Asia

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Killing a day before a night flight

Above:  The grounds of the Naval Museum. Killing time Just like in Istanbul last week, we have a long day to kill before an evening flight.  We fly from Varna to Larnaca at 2025.  The difference is that Istanbul is a big city with limited exploration whereas we didn’t want to get wet and salty […]

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Finally, some “me time”

I finally had some “me time” and chilling this morning.  I had recommended that Kim visit the Dolmabahce Palace, which I had visited on a previous visit.  He did that while I relaxed in the room and then the hotel lobby. I didn’t emerge from the hotel till our lunch together.  We bought some sweets […]

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Island-hopping

Islands-hopping on the public ferries Being such a glorious morning, we thought we’d go island-hopping on Istanbul’s public ferries once more. Google Maps wasn’t too helpful with the public transport schedules to the islands by ferry because it’s a little faster to go by underground then change to a ferry. It did show a ferry-only […]

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Revisiting Istanbul’s best

Conquering jetlag We were surprised to have slept till 0615 despite the 6h time change from Seoul.  [Edit: It turned out that we adjusted to local time straight up as we had no issues on subsequent days too.] We had an early breakfast soon after it opened at 0700.  Looking up my notes from my […]

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Wall and War Museums

Wall Museum We woke earlier than yesterday but with a less “full-on” day ahead, we took it easy and had breakfast later.  We headed out to the nearby City Wall Museum to take a look at the history of the city’s wall.  The displays were very well done, showing the scale of the wall and […]

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Seoul, sights new and old

Hanok Bukchon Sunrise in Seoul now is about 0500.  I stirred around 0600 and fell back asleep till 0740. We ventured downstairs to the good hotel breakfast around 0800. I had hoped to have an early start to avoid the expected 33 deg C heat but it wasn’t mean to be.  We left around 0900 […]

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Onwards to South Korea

Above:  Dongdaemun Design Plaza. Flying on the Airbus A220 We have an 1145 departure from Naha airport to Incheon today.  We left by monorail after 0800 and got to the airport 3h before the flight. As today’s flight on a small plane, an A220, I didn’t expect check-in to be open that early. I did […]

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Exploring Okinawa Island

Mass suicide bunker The mall in which Banana Car Rental is located opens at 1000.  But they had set up a desk outside for our 0930 collection in a highly professional and organised manner. We turned up a little earlier and managed to hit the road in our Suzuki Solio at 0930 heading to the […]

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Zamami Island

Bad news I had pre-booked our ferry tickets to Zamami Island and back, having read that the ferry can fill up.  The departure point involved a bit of a walk from the monorail so we treated ourselves with a taxi ride ordered through Uber. Then bad news struck, my credit card number had been used […]

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Interisland hop

Interisland flight We woke to stunning weather today.  Damn!  We could have done with this yesterday for our exploration, but today all we’re doing is a short interisland hop by flight from Ishigaki to Naha on Okinawa island. We left our hotel by foot around 0850, slightly ahead of our intended 0900 departure time.  We […]

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