Taipei → Singapore → Athens → Skopje
Today i finally got a decent block of time to myself.
Well, technically i am supposed to be with all my colleagues kayaking in Matka Canyon, but i skipped out on that, and i am so glad that i did.
But let's rewind to 8 days ago. Friday lunchtime, i got on the subway to head to the airport, the start of a spectangularly exhausting trip halfway round the world.
Because i was on a budget carrier and they had canceled my originally-booked flight and then i had to blag my way into a different flight through customer support, i figured i better get there early so i didn't have to eat the overbooked shit. Of course, i arrived 3 hours early, everyone was waiting on the normal checkin line, but i had done online checkin while sitting on the subway, so i walked straight to the front, they looked at my passport and that was that. Which left me bumming around Taoyuan airport for 2 hours, and it's not the most thrilling airport in the world.
You know what is the most thrilling airport in the world? Singapore. It's well-known as a "destination airport", and allegedly (although i am not sure if i believe it) local people take day trips to the airport just to visit the mall because it's so great.
I did not go to the mall.
I arrived a bit after 8pm for a 7 hour overnight layover. 8pm is exactly when most of the local style restaurants close, which left me without the nasi lemak i was hoping to find. My terminal was a sad wasteland of American fast food chains and overpriced airport fusion-y casual dining stuff. I booked it around to one of the other terminals where there is a fake Disneyland version of a hawker food court and - hooray! - i found a South Asian place just about to close that served me a passable idly.
And then i wandered the airport like a lost soul.
Eventually i found my waiting spot. The cactus garden. Singapore airport has a bunch of gardens, including a motherfucking butterfly house, but many of them are not open at night. The cactus garden is. Because the cactus garden is just a rooftop smoking area with a bunch of cactuses. Most people refuse to go outside in Singapore because it's too hot, too humid, too wah wah wah i'm soft AF and don't deserve the tropics, but way i see it you're stuck between two international flights, what better than to spend your layover outside?
So i did. I found a bench, and tried to curl up on it, surrounded by cactuses and airplanes, and read some Kindle, desperately trying to stay awake to avoid jetlag. It was amazingly humid. It started to rain. I stayed.
Then on to Athens. The funny thing about this plane is that it was a full-blown budget airline, with no apologies. Most people have been on budget airlines for short flights - you know, where there is no free services on the plane at all, you have to pay for everything - checked baggage, seat selection, food, drinks, internet... But when it's a long haul flight it's really a different feeling to not have any TV screens anywhere, no official meal times, no blanket, no pillow, no headphones, no nothing. I have to say... I kinda liked it! The amount of wastage that usually happens on international flights is really depressing - as if just burning all that jet fuel wasn't bad enough - all the plastic, the unfinished food, the trash... But when people have to pay for shit, suddenly it turns out that most people actually can survive just fine for 12 hours without a meal. And most people don't need to drink a bunch of booze just to be able to sleep on a plane. People don't need to zombie out watching crap movies, they can talk to the person next to them, or read a book, or just sit in silence and doze off... it's all good. This myth that air travelers are like kindergarteners who can't go 5 minutes without being entertained... busted!
Although, to be fair, there were a handful of extremely obnoxious Australians who couldn't help but complain about how they'd never take this airline again because crikey Sydney Bali dunny whiny whiny whiny whiny... Can't say i miss that that country, bloody hell.
In Athens i had another long layover, waiting for one of the rare few flights into Skopje. I boldly attempted my beach experiment and... success! I made it to Artermida, the beachside corner of the Spata suburb which is right next to the airport but not a single tourist goes for some reason. Well, one reason might be the annoying public transport connections, which i just sucked up and suffered through because fuck taxis and other private internal combustion vehicles forever.
Dude, the beach was great. No foreign tourists, but there were definitely some Greek locals, maybe from Athens inner suburbs. No signs anywhere in English, or even Latin alphabet. No fish and chips. (Which actually bummed me out a bit, because i was craving it, but i'm sure i'll get some when i am back in Greece again next week.) I went to bakery and just randomly picked something, which turned out to be a ham and cheese pie that gave me all the great feelings of the legendary Schinkenkäsecroissant and also made me laugh because i learned that ham in Greek is "zamboni". (Okay, okay, really it's ζαμπόν/zampon, but it sounds like "zamboni" when you put it into ζαμπονοτυρόπιτα/zamponotyropita and i will die on this hill.)
I wandered through the town and found a small market with local folks selling their wares - melons, olives, tomatoes, various dried nuts and fruits... Man, Greece is just so comfortable. I think that's what surprised me last time i was there. I thought it was going to be insufferably touristy, but actually those areas are extremely concentrated, and you don't need to go far off the beaten track to find a nice, relaxing vibe. Markets, coffee shops, bakeries, all that stuff everybody loves about Europe, except there's sun and sand too, and people are in flip-flops and tank tops and completely unbothered if you look like a hobo.
