food was good of course

Singapore airport had all the cool attractions shut down or inaccessible for transit passengers. I ended up spending multiple hours at the nice lounge, waiting for my flight to Male/Maldives:

they also took security seriously

I did not starve at the lounge :)

Finally, after may hours in planes, arrived over Maldives:

Boats would pick up people directly at the airport to go to other islands, although in my case I had 24H on land waiting for my diving boat the next day:

A lot of people also take small planes to farther away islands:

I'm told this is called a beach and that people sit on it, while collecting skin cancers and looking at the waves :)

In my case, despite my hotel dropping my reservation, I got on a local dive boat with Ocean Junkies as soon as I could after arriving, and did a couple of nice dives, and then two more the next morning. The dives at the top of the page linked were surprisingly good.

lots of friendly cats

although I was super jetlagged, I hung out with the crew afterwards

I only spent limited time in Malai, but my impression was that all the people I interacted with were very nice and helpful, but it is still very mush a shariah law country, where a strict version of islam is mandated for all citizens, although apparently some allowances are made for foreigners, probably only because of tourist money. Obviously, I'm not a fan of that:

Virtually all my time was spent on the carpe novo dive boat though, so I didn't have to worry about land/country issues too much.

Nice pictures from the flight out:

From there, I went to the nearby mob museum which was detailled and entertaining enough:

When I got out, I went to visit the fremont experience I had never seen all these years. Nice lighting:

Then it was time to go to area 15 and meet Alvin and go to Meow Wolf a very interesting art installation/game:

the game starts in a store wtih lots of funny fake products

But the game really starts in the back, Alvin and I finished it in a couple of hours. He did most of the work at the end as I was getting tired with jetlag having just come back from Holland 3 days before:

The rest of the week was mostly spent at EDC and recovering from it. Thankfully I had a room with a nice view of the strip, so that gave a few nice shots:

On EDC Day 1, we went to Bellagio for their buffet that now closed at 15:00. It was still good enough with unlimited mimossas. Of course, went to see the conservatory which is always a delight to visit:

Two days later, after failing to get into the Cesar Palace's buffet the previous day (reservations only and even by going early, they didn't take walk-ins), we got in the the last day. Still a very good buffet:

And that was it for Vegas, of course most of my time was spent at EDC 2021.

nice weather in SFO

After Turkish Airlines nicely cancelled my flight, I ended up with Luftanza to FRA and then AMS. Service was decent1108*

Eventually arrived in Amsterdam, despite the connection (no direct flights during covid)

The first day, after unpacking and a quick meeting in my hotel, went to AFAS Live for AMF DJ 100

The next day, I took my bike on the train and went to Den Hagg to meet my cousin Frank during his lunch break. I then used the remaining time to see other things I hadn't seen in Den Hagg yet (the car museum is world class, and so is the Eischer museum):

I kind of half randomly picked Museon, a science-ish museum which was ok-ish, but was nothing to write home about:

so happy that I got to see some of those in real life

I was done quickly enough that I had time to see the Kunstmuseum next door, and that was much better, including works from Mondrian:

Mondrian:

Then I just had time to bike back to the main train station to get back to AMS in time for my 2nd evening show, ASOT 1000 special at AFIS. Sadly I got to the train station just a bit too late for bikes to be allowed (they are not allowed during 'rush' hour), so getting back was a bit tricky. Biking through Den Hagg is always fun, it's a pretty town:

They should have a remake of 'dude, where's my car' but with 'where's my bike'

Day #3, I decided to go check out the NXT Museum which was hit and miss. Not a must do, but a fun way to spend an hour or so:

Since I had a bit of time left over, I looked around on google maps and randomly found the 'WONDR Experience', also a bit out of the way in some hangar. I only had 45mn or so, which was a bit rushed, but it was just enough for a reasonable visit:

That evening, I went to Panama for Aly and Fila OTC, which was of course well enjoyable.

The next mornign was Day #4, I had a bit less time, so I just went for a bike ride a bit outside of the city center to a street that had art outdoors, and saw a few things on the way, and accidentally bought $100 of cheese, ooops ;)

my cheese being wrapped up

weather was surprisingly good for october

found a few street markets

finally made it to the art street

didn't do the museums again, had seen them already

That evening was really the afternoon, the much longer Luminosity's This is Trance

Day #5, the last day, there weren't any compelling ADE parties (no music I was likely to really enjoy, and besides after 4 days in a row of partying, I was a bit partied out too :) ), so I looked for day trips out of Amsterdam, and Leiden won. It's a charming town about 30mn away by train:

I started with Boerhaave, a medicine/science museum:

Next, I did the Volkenkunde museum, which had an extensive collection of art from different civilizations:

I finished with the small Observatory and Botanical garden:

I had no idea that Holland had a wild population of parrots

Leiden had more museums than I was able to see in one day, so I did as many as I could fit before the day was over (18:00):

It was time to back to Amsterdam, buy some groceries (mostly stropwafels) and get ready for the early flight home the next morning (with another detour via FRA)