It was a very slow start that day, even for me. I had managed to get out of bed at 8.30 to eat a breakfast of lukewarm rice, oily tofu and bitter greens washed down with orange juice but when I slouched back to my hotel room with its crumpled white sheets, drawn blinds and…
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
I learned many things during my time working in a small museum in the UK, many strange, extraordinary, worrying things, but one of the real eye-openers for me was that all museums, no matter how great or humble, have objects in their collection for which they have no provenance. What that means is that they…
Read more
I spent three whole weeks in Hanoi and filled my days with incredible ease. Here are a few of the things I saw and few of the things I did. Ho Hoan Kiem or ‘Lake of the Restored Sword’ and Ngoc Son Temple or ‘Temple of the Jade Mountain’ Hoan Kiem Lake is at the…
Read more
