Vacation. Faraway, exotic destination equals a beach straight from the paradise, right? If the landscape doesn’t look like your laptop’s wallpaper it doesn’t count, does it? Especially if you’re on an island and it’s named Langkawi. The name itself sounds exotic, wild and like from the other side of the world. Vacation in the tropics have to be like from a postcard: white sand, crystal blue sea, empty beach and this funny leaning palm tree. Well, maybe one local inhabitant is ok. Another tourist would destroy this heavenly atmosphere of instagramable vacation. Let’s stop here for a moment and talk about Instagram. Picture perfect destination We’re taking photos of beautiful…
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Kuala Lumpur – welcome to the urban jungle
Kuala Lumpur welcomed us with a warm evening and an accommodation disappointment. The first morning welcomed us with a downpour. Was it a crisis? It was. But we changed the accommodation within 30 minutes and waited for the rain to go away. And everything turned out really well. The story of (not)staying at Regalia Suites deserves it’s own post. The building itself seems to be the most popular place to stay in Kuala Lumpur. All of my friends who visited KL, took a photo in the swimming pool there. Well, I did as well. The story of this stay is a short motivational story of not giving up. From the…
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Cameron Highlands – the Scots in Malaysia
We all enjoy pretty landscapes, don’t we? It’s worth going to a chilly place, suffer in a bus going through a curvy road in the mountains and get wet to see a spectacular view. Especially if this view includes a tea plantation in Cameron Highlands. Is it Malaysia or Vietnam? The bus mentioned above brings us from Geroge Town to Cameron Highlands and I experience a deja vu: It’s raining It’s less than 20 degrees Celsius It looks like a very touristy place in the mountains Is this Sapa? Not really. It’s Tanah Rata, but feels similar. People go to Cameron Highlands to see tea plantations and one night in…
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Penang National Park – will the jungle eat you?
Jungle. I’m not a fan. Frankly speaking, I haven’t encountered many jungles, but I simply don’t want to come close to them. The only 30 minutes of a Thai jungle was enough for a lifetime. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy nature. As long as it’s not trying to eat me. It’s a selective love, I guess. So why jungle? Well, trekking in Penang National Park to the isolated beach is one of the “must dos” when you’re in George Town. And it took me around 3 seconds to decide that it’s not going to my Penang bucket list. Because you know – jungle. But I’m writing about it, so…
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Penang – around the world in George Town
The plane lands on the Penang island and I’m wondering if this really is Southeast Asia. This thought will be in my head during these few days in George Town. Our Grab driver, southeast Asian Uber, keeps repeating “Welcome to Malaysia”. Not because his vocabulary is limited. He’s just kind. Malaysians are kind. It’s evident we’re in Asia. Just one glance is enough to realize there’s no local space development plan. It looks like someone took a few dozen blocks, tossed them up and left where they fell. But the whole George Town feels surprisingly spatial as for Asia. Only a little chaotic, not so crowded, you can walk around…
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Malaysia – expectations vs reality
When I bought tickets do Malaysia, I had no expectations. It was a good deal, I like Southeast Asia, so I got tickets. I had a loooot of time to read about Malaysia before the departure. 10 months. So I did my homework, but it didn’t change a lot. I still had no expectations. I was sure it would be great, I was going on holidays after all. But there were a few things that came to my mind and I wrote them down. Now it’s time to confront them with reality. Like always. Expectation: lots of rain. It shouldn’t be surprising. Malaysia has equatorial climate, so it rains a…
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Sa Pa: what if
We were supposed to see rice terraces, hills, lots of green and we were supposed to walk a lot. Instead, there was lots of coffee and even more rain. We arrived in Sa Pa in the middle of the night by a sleeping bus. It was raining. We could sleep inside till 6am. At 6am it was raining a little less, but on our way to the hotel it started raining heavily. Few hours later we put on water shoes and went for a walk. Or swam. We swam for a coffee. The first coffee. Sa Pa is a typical touristic town in the mountains. Everyone goes there for trekking…
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Postcards from the seaside: Mui Ne
I have an issue with Mui Ne. Mui Ne is weird. A town, that stretches along the coast for 16 km and has over 100 beach resorts. Full of Russians, with Cyrillic alphabet everywhere. Kitesurfing. Fishing village. More holes than pavements. And lots and lots of sand. Postcard 1: the beach We’re arriving in Mui Ne in the evening, after a heavy rain. The next day it’s mostly raining and there’s no electricity, but each day it’s getting better. Each day the sky is less cloudy and when clouds disappear, we miss them a bit. If there were no clouds on our first day, we would be totally fried.…
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Vietnam: Ho Chi Minh City
It started with an earthquake and then it only got better. Well, not literally with an earthquake, but “Southern Vietnam” chapter started with a bang. Our trip to the South started at Hanoi Airport, were we met a couple from Poland. People with whom it simply clicks. Especially when you discover that the guy took his friend and a swan-shaped pedal boat and pedaled the Vistula river from Cracow to Gdansk. It’s about 1000 km. We met them and we knew that upcoming 2 days simply couldn’t be ordinary. Few hours later we landed in Ho Chi Minh City and while waiting for our backpacks, we discovered that in a…
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Unexpected 24h in Hoi An
Ha Long Bay. I’m lying in the sun. In just a few hours I’ll be back in Hanoi and the next morning I’ll be on my way to Ninh Binh. And it will be exactly like in Ha Long, but with rice fields instead of water and bikes instead of a boat. I’m lying in the sun, daydreaming about these rice fields and I’m checking my mailbox. Long story short: our hotel cancelled the reservation, there’ heavy flooding in Ninh Binh, actually it’s a natural disaster, our hotel in Hanoi forbids us to go to Ninh Binh, it’s serious, over 40 people died. October is perfect for Northern Vietnam, they…
