‘Don’t step on the moss’ is Ahmed’s only advice as we slip and slide up a steep, muddy bank, away from the road that runs from the base to the summit of Gunung Brinchang Mountain and towards the 200,000 year old Mossy Forest. Avoiding stepping on the spongey, khaki-coloured floor of the mossy forest is…
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If you’re not very organised and plan your trip around intuitive inconsistencies like ‘what feels right at the time’ or you go for practical ease like ‘where’s the nearest place to here’, eventually you’re going to end up somewhere you don’t particularly want to be. And the reason you’re not particularly going to want to…
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I was going to type ‘is Dalat Vietnam’s biggest exporter of flowers?’, a quick, lazy search to find out whether I had any grounds to say that it was, but I didn’t get round to actually doing the research. As soon as I typed in ‘is Dalat’ Google’s auto-fill search function finished off my question,…
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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…
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You can’t look out at Ba Be Lake, watch it shimmer and glint in the distance, without wanting to get into it. So we arrange for a man with a boat to take us out for an hour not expecting much more than some fresh air and a glimpse of a few fish. The deafening…
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I’m on the patio of a stilt house in a tiny Tay minority village, close to the shore of Ba Be Lake in Bắc Kạn Province, Northeast Vietnam and this may be the most beautiful place I’ve ever seen. I’ve been sat here for a few minutes or maybe a few hours, you really can’t…
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