Mallorca is very cool from what I hear. Loving the updates! Keep them coming when Wifi is good!

I'm in HK right now. Just bought 3 Columbia shirts at Stanley market yesterday. A little pricey but I think real (?), about $14usd per. Probably better selection and price in the wan chai markets but I like hanging at Stanley and drinking also. I'm sure some smoothies can be sourced though.
You should be able to equip yourself pretty well in HK if you strikeout in Vietnam.

Glad you guys are still enjoying it.

Mallorca was full of bicycles when I was there. Lots of people go there to train for bicycle races. I drove two circuits around the island and saw probably 1000+ people on bicycles over 6-7 days of driving. I didn't mind because I like to drive slow and am happy to share the road.


5 south - Thanks for that HK tip. I'm finding tons and tons of North Face gear (most of which I assume is fake) but almost no Columbia in Hanoi. It's mostly backpacks, hoodies, and cold weather gear. Hopefully my luck will be better in Saigon. If not, I'll be checking out Stanley & wan chai per your recommendations.


My HK shopping list looks something like:

- Columbia long sleeve shirts & pants if I can't find them in Vietnam.
- Doxycycline (anti-malaria drug)
- Some kind of cheap GoPro so I won't mind if it breaks or I lose it in the ocean
- Small stash of heat & water resistant comfort foods like Skittles, wasabi, Pringles
- Various travel sundries like AA batteries, wet wipes, ziploc bags, toothpaste, etc.

I'm not tied to Columbia for any fixed reason, definitely don't care about the branding. Just know they make good stuff. I need lightweight sailing clothing that offers good sun protection, some degree of mosquito protection, and is easy to take care of.

Also not tied to GoPro in particular. Looking for a camera I can take diving that I won't be too sad when I drop it in the middle of the ocean somewhere or the salt water eats it. Knockoff brands would be fine.

The travel sundries are pretty important as we'll be going to some remote places that simple won't have anything like that for sale. If you do manage to find stuff like mosquito repellent & sunscreen, it's always like 5x the price.

We were waiting around in Palma for some parts to show up in the mail, so I decided to rent a car and drive a circuit of the island. As mentioned, there were a lot of bicycles out there riding around. There were also a fair number of motorcycles. Mallorca has a lot of sweet windy coastal roads, most of it looks like this:



and the restaurants and buildings are built on the edges of the cliffs:



I mostly stayed on the coastal roads, but occasionally detoured inland to check out a supermarket or something like that. Found boxed sangria:



just add your own fruit!

This being a part of Spain, there was also lots of jamon:



just tons of pig legs hanging around everywhere.

but mostly, I just drove along the coastline (driving a big clockwise circuit around the island), stopping every so often to get out for little walks and hikes in places like this:



You can just barely see the road snaking along the bottom of that area to the right, just above the bulk of the trees.

See how the cliffs jut way up into the sky from that last photo? There are tiny little forts and towers along the tops of some of them. This one was at the top of the cliff in the right hand side of the previous photo:



I got up next to it and then started evaluating the railings:



which were guaranteed tetanus vectors.

Thought about it...



and hey, #YOLO amiright?!



Well, that's the easy part. Now time to enter that tiny ass little entryway and not get stuck or stabbed on something.



pretty sweet view from the top:



that parking area down there is the location that I took the last photo in the previous post from.

and turning 90 degrees to the left..



sick views.

Some other dude took on the challenge as I was leaving:



while I contented myself with heading back to a hotel and enjoying some:



ensaimada, which is the semi-official dessert of Mallorca.

Was impressed with their selection of different milks:



but did not partake. Cow milk, goat milk, sheep milk, coconut milk, rice milk, soy milk, they had it all. I guess the Mallorcans like their milk.

