After a 17.5 hours train ride (3.5 hours delay due to floods) I’m back in Chiang Mai now. I didn’t expect to be here again that soon but the city is a stop on the way to my next adventure. Quite an unusual adventure that’ll be, a ten days meditation retreat at Wat Phradhat Doi Suthep. I’ve been interested in learning meditation for a while but never really got the hang of it.

Yesterday and earlier today I got to experience Bangkok with local knowledge by my side. Two Bangkok-born couchsurfers, Sara and Oh, showed me around their parts of the city and told me about Thai everyday life. Now I know that Thais really love their king, they don’t like the prince and the police is corrupt to the bone. It was an interesting encounter each time and both Sara and Oh have their own opinions on Thailand and westerners so I got to hear more than one side of the story.

It’s business as usual. Bangkok is smelly, smoggy, crowded, hot and humid. In the beginning I always wonder why I’m staying here again and again but the answer comes with the first stroll through the streets: It’s interesting. Getting bored in Bangkok is almost impossible. I started yesterday evening with a massage. There isn’t any places around the guest house but the lady at the reception recommended to take the subway to Silom Road.

Wednesday morning starts early for me. I don’t want to take a gamble with the railway and decided to take a train that takes me a couple of hours early to Berlin. All connections are on time though and I arrive in Berlin around noon. The central station in Berlin is impressive, trains on two levels and heaps of shopping possibilities. I spend some time with my cousin and his wife at their place and it’s nice to see them again.

There it is, all the stuff that is (most likely) going to accompany me in the next couple of months. Two backpacks, cloths, bathroom stuff, electronics (heavy), books (even heavier, especially those illegal copies of the LP), documents, credit cards, cash in four different currencies, etc.. Let the games begin!

Disclaimer: The following text is full of generalizations and does not apply to each and every German. Go to whatever country on earth and ask about peoples’ opinions about Germans. Aside from the old nazi stuff, what you will most likely hear is that Germans are great engineers and hard workers. That certainly is true, Germans are crazy about work. Work is the most important thing in life and way too many people identify themselves through their job.

On Monday I paid the Vietnamese consulate in Frankfurt a visit. The address: Villa Hanoi, Kennedy-Allee. That sounds awfully wrong but at least Kennedy was kinda pre-war. The consulate was pretty busy and I had to wait a while before I could hand in my paperwork. ‘Ok, come back next month to collect passport’, I was told. ‘Ah hang on mate, I’m only in town for today, any chance you have an express handling?

On my first and last night in Edinburgh I wanted to see a little bit of the city and went to grab a beer somewhere. The city certainly looks better than Glasgow. I found some nice bars, had a couple of pints and was in bed before midnight. Way to early the alarm woke me up and at 5 am I was standing in a crowded departure hall at Edinburgh international.

At some point in Australia my focus in travelling changed from seeing and doing a lot of nice stuff towards learning something about the country I’m in. In Cambodia Couchsurfing was very helpful for that and in Germany I met a lot of interesting people through the network as well. Here in Scotland I wanted to give the ‘original’ couchsurfing a try, that is staying with a local and crashing on their couch or - in this case - spare beds.

Text comes later, here’s some pictures.