Travel Newsletter: 22 December 2023
Notes on Manila, more walk and talk, Afghanistan in the 70s, and more travel reads.
Welcome to the Nomadic Notes Travel Newsletter, where I curate the best travel reads of the week.
Latest posts at Nomadic Notes
• Notes on Manila: A tale of four cities
Metropolitan Manila is composed of 16 cities and one municipality. I stayed in two and visited two others. This is my trip report from my visit in December last year (yes I have now cought up to 2023 on the blog time line).
Travel reads
• I posted in last week’s newsletter about a walk and talk in Chiang Mai province. I was wondering who else was on the walk, and then more trip reports turned up in my news feed. The walk was co-organised by Kevin Kelly, with Craig Mod, Jason Kottke, Liz Danzico, and Rolf Potts, among others.
I did a coffee tour to a remote village in Chiang Mai province in 2011, and I am still in contact with people I met on that tour. Reading these trip reports of the walk and talk made me realise I need to do more trips like this.
• Afghanistan: Bamiyan and the Buddhas by
“A memoir of life in Kabul, Afghanistan from 1976 to 1978: Part III.”
• Italy meets Costa Rica in a new urbanism community for neighborly walkers
Have you ever been to a walkable old town in Europe and wondered why we can’t do this where we live? This new town in Costa Rica has shown how to make a new walkable neighbourhood. By Tim Leffel via
.• Napping cats take over northern Thailand rice paddies in carefully planned artworks
• Rolling Through Paradise: A Bali adventure on a wheelchair
• The sauna secret: why Finland is the happiest country in the world
I was invited to stay in a small town in Finland by a traveller I met on the road. I was surprised to find that the apartment had a sauna, and they are indeed great.
• Greccio: The Italian village that's home to the world's first nativity scene
• How different languages laugh online
• Married yet solo: more women are traveling without their plus-ones
• He ran out of countries to visit, so he created his own
🚆Train travel
• JR East announces cheap one-day all-you can ride pass, shinkansen included
✈️ Air travel
• The world’s busiest flight routes for 2023
…
James Clark – Bangkok, Thailand.