Asia
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February 29th: Remember The Last One?
A post this morning by Lynette at In the net! was our prompt for these thoughts today… Where were you last time we had a 29th day of February? Cast your mind back. The news channels were by now full of stories emanating from a city called Wuhan, which most of us had never heard of before, about a killer virus, with all sorts of side issues including city lockdowns and the consumption of live bats, to name just two. Yet really, even then, on “Leap Year Day” 2020, we had no idea of how radically the world’s entire landscape was to change in the next three weeks. On this…
- Africa, Asia, Independent travel, North America, Photography, South America, Travel Blog, USA, Vietnam
Crossing The Line
We’ll be crossing the equator on Monday night this week as we head out for our first ever visit to South America, arriving in Rio de Janeiro on Tuesday morning. Perhaps surprisingly this will be only our second ever foray across the equator, our one previous destination south of the line was our honeymoon trip to Tanzania and Zanzibar back in 2013. Given that Rio will be the furthest point south we have so far visited, our thoughts have turned inevitably to the extremities of our previous adventures. The furthest point north so far is St Petersburg, a beautiful and majestic city which we visited in the depths of its…
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Storm Ciarán & Friends
By Tuesday the TV news is full of it. Never mind the wars raging in both Europe and the Middle East, there is, it seems, a storm heading towards Britain which is akin to the four horsemen of the apocalypse powering across the Atlantic to wreak devastation on our forlorn shores. Storm Ciarán, somebody somewhere has decided. With Ciarán due to enter the fray Wednesday night into Thursday, we bring our plans forward by 24 hours and make the 350-mile 6-hour drive to Cornwall ahead of those “essential travel only” messages which will no doubt soon boom across the nation. We hole up, batten down, listen to the wind as…
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Michaela’s Favourite Photographs #13. When We Are The Mystery
Sunderbans, Bengal, India, 2017. Way beyond the end of the road network, far beyond the concept of cars, out into the world’s biggest mangrove swamp where our temporary home was to be a mud hut amongst the wild and mysterious terrain. The only means of transport was small, cramped, low slung boats across the water. Here, in these far off corners, the real mystery was us: what were these two pale skinned people doing right out here where white man is a rarity? As you can see from the faces of our fellow passengers, we were a source of friendly amusement. Elsewhere around the villages, tea sellers like this lady…
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Michaela’s Favourite Photographs #12: Village Party
A mountain village north of Foça, Turkey, 2012. It might have been a funeral, so we held back, not wishing to intrude on whatever this private village gathering was. But they called us in, beckoned us to join the strange procession in which every member of the village was playing their part. Invited to dance to the music, cans of beer thrust into our hands, the smiles of these mountain dwellers told us we were going to be part of the celebration. The event was in honour of Mohammad, a young boy passing from youth to adulthood: in essence, a party to celebrate his circumcision.
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Michaela’s Favourite Photographs: #3 Island Sunset
Klong Nin, Koh Lanta, Thailand, 2020. Of all the many wonderful sunsets we’ve witnessed across the world, the island of Koh Lanta produced probably the best. Michaela has not enhanced the colour on this photo in the slightest, this is unedited – it really was this colourful. As we sat on the sands watching the sky move through its amazing palette, Michaela captured this stunning moment.
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Var’s New Home & Other Stories
If you’re lucky enough to travel, meeting people from entirely different cultures, with entirely different lives, is one of the many privileges. It broadens the mind, is stimulating, educational and humbling, and puts our own lives into a different perspective. Here we continue our short series of posts telling the stories of some of the people we met on our recent tour of South East Asia. Life is never quite as straightforward as it seems: there is another side to every story. Sitting outside the floating house in Prek Toal and talking with a relaxed and disarmed Var, our guide and companion, was absolutely enlightening. His story is no doubt just…
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Tin-Tin And The Khmer Rouge
If you’re lucky enough to travel, meeting people from entirely different cultures, with entirely different lives, is one of the many privileges. It broadens the mind, is stimulating, educational and humbling, and puts our own lives into a different perspective. Here we begin a short series of posts telling the stories of some of the people we met on our recent tour of South East Asia. When we first meet Tin-Tin he is busily cleaning his tuk-tuk, clearing dust from its wheel arches and drying off the recently wiped passenger seats, sharing jokes with a guy who is cooling off in the shadow of the trees. He greets us with…
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Street Art & Tech Art In Singapore
For a fee which is eminently reasonable we are able to delay checkout till 6pm, hugely useful when it’s an overnight flight home. One last ride on the MRT and a couple of stops on the Skytrain and we’re wandering into a crowded Changi Airport, still far too early for our flight but happy to kill time with a beer and a sandwich. Until, that is, the lady at the check-in desk suggests we stay land-side and head to the Jewel. Has anyone seen the Jewel at Changi in the last few years? At night? Just when we think we’ve seen all of the wonders which Singapore has to offer,…
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Last Days Of The Trip: Ending On A High, Literally
“Good morning Sir, will you be paying cash or card?”, she asks before we’ve even got past the gate. “I don’t know yet. Probably card”. “That’s one hundred dollars then, Sir, please”, she says, picking up the card machine. “But I haven’t bought anything yet”. “No, Sir, it’s fifty dollars per person minimum spend here”. I grin, most probably an inane grin, thinking she’s joking. I look at her more closely. She definitely isn’t joking. She means it. This is a beach bar, it’s 11 o’clock in the morning, and they want a minimum of 100 dollars regardless of what we want to eat/drink/buy. We’re both speechless – well, speechless…
