That Man, Matt – The Travels of That Man, Matt

Prague – Day Three

My final day in Prague ran until my train home at 16:30. What to do?

Not the Old Town – nice to look at, overrun with tourists / stag do’s / hen parties.

The National Museum kept being recommended and since it was likely temperature controlled – this being anew the hottest day of the year – I took a short metro journey to Muzeum station, and popped up at the entrance to the New Building rather than the Historical Building. I think this accident of geolocation actually worked in my favour.

New Building

Highlight of the New Building is its permanent exhibition History of the 20th Century. Of course, this is presented with a focus on the Czech / Czechoslovakian viewpoint. As the webpage describes, there is an engaging – dare I say immersive – entrance to this exhibition, the Time Elevator. It’s a circular room, with a 360º projection above your head. The “elevator doors” close, and with a literal rumble – the floor actually shakes – you begin to “rise” through time, the projection around you constantly shifting from event to event from the early 1900s to the 2000s.

Following that, a wide-ranging series of artefacts are presented in the rest of the space. The Hall of Busts displays historical Czech figures across the 20th century, a walk through a series of apartments furnished in the styles of the times (the 1990s office was reminiscent of my home setup, replete with bulky CRT monitor and dial-up modem), plus some album covers and posters detailing quite why the 1980s were both awful and amazing.

Down a couple of floors and to a temporary exhibition Františka Plamínková and Us. Unsurprisingly I knew nothing about Františka, but she was, by this account, a prominent campaigner and advocate for women’s rights in Czechoslovakia, before her murder in a WWII concentration camp.

This quote stood out to me, especially given the [gestures hands wildly] state of the world today:

“Certain ways and means are forbidden to a Democrat, ways and means to control others without their consent, ways and means that they would never tolerate for themselves.”

–– Františka Plamínkova to the Czechoslovakian Senate, 1935

Skipping over the Children’s Museum floor, for I am only sometimes a child, the route to the Historical Museum takes you through an underground passageway. Since I was doing the whole tour the “wrong way around”, it was not immediately obvious what I was seeing.

On both sides of the passageway, projectors display a continuous sequence of images, either formed from individual photographs that merge into a panorama, or cleverly crafted animations forming another journey from the origins of the universe to the present day of Prague. It’s a truly impressive way to make use of what would perhaps otherwise be a dull corridor with some paintings hung on the wall. Some images in the gallery below.

Historical Museum

This part is much more the “traditional museum” style: many permanent exhibitions and detailed research into historical themes.

I’ll be honest: I was experiencing museum burnout by now – I can’t last more than an hour or so in a museum – so I only briefly looked through the exhibitions. They are mostly what you would expect: natural history features heavily, and deep dives into theological and nobility studies.

The atrium and cupola are spectacular though, even if my bugbear of people making themselves the subject of photos was in full view.

Nevertheless, I was happy to experience it, and my routing via the New Building first was actually better for me.

Summing it all up

I really enjoyed Prague as a city, as a destination. Despite the heat, I and my travelling partners explored quite a bit. The transport network is extensive, mostly based on street trams, alongside buses and the metro. (A word of caution: those Tatra T3 trams with their huge glass windows and no air-conditioning are not designed for hot days… but rare are air-con trams in Prague at all).

Apart from the accommodation, the city is reasonably affordable – meals, drinks and entrance fees are all reasonable.

My top tip: head out across the river away from the Old Town, into Prague 7. It’s more diverse, less touristy, and has great food options – some with added cats.

June 27, 2026

Prague – Day Two

Admittedly, spending what was – at that point – the hottest day of the year in Prague walking up a hill to the castle perched high above the city was a bold move. Still, when time is limited, that’s what we did.

Prague Castle

The path up is steep, and doesn’t reveal its destination until you are through the first gate and on a bit further. Consisting of the castle, St George’s Basilica and Cathedral of Saint Vitus, this is a an impressive collection of buildings, with the cathedral a third development of an original church founded in 930CE.

