Asia
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Photographic Memories #11
As every traveller knows, when you look back through old travel photos, many of them trigger wonderful memories. With no current prospect of travel even domestically let alone worldwide, we will have no new adventures to blog, but we do have many such memories…. Photo #11: A Sri Lankan Welcome This photograph recalls one of our most humbling experiences in all our days of travel so far. In August/September 2015 we travelled across Sri Lanka from west to east, making our way from Colombo to Trincomalee, via Kandy and Sigiriya. On our first day in Sigiriya we were introduced to Mangala, one of the few local tuk-tuk drivers able to…
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The Difference A Year Makes
It’s not always easy to stay positive and optimistic during this COVID lockdown, a mood not helped by an extremely dreary English winter as our weather does its absolute best to justify its bad reputation. Whilst some parts of the UK have witnessed significant snowfall, our South East corner has been deluged with what seems like incessant rain, borne out by this detail: January brought 151mm of rainfall when the historical average for that month is 50mm. Three times normal, and it feels like it, too. Many days have been simply too wet to take a walk, and the countryside is now so saturated that the fields and footpaths are…
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Were We Safe? Take A Look…
Travel isn’t about staying in your comfort zone, sometimes you just have to seize the moment to embrace a new experience. It’s not always about safety belts, health and safety and life jackets. Here’s just a few of those occasions… We spent a whole day like this, sat on a blanket on a roof rack, clinging on to the struts for dear life as Khaled took us to various viewpoints in the desert. All the other similar rides were in the back of a pick up, but not Khaled, he just stuck us on his roof rack and sped across the sand, much to everyone’s amusement. If you’re out in…
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Photographic Memories #10
As every traveller knows, when you look back through old travel photos, many of them trigger wonderful memories. With no current prospect of travel even domestically let alone worldwide, we will have no new adventures to blog, but we do have many such memories….. Photo #10: Family History Like the poor soul remembered on this war grave, our surname is Sharman; this is the grave of my father’s cousin, Roland. The plaque is one of many hundreds of memorials in the war cemetery at Kanchanaburi in Thailand, built to commemorate those poor souls who perished during construction of the infamous Death Railway as they laboured as Prisoners Of War in…
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Photographic Memories #4
As every traveller knows, when you look back through old travel photos, many of them trigger wonderful memories. With no current prospect of travel even domestically let alone worldwide, we will have no new adventures to blog, but we do have many such memories….. Photo #4: Thai Sunset Capturing a sunset on camera is something every traveller has done numerous times, but of all our sunset photos, this is probably our favourite. Michaela hasn’t done any doctoring of this photograph, not even enhanced any colouring, what you see in the photograph is exactly how it was. Just to make it even more special, we were drinking some very strong and very…
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Lightning Strike
With our travel adventures for 2020 complete, and our plans for 2021 on hold until there’s more clarification around travel restrictions, we have nothing current to write about. We do, however, have a load of stories from past travels, which we hope may be interesting or amusing. Such as…. Kuala Tahan, Malaysia, September 2018. After several days in Kuala Lumpur, we’d headed northwards in our hire car towards the wilds of the jungle and settled in Kuala Tahan on the edge of the Taman Negara National Park. Here the jungle trekking, both guided and independent, had been fabulous, the humidity absolutely sapping, the wildlife spectacular. The food, however, was distinctly…
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The Dirty Plastic Bucket
With our travel adventures for 2020 complete, and our plans for 2021 on hold until there’s more clarification around travel restrictions, we have nothing current to write about. We do, however, have a load of stories from past travels, which we hope may be interesting or amusing. Such as…. Bakkhali, Bengal, India, April 2017. The little coastal town of Bakkhali is probably the place, so far anyway, where we have been furthest from our comfort zone. Despite the unique positioning of its beach, jutting out due south into the ocean, meaning that both sunrise and sunset are across the water, this is not a seaside town as we know it.…
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Hamam’ing It Up
If you haven’t visited a hamam on a visit to Turkey then you have missed out on this centuries old tradition which the people of this colourful country still enjoy today. The truly traditional dome roofed hamams are fewer in number these days, simply because they date from times before most of the population had running water at home, but there is still a good deal of choice. Whether you go for a rustic hamam in a dingy building hidden down an alleyway where you are laid out on a marble floor, a more sumptuous spa where you have the luxury of a raised marble plinth, or any of the…
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From Turkey To Quarantine
And so we start our 14 day quarantine which will most likely run straight into a period of further regional lockdown given the high current COVID rates in our corner of England. We’re a little sad that the Turkey adventure ended the way it did, with our time in Antalya cancelled and an abrupt end to our newly found social life in Side. In the final three days after making our decision to return home, we did manage one last trip to our favourite riverside eatery in Manavgat before it all shut down, and even managed a quick dip in the Med on each of the last two days. So…
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COVID: How Quickly Things Change
All of a sudden our Turkish adventure is coming to an end and we are now travelling back to England on Monday. As we headed off to Alanya this week, news was breaking that the Turkish Government were about to announce increased COVID restrictions, although at that stage all of the talk surrounded weekend closures. When the announcement came, the measures were much more far reaching, with an indefinite closure of all bars and restaurants and heavily restricted opening times for all other outlets including food shops. At the same time an 8pm curfew comes in and, although the curfew, rather counter intuitively, doesn’t apply to tourists, it’s clear that…