After a few days of cruising around trying to get tetanus, fall off a cliff, or get swept out to sea by walking along one of the jagged rock beaches:



it was time to head back to Palma. I stopped at one of the larger supermarkets on the way back in, and was delighted to see a truly impressive jamon display:



hundreds and hundreds of them!

and was amused to see that they had a USA#1 imports section:



which some larger international have. It's great to see what the product selections are and see how they do or don't represent USA#1. How many marshmallows and ice cream sauces do we really need?

My obsession with international supermarkets also results in finding sweet products I don't usually see in USA#1:



that curry mango stuff is crazy good. Will probably have to start an import business and have that be the only product I ship in.

Probably not as much of a market for squid ink:



but I'd still use it myself to make squid ink pasta.

Mallorca looks amazing. Thanks for continuing with the great TRs!

imgur seems to be crapping out on me, so I guess I'm done for now. Was really hoping to get some more updates in and make it through Singapore and Fiji to at least New Caledonia, maybe even into Australia.

None of the photos I linked in the last post (supermarket stuff) seem to be loading. Hopefully it's just me and you guys can see them.

Will give it another shot when I get to Saigon.

i can see pics, last one is squid ink for 2,42€

Ah, good times. Thank you for letting me know.

Guess it's just a problem with my computer or my connection or something. I can't even see them on imgur.com while logged into my imgur account. Uploaded more photos but they are just black squares so I don't know which is which. Will continue updating whenever this is fixed.

Good stuff, chop. Mrs. T loves that squid ink pasta. Looks like you've lost an arbitrage opportunity!

Yeah, it's definitely on your end, they still all work fine.

I cleared my cache, ran CCleaner, and rebooted. Seems o have worked. My laptop was manufactured in 1872, that may have something to do with it as well.

Now I can suddenly behold the beauty of squeezeable curry mango! Christ almighty that stuff was good.

Leaving Hanoi tomorrow for Da Nang, but I think I can squeeze in one more update while the wifi is still decent.



Given the location and the international mix of visitors, Palma has a lot of food options. Even the fast food places have tons of different stuff available:



But I didn't stay in Palma for long. Once I got back and explained to the owners where I had been and what I had seen, they wanted to do a similar circuit, and wanted me along as the guide. I was amenable to this as long as I didn't have to drive, which they instantly agreed to.

So off we set for another (for me, anyway) loop around the island.

They prefer restaurants to grocery stores, so I got to see something on the menu in some random spot I've never seen before:



that's right. Grilled prey.

If you could narrow that down for me... I'm a lolhuman#1, everything is my prey.

Speaking of stuff I'd never seen before, we walked into a pharmacy to check out the goods. They needed some meds, and you can get a lot of meds OTC w/o a prescription at a far cheaper rate in euroland than in USA#1, so they were hitting every pharmacy and stocking up at like 80-90% savings. While there, we came across this sweet combo:



Protects against both sunburn and jellyfish. How do they even do that.

I had really talked up the beauty of the NE corner of the island, which is where I went in that little tower and all the majestic cliffs were. They enjoyed it as well, and got a sick photo of me while we were there:



That's me in the corner. Already lost my religion way beforehand. There's a tiny little sailboat in the upper right, it's the white triangle dot thing. I love this image, mostly because it's proof that I cannot be a narcissist since I never made it my Facebook default photo. Also, it's just freakin sweet.

We continued along, eating at some pretty lol restaurants:



as well as some sick ones:



that may be the best cheese I've ever had in my life. Not much of a cheese person so I'm not a qualified judge, but daaaamn.

Ah, I think I just realized part of the problem. I neglected to resize those recent photos, so they were all super massive size and that's probably why they weren't showing up for me, because I wasn't waiting long enough for them to load. Certainly explains why they took forever to upload. The wifi here is far better than I usually have, but it's still pretty terrible compared to USA#1 quality.

I'm not going to reupload smaller ones because I can't edit the older posts and I'm lazy, so enjoy your super high res cheese photo. Hopefully they don't slow down the thread loading time too much.

