Author archive
28 October 2025
Dennis bought us breakfast at 0700 and left to borrow the car and bring it back. We got going at 0930, picking Swee and Chen before leaving town heading towards Daoyun Lao in the Raoping area. Dayun Lao We arrived at Daoyun Lao around 1040. This huge octagonal 1587 tulou was once home to 600 […]
27 October 2025
Breakfast I’m nearly on local time after three nights and we didn’t head out for breakfast till after 0830. With some items not ready yet, I happily chose a pork and century egg congee. Teochew congee is meant to be like rice in hot water and that’s the origin of the Thai rice soup. Today’s […]
26 October 2025
Swatow’s old centre Dennis left around 0530 today to catch the train to Guangzhou for some errands. Kim and I, Swee and Chen had booked to go to Swatow (Shantou) for an overnight stay to explore a different part of the region. At around 0900 Kim and I walked to the Vienna hotel where Swee […]
25 October 2025
Breakfast and wet market I woke around 0600 with only one interruption around 0130. We left home around 0700 to go to Dennis’ aunt’s place. Aunt took us for a little walk to a local eatery for breakfast. The local specialty here was the Tenghun (which is literally the same words as the Cantonese Cheongfan). […]
24 October 2025
Arriving and transit in Bejing With one sleeping pill, I slept soundly for about 4h30. With about 3h remaining till the breakfast service, I reluctantly popped another half a pill which gave me another 2h. Magic! We landed in Beijing Capital about 1h before the scheduled arrival time of 0530. It was quite cool as […]
23 October 2025
Trip summary This trip started with the idea of visiting my favourite country in all my travels, Syria. A friend, Dennis, had talked about having me over to visit him in his hometown of Teochew (Chaozhou) in China, and I managed to combine this into the trip. The cherry on top was a redemption ticket […]
3 August 2025
Flight cancellation Today, I’m supposed to finish my whole trip with a flight at 1150 back to Auckland with Latam Airlines booked with a commercial confirmed ticket (rather than a staff standby ticket at about the same price). Knowing that the airline is somewhat unreliable on the route, with the aircraft coming all the way […]
1 August 2025
Even though we landed in Sydney in the land down under on time at 0750, the previous aircraft at the gate hadn’t pushed back, so we had to wait a little before we could park and disembark. For my two-night stay in Sydney, I’m staying with a friend, Henry. He kindly picked me up from […]
31 July 2025
Killing a day Tonight, I have a flight to Sydney at 2130, brought forward a few months ago from 2335. I had cancelled the hotel room for tonight, which I was going to use as late check-out but with the earlier flight time, I would only use it for maybe 4h max. To my surprise, […]
30 July 2025
A bit of a fright I had a bit of a fright this morning with my flight departure time to Kuala Lumpur which I had thought was at 1320. I had thought of going to the airport at 0945 to have brunch at the lounge but didn’t think I could last till then without […]