• Independent travel,  Middle East,  Travel Blog,  World food

    When I’m 64…..

    Will you still need me, will you still feed me…so went the Beatles lyric. Well, I’m about to find out whether Michaela will still need and feed, birthday greetings, bottle of wine, and all of those things, because I am actually 64 today, and “celebrating” (if that’s the right word) a second successive lockdown birthday. I don’t think we really thought, on my 63rd, that we would be back in the same situation a year later. There have been some rather more exotic locations for our previous birthdays, most notably the year before COVID, on the occasion of my 62nd, when we were staying with a Bedouin family in their…

  • Asia,  Independent travel,  Photography,  Thailand,  Travel Blog

    3 Days With The Karen Tribespeople

    It’s all too easy when travelling to be OTT about current experiences, but it’s hard not to use effusive phrases like “best ever” after our wonderful, educational and humbling few days with the Karen tribespeople in Northern Thailand. Experiences like this are what travelling really is about…. 1: Welcome to Nongtao After cities and islands, we head out in search of the “real” Thailand. Chiang Mai gives way to rice fields, the roads become narrower, villages become fewer and farther between. Straight roads become hairpins, the climbs get steeper, farmland becomes jungle. The dust roads lead us finally to Nongtao, a tiny village and a traditional home to Karen tribespeople,…