Some guy who was picking through the driftwood randomly offered me a carving he found. I left it for the next person because i am traveling very light, but it's indicative of that kinda unforced blasé attitude that so surprised and cheered me the first time i was in Greece. It felt like a very easy country. I hope it will be again.
After a brief wander, i waited for the bus back to the metro station where i could transfer to the airport. I left myself a couple hours, even though i was only 5km away, and i'm glad i did, because the bus did not come as scheduled. By the time it arrived, almost an hour later, there was a small army of locals milling about waiting to head up to Spata. But nobody was especially upset. It's just how it is.
When i said i was planning to take the bus around Greece to one of my colleagues, he said he'd asked another colleague and she had told him that taking the bus in Greece is a disaster. She is French, and exactly the stereotype of a French person - very high standards and brutally dismissive of any kind of low end culture, inconvenience and jank. This is the kind of person who understandably would not enjoy Greece much, unless i suppose she went on a cruise or stayed in a resort or something. For me the delight of southern Greece (and - in my experience - also southern Spain) is this kind of "eh, whatever" attitude. Random and unpredictable bus schedules. Waiting for hours? Eh, whatever. Thinking that way helps to make a holiday relaxing. It's so much more stressful to march around trying to fit each day into a rigid schedule. Fuck, that's work.
In any case, i made my flight. Little propeller plane chugging its way north up the coast and over the hills into Macedonia. The way people had talked about the Skopje airport i thought it was going to be a desolate airstrip in the middle of nowhere, but it's a perfectly serviceable airport. ATMs, people selling local SIM cards, coffee shop, all the usual stuff. It is in the middle of nowhere, but i waited for the bus and let it drop me in town. My hotel was about a 20 minute walk from where the bus stopped, in a direction where there was nothing in particular to see or do, up some very seedy looking streets and past delapidated housing, but i made it.
And let me tell you, i was glad to fall into bed. I had been on the road something like 36 hours.
Since arriving in Skopje it's just been non-stop work shit. I have barely even had the time to watch a TV show or do something for me because it's so exhausting. Even i noped out of almost every group dinner, and after the first hotel breakfast i started skipping those too, it still takes so much energy to be "on" for this kind of work trip. But i'll write more about my thoughts on Skopje in another post, what little of it i have been able to see in between the work stuff. Tomorrow it's back to Greece for week two of the work stuff. After that? Hopefully some more sand and zambonis.
Well, technically i am supposed to be with all my colleagues kayaking in Matka Canyon, but i skipped out on that, and i am so glad that i did.
But let's rewind to 8 days ago. Friday lunchtime, i got on the subway to head to the airport, the start of a spectangularly exhausting trip halfway round the world.
Because i was on a budget carrier and they had canceled my originally-booked flight and then i had to blag my way into a different flight through customer support, i figured i better get there early so i didn't have to eat the overbooked shit. Of course, i arrived 3 hours early, everyone was waiting on the normal checkin line, but i had done online checkin while sitting on the subway, so i walked straight to the front, they looked at my passport and that was that. Which left me bumming around Taoyuan airport for 2 hours, and it's not the most thrilling airport in the world.
You know what is the most thrilling airport in the world? Singapore. It's well-known as a "destination airport", and allegedly (although i am not sure if i believe it) local people take day trips to the airport just to visit the mall because it's so great.
I did not go to the mall.
I arrived a bit after 8pm for a 7 hour overnight layover. 8pm is exactly when most of the local style restaurants close, which left me without the nasi lemak i was hoping to find. My terminal was a sad wasteland of American fast food chains and overpriced airport fusion-y casual dining stuff. I booked it around to one of the other terminals where there is a fake Disneyland version of a hawker food court and - hooray! - i found a South Asian place just about to close that served me a passable idly.
And then i wandered the airport like a lost soul.
Eventually i found my waiting spot. The cactus garden. Singapore airport has a bunch of gardens, including a motherfucking butterfly house, but many of them are not open at night. The cactus garden is. Because the cactus garden is just a rooftop smoking area with a bunch of cactuses. Most people refuse to go outside in Singapore because it's too hot, too humid, too wah wah wah i'm soft AF and don't deserve the tropics, but way i see it you're stuck between two international flights, what better than to spend your layover outside?
So i did. I found a bench, and tried to curl up on it, surrounded by cactuses and airplanes, and read some Kindle, desperately trying to stay awake to avoid jetlag. It was amazingly humid. It started to rain. I stayed.
