Travel Stories

Grimes, California: Tales of the riverbank

25 Jun 2010 | 2 min read

The fact was, when you walked from the cool, fresh air of the Sacramento River into the restaurant at the RV park you could barely breath for the smell of cooking oil. It coated the tongue and hurt the eyes, and penetrated your clothes instantly. You immediately felt like you had spent a day working over a vat of simmering oil. Emily didn't seem to notice. I guess she was just used to it.... > Read more

Rome, Italy: When in Rome

25 Jun 2010 | 2 min read | 1

I don't know his name, never did, and it isn't important anyway. Let's call him Big Marco because that's who he looked like. I arrived at Big Marco's small hotel in Rome early one morning having been directed there by a sad-eyed gentleman at the hotel bookings booth in the nearby railway station. I had said all I wanted was a cheap room, with a bathroom if possible, somewhere near the... > Read more

Chinatown, Singapore: Life in the lens

25 Jun 2010 | 2 min read

Among the trinkets and souvenirs at the Chinatown Heritage Centre in Singapore the photograph caught my eye: a lone boatman, standing up in his small craft, is rowing between some other vessels as dawn light catches in the ripples off his oars. The image, obviously taken many years ago, has a strange golden tone and in the ripples the camera has captured the instant when shadows made... > Read more

Nga Trang, Vietnam: He wears my ring

25 Jun 2010 | 2 min read

Within an hour of us meeting, Mama Thiu was knocking me up for money. Then her brother had a go. It was at Nga Trang in Vietnam and Mama ran a small, outdoor restaurant at the northern end of the gorgeous beach close to the port. Mama's place was near the centre of town but it wasn't a favoured area with tourists who headed for the quieter sands further down. So Mama struggled, which made... > Read more

Miami Beach, Florida: The goofy gunman

25 Jun 2010 | 2 min read

In the fuzzy Polaroid I am standing next to a short, goofy-looking guy with a curly blond Afro. He is holding a multicoloured cocktail. And I have a parrot on my head. It was at a travel industry function in Miami Beach some years ago and representatives of various countries, every American state and dozens of major cities, and many small tourist operators, were there to sell their... > Read more

Guam: Lost in the outposts of America

25 Jun 2010 | 2 min read

The two places I thought I'd never go were Guam, and a Hard Rock Cafe. Guam -- essentially an island-cum-aircraft carrier for the American military in the north west Pacific -- just seemed well off any track, and a Hard Rock Cafe because turning revolution into marketing, with a side order of fries, isn't my idea of progress. As with Planet Hollywoods -- where some people seem to think... > Read more

San Francisco, California: Feeding the inner man

25 Jun 2010 | 2 min read

He didn't give his name and it didn't matter actually. My guess is he just wanted someone to listen. So I did, and it wasn't a pretty story. It was mid-afternoon on a weekday in the 21 Club, a bar in the rundown Tenderloin district of San Francisco with a handwritten sign which read "No bicycles inside" on the battered glass door. Outside broken and damaged people pushed... > Read more

Nashville, Tennessee: Nashville Cats

25 Jun 2010 | 2 min read

The cliche and joke about Nashville, the country music capital of the world, is that every bus driver, real estate agent, waitress and desk clerk is an aspiring songwriter. Spend more than a minute in their company and they will be pressing their demo tape on you just in case you can be useful to their career. I'm not sure what Roger thought I could do for him -- we were both at a sleazy... > Read more

Gold Coast, Australia: The singer not the song

25 Jun 2010 | 2 min read

The night we scattered my mother's ashes on the Broadwater at Surfers Paradise where she had lived, Silvio sang to us. I recognised him as soon as we entered Fratelli's restaurant, he had sung to me in another place in Surfers a few years back. The story then as I remember it was that it had been one of his sons' restaurants and Silvio, a lifelong restauranteur and with an Italian's love of... > Read more

Innsbruck: The imagined mountains

14 Jun 2010 | 2 min read

For about four years, from when I was maybe 10, I carried a photograph of Innsbruck in my wallet. Of course at that age I had very little else to put in a wallet and I can't remember what else might have been stashed in the thing. But the picture of Innsbruck I can still conjure up. It was highly coloured -- the sky an impossibly vivid blue -- and showed a view down what I took to be the... > Read more