Hot and bothered as we already were (by 10:30am), we skipped the views inside (no doubt I missed the best part), but the queues were long and slow-moving. Ice cream instead 🍦

Heading back down, we took a different route which lead to the Waldstein / Wallenstein Garden, the Parliament buildings and the curious artificial stalactite wall, home to hidden silhouettes of animals such as frogs and snakes or grimacing faces.

Kunsthalle and DOX Centre

Opting for locations with air conditioning, after the castle we headed to the nearby Kunsthalle. With exhibitions spreading over three floors, we explored Mark Dion’s Cabinet of Electrical Curiosities, Memory of Touch: Chapter I and William Kentridge’s The Battle Between YES and NO.

Of those last two, I found the former more accessible, but certainly aspects of Kentridge’s work (YouTube link) are approachable for us non-artists.

Then over to the DOX Centre for Contemporary Art. Here was more challenging for me: a three-storey exhibition by Radka Bodzewicz on the story of Faust was pleasing, if you are familiar with the intricacies of the writing. Hit by News, Press Art from the Nobel Collection detailed how access to and truthfulness in writing was forever changed by the introduction of mass printing and newspapers.

Least meaningful, to me, Jiří Petrbok: Patient Diary, a focus on self-portraiture, could be seen as the expression of a madman in places. It didn’t resonate with me.

More images

June 26, 2026

Prague – Day One

Prague? On a Thursday?

Yes. I’m here to meet up with some friends of mine from the UK who are on a motorbiking tour to Czechia and back. Of course they have spent most of the day on the road whereas I spent about four hours on a train from Berlin.

The ComfortJet, operated by České Dráhy as “the Berliner” starts in Köbenhavn via Hamburg and Berlin, to Praha Hbf. It’s all practically brand-new trainset, very comfortable in first class. Despite a delay that DB claimed was “in another country” (actually the stretch from Hamburg to Berlin), the journey was smooth, and the scenery very nice to the east as we travelled south.

Having never been to Prague I expected hoards of stag do’s and hen parties, and I’ve definitely seen some groups that would qualify. Remains to be seen how we can avoid them, given we’re a group of 40+ yo men, but literally not here for that kind of schizzle.

More to come, let’s see how the evening pans out, especially since it’s still 33° at 17:30.

June 25, 2026

The Malls of Bangkok

The shopping mall. You know: that place where the lighting is a bit too bright, the escalators are broken, and there’s a “food court” piled high with teenagers and empty trays.

Bangkok’s malls are… not like that. If the Mall of Berlin is a medium ranking church of capitalism, then the Siam Paragon is the Dom in Köln, centralwOrld (yes, that’s how it’s written) is the Sagrada Família, and ICONSIAM (yes, again) is the Vatican.

These are places where the wealthy come to spend and the curious come to take pictures and snark.

Bangkok is home to two of the top ten largest malls in the world – Central World at number six, Icon Siam at number four. Along the Sukhumvit BTS line where I’m staying, there are six within a six-station distance, all conveniently connected to those stations so one doesn’t even have to touch the ground or barely suffer the humidity outside. Three of them are so close together that they almost merge into one; you never have to step foot outside.

Icon Siam

Icon Siam is the newest kid on the block, opened in 2018 and toppling Central World’s crown as the largest mall in Thailand. It has something like 525,000 sqm of retail space. For comparison, Manchester’s Trafford Centre – third largest in the UK – is about a third of the size.

It has its own BTS spur line connecting it to the rest of the metro system, called – unironically, one assumes – the Gold Line. It’s not the most graceful way to approach, being a glorified airport train, a bit jumpy and lumpy and slow.

BTS Gold Line train at Charoen Nakhon station.

One could also approach from the river by boat, or from the road in one’s Mercedes, but truly the only acceptable arrival is by helicopter to the adjacent Millennium Hilton.

