When you travel, just as in everyday life, you miss what you can’t have. Reality is a bitch and no matter how exciting it feels to leave all of the comforts you’re used to behind, embracing all that is adventurous and wild and free, there may come a time when roughing it loses its appeal.…
Read more
Sometimes you can go to a new place without any expectations. Nothing but a name, the place is an empty vacuum until the moment you step into it, breathe its air and look around. Hoi An was not this. Hoi An was a place I had already vividly imagined, a collage of postcards and adverts…
Read more
My waterproofs were used. They stank with the unmistakeable sour tang of wet and muddy fabric left to stew in its own nasty bacterial heaven like the very worst of festival tents. I slipped the trousers over my legs and held my breath as I pulled the hoody-shaped bag over my head. I suppose I…
Read more
It’s normal, I think, to put the most difficult and disturbing realities of life on earth to the back of your mind. None of us could function if we constantly acknowledged the truth of just how messed up this planet really is. If it wasn’t for that safe little smokescreen of wilful ignorance that envelops…
Read more
“I only spend my money on two things”, he said. “Sports shoes,” he lifted his tiny leg to show us his spotless, size three Nikes, “and orchids”, he gestured towards the delicate, white and pink potted plants resting on every available surface. We met Mr Mu in his coffee shop, right across the road from…
Read more
The imposing walls of Hue’s Imperial Citadel, a city within a city, loom over Hue. These walls have borne witness to the rise and fall of dynasties, the toppling of governments, the waging and winning of war. Now the crumbling, moss-covered remains of what was once a heavily guarded fortress look out at the modern city…
Read more
I was told that nobody goes to Ninh Binh, which isn’t in itself a reason not to go but went some way in explaining why we found it so difficult to find somewhere to eat that first night. After walking the dark, rainy streets for half an hour or so we settled for a pho…
Read more
“So, this myth”, I asked the tour guide, “about the dragons. Where does it come from? Did anyone ever write it down?” He smiled and looked at me with raised eyebrows, the way you’d look at a small child who asks something cute, like are the sun and the moon brother and sister, and said,…
Read more
