I’ve heard it said that once you’ve seen one Chinatown you’ve seen them all. Wrong. One of my favourite things about going to a new city is finding Chinatown, if there is one, and there nearly always is. Another one of my favourite things at the minute is to find attractions I intend to visit…
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I’m not a practical person, nor am I a particularly logical one. I daydream. I never know the time. I see the world through spectacles tinted in the shade of what is desirable and convenient to me, a sort of lilacy-blue colour usually. I truly believe that I can bend the universe to my will,…
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Getting lost in Chatuchak Market is a rite of passage for new arrivals to Bangkok. It’s only once you’ve felt that panic, that real thud in the chest realisation that you’re lost and dehydrated and if passed out on the spot nobody would come to look for you, you’d just get swept up with the…
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The first time I went to Chatuchak Market it was a hallucinatory experience. I had been in Thailand for less than two days. I was jet-lagged and hung-over, swept along with the crowd, blinded by the sun, sweating and dehydrated, too overwhelmed to commit to a purchase, of anything, even a bottle of water. I’m…
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In Kuala Lumpur, the best malls are the worst malls. New malls are largely cavernous, too-brightly lit spaces made of glass and faux marble with endless floors connected by a labyrinth of escalators that look as though they were conceived by Escher. As soon as these new malls open, all sparkly and new and yet…
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