CM Travels

20/03/2025 - 28/03/2025 Writing overlooking La Giralda, the magnificent Spanish-renaissance tower, at the heart of Sevilla's old town, I have realised that my time in Portugal has caught up to me. While the phenomenon of not knowing what day of the week it is, and honestly not really needing to, does enable spontaneous outings in Iberian cities, eventually this takes a toll on the body. A sore throat has plagued me for the past few days with a headache and runny nose joining the party today. Good times.  Speaking of good times, the phase of my journey in Europe's western most country, Portugal, was full of them. Prior to arriving in Portugal's second city of Porto, I spent a night in the Spanish city of Merida, or as it was called during the time of Imperial Rome, Augustus Emerita. Being the history geek that I am, this place was full of fascinating Roman artifacts, sculptures and architecture. I'm sure just a taste of what I can expect to see in Roma itself in a month...

  10/03/2025 - 19/03/2025 "The moon is up over One Tree Hill" echoed through my headphones as I gazed across a hill that was almost as far away from One Tree Hill as you can possibly get on this Earth. A weird sense of melancholy mixed with nostalgia and adventure washed over me as a tear started to well in my eye. I was a long way from home in the central plateau of Spain. I think that I have began to recognise on this trip that there are such a wide range of emotions that we can go through as humans that aren't necessarily split into positive and negative. This moment in Segovia outside Madrid was one of those emotions that I couldn't define as either "good" or "bad", it just was what it was.  I spent my last portion of time in Thailand back in Bangkok, albeit in a different part of the city. In the end I stayed in five different places in Bangkok, which gave me a better understanding of the city than if I'd just stayed in the same place I re...

4/03/2025 - 9/03/2025 Not much can beat a New Zealand beach. This little slice of Thailand called Koh Samet has tried, but in my eyes, failed. Clear water, white sand and blistering temperatures do make the beaches of Koh Samet and surrounds picturesque, but Marahau or Hahei, those are special beaches. I suppose that I am  naïve   to the nature of many beaches across the world, meaning that any sense of commercialisation on a beach is a turn off. Give me water, sand, a bit of grass, a road, and then shops/bars/cafes etc. rather than bars and resorts right on the beach any day. Oh also there is a decent amount of rubbish on the beaches too. Not quite like back home. One of the goals of this expedition of mine is to gain some perspective and appreciation for Aotearoa. In terms of beaches, I certainly have a new found appreciation of kiwi ones.  The rest of my first stint in Bangkok was relatively uneventful, however, it was filled with some good reflection time, as well as ...

3/03/2025 I think that I expected this trip to include meeting some wonderful and interesting people, I guess I just wasn't expecting it to happen so quickly. The lessons I learnt from this particular day will stick with me for a while. Put yourself out there, be yourself and enjoy every moment for what it is. Don't dwell on what could have been, accept that it's better to have a great experience and for it to end, rather than wishing it would continue. In order to know the joy in life, it can't last forever.  Some of the temples of Bangkok were on my agenda for the morning, trying to beat the 35 plus degree heat of the middle of the day. The temples were spectacular. Ornate, intricate and colourful, it was a different kind of architecture than what I have seen before. The Grand Palace (as seen above) was fascinating in combining Thai architecture and more western, neo-classical architecture. The plan for the afternoon was a Thai cooking class at the hostel.  In showing...

1/03/2025 and 2/03/2025  A night sleeping in a plane seat between two strangers is always an enjoyable experience, right? Well of all the nights I've slept on this earth, that was certainly one of them. The last day in Sydney was spent watching the mighty Auckland FC drop several leads against Adelaide to draw 4-4, with the NSW Art Gallery sprinkled in. The art gallery was pretty cool, some really nice pieces in there, with an impressive building to match. During dinner before heading to the airport, this old American geezer started talking to me about IQ testing, firstly in when he was drafted in the Marines for Vietnam, and then it increasingly started getting very racially charged about how different races have different IQ levels and the like. I should have known when he asked me relatively off the bat if I was "Celtic", never a good sign asking someone's racial background unprompted. Also like sure my ancestry is "Celtic" technically but what does that ...

  27/02/2025 and 28/02/2025. I am 100% certain if a government (likely a looney lefty liberal one) proposed the idea of public libraries today then they would be laughed out of Parliament/Congress/the respective legislative assembly. I am writing this post from the New South Wales State Library which is an immensely impressive structure. As you can see by the picture, the ceiling is probably 20 metres high (rough estimate I could be wrong, but anyway very high ceiling). This is the second visit to this library in two days for me, and it's provided such a great environment for me to write, research and read in, and most of all in sweet, sweet air conditioning. Oh and it's totally free. What will these liberals think of next? Free healthcare? Frightening stuff. The past two days have seen me settle into my solo-travelling lifestyle a bit more. Yesterday I caught the metro to North Sydney for breakfast and then took the ferry to Cockatoo Island and through Sydney Harbour and up th...

26/02/2025. I left Auckland full of optimism, adventure and anticipation. This then turned into nervousness, overwhelment, and a small sense of regret. However, like everything, this didn’t last forever. My final few hours in Auckland were spent having breakfast with my family and Lance, before flapping my wings across the Tasman. The arrival into Sydney was smooth and seamless. Taking a direct train from the airport to the CBD was something my little kiwi brain almost couldn’t comprehend. After dropping my bags off at my hostel, I meandered aimlessly through the bustling streets of New South Wales’ capital – something I will be doing a lot on this trip. Sweating through my shirt in the hot Australian sun, I took in the sights, sounds and smells of Sydney with the highlight being One Martin Place, an intricately orante neo-classical building. As I walked purposelessly, a twinge of panic flowed through me. What the fuck am I doing? I’ve quit my stable post-grad job and left behind my fr...