Despite there being plenty of them at home, Irish people have a strange need to frequent Irish bars on their travels abroad. Maybe it's the friendly atmosphere, the chance to meet fellow Irish people, the often failed search for a good Guinness or maybe just a little homesick.
Few people have seen the inside of an Irish bar in so many far-flung places as Kerry lad, Colm Dalton. The Tralee native has visited over a hundred Irish bars in around 35 different countries as he attempts to visit every Irish pub on Earth!
Colm estimates there are around 6,500 Irish bars worldwide and with his love for the Irish pub and travelling, the challenge was a perfect way to combine the two. We at LADbible Ireland sat down with Colm recently to hear about his travels and the pubs he has visited in the far corners of the globe from Amsterdam and Indonesia to Cyprus and Singapore.
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Colm said he started the idea as “some kind of morbid curiosity, what’s the Irish pub like in different cities?” Having grown up surrounded by great pubs in Kerry and with parents who were both folk musicians, he knows a thing or two about what it takes to make a great Irish pub. He said, “I spent loads of time as a kid eating Taytos in a pub in Kerry.”
For Colm, some of the great Irish pubs around the world can be seen in the most unexpected places. One of his best picks is in the Azores, way out in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. He told us “It was a really really good pub called Ned Kelly’s, because they had like proper Guinness glasses, and they do like the table service, which is the Rolls Royce of any Irish Pub.”
He added “That was really surprising. But also because there's no other pub at all in like about 1000 meter radius.”
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However, as you’d expect, with the good comes both the bad and the ugly. In Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Colm found a place literally just called ‘Irish Pub’ which he called “a red flag straight away.”
He said, “We were just sitting here on our own with 20 minutes not getting served and when the service is really bad, that's how you know.” He added, “It's not a classic.”
Some gems can be found in the most unexpected places, however. A shopping mall in Jakarta, Indonesia is not exactly where you might expect to find a great Irish pub but after 3 hours on a tuk-tuk looking for the place, Colm found it.
With no expectations whatsoever, Colm was shocked to find at the back of the mall a cracking Irish pub. He said “It was brilliant. It looked really like an Irish Pub. Just as soon as you go in all the lads there was like a mixture of locals and stuff like that.”
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Meanwhile, in Bali, Colm found an Indonesian leprechaun with a thick Dublin accent. We can only speculate that he is a big fan of Love/Hate or Kin!
So what makes a good Irish pub according to Colm? Well, the crowd inside tells a lot about the place, somewhere for locals and Irish expats alike. He said, “A mixture of local students, music heads and some tourists, those ones are the best.”
Having visited so many pubs it would be easy to forget them all. Colm, however, keeps a blog online of his travels detailing the pubs he visits and memories he makes along the way. He says his blogs “Tie in the culture of the place. To see if there is a connection between the place and Irish culture or Irish history, I make a kind of connection if there is one.”
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You can read about his travels and his experiences good and bad in Irish pubs around the world by clicking here. Next up for the Kerry man is Ghent in Belgium and Rome so be sure to keep an eye out for them. His blogs are a great read and a handy guide to knowing which pubs to visit when travelling abroad…and which ones to avoid!
Topics: Ireland, Pubs, Daily Ladness, News
Conor Paterson