Notes on Medan

[Travel Newsletter: 29 March 2024] Tana Toraja, circumnavigating Lombok in a kayak, Vietnam after 15 years away, 80+ travellers, Japan's southernmost station, and more travel reads.

Mar 29, 2024

Hello from Ho Chi Minh City. This is my last day here after getting back 10 days ago, which is a relatively short trip for me. Tomorrow I get on the North-South Railway, which will begin 2 months of solid travel. It’s been a while since I’ve done a long trip like this. The itinerary came together while I was back in Australia, where I was dreaming of getting back on the road. Booking travel when you aren’t travelling is like shopping at a supermarket on an empty stomach and buying more things than you need.

This is a research trip for Future Southeast Asia, and it will include some train trips that I haven’t been on before.

I have a Southeast Asia Railways newsletter that goes out at the end of each month (subscribe here to get the next edition this weekend) and I will post the train trips as guides on Nomadic Notes.

Latest posts at Nomadic Notes

• Notes on Medan: Gateway to North Sumatra

Continuing with my notes series in chronological order, I’m now up to my trip to Indonesia from last year. I visited Medan to ride the railways of North Sumatra, and it was interesting to revisit the first place I visited in Indonesia.

I linked in last week’s newsletter about the coolest streets in the world. There is also a street in Medan that has the potential to be one of the coolest streets in the world.

Travel reads

• Suspended between life and death

“The fascinating culture of Tana Toraja.”

• Sri Lanka's south coast is the next great lifestyle destination

• Circumnavigating Lombok in a kayak

• Why I returned to Vietnam after 15 years away — and what's changed today

“A decade and a half after a life-changing sojourn in Vietnam, a writer returns to track the country’s transformations — and his own.”

• These skiers are still chasing powder in their 80s and 90s

“For the Wild old Bunch of Alta, Utah, getting older means more time for the mountain. And anyone over 80 skis free.”

• The 89-year-old woman who is still travelling the world solo

• Dare to venture down unknown paths

“A brief reflection on the need to wander to vanquish fear and gain meaning in life.”

• The procrastinator's guide to solar eclipse travel

• Record diary of a walk around Australia

“On 20 September 1921 Aidan de Brune, a pseudonym of Herbert Charles Cull, set out from Sydney to walk around the perimeter of Australia in twelve months. As he described it:—

"To leave Sydney on foot, to walk ten thousand miles (more or less) around Australia, calling at all the ports en route on the four coasts, and to return to Sydney, was the task set me."

In the event, de Brune took two and a half years to complete the walk.”

The diary is a dry read, but I found it notable that people have always gone on crazy adventures long before the internet.

• St Helena hopes to woo more tourists to the island where Napoleon died and world’s oldest land animal lives

• This Italian region now has Europe’s highest Tibetan bridge