty late and when I woke up in the morning, I found the city was not that pretty. I managed to talk to a Slovenian local. He was not against Yugoslavia but he also emphasised that this country was much better than the other countries. Maybe that was true but I just couldn’t tell.

I went to the old town in the afternoon. The town was small but quite beautiful. I particularly like the dragon bridge which had four dragon statue in each corner of it. There was also a nice fortress according to the map but unfortunately, I did not find the entrance to it, so most of the time I just walked around under the fortress.

I quite liked this Ljubljana as it is nice and small. I bought four persimmons from an “Aldi-like” shop called “Hofer” for lunch and they were delicious. I thought this city set a high standard of the trip, so I hope the following would not disappoint me much.

I finally made my trip to Dubai.

Dubai is built for rich people. The biggest shopping centre Dubai Mall – its gates are all in the car park, so the assumption is you have to have a car to go to the shopping centre. I can probably understand it because walking on the street in Dubai is horrible. There are no shades or grass anywhere. It is so hot to walk around and quite often on the sand directly.

I was lucky to stay at JW during my stay. There was a nice sports bar with big screens at the ground floor. I passed it the other day and saw live different football games on the wall and local people were drinking and chatting. The rich people’s life is nice no matter where they live.

It is a different experience to run in Dubai. They’ve built nice running track along the beach, but no one can run after 8 am during the day because of the heat. I tried to run a few times before the sunrise. It was actually pretty good.

The jetlag was always with me, so I followed Australian time. When the hotel provided the free breakfast, it was my dinner time, so I enjoyed the food a lot – especially after the run.

At one stage I think they should instal a huge aircon to cover the whole city to cool it down and stay away from the sand, but they didn’t, so Dubai is still dusty and hot. Anyway, Dubai is safe and modern, so I don’t mind coming back to visit again, but I don’t think I can live here for sure.

 

I went to Barcelona over Easter. It was a short visit with four nights, but I enjoyed it.

I stayed in a hotel in the city right next to Casa Batlló and it was close to everything. My first impression to the city was it was so organised. The city was old but the original design was so good. There was a small square in each junction; the buildings around were pushed back so the square was big enough to be used as a small car park. Pedestrian crossings were at the sides of the square and there were bins along with them. I was also surprised by how people behaved in the city; almost all residents followed the traffic rules. I took the bus only twice and the bus driver used indicators properly. Compared the UK, the US, Australia, Asian, this place was much more civilised. People were also friendly as well. Most residents were white, occasionally I could see some Latinos. The language of Catalan was softer than Spanish and didn’t sound that rude in my opinion, but I still want to learn Spanish one day  as I want to be tough.

I was in Madrid three years ago and I also have friends from Barcelona who claim Catalonia is an independent country. Now I know why.