Leaving the air con cool of the hotel, we walked out into the oily heat of a Saigon evening. Our guide, a tiny 57 year old Thai woman called Lek, who seemed to hate everything Vietnamese, hailed a taxi. We climbed in and were whisked through the chaos of whirring motorbikes beneath the infinite mass of telephone lines. We arrived at the train station after dark. Continue reading
As you advance through countries, you will find that you assemble a patchwork quilt of memories. There are countless stories and moments which you take in your stride while you’re travelling. Some of them stick with you forever. Many are forgotten, and the memory dredged up years later while flicking through an old journal, jerked out of the subconscious by the scruff of its neck. Continue reading
Time, and how it is perceived, varies greatly depending on where you are in the world. In the Western culture I’ve been raised in, we prioritise and organise frantically to fit everything into our day. We live and work to deadlines, wake up with alarms and work rotating shifts. In several countries I’ve visited, however, the notion of immediacy is actually shunned, or simply doesn’t exist. Vietnam and Cuba are two countries in which patience isn’t just a virtue but a necessity. The country that takes the crown, however, is Fiji. Continue reading
Waitomo is a little village on the North Island of New Zealand. I don’t think anybody who’s been there would disagree with me when I say that, above ground, the village doesn’t have much going for it. Nah, all the fun is to be had about 30 metres beneath the surface. Waitomo Caves are an extensive tangle of tunnels and caverns and rivers that are jumbled and ragged like the London Underground’s Neanderthal ancestor.
You’ve got to love the Kiwi’s knack for naming things.
Hot Water Beach was one of the first stops on my month exploring NZ. On the Kiwi Experience bus, fifty or so of my fellow backpackers, all fresh faced and eager at the start of the three-week tour, giddily watched the green hills of the North Island roll by. We stopped at a supermarket en route and grabbed the essential alcohol as well as reluctantly spending precious travelling money on food. Continue reading