Once back in Palma, I did another grocery run, and picked up some squid:



which were always super fresh. Frying them up in just a touch of oil with nothing else is off the charts. The white ones on the left have been skinned, the purple ones still have their skin on.

also made time for a casino run to the one real casino in Palma:



but there wasn't much going on. You have to pay an entry fee, and there were only two poker tables going. Maybe 4-6 table games. Donked around on one of the table games that I didn't understand, lost a bunch of euros, then said **** it and went over the to roulette table and slammed all my remaining euros on Wesley Snipes. insta ship it, up a few hundo on passenger 57 with a single spin. Thanks, Wes!

Finally, after a few weeks, our shipment of stuff arrived. Here was what I got:



that's only the best candy of all time. I'm not much of a sweets person, but I'm one of the few who like black licorice, and this is kind of like a black licorice flavored caramel/toffee thing. They are the closest thing I've ever found to the old school Callard & Bowser licorice toffees of the days of yore. They stopped making those years ago, and ever since, people have been trying to find a substitute or replicate the recipe. This is as close as it comes.

Yeah, that's a curry mango bottle in the background.

Lest you fear I had abandoned the gelato when we left Spain, fear not. There was a place literally across the street from the marina, and I contributed:



After the stuff came in that we had been waiting on, it was time to head to the Canaries. This is when I found out that we weren't going to be doing that anymore. The owners said they needed to talk, and when we sat down, they broke the news. They had decided to have the boat shipped across the Atlantic to the Caribbean instead of sailing it. Yes, there are enormous ships that you can sail your boat into and then the ship ships your ship. Yo dawg.

I was sad to hear this, as I had really been looking forward to checking out the Canaries and crossing the other direction. They explained that their hearts just weren't in it anymore for long passages, and they wanted to enjoy their time on the boat when on it. I completely get it, and I knew the lightning storm we had just sailed through had really unsettled them. They said I was welcome to stick around on the boat until it got loaded up into the big boat and that I'd always be welcome on the boat in the future.

So now I needed to decide what to do. I could either look for another boat doing the same crossing, or go do something else. At first, I wanted to just find another boat, and I spent a few days contacting people and talking with them. Had a couple of tentative offers that I declined, because my heart wasn't really in it.

A little thought had started working on my brain while considering my options, and it was getting more and more pervasive each day. I'd never spent any real time in SE Asia, and I was thinking of just heading over there instead and backpacking around Thailand / Laos / Cambodia / Vietnam instead of sailing. The more I considered this, the less heart I had for doing the Atlantic crossing on another boat. Eventually I just decided to pull the trigger on SE Asia, and it was time to get off the boat:



and go see what that part of the world was up to. I went ahead and bought a one way ticket to Singapore and decided I'd figure out the rest when I got there.

I've been on one of those boat shipping boat ships.

That sandwich at the lol-restaurant looks pretty awesome

When you are praising the curry-mango sauce, are you talking about the Heinz one or Hellmann´s? (guessing Heinz as it is in the background of your Toffees picture)
I want to order some and see if you have good taste

Go for the mango chutney as well.

Ensaimadas and vomit inducing switchbacks. Mallorca!

That curry-mango looks as if it should be pretty common in German land. Brand / bottle type all over the place. I'll look out for it.

When I went to USA#1 I really regretted not bringing my own tiny herpes salve. It's only a few bucks from any pharmacy here and really helps. In USA #1 everything down the West Coast was at least $30 and I don't think it had that exact substance even. What the hell, didn't expect that.

Real-time update!

Leaving Hanoi right now for Da Nang on the overnight sleeper train. Requested a lower berth but got jacked and was assigned a top one:





All three other berths are taken by Vietnamese locals. One old dude in the one under me. The other two have a young couple with a 2 year old that I am really hoping is not going to screech and cry for the next 15 hours.

If I ever manage to catch up the posts to current day, I'll be able to do some sick real-time updates because I found an app that auto-resizes photos and makes it really easy to upload them to imgur.

