Jul 13, 2025
Italy, Switzerland
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Close to heart

Trieste to Aosta, Italy /
Thun, Switzerland

On a trip of this length, energy and enthusiasm are bound to dip. It’s been great to have a few chances to recharge, but at times in the moment, this final stage felt like killing time between seeing more friends. Haphazardly chosen on the fly as convenient places to break long journeys, some of these last few stops were not places I had any familiarity, and as I realised towards the end, it was a unique opportunity not just to see more sides of Italy than the ones I know, but to see and experience places special to people I care about.
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Jul 3, 2025
Slovenia
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Breather

Ljubljana and Piran, Slovenia

After weeks of consecutive heat waves in Sicily, Malta, Tunisia, and even in northern Italy, I was dying for a change. Upon suggestion by multiple friends and a simple glance at the map — mountains! — I made a short detour to Slovenia with no planning beyond simple knowledge of a capital and a lake.

While not much, I did get a few modest degrees of relief from the thermometer. Taking the bus up from coastal Trieste, I also didn’t realise how much I missed seeing green fields, trees, and mountains! And while I actively choose not to seek cultural immersion, having been overwhelmed by a firehose of different histories, languages, and information already from three other countries and only having a few days here, Slovenia made a lovely and distinct impression.
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Jun 29, 2025
Italy, San Marino
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Backdrop

San Marino /
Bologna to Venice, Italy

Even if I haven’t visited most of northern Italy before, you could say that it’s a known quantity. Everyone knows someone who’s visited or wants to visit. Everyone knows how good the food is. Everyone’s probably learned at least some of the history in school — whether it be about artistic figures, religion, war, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance… Much has been said, and there’s not much for me to add.

I won’t lie, my main interests don’t exactly lie in these things, even if I can enjoy or have appreciation for them. What brings me to this area, and what’s kept me going in spite of peak season crowds and extreme heat, are friends: one who moved back to Italy from Canada, one who happens to be in town, Italian friends from Canada getting married and all our mutual friends in town for that wedding, and one guiding me through her hometown in absentia. Same goes for Switzerland, a detour tacked onto the end to visit some more friends again. That made for a grand but overwhelming time of reunions and highlight after highlight threatening to blur into each other.

Most of those highlights are ones that I think best remain in our memories. But in between, there was some exploring too!
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Jun 24, 2025
Tunisia
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Troglodytes no more

Tunis to Tataouine, Tunisia

Despite the distance and the historical ties, there doesn’t seem to be much connection between Tunisia and Malta, let alone Sicily. What seems like a logical next stop feels instead like a world away, involving a very short but incredibly expensive flight.

It’s been a very long time since I’ve been in North Africa — a trip to Morocco in 2012 was the last, which left me with decidedly mixed feelings and a hesitation to return. Tunisia seems somewhat similar on the surface: same language (well, the Arabic dialect is different, but everyone speaks French too), religion, cuisine, climate, even some geography. But even on first impression, things diverge from those similarities quickly.
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Jun 16, 2025
Malta
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All of the above

Malta

I’m not sure what I expected landing in Malta. It’s just a short half hour flight from Catania in Sicily, or a half-day ferry ride. Sicily has tiny islands to its south, even further south than Malta — wouldn’t it make sense if Malta were similarly Italian in character? But it’s also a stone’s throw away from North Africa, and the Maltese language is closely related to Arabic. Wouldn’t it make sense if Malta were an Arabic-speaking Muslim country?

That’s the logic brain talking. Ignoramus brain only knew of Malta as a hedonistic destination for nightlife party-seeking Brits and festival-goers, and a microstate playground for the rich akin to Monaco.

So imagine my surprise that my logic brain wasn’t right at all. Not only that, but my ignoramus knowledge was but a footnote in a stay that provided the kind of genuine surprises that I find increasingly uncommon after so much travel.
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Jun 11, 2025
Italy
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Romanticise

Sicily, Italy

It’s my third day in Palermo (of 11 in Sicily) and I’m puzzled. The sights are famous. The pictures are beautiful. The food is everything you hear about from Sicily. The evening brings the city to life and the crowds come out.

I’ve made my way down the pedestrianized Maqueda, checked out the famous cathedral, the Palatine Chapel with its golden mosaic art, and even made my way up to nearby Monreale for even more mosaics. I’ve walked through the markets. I’ve gotten real-time advice from friends on what food to try — arancini, pasta alla norma, cannoli, granita, brioche col gelato, pani ca meusa (spleen sandwich)… I’ve taken the train to Cefalù and climbed all the way up to the top of La Rocca, then all the way back down again to dive into the azure water sandwiching the town to said rock.

So yeah, I’ve done all the stuff. But something feels…off. The heat is stifling. The jet lag lingers, I’m disengaged, and anxiety keeps me awake even longer at night. The food recommendations may be solid, but the places I’m getting them at aren’t hitting the spot. The crowds are everywhere. All of that can be managed. As I sipped on an overpriced limoncello spritz by the shore, trying to cool off while watching the world go by, seeing neighbourhood residents chatting it up, I suddenly felt an odd sense of enjoyment. It finally dawned on me: as pretty as the pictures were, I was focusing on the wrong stuff.

