3/4. Left-hand traffic, temples and other colonial buildings are a legacy from the British. And the observation wheel kind of resembles the London Eye.

2/4. The skyscrapers and road signs clearly moved straight out of New York. They even have the Statue of Liberty (:​

1/4. A slice of India with Hindu temples and mosques, Indian food and Indian people. The only thing missing is chaotic traffic and the constant honking of tuk-tuks.

I seriously started to doubt that they actually brought me to Singapore. There's this bakery called Yugoslavia with ajvar and burek, opened by a Macedonian guy's daughter. Then these Bosnian guys are offering cevapcici for S$25 (€17) (honestly, I'd rather grab them in Serbia). We even had a really nice chat in Serbian :)

For years now, Singapore has been seeing territorial disputes between local otter gangs. Clashes often result in serious injuries or even deaths for those involved.

These events regularly make the local news and sometimes go international (here, here, here). Wikipedia has a detailed writeup on the largest family — Bishan.

Bishan is also the most aggressive bunch. They control the most territory and haven't lost a single fight! A lot of that is thanks to their numbers. Close behind them is the Marina family. They adapt really well to new environments, but keep getting beaten down by Bishan, losing territory and having to move to worse neighborhoods.

The local police? Totally hands-off... but honestly, they don't need to do anything. Because these territorial disputes are happening between smooth-coated otters :)

If you're thinking it'd be cool to see a Netflix series about them, well, at least there's an episode about Singapore's otters in Night on Earth. Plus Google even gave them some love with a Doodle.

Video credit here. There's actually a whole community of otter watchers on Facebook. They share maps and honestly, they're awesome.

PS I wonder if an otter from the Bishan family could fall for a Marina girl? :)

I spent a whole hour trying to convince the check-in staff in Belgrade that I absolutely needed to be registered for the flight. They spent a whole hour convincing me otherwise.

Timatic apparently showed them that I needed a Singapore visa, which I didn't have. But on the government website it says you don't need one if you have a ticket to a third country within 96 hours of arrival (which I did).

There was quite a heated discussion with colleagues on-site, three calls with different airline departments, and a couple of times they said there was no chance without a visa and I should just go home.

Eventually we figured it out. They apologized profusely for the misunderstanding and issued me a boarding pass. No problems with Singapore immigration officers.

Singapore airport is awesome. The greenest one I've ever seen. I'll go explore the country since they let me in.

Serbia has lots of caves, but Bogovinska is the first one where they showed bats up close like that, and even seedlings that somehow ended up inside without any sun or heat! It's more interesting inside than in a lot of other caves I've been to.

You need to book a tour here in advance. Nobody's sitting at the entrance waiting for people. There's not even a schedule. Apparently the number of visitors is pretty small (at least in winter). I didn't prepare well, but I got really lucky—right when I arrived, a couple of guys showed up who'd already arranged everything. They took me along with them.

There's not really much of a story here, I just wanted to share some pictures.

Made it to Višegrad. Nice little town. The surroundings are absolutely stunning. Once I get my drone fixed up, I'll definitely come back to film here. The famous bridge is still standing. I really loved the legend about its construction as told by Ivo Andrić.

The bridge was built on the orders of a Turkish vizier who, by the way, was originally from the local Christian population but converted to Islam. But things weren't going well. A river mermaid would break everything down at night that the builders managed to construct during the day. After some time, the builder Rade heard a voice from the water saying he needed to find twin children—a brother and sister named Stoya and Ostoya—and wall them up in the middle columns of the bridge. Then the destruction would stop.

They began searching through every corner of the country, even announcing a reward. They found such infants fairly quickly in a remote village. In the name of the vizier, they took the children from their mother. And they walled them up in the middle columns. Rade took pity and left holes in the columns so the mother could feed the infants. After that, there were no more problems.

To this day, a white residue forms on the bridge. It's believed to be mother's milk.

Most likely, they weren't too keen on submitting to the Turks, but over nearly 500 years, the events turned into a legend.

PS. The owner of the guesthouse turned out to be exceptionally hospitable. He lit the fireplace, was really worried the house wasn't warm enough (it was fine). Then he said something like "there's excellent homemade rakija in the fridge, help yourself. and honestly, whatever you find—it's all yours".

It turns out that five years have passed since the first post in this channel.

During that time, I've been bounced around quite a bit across different countries. And I can tell you that the brightest and warmest memories are all about people. No matter how much I love mountains, seas, and amazing architecture, I find myself reminiscing more often about random locals who invited me for tea in Beslan or coffee near Niš. Or how passersby in Egypt asked me to take their photos, or how a local girl in Tanzania gave me a whole tour of the city. Or how an airport check-in agent in the US sang the Soviet national anthem—which he'd memorized while studying at RUDN back in the 80s—and how a guide from Almaty helped me find emergency housing.

Even though the world has become much more hostile and turbulent since then, I want to believe that people can remain kind and wonderful through all times.

Thank you for reading. Thank you for commenting.

Special thanks to those brave enough to travel somewhere together with me. Or even let me crash at their place abroad.

PS. In my first post, I really hoped this channel would be more interesting than a coffee maker's. Now I'm just hoping they don't start embedding ChatGPT in them anytime soon :)

A couple of days ago in Belgrade it was +19°C, and literally the next day a bunch of snow fell and didn't even melt. I've gotten so unused to weather like this that it feels really weird. Here are some snowy photos for you.

