My first trip to Europe in many years brought about the opportunity to travel to a destination i never made it to previously. Neuschwanstein Castle . I mean I had been to Munich 3 times before. But never made a trip to the castle. I have to admit though 2 of those trips were when I wasn't experienced in independent travel, and the other was when I had sprained my ankle skiing making mobility a challenge in winter. Famous for being the Disney Castle yes. But also to me more famous for being the castle from the movie Chitty-Chitty Bang-Bang. A favourite childhood movie. It wasn't until I was an adult I got to hear of the real castle story with King Ludwig the second. But let's leave that for later. So how did we make it to Neuschwanstein . Yes we. I was traveling with my friend who did all the planning. So when I say "we" I admit it, I refer to the royal we. I was riding coat tails on the logistics getting through jetlag with google maps and contributing only a vag...
Subic Bay was my introduction to the Philippines. On reflection starting here gave me time to adjust. This was an introduction to the Philippine office environment, and a snapshot into what it is like to be living in the Philippines. By day I was busy into the depths of completing our Australian engagements. Only I was now doing this so from the office with my colleagues physically in the room. Finally I could just walk over and ask for their assistance and tell them the underlying background stories of clients as they called. It was an underrated joy to not have to wait for a weekly "Teams meeting". To see how they even had a food truck arrive daily at the office as an option for staff to purchase lunch as opposed to walking out to get food was interesting. In Australia we'd only associate food trucks with construction sites but to staff here this was their normal. The office was just a bit away from other places and I could see how in wet season this would mean staying ...
I took the opportunity to visit Layess, my former Brisbane flatmate, as a part of my Panda trip. The idea was that I could make a side trip to her home city of Chongqing from Chengdu. It was about 2 hours by train. This was easy enough to complete in theory. I just had to figure out myself how to get there. Which meant navigating the long distance trains myself after managing to buy a ticket. Easier said than done. The first step was easy. I just had to retrace our trip from the Chengdu Train station we had arrived into. Then I just had to board the right train at the station. It was fairly easy on the way to Chengdu. But then we had guided instruction on what to do from the tour. Although we didn't actually have the guide with us every time we were inside the station we were seemingly under the safety blanket beingtold what to expect. This trip has no such support. I was alone and had my memory to rely on. I had no ability to book my train tickets onlin...
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