Solo trip to Budapest

Solo adventure starts

I was excited and scared to be honest, especially when my first destination is Budapest where English is not their first language. Hop on easyjet and 3 hours later, 12 in the middle of the night, I says hello to Budapest.

After Web Summit, Karu head back to Malaysia to focus on his work while I will start my solo trip in a few cities around Europe. I was excited and scared to be honest, especially when my first destination is Budapest where English is not their first language. Hop on easyjet and 3 hours later, 12 in the middle of the night, I says hello to Budapest.

Took a shared van to get to my hostel. I was tired and hungry as I was busy patching up some code at Dublin airport before flew over to Budapest. Lucky for me there’s so many fast food and kebabs around where I stayed. I opt for McDonald’s to try out McRib ( In my country McDonald’s are halal ) and was shock to see they employ security guard in the store.

security guy at mcdonalds

Strolling around town

Spent the first day walking around looking for SIM card after I finished some work. Grab a quick lunch(can’t resist the sausages and beers) at the food stall nearby and wonder around city square and saw this saxophone player. Sat down on the outdoor bar, grab a Staropramen and enjoy the music. I’m so pumped up when he starts playing the final countdown! ( I played saxophone for 5 years when I was in high school and that’s our theme song for most of the competition we joined)

random saxophone player

Same routine the next day, get some work done, walk around town try out the local food and beer and even get to see live snatch thieve in action when I wonder around the ruin pub area at night. Some teens grab a suitcase from an old uncle and just took off. The uncle tried chase them but.. well hope there’s nothing too important in the bag.

On the third day my hostel mate was planning for a walking session and to check out the parliament and castle hill but unfortunately I got to finish up some work and I pass on that which end up to be a pretty good decision.

Meeting a new friend

After getting some work done, I grab my camera and start my walking journey to castle hill ( A must visit if you’re here ). It is breathtaking, one of the best night view I’ve seen so far. After wondering alone for couple hours on castle hill, it’s getting dark and the yellow lights on the parliament building attracts the attention of tourist and photographers to it. After snapping some photos I walked away to check out the view from the other side where there is this watch tower like building.

It’s a lot more quite and offers a different view and I want to take a photo of me with that awesome scenic view. I walk to this girl and say “Hey, could you help me to take a photo?“. That’s when I meet Debbie. She’s a hongkie that is studying in Finland at that time. She’s on her central Europe tour alone. We get along well and after some photo taking we proceed to grab dinner together at a traditional Hungarian restaurant.

butter noodles with chicken

My main, butter noodles with chicken. The noodles has a very different texture compared to anything that I’ve tried before overall it is decent but it’s not something I would crave for. Debbie ordered beef goulash, pretty good and similar taste to the one I had on my second day in a different place.

hungarian dessert

Missing home cook food perhaps?

The dessert is a warm cake like texture top with cheese cream. I must say food in South East Asia is pretty damn good. I walk her home after dinner and we the next day we went to visit the hot bath, heroes square and Gellert hill some other places. Luckily she had a good itinerary so I just followed her plans all the time. Soon after, we head home and we’re heading to Vienna next.