Glencoe, Scotland: The past on the wild wind

8 Jun 2010 | 3 min read

The plaque at the reception of the Clachaig Inn at Glencoe in the Scottish Highlands reads: “No hawkers or Campbells”. It is amusing -- I’m sure Naomi would be welcome should she show up in this beautiful but largely unpopulated region -- but it also reminds you of a fault-line of deep feeling that runs through Scottish history. It was here in these once remote... > Read more

Nye, Oregon: The man who could draw air

2 Jun 2010 | 2 min read

He introduced himself at breakfast as Hippie Mike -- his business card had a nuclear disarmament sign on it -- and told a story. "One time I walked into this bar with my walking stick, wearing my big hat, and moccasins and the whole place went silent. You could hear a pin drop, man." I believed him. Mike stood two metres tall, had long thick greying hair down to the middle... > Read more

Natchez Trace, Mississippi: The highway like Heaven

24 May 2010 | 6 min read

One of the guidebooks we took on a recent drive across America wasn't particularly helpful when it came to scenery. Then again, the Rock'n'Roll Traveler USA was always going to be more interested in directing you the field in which Buddy Holly's plane crashed, and the Taliesyn Ballroom in Tennessee where the Sex Pistols played the second concert of their notorious and short US tour in 78.... > Read more

Guangzhou, China: The sour sound of respect

30 Apr 2010 | 2 min read

When you travel to foreign parts it is good to be respectful of local customs, and usually they are common courtesies or pretty obvious: you don't wear shorts or a halter-top to St Peters -- or in various Muslim states -- and you should always take your headgear off (or put something on, depending on the faith) when you enter a place where people communicate with their God. In parts of Asia... > Read more

Pompeii, Italy: New days in the old place

28 Apr 2010 | 2 min read

Alfonso lives in the hills behind Sorrento and is Neopolitan by birth. "But the two places are very different, you know. I don't want to say anything against the Spanish . . ." he says, but the pause is the giveaway. "But when that pope, you know the one maybe 400 years ago, when he came to be pope he appoint a Spanish king -- and all the trouble in Napoli come from then.... > Read more

Kakogawa, Japan: Taking the heat

23 Apr 2010 | 1 min read

Wisdom is not -- perhaps fortunately - contagious. But of that triumvirate of desires alongside fame and wealth it might be the most valuable and so actually be worth working toward. At the end of the race it might be nice to go out thinking you actually knew a thing or two. Miki-san did. And he also possessed that rarest of gifts, a sense of humour. Head monk at the Kakurin-ji Temple in... > Read more

Kaua'i, Hawaiian Islands: The land where giants walked

19 Apr 2010 | 5 min read

The beach bungalow where the King once stayed, just a short stroll from the white sand shore, is a sad and sorry sight today. The roof has caved in, the windows are blown out and the walls look perilously close to collapsing. It looks even worse in the wider context of this beautiful Pacific playground. Over there at the lagoon where he was married in a ceremony witnessed by hundreds... > Read more

Sydney, Australia: The Coastal Track

9 Apr 2010 | 6 min read

To tell the truth, I lied. When The Coastal Track people sent information about their three-day hike through Sydney’s Royal National Park there was a section asking about my fitness. I exaggerated enormously and said I exercised “once a week“. And on the first day when I queried Colin, our guide, about the route he pointed to his map and said,... > Read more

Liverpool 2010: Forty years after the divorce

5 Apr 2010 | 5 min read

The divorce was as messy as most when, 40 years ago in April 1970, the Beatles broke up. As John Lennon put it later that year on his Plastic Ono Band album, “the dream is over”. But it was Paul McCartney who first made it public and official. In April 1970 McCartney released his first solo album -- Lennon and George Harrison had already been involved in individual... > Read more

The Beatles 1958: In Spite of all the Danger

Austin, Texas: The dream deferred

31 Mar 2010 | 2 min read

For a sensitive, gay New York Jew he sure picked a helluva place to live: Texas, the home of rednecks, Stetsons, and chicken-fried steak, that peculiar delicacy which is a perfectly good piece of steak deep fried in thick batter. But Austin in Texas is where David now calls home, and where he runs Summit House, his tastefully decorated, gay-friendly, biker-friendly, animal-friendly, b'n'b... > Read more