The selection of non-alcoholic beer and grape "celebration drink" in Muscat stores is really impressive :)

And I saw peeled garlic for sale for the first time. Plus lamb offal and other organ meats in a regular grocery store.

One last thing about Oman — it's the nature. The pictures look beautiful, but overall the landscape is pretty lifeless. I kept getting this feeling like the end of the world had come and I had to somehow survive. I really wanted to see something alive, but there wasn't even a hint of any movement anywhere.

And honestly, I never really fell in love with Oman. It was interesting to see, but I have no desire to go back.

Even though I've already left Oman, I still haven't managed to finish a couple more posts from there.

Oman is one of the few absolute monarchies today. There are fewer than ten in the modern world. Portraits of the local sultan and his predecessor Qaboos bin Said hang in many places. The latter ruled for almost 50 years and died in 2020. It's believed that people were very fortunate to have him, and he did a great deal for the sultanate. If you read about the state the country was in when he took over, the changes are truly impressive.

1970. In power was Qaboos's father. A very eccentric ruler. Here are his accomplishments by the end of his reign: child mortality above 25%, literacy rate around 5% (no wonder when the entire country had only 3 schools), paved roads totaling just 10 (ten!) kilometers. Even their own currency had just appeared (before that they used Indian Gulf rupees). After an assassination attempt in 1966, the monarch developed serious paranoia and started banning everything: playing football, wearing sunglasses, talking for more than 15 minutes in the street.

When it became completely unbearable, his son staged a coup and seized power from his father. The latter was exiled to England and lived in London until his death 10 years later.

Though the new ruler removed the completely insane restrictions, many political bans remain in effect today, and punishments have gotten harsher. For example, criticizing the highly respected sultan can now get you 3 to 7 years (before 2018 it was 6 months to 3 years). Tons of laws are worded vaguely for convenience in enforcement, naturally. It's just like in the best of places.

I've always been curious about how different minorities live. These things tell you a lot about a country. In Oman, the minorities are Christians and Hindus. Together they make up less than 5%.

You can't just build a temple wherever you want here. You need government permission. In Muscat, Christians were given permits in the same neighborhood, so practically all the major religions ended up in one place: Catholics, Orthodox, Protestants, and many others. From the outside, you wouldn't even guess these buildings have anything to do with religion. That neighborhood was the only place where I actually remembered it's the new year.

Hindus in Muscat have only 2 temples, but they're among the oldest in the Middle East. And attendance is impressive: I stopped by for 5 minutes and there was an endless stream of families coming to pray. Probably because it was a holiday.

Finding good food in Oman is tricky. There are eating places everywhere, but picking something decent takes real effort. There are tons of cheap, sketchy little joints for workers with mediocre food and, let's say, unique décor—the kind where they feed you off a disposable plastic tablecloth (like they literally just ripped open a grocery bag and spread it on the table). It's mostly Arabic or Indian food. With insane amounts of rice (one serving is honestly enough for 3-4 people; locals often can't even finish it themselves). Turkish cuisine is popular too—well, the kebab version of it anyway—and yeah, that gets old fast.

Google Maps lies more here than anywhere else. A 4.1 rating could actually be better than a 4.8 if you compare similar review counts and price ranges. In Muscat, tasteatlas recommends 2 places where the bill starts at $60 per person, and one cheaper option that's better left alone. The further you get from the capital, the more limited your choices become. Somewhere between Sur and Muscat, I really needed to find something to eat, but there was nothing but Pakistani cafeteria-level spots for miles around. To be fair though, even that place for (and I'm serious) 2 bucks a head went down just fine.

In the end, the best recommendations came from r/oman discussions.

PS. If you happen to pass through, my top 3 are number one, number two, and number three.

Small towns and villages in Oman look pretty worn out. But because of their unique, unfamiliar architecture, there's no sense of dreariness or hopelessness. At least at first.

During the day, there are very few people on the streets. It feels like you're driving through ghost towns. But as evening comes, life wakes up and it doesn't feel that way anymore. The streets are mostly filled with men. In large part because there are many migrant workers. For every woman in the country, there are 2 men (which is still better than Qatar's ratio of 1 to 3).

I often see drinking tap water faucets sticking out from the fences of private houses. Most of the time they're not marked, but I did come across one with a blue sign saying you can drink from it.

Inside really small villages, sometimes there's no asphalt at all. You drive through it and wonder if you're even supposed to be driving there.

There are tons of mosques in Oman. Most of them are pretty new. You'll even find them at gas stations sometimes. That said, at the most popular ones, they either limit tourist visits to morning hours—like 8 to 11 AM—or don't let them in at all.

This was the first time I'd seen visitors allowed not just to check out the interior, but actually set up a separate tea area where they serve free tea and coffee and answer any questions you have about Islam. If you're really interested, they even offer literature. Some of it's in Russian too.

Hotels usually have a sign pointing toward the Qibla so guests know which direction to pray. And there are radio stations that just play Quran reciters nonstop (though there are music stations too, of course).

By the way, people in Oman aren't Shia or Sunni (if you want to know the difference, redroom has a pretty good explanation), they're Ibadis. The main differences with Ibadis are pretty subtle. Like, most people believe you can go to paradise from hell once you've atoned for your sins, but Ibadis think once you're there, that's it. There's no coming back.