Entering this cathedral is a mind-boggling experience. It’s not just big; it’s ambitiously, blatantly, conspicuously big. And while I essentially dislike the whole idea of twelve floors of luxury stores and Michelin restaurants and lifestyle retail all being thrown in my face… well, they certainly know how to make it work.

The first thing that I saw: a triple-level store with a name I have never heard of, selling… well, hard to say. Two enormous sculptures of semi-naked men (by enormous I mean: 10x10x3m), and at the other end of the store, this:

No, I don’t know either. Sunglasses, I think.

Of course, literally every luxury brand you can name is here, and there’s a curious thing: those same brands are in every other mall too. Luxury is not about exclusivity here.

So at first I was considering making this a half-hour thing, yeah yeah GucciLouisMcQueenDiorLagerfeldHermesYadaYada but… since I’ve come all this way, let’s have a wander about because there has to be more than that. And there is… of course all the usual suspects: Uniqlo, Muji, H&M, Zara, Nike, Adidas, Apple, even JD-fucking-Sports is here. Numerous food outlets selling fancy cakes and less fancy pastries (which I would not have been surprised if Greggs was written above the door). Also, cars: BMW, Mini, Volvo, BYD.

In between: just so. much. stuff. Like, housewares, but for no house such as I’ve ever been to. The kind of items you exactly expect to see being sold in a place like this, but never expect anyone to actually buy.

And restaurants. At least six are Michelin-something’d.

There are more floors: a cinema, a gym, a concert venue, a gallery space. Outside, wide vistas over the Chao Phraya river.

And they really nailed that mall escalators thing: never allow a simple route up or down. Once inside, patrons must be guided past every shop possible just to ascend or descend. (Also: make the lifts slow and inaccessible).

Escalators never where you expect them to be.

Overall, sure, I was impressed. It was a lot less awful than it could have been. And I didn’t spend a single Baht, so I guess I win.

But I might have to go back for this:

April 9, 2026

Bangkok, part 392

Yes, yes, I’ve skipped over the Laos part, I’ll get back to that at some point. TL:DR is that southern Laos is not as interesting as northern Laos, so I bounced back to Bangkok.

So what to do with an extra week here? Well, just explore, wander about, buy stupid stuff from the 7-Eleven at the end of the street.

Today I:

Had breakfast in a place where they played NTWICM Summer Hits 1997 (or similar)
Walked along a walking street (?)
Walked along a regrettable street
Took a boat along the river
Bought stupid stuff from the 7-Eleven at the end of the street.

The Ong Ang walking street is a bit strange. A couple of years ago I think they had a street festival here and wanted to promote the street sellers. But nothing much seems to have come of that. There is some street art, as promised, but it’s not the East Side Gallery (maybe that’s a good thing).

The regrettable street is the infamous Khao San Road. I thought I should see it, just once, and in the daytime it’s just a bit sad. Lots of people trying to sell food, beer, North Face gear, massages, and trips to other touristy places. Plenty of western tourists (heavily skewed to young lads) and by nighttime I am sure all the worse for it. There’s clearly a market for this; I am clearly not that market.

April 8, 2026

How did you get here?

When Little Simz asks this question, she ends up with a very different song to when Antony Szmierek asks this question. On balance, how I got to be where I am right now leans more to Antony’s go to work, then I did something stupid than Simz’s trust me, this music ting is my prophecy.

Apparently Louis Tomlinson also has a song with a similar title but I guess no one has ever heard it.

