Bali railway and the best beaches near Bangkok
Where I’m At: Chiang Mai, Thailand. Latest Post: Best beaches near Bangkok. Travel Reads: Exploring Lazio, Inari shrines in Tokyo’s 23 wards, the night train across war-torn Ukraine, and more...
Bali has been announcing that they want to build a railway for over a decade, and this plan was announced again when I visited in September this year.
While I was sitting on the back of a motorbike taxi stuck in traffic, I wondered what Bali would be like with a railway. Using the information from all of the previous announcements, I made a map: Bali Railway Concept Map.
Most railway fantasy maps are just fantasy, but this map is made up mostly of previous proposals. I added a fantasy line that connects Ubud to Canggu, so I would never have to sit on the back of a motorbike taxi again.
I posted this map in my newsletter for transport and urban development, but it is also overlaps with travel.
I’m still in Chiang Mai, where I have been working my way through a to-do list of things I wanted to get done before 2022 (including more maps). There are a lot of nomads here at this time of year, so it has been good to meet old friends and readers of the newsletter.
Latest posts at Nomadic Notes
"What is the easiest beach getaway from Bangkok with the least amount of friction?”
A friend asked me this when he went to Bangkok for a conference. I knew what he meant by friction, as getting out of Bangkok can be half the hassle of travel.
It’s a complicated question that I couldn’t answer with a simple reply. Closest doesn't mean best or easiest, and the answer will vary by how you travel. Forums are not much help either, so I have attempted to answer this question with a blog post.
Travel reads
• Exploring Lazio: Off-the-beaten path Italy outside Rome
• Pain & Glory! The story of cycling to all Inari shrines in Tokyo’s 23 wards
• A herd of elephants was caught on video crossing the Theun River in Khammouane Province (Facebook video link)
A rare sighting of wild elephants in Laos.
• Amami Oshima: Japan's UNESCO-listed subtropical island paradise
• Deep in Guyana’s jungle, just upriver from a thundering waterfall, my boat began to sink . . .
• The cool, wild and very remote Andaman Islands
• Man travelled nearly 600 miles to TEN countries in 24 hours using just public transport
• These three European cities have the most free tourist attractions
• A 30 km long park and bike lane set to change how people live and move in Sofia
• What Qatar built for the most expensive World Cup ever
🚆Train travel
• Taking the night train across war-torn Ukraine
I feature more stories about European train travel at Europe Rail News (subscribe here for monthly updates).
• Zimbabwe's stunning 80km safari train
✈️ Air travel
• Foster + Partners lands design of major new Polish airport
• Stowaway cat has fur-tunate escape after sneaking into suitcase at JFK airport
The Nomadic Notes Travel Newsletter is a weekly newsletter of the best travel reads and interesting travel news from around the web, and random ramblings by the editor.
- James Clark