Beirut

      Beirut is a fascinating city of huge contrasts.Poverty and wealth.Religions juxtaposed.Evidence of a great street-wise hussling culture. Where you can find a cafe worthy of St Germain opposite totally derelict land.    Where there is the latest Mercedes gullwing sports on show at the airport and a Ferrari dealership in the city […]

Paradise in a warzone

I found my golden beach in Trincomalee in the northeast of Sri Lanka.   This place should be paradise, but it’s suffered a rough couple  of decades. The north of Sri Lanka is about as close to the south of India as Tasmania is to Australia. So going back centuries, the Tamils in south India […]

Tea for two

  Today was one of those simply magical serendipitous days one gets every now and again when travelling. For a start I’d met a fellow traveller – a Swedish woman who has been setting up womens medical care centres in Dubai and has just been head-hunted by the ruler of Qatar to do the same […]

Coastal Sri Lanka

It’s very weird to arrive in one of the locations in Sri Lanka that was obliterated by the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami just as the Japanese tsunami is occurring. All the new buildings here and the occasional large boat stranded way inland serve as a reminder.I can’t say I looked at the Indian Ocean and […]

Tea for one

      I’ve never seen tea on bushes before today. And when those bushes carpet every spare corner of the rolling hillsides in the pleasantly cool atmosphere at about 5000 feet up in the Sri Lankan mountains, it’s extremely refreshing. Nearly as good as a cup (Liptons of course, since Sir Thomas founded his […]

True Grit

I’m not sure whether an Americanism is exactly suitable, but whatever the phrase, I reckon the colonialists of old must have been made of much sterner stuff than me…     After 4 hours on two buses traveling west,  I arrived in Galle which was colonised by the Portuguese, then grabbed by the Dutch, who […]

By the old Moulmein pagoda

This is slightly disconcerting, because as I write this, I have an audience of hotel employees standing behind me watching. I’m in Moulmein where there is simply no internet, and I’ve yet to see a mobile phone. The buses are old Chevy trucks with a roof built over the load area, and about one person […]

Mindblowing Myanmar

Words fail me – well nearly! This is the most stupendous traveling experience I have had in a very long time.Whatever else the governing generals may have done, their policies have effectively placed Myanmar (only the British decided it should be called Burma) in a time-capsule. No credit cards, no ATM’s, no mobile phones, hardly […]

Rural Cambodia

Battambang, though the second city of Cambodia, is like a French provincial town with Asian overtones. The neighbourhoods are still rural with houses in the very traditional style.   The temples are almost unvisited – possibly with reason given that the little red sign on the left of the very long staircase to this one […]

How many foreigners can you fit in a Toyota pickup?

Much touted as a charming boat trip through rice paddies and farmland, this would be a 3-4 hour trip in the wet season. But right now it’s dry…   So a pre-dawn pickup in Siem Reap leads to a crammed bus ride for about an hour to the most upriver point where you can board […]

The Churning of the Sea of Milk

You do get to judge the general cost of living in a country based on its currency. $100 just bought me nearly half a million Cambodian riels. When you consider that the smallest note I received was newly printed and worth about 12cents, you do begin to get the picture.   What on earth were these guys […]

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