Anyhoo. The sequence of steps to how I got here is lengthily and thusly:

Need vacation, ideally around Eastertime to make best use of Jebus holidays.
Decide to tour the Baltic states, all the way up to the armpit of Finland-Sweden. (They probably don’t call it that).
Suffer through the worst Berlin winter since moving there a decade ago.
Decide I’ve had enough of cold, want warm.
Decide to bring forward the plan to visit Taiwan from 2027 to 2026.
Book flights on Etihad to Taipei via Abu Dhabi because I’m not made of direct-flight-on-two-months’-notice money.
Make all sorts of plans! Rent a motorbike! Meet Masto friends! Eat stinky tofu (maybe)!
Watch as a war breaks out in the Middle East.
Curse as the inevitable email arrives to tell me that flight segment Abu Dhabi to Taipei is cancelled.
Fume.
Research alternative ways to Taiwan.
Fume some more.
Go to work, then do something stupid.
Switch plans, book to Thailand via, uh, Dubai 🙈
- Masto friends: this is what I meant by rolling the dice 🎲🎲
Make all sorts of plans! Fly to Laos! Rent a motorbike! Ride Vientiane to Pakse via two or three excursion loops!
Watch as a continuing war in the Middle East causes fuel price shocks and shortages across the world, increasing the price of fuel in Laos by 50% in two weeks.
Cogitate.
Ruminate.
Have a complete crisis of confidence and consider bailing on the whole Laos thing.
Have a word with myself.
Rent the damn motorbike and figure stuff out on the way.

So. That’s how I got here, here being a little guesthouse in a village called Thongnamy (anglicised), somewhere due east of Vientiane.

March 30, 2026

Manchester – July 2025

Ahh Manchester. You split my heart in two every time I return.

For the uninitiated, Manchester is my not-really-hometown. German has the nice word Heimstatt to describe what Manchester is for me – Heimstatt is not necessarily the place you were born, but the place where you feel at home.

In 1994, I moved to Manchester as a naive, impressionable late-teenager, staying until 2015 when I finally upped sticks and moved to Berlin. A lot happened in between, not only to me but also to the city.

And in a surprising twist, things continued to happen after I left, dishearteningly proving that the world does not revolve around me.

Returning every year or two, I get to see the changes that Manchester locals maybe don’t notice: the point-in-time digital snapshots versus the analogue cinema.

Maybe five years ago, those digital snapshots were worrying: a wave of homelessness and drug dependency, litter everywhere, private car traffic clogging the city-centre streets, and a pervading sense that, perhaps, Manchester had run out of the steam that drove it in those preceding twenty-five years.

This time? It felt different. Visible homelessness seems way down – and yes, I am aware that out-of-sight is not out-of-mind, but I also know that a lot of work has been happening in this area. There were people everywhere, the city centre felt busy, traffic management is keeping private cars out of the centre. There’s much debate about the necessity of moar skyscrapuhhhs, and quite who they are serving, but the construction sector must be happy. There’s been a turnover in shops, many new independent places opening (and yeah, some closing), but the overall sense is one of activity. All those yellow buses, reminiscent of another city with yellow-painted public transport, only in Berlin, it’s a failing system.

“Yeah but Matt, you were only there for a few days, and only saw the city centre. You don’t see the day-to-day mess that is [the council | the Metrolink | the streets | the crime | the national government].”

Sure. You have to live in a place to understand the analogue. But believe me, I can compare it to Berlin and Berlin is today where Manchester was five years ago. It needs help.

Five years ago, when people asked if I would move back, my answer was a firm no. Now, if my personal circumstances were right (and they are not), I’d be seriously considering it.

And that’s why my heart splits. I want the best bits of both Manchester and Berlin.

I’m greedy.

Castlefield

Castlefield in the sun cannot but look great. I hope the urban garden along the viaduct gets extra funding to extend the full length, it’s a beautiful spot.

John Rylands Library

Ignoring those terf-sycophants who seem to think that the building was modelled on a book series about a wizard just for them to take selfies, there’s so much to enjoy here. The classic architecture, the merging of the extension to the old building, the endless cases of books, and slap-bang in the middle, an exhibition about queer pop music and culture of the 20th century. Always a pleasure to visit.

July 5, 2025

Author: That Man, Matt