This 4 berth cabin is known as a soft sleeper, it's the best you can do without getting your own private cabin. Includes a pillow, blanket, and only semi-terrible mattress. Also multiple power outlets which is pretty sick because usually you have to battle over access to just one. There are also hard sleepers which jam 6 berths into the same space, but **** that.

Definitely talking up the Heinz version of the mango curry sauce. I went through that entire bottle in a few days, then went back and bought another one.

It's crazy how much more medicine costs in USA#1 compared to the rest of the world. There is a reason why global medical insurance policies usually either excludes USA#1 or is an optional rider that doubles your premium.

Getting tired of the constant scamming in Vietnam. As much as I love the food, the scamming is really getting old. I've been here two weeks and been "accidentally" given the wrong change at least 7-8 times. Got longhauled in a taxi once for +33% more fare. Have had the "I don't have any change" run on me and the guy miraculously came up with change when I said I didn't, either. Just had a bus fare taker try to scam me on the bus for 3x the regular fare, threatening to throw me off the bus, etc. She immediately backed down and accepted the regular fare when I started recording the interaction with my phone.

Check out the wikitravel page on Hoi An for details on that bus scam, it's pretty notorious:

Just chiming in to add continued thanks for the time/effort you put into updating this thread, Chop.

I don't get on here much anymore but when I do it's usually to check in here. Thanks for the constant inspiration to get out and live!

Thanks for saying that, always nice to hear someone is inspired. I'll plan to keep updating as long as people are still enjoying it.


With the one way ticket to Singapore in hand (in phone, whatever), it was time to say goodbye to the microwaveable paella:



and tasty sangria:



of Palma, and say hello to airplane food, both lol:



(the taste of Niki indeed)

and decent:



on the way to the layover and plane change in Abu Dhabi:



Wish I could have seen what Abu Dhabi looked like during the daytime. Flying in at night, it was almost like flying into Vegas. Absolutely nothing, then suddenly a city in the desert out of nowhere. Very planned location, all the roads running in straight lines, massive grid layout. Very few cars, though.

The life jacket proved to be a hassle yet again on the flight into Abu Dhabi. The first flight I was on was Palma to Berlin, which was no problem. In Berlin, they didn't want to let the life jacket on the plane, despite having already let me fly the first leg in from Palma. I can pretty much recite the IATA regulations regarding inflatable life jackets at this point, and I don't give up easily, but this one was pretty close. They were adamant that the jacket (which contains a small CO2 cartridge) was not allowed on the plane.

After going back and forth with the security folks at the gate, and having them continually make calls to someone in the airline, eventually the pilot got involved. That was a first, never had that happen. He agreed to let it on the plane, but under the condition that the CO2 cartridge be removed and stored with the crew luggage. I snap accepted, because otherwise I was pretty sure I'd end up missing the flight.

Of course, once we arrived in Abu Dhabi and I asked for the cartridge back while exiting the plane on the tarmac, I was told they couldn't find it. Say what?! How the hell did you lose it that fast? The pilot was apologetic, and his attitude was basically "Yep, it's gone. No clue where. Sorry, bro." which I was not happy with. We were having this conversation at the exit door of the plane while a little bus full of half of the passengers waited for me to join it to be driven over to the terminal.

I figured since we were already there and I couldn't be kicked off that plane anymore, I'd put up a bit of a fight. I started in on how crazy it was that they took the cartridge in the first place, that it was a violation of IATA regulations (not exactly true, but..), and that I'd never be able to find another one of the correct size/fit outside of the USA, nor have one mailed as they are considered hazardous goods. I also stressed that I was on the way to Singapore and that it would be impossible to join a boat without functional safety equipment. The people on the bus were getting impatient and the pilot realized I wasn't going to just roll over, so he had someone go check the cargo hold again and wonder of wonders, guess what they found? Yep, my C02 cartridge. The pilot did seem genuinely apologetic at that point, but I don't know if it was actual empathy or if he was afraid of a formal complaint. I was laying it on pretty thick at that point.

