Travel Stories

Portland, Oregon: A light in the window

26 Mar 2010 | 2 min read

Dusk was dropping into night when I saw her. She was on the corner of North Russell and Mississippi in an industrial area of Portland, Oregon. She looked old and slightly painted up when I spotted her near the underpass, but she was inviting with her stories of shanghai-ed sailors and musicians who had taken comfort in her company. So I decided to spend the night. The following morning I... > Read more

Kolkata, India: A confusion of Nevilles

26 Mar 2010 | 4 min read

He said his name was Stephen and my father and I were too weary to disbelieve him. It was only mid-morning near Kolkota's Dalhousie Square and already we were worn down by the press of hands-out humanity, hucksters and humidity. So when Stephen walked up and introduced himself we just kept on moving. He did the usual persistent questions: Can I help you in any way gentlemen, would you like... > Read more

Flagstaff, Arizona: Night of the hunter

22 Mar 2010 | 2 min read

Brent was a mountain man. That said, as he sat in the bar of the Monte Vista Hotel in Flagstaff -- drinking what I took to be another of the many whiskies he'd got through before I arrived -- he didn't seem like a Grizzly Adams or Jeremiah Johnson. He looked like woozy, if fit, hardware salesman in town to buy a new line of garden tools. But as the layers fell away he told me his story. He... > Read more

Belfast, Northern Ireland: History by taxi

19 Mar 2010 | 3 min read | 1

Billy Scott is probably the most famous taxi driver in Belfast. He didn’t tell me this -- he was too busy telling me other things -- and I only found out later he’d appeared on television travel shows, podcasts and the like. That was understandable because Billy is witty, chatty, knowledgeable and over-flowing with Irish charm and wit. I figured about a third of what he said was... > Read more

Hanoi, Vietnam: Milking it

17 Mar 2010 | 2 min read

Marcel was so French you could spot it across the cafe. The shrug of the shoulders, the downturn of the mouth and sulking bottom lip, the sleepy eyes and cigarette permanently attached. He was a beret short of a stereotype. It was Hanoi on a hot afternoon when we met, both of us escaping from the sticky humidity. I had been around the city for a few days and he had just arrived back from... > Read more

Outback, Australia: The speed of the sound of loneliness

15 Mar 2010 | 6 min read | 1

Eventually curiosity gets the better of me and, on a typically empty stretch of tarseal some 100kms west of Alice Springs, I stop the car and climb a rocky outcrop. For the past half hour I have had the magnificent MacDonnell Range on my right but 10 minutes ago a strange, irregular wall of bricks ran parallel with the road on my left. I’m puzzled as to who might have built it way out... > Read more

Vancouver, Canada: A user's guide

14 Mar 2010 | 5 min read

To be honest, I can’t tell you whether you can get a decent cup of coffee in Vancouver, coffee doesn’t interest me much. What I can tell you however is that you won’t be short of a cup. On fashionable Robson St right outside my hotel was a Starbucks, and two blocks down on the corner of Thurlow a couple more faced each other across the intersection. Within an hour... > Read more

Sydney, Australia: I'll be back. Or not.

14 Mar 2010 | 2 min read

My recollection is this, that after having interviewed Arnold Schwarzenegger for some ludicrous and subsequently unsuccessful movie I went back to my room overlooking Sydney Harbour and read the booklet about my expensive hotel's many merits. Among them was a cigar bar and -- having talked cigars with Arnie -- I decided this might be a nice place to adjourn to after a dinner on Circular... > Read more

Crescent City, California: Redwoods and dead wood

14 Mar 2010 | 2 min read

So, he said leaning over me in a slightly menacing manner, how do you get to meet people when you travel around? "Just like this,"I said, and the big man looked puzzled. "By coming into a bar, buying a drink and talking with people. Like you." The big man with the bleary look paused just long enough for it to be uncomfortable, then realised what I was saying wasn't... > Read more

London, England: With a pinch of snuff

1 Mar 2010 | 3 min read | 1

Curious what you find in the bottom of your bags -- and maybe keep -- after a trip away. I usually turn up napkins with scribbled addresses and notes, postcards and receipts, fliers from concerts or galleries, and the odd article torn from a local newspaper because it seemed so brilliantly incisive at the time. Mostly I throw such things away after a period of grace, but sometimes bits and... > Read more

Golden Triangle, Thailand: Where the girls are

1 Mar 2010 | 7 min read

Pale fingers of mist weave through the tree tops of the jungle. At just past dawn it is almost silent, only the faint call of birds and the distant putter of a long-tail boat on the Mekong River beyond the hill. I step onto the terrace of my hotel room into the balmy air. Already you can feel that the rains will come later today. I sniff in the humidity and gaze across at Myanmar no more... > Read more

Kuching in Borneo Malaysia: Big city, small town

1 Mar 2010 | 4 min read

“This is my kind of Malaysia,” says Bob from laidback California as we enjoy Tiger Beer at the James Brooke Bar and Bistro near