What a road trip! As if destination: Shangri-La wasn’t enough, our route took us through Tiger Leaping Gorge and through the mountain roads where tour buses don’t venture. The road was narrow and...
Sabbatical
Chinese place names are magic. Everywhere else in the world, place names are prosaic descriptions – black pool, slough – or refer to some dull person: Snowdon, Brighton – with...
China got off to a rocky start. 5am start, with 3h sleep, slow taxi to the border, slow (but happily painless) bordercrossing, and got to the Zhuhai train station on mainland China with an hour to...
Hotpot sounds so innocent, doesn’t it? The name summons up warming winter foods at home, preferably when it’s freezing and raining outside. Turns out it’s a bit different here. A...
Macau is delightful! We hadn’t expected to particularly like it – colleagues who had visited had winced slightly when mentioned: it’s famous as the Vegas of China, full of giant...
Bukit Lawang was a tiny remote village in the arse end of the jungle getting slowly approached by palm oil plantations till just a few years ago. But local and international effort kicked in to...
Yogyakarta and temples You wouldn’t really call either of us spiritual, I guess, unless you’re referring to whiskey. However, I have finally found a temple where I can truly worship. Bukit Rhema I...
What is it about Gili Air? There are no cars, no scooters, no motor noise other than occasional boats – just the jingling of horse bells from the carts. Yes, horse carts are in actual use, not...
Some 20 years ago, I’d been through quite the year. I’d split up with my boyfriend of seven years, come out of the closet, started and broken up with first girlfriend, changed house 5 times...
Brisbane could probably take the tagline of ‘The Surprisingly Nice City’. We hadn’t expected much – but it surpassed, nicely. Lots of – yes, nice – things – free ferries...