Either way, it didn't matter because I was made whole with the return of the cartridge. I'm not going to say they "lost" it on purpose, but..

The stay in Abu Dhabi was only a few hours:



so not much to report there. Decent airport. Lots of mobile charging stations, including little lockers that look like a bank of PO boxes. You open the door, put your phone in, connect the charger, then close the door and type in a code to lock it. You then come back later and type the code back in to unlock the door and retrieve your phone. Pretty sweet.

The stop was in Abu Dhabi because this leg was on Etihad Airways, which I had never flown before, and AD is their main hub. Etihad was fantastic. They are a relatively young airline, so they are still building their brand and taking care of their customers. Everything about the flight was great. The seats were super comfortable, the food was excellent, and they gave you a little care package tailored for an overnight flight, including ear plugs, eye mask, slippers (!), and more. Definitely would fly Etihad again.

Arrival in Singapore was standard. They have a temperature checkpoint next to passport control where they scan your forehead and pull you aside if your temperature indicates that you might be sick. The luggage pickup was a good marker of what Singapore is like:



lots of stuff like that all around.

Was pleasantly surprised to find the legendary "no durians" sign almost immediately:



when boarding the train into the city. I'd see many, many more of those signs all over the place over the next few weeks. All public transport forbids durians, and lots of hotels do as well. Durian is a love it or hate it thing, and the smell is inarguable. If you aren't already familiar, durian is a large spiky fruit common in SE Asia, known as the "king of the fruits". It is known for its extremely strong smell and how much it divides people into pro and anti durian camps.

Checked into the hotel and immediately located a post office nearby to mail some stuff off to USA#1:



as I was no longer on the sailboat and had some extraneous items at that point. Mailing stuff back is crucial in general to not get loaded down with the little things you pick up as you travel long-term. In this case, I also had stuff with me that was specifically for long term sailing which I knew I no longer needed but didn't want to just toss out. Like my spare bottle of mango curry!

This wasn't a standard hotel. It was a capsule hotel. It had been a while since I'd stayed in one, so I figured I'd give it a go. Here's what my capsule looked like from the inside:



There was just enough room to lay down, and that was about it. The capsules were packed only two high, so not that tough to get in and out of them. I had one on the top, so I climbed a little ladder, pushed the curtain aside, and slid in. Also had a little locker down below the capsule to store my large backpack.

Not much room in there!

My first Singaporean meal was at a hawker centre:



which are enormous complexes full of tiny stalls of food vendors. I got to this one fairly late, which is why most of them are closed in the background. These stalls are permanent fixtures, and there can be hundreds of them in a single complex. Often they take up an entire floor of a building such as a large mall. They are great for getting a large variety of different cheap local foods, and I ate most of my meals in Singapore in these places.

Thank you so much for sharing sir. Your adventures are truly eye opening and inspiring.

I wish you the best,

Scott

One of many meals I had at a hawker centre:



which are absurdly cheap, like $1-3 USD.


Here are a couple more shots of a hawker centre to get a better idea of what they look like:





One of the interesting quirks about these places is that none of the stalls have napkins. If you want a napkin, you either need to bring it yourself, or buy one from a couple of old people that do nothing but roam around the hall selling napkins.


note the ducks hanging in the stall:



duck rice is one step above chicken rice:



yeah, it's the real deal.



frog porridge:



I've eaten frog before, but that was my first frog porridge. It was thick. That breadstick looking thing gets dipped in it.


The drink stands inside have all kinds of stuff:



bird's nest?

and if sodas aren't your thing:



all kinds of juices are available.

my favorite drink was easily lime juice:



I crushed many, many lime juices while in Singapore. They are essentially limeade, maybe a little sweeter and slightly less sour. Super addictive if you like lemonade/limeade, and I do.