In the next couple of updates here on my PL.com blog I'll fill you in on what I've been up to the last couple of weeks: traveling around the globe.

I went from Holland to Newcastle, to Galway, back to Newcastle, back to Holland again, on to Hong Kong, Melbourne, Hong Kong, Macao, Hong Kong and all the way back to Holland again. But first things first: from Holland to Newcastle.

Since there's no direct connection from Amsterdam to Galway I had to make a switch somewhere, so I decided to stop over in Newcastle where I had business to do anyway. My cousin needed help with his computers, so I bought all kind of supplies here in the Netherlands such as a video card and hard disks.

The next day we flew to Galway. Galway is not the biggest of airports, so we had to board at one of the smaller gates at the Newcastle airport. When I saw the plane I had my doubts whether to go or not.

With another 15 brave ones we decided to take a chance and boarded. To the surprise of most, we landed safely in Galway Airport.

The plane in question. Umm, when did the Cold War start again?

In Galway we stayed in the Radisson SAS hotel where the tournament was held, which was pretty convenient. Minutes after I got my door key I ran into some people from Veronica, a Dutch media outlet. They wanted to do several interviews with me, so we did a couple of them.

One of the interviews took place in the restaurant where, after a while, we found out that both the chefs were Dutch, so they joined the conversation and we had a nice chat and some good laughs.

Great Media Exposure But to No Avail

When my tournament (the Irish Poker Championships) started, I was placed directly at the televised table. Among the other players on that table were Bruno Fitoussi, Mike Sexton and Maud Mulder (a Veronica anchor).

TV table at the Irish Poker Championships. Photo Credit: Mickey May.

Unfortunately I could not do any serious damage and had to leave on Day 1. I was already pretty low in stack when I made my nut flush at the river; I couldn't get away anymore.

The card that made my nut flush paired the board, and my opponent had already flopped trips, so he had me beat with a small full house. Hometown player Jude Ainsworth won the event and took home €180,000 for his effort. (Click here for more info)

Post-Tournament Chilling

Since there are only two flights a week out of Galway I had to stick around, so I decided to play the €800 buy-in tournament the next day. I ended up 18th or 19th - while I had a decent stack, I took some major risks.

I wanted to win the tournament there and then, so I got involved in three coin flips and lost all three of them.

Tournament ruler and computer repairman.

I felt like I needed to rest and chill out a bit, so I took it easy and went to the sauna. I decided not to play in the €500 buy-in event the next day. My cousin (Steven "Lucky" Liu), who came with me from Newcastle on this trip, did pretty good by chopping three-way in that tournament for just over €10k.

The last day we wandered around Galway, had a few drinks, played some pool and left for the airport. We went back to Newcastle where I had some unfinished computer fixing and upgrading to do, but I managed to fix and upgrade all six (!!!) of them.

The next day I headed eastward again (I would go a lot more eastward in the coming days :-) ) to the Netherlands.

In the next update I will tell you about my trip to Hong Kong and Melbourne - the latter for the Aussie Millions.

--Steve Wong

More blogs from Steve Wong:

• Traveling Around the Globe Part 2
• Traveling Around the Globe Part 3
• How I Started in Poker