20 July, 2023 · 1:14 am

Antwerp – a week of uni life

Antwerp

I was in Antwerp for the week to attend the University of Antwerp Summer School course in Children’s Literature, in the Ecology stream. It was part of the scholarship and was a really amazing week. If you’re interested in literature for young people and you happen to be in Belgium at the right time, take the opportunity and go along. It’s primarily a course for academics, but there are also a lot of people who are involved in lit in other ways – teachers, librarians, booksellers, all passionate and interested.

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2 July, 2023 · 4:34 pm

Germany stopover

Gelnhausen

I decided to spend a couple of days in Germany on my way through to Antwerp so I could catch up with some of my family there and there happened to be a couple of bands playing on convenient days. This meant I didn’t see much of Germany itself in the three nights I was there.

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30 June, 2023 · 3:51 pm

Halcyon Helsinki

Flying Finnair

Back at the beginning of the pandemic, I had to cancel a trip to the Baltics that I’d had booked. I’d planned to resume that trip these holidays, but I was lucky enough to win a scholarship to attend a summer school and conference in Europe this month, so I cancelled the Baltics again… but kept the first leg, which was Helsinki.

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19 December, 2022 · 12:23 pm

Phuket (delayed post)

Seafood dinner at the beach

After the great time we had in Chiang Mai, Phuket was a more subdued way to finish the trip. It rained quite a bit (unsurprisingly) and the hotel I’d booked was gorgeous and right near the night market, but also right across the road from a bar featuring live music… until midnight every night.

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17 December, 2022 · 1:10 am

Chiang Mai

The night train to Chiang Mai was pretty uneventful – hard beds and smelly loos, but nowhere near as difficult as the last night train I was on (the Sofia-Istanbul Express). We arrived in CM not too far from the scheduled arrival time and headed off to leave our bags at the hotel, the Movenpick right near the Night Market area.

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13 December, 2022 · 11:51 pm

Back to Bangkok

At the Grand Palace

This trip to Thailand is kind of an accidental one. You remember how we were in Vietnam earlier in the year? We’d actually booked Thailand for that time but postponed it when Vietnam opened up, and so now we are in the land of smiles.

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27 June, 2022 · 10:54 pm

Singapore sojourn

We’re staying in a slightly different area of Singapore than where I’ve stayed before – at the Village Hotel in Bugis, really close to Arab St. The hotel looks to have spent a lot upgrading their public areas, and the pool is gorgeous – a half star shape, but the accommodation decor is pretty tired and we have a very odd-shaped room with only a tiny side window for natural light. A nice rainshower in the bathroom though, and the aircon works well, which are the main things!

Special ‘Starlight’ Diet Coke in Singapore. Interesting flavour…

We arrived mid-evening, and after getting from the airport and checking in, it was quite late, so we contented ourselves with a bit of a walk to get our bearings, find an ATM and then some necessities like water, cola and canned coffee.

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24 June, 2022 · 10:58 pm

A Return to Hoi An (and much shopping)

It was a long travel day between Sapa and eventually reaching our hotel in Hoi An. Next time, I’d recommend a night in Hanoi in between, rather than mixing the 6 hour hilly drive plus a flight.

Feeling like I had to get in on the modeling in front of coloured walls action.

Hoi An is an old favourite of ours, gorgeous and seemingly the whole town is focused on food, massages and custom-made clothes. A pretty good focus, and we pretty much stayed within this purview!

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15 June, 2022 · 11:32 pm

Holidaying in the clouds – Sapa

We decided to include Sapa on our Vietnam visit as we hadn’t been here before and many people had said it was interesting and as it was in the mountains it’s a bit different to the rest of Vietnam. Why not!

We’d initially planned to catch the night train (I love me some train travel!) but since Vietnam only reopened to tourists three months ago, the train is only running once a week, and not on the day we wanted. So we took a minibus… a “limousine” minibus, if you will, meaning there are 9 passengers instead of 12, giving us all a bit more elbow room. We were picked up from our hotel before breakfast and zoomed through the Hanoi traffic out of the city towards the Noi Bai – Lao Cai Expressway, stopping an hour in for a snack and bathroom break. FYI, the Lobster with Golden Salted Egg Sauce chippies were pretty good.

Lobster chips and seaweed chips
Chips!
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12 June, 2022 · 11:39 pm

Hello, hello Hanoi!

We touched down in Hanoi right on time, and bid a fond farewell to our SQ cabin crew, before hightailing it through the airport to Passport Control. Like everywhere to do with passports, there were queues. Unlike the regulations we’d read about online, the official didn’t ask about travel insurance or vaccination status, just checked the e-visa and we were off.

dinner
Dinner of spring rolls and avocado smoothie

Our taxi driver drove relatively sedately compared to how I remember Vietnam traffic: mostly staying in a lane and mostly giving indication of changing lanes (but by flashing his lights rather than using the indicator). The trip between the airport and the city took about 45 minutes, and we were definitely ready to stop moving by the time we arrived!

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