11.00 Jesus, it’s so pretty. I didn’t expect it to be so pretty. No matter how many travel guides or blog posts I read that said that Hong Kong was a predominantly green and mountainous island I couldn’t reconcile it with the neon-lit, vertical glass, dirty streets I had seen, and fallen in love with,…
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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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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…
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There’s a man standing in Hanoi airport holding a sign with our names written on. It’s the first time I’ve ever been met at the airport by a driver and the ease with which I glide towards the waiting car, am relieved of the weight of my bag, slide into the seat and am whisked…
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Coming to Bangkok for the second time is like déjà vu, unsettlingly familiar. I lost a whole day when we arrived. A whole day, half a rotation of the earth, gone. After three flights and almost 24 hours of travelling I collapsed into bed at 1.30am and when I slept, I slept for fourteen hours.…
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You know the traffic’s bad when people can make their living selling cigarettes and snacks through stationary car windows. Sitting in an airport taxi in traffic that looks as though it stretches from the past way into the future, I can hardly see a thing. It’s only 5.30pm, far too early for sunset but the…
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As in Singapore, our first night in Kuala Lumpur is spent in a thunderstorm. British storms begin like a growl in the back of the throat and grow into a little tantrum of rain. More often than not the sky tires of its noise and activity and gives up after half an hour, leaving behind…
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It was 2am and the city of Singapore looked like a simulated toy town, illuminated by the white, artificial glare of streetlights and skyscrapers. The streets were immaculate, unpopulated and surrounded on all sides by glinting steel and glass reaching up to touch the inky black sky. I felt as though I had shrunk down…
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