Then on to Athens. The funny thing about this plane is that it was a full-blown budget airline, with no apologies. Most people have been on budget airlines for short flights - you know, where there is no free services on the plane at all, you have to pay for everything - checked baggage, seat selection, food, drinks, internet... But when it's a long haul flight it's really a different feeling to not have any TV screens anywhere, no official meal times, no blanket, no pillow, no headphones, no nothing. I have to say... I kinda liked it! The amount of wastage that usually happens on international flights is really depressing - as if just burning all that jet fuel wasn't bad enough - all the plastic, the unfinished food, the trash... But when people have to pay for shit, suddenly it turns out that most people actually can survive just fine for 12 hours without a meal. And most people don't need to drink a bunch of booze just to be able to sleep on a plane. People don't need to zombie out watching crap movies, they can talk to the person next to them, or read a book, or just sit in silence and doze off... it's all good. This myth that air travelers are like kindergarteners who can't go 5 minutes without being entertained... busted!
Although, to be fair, there were a handful of extremely obnoxious Australians who couldn't help but complain about how they'd never take this airline again because crikey Sydney Bali dunny whiny whiny whiny whiny... Can't say i miss that that country, bloody hell.
In Athens i had another long layover, waiting for one of the rare few flights into Skopje. I boldly attempted my beach experiment and... success! I made it to Artermida, the beachside corner of the Spata suburb which is right next to the airport but not a single tourist goes for some reason. Well, one reason might be the annoying public transport connections, which i just sucked up and suffered through because fuck taxis and other private internal combustion vehicles forever.
Dude, the beach was great. No foreign tourists, but there were definitely some Greek locals, maybe from Athens inner suburbs. No signs anywhere in English, or even Latin alphabet. No fish and chips. (Which actually bummed me out a bit, because i was craving it, but i'm sure i'll get some when i am back in Greece again next week.) I went to bakery and just randomly picked something, which turned out to be a ham and cheese pie that gave me all the great feelings of the legendary Schinkenkäsecroissant and also made me laugh because i learned that ham in Greek is "zamboni". (Okay, okay, really it's ζαμπόν/zampon, but it sounds like "zamboni" when you put it into ζαμπονοτυρόπιτα/zamponotyropita and i will die on this hill.)
I wandered through the town and found a small market with local folks selling their wares - melons, olives, tomatoes, various dried nuts and fruits... Man, Greece is just so comfortable. I think that's what surprised me last time i was there. I thought it was going to be insufferably touristy, but actually those areas are extremely concentrated, and you don't need to go far off the beaten track to find a nice, relaxing vibe. Markets, coffee shops, bakeries, all that stuff everybody loves about Europe, except there's sun and sand too, and people are in flip-flops and tank tops and completely unbothered if you look like a hobo.
Some guy who was picking through the driftwood randomly offered me a carving he found. I left it for the next person because i am traveling very light, but it's indicative of that kinda unforced blasé attitude that so surprised and cheered me the first time i was in Greece. It felt like a very easy country. I hope it will be again.
After a brief wander, i waited for the bus back to the metro station where i could transfer to the airport. I left myself a couple hours, even though i was only 5km away, and i'm glad i did, because the bus did not come as scheduled. By the time it arrived, almost an hour later, there was a small army of locals milling about waiting to head up to Spata. But nobody was especially upset. It's just how it is.
When i said i was planning to take the bus around Greece to one of my colleagues, he said he'd asked another colleague and she had told him that taking the bus in Greece is a disaster. She is French, and exactly the stereotype of a French person - very high standards and brutally dismissive of any kind of low end culture, inconvenience and jank. This is the kind of person who understandably would not enjoy Greece much, unless i suppose she went on a cruise or stayed in a resort or something. For me the delight of southern Greece (and - in my experience - also southern Spain) is this kind of "eh, whatever" attitude. Random and unpredictable bus schedules. Waiting for hours? Eh, whatever. Thinking that way helps to make a holiday relaxing. It's so much more stressful to march around trying to fit each day into a rigid schedule. Fuck, that's work.
In any case, i made my flight. Little propeller plane chugging its way north up the coast and over the hills into Macedonia. The way people had talked about the Skopje airport i thought it was going to be a desolate airstrip in the middle of nowhere, but it's a perfectly serviceable airport. ATMs, people selling local SIM cards, coffee shop, all the usual stuff. It is in the middle of nowhere, but i waited for the bus and let it drop me in town. My hotel was about a 20 minute walk from where the bus stopped, in a direction where there was nothing in particular to see or do, up some very seedy looking streets and past delapidated housing, but i made it.
And let me tell you, i was glad to fall into bed. I had been on the road something like 36 hours.
Since arriving in Skopje it's just been non-stop work shit. I have barely even had the time to watch a TV show or do something for me because it's so exhausting. Even i noped out of almost every group dinner, and after the first hotel breakfast i started skipping those too, it still takes so much energy to be "on" for this kind of work trip. But i'll write more about my thoughts on Skopje in another post, what little of it i have been able to see in between the work stuff. Tomorrow it's back to Greece for week two of the work stuff. After that? Hopefully some more sand and zambonis.