Monthly Archive: May 2015

Qingdao: Laoshan / Mount Lao

On our recent trip to Qingdao we were looking for a day trip to see a bit more outside the city. Not far away is the Laoshan region / Mount Lao. As always, I won’t go too much into detail of the history and significance as you are probably better...

Travel pr0 tip #2: foreign currencies

One of the advantages of the European Union is that it laid the foundation for the Euro Zone. While it has its disadvantages as well, it has made travel a lot easier. Gone are the days of having 19 (current number of Euro members) different foreign currencies in your drawer. Asia...

Qingdao: (German) beer culture

As explained earlier, Qingdao has a short German colonial history over 100 years ago. While shortlived, the German left their mark on some of the architecture. But first and foremost, the city is nowadays known for the Tsingtao beer which started out under colonialism. While Tsingtao isn’t China’s best selling...

Singapore: Sungei Road Thieves’ Market & Rochor Canal

I don’t think anybody would deny that Singapore has plenty of shopping opportunities for all budgets. Development for new, glitzy shopping malls is constantly ongoing and regularly a new one pops up somewhere. Probably the most extreme opposite to these shopping malls one can get is a visit to the...

Travel pr0 tip #1: communication with the taxi driver

Under the series “travel pr0 tips”, I’ll start compiling some advice for the road that I have personally found really useful. Today’s post is about communication with taxi drivers in foreign countries. Unless it is a country where I feel confident communicating in the local language or taxi drivers are...

World’s smallest wine menu?

I just got back from a trip to Qingdao in China and will have some good stories and photos to share. In the mean time, here is what has to be the world’s smallest wine menu. Which makes sense if you consider that Qingdao is famous for its beer…