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Jul 6, 2024
Madagascar
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Familiar

Andasibe and Antananarivo, Madagascar

Off a flight, and right back to the taxi-brousse: something clicked in Île Sainte-Marie… or perhaps it’s the looming return home? With just a few days left in the trip, I made a beeline for one more national park visit with renewed energy. Negotiating with taxi drivers, dealing with the chaos of the gare routière, finding a balance between being firm but friendly in securing myself a good seat, dealing with more delays and traffic jams… Maybe I just finally found my rhythm in Madagascar. I left Île aux Nattes by boat to the Sainte-Marie airport at the crack of dawn at 5:30 am, exited Tana airport at 8:30 am and made it to Andasibe, 143 km away, at 2 pm. Slow travel, no sweat.

Staying at a hotel a stone’s throw from the national park entrance, I was approached by several guides, but found the quoted prices too steep unless I found people to group up with. On an afternoon walk, a local struck up a conversation asking about my plans before revealing that he was also a guide — and with not a trace of coercion, his suggestion was Parc Mitsinjo directly across the road instead, a far cheaper and less crowded option maintained by a local conservation society instead of the national park authorities.

All I wanted was to see more lemurs. It may not be the big name park, but it’s the same piece of rainforest with all the same species — and I’m so glad that option presented itself. On a very rainy morning, Panderies was an excellent guide, following the beautiful morning song of the indris to find three of them hanging out low in the trees after a heavy shower ended. Even without their vocalisations, you can’t miss them — they’re the largest of lemur species, with those ears and that pom-pom tail making it look almost like a panda with wrong proportions.

And in one of the most magical moments of my trip…one indri happily took leaves from my hand, and stared at me face to face while eating. It’d be weird if it were a human, but come onnnnn. This was adorable.
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Jul 1, 2024
Madagascar
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Temperamental

Île Sainte-Marie / Île aux Nattes, Madagascar

After getting tired of endless taxi-brousse rides, I decided to park myself on an island for at least a week. There are two major beach island destinations in Madagascar. The more famous one is Nosy Be in the north. There’s lots of great diving, there’s more resorts, and crucially, the weather’s consistently great. But then there’s also Île Sainte-Marie in the east. There’s less diving and it’s quite rainy in the winter. But hey, it’s less touristy and their humpback whale migration season starts two months earlier than in Nosy Be! Rainy island it is — how bad can it be, right?

Typically to get to Île Sainte-Marie, it’s a two-day journey from Tana: a 13-hour ride to the port city of Toamasina (still more frequently referred to by its old French name, Tamatave), then an additional 4-7 hour ride to one of several embarkation options, then finally a rough 1-3 hour boat ride depending on the previous choice. It takes eight hours alone just to get from Fianar to Tana, which adds an extra day. With my motive clear, it was a no-brainer to pay up for a flight from Tana to the island instead.

Thank goodness I did that. You know that rain I just mentioned? Well…
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Jun 24, 2024
Madagascar
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Bygone

Antsirabe to Ranomafana, Madagascar

While I never found myself an oasis of calm in Tana, Antsirabe felt like a breath of fresh air in comparison. Well, at least the few blocks around the centre did: like Tana, a wide central boulevard leads to a disused train station. Unlike the chaos there though, I arrived in Antsirabe to find simple amusement park rides in a pedestrian area. Rather than dodging traffic, I was dodging the occasional toy cars and trains full of children and their parents.

There’s a distinctly cleaner air here too: for last-mile transport, where Tana only has taxis and Morondava and other cities have tuk-tuks, Antsirabe seems to have eschewed motors and pollution entirely and gone for the classic cyclo-pousse (bike rickshaw). It’s small enough for it, much cheaper, and friendlier all during my multiple trips to and from the gare routière — a big contrast to the frustrating experience of actually taking the onward transport from there by taxi-brousse.
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Jun 22, 2024
Madagascar
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Move it

Tsaranoro Valley, Madagascar

The highlights have been high, but the travel has been long and punishing, and one week in, I’ve spent more than half my time in Madagascar sitting in transport. After an 8 hour 4×4 ride again on the world’s worst road from Tsingy de Bemaraha to Morondava (250 km), barely a night’s rest before a 12 hour ride from Morondava to Antsirabe (484 km), a one-day break there, then what was supposed to be a 7 hour taxi-brousse ride to Fianarantsoa (243 km) that turned into 10 hours where I missed my onward transfer, I admit to feeling pretty done. And while people have been unfailingly polite, real interactions have been few. For a classic backpacking destination, I was also surprised not to have encountered anyone to group up with; any other tourists I saw were heading off in different directions, mostly in private transport. (Turns out I was a few weeks early from peak season.)

After missing the transfer, I needed to re-plan, deciding to take one last southbound taxi-brousse 2 more hours to Ambalavao (55 km – yes it’s that slow even on a paved road) en route to a nearby lemur reserve. It turned out to be one of the worst rides I had: a one-hour wait for it to fill up before departure, 29 people squeezed in a Sprinter for 18, squeezed so tight I was unable to move (hey look, name of the blog), barely avoiding the beak of a live duck in a plastic bag sitting on the lap of the man beside me. It felt like the last straw — in my head, after that, no more taxis-brousses except to return to Tana. No more hikes, having had enough of that in Réunion. Sure, there’s far more points of interest further south, like Isalo to Toliara, but… when the spark’s gone, you can’t force it.

And yet, on my arrival to Ambalavao, a vaguely familiar face made me change my mind on a dime, with a different spark. Thanks to him, I chose more suffering, and got even more suffering than I braced myself for — yet I couldn’t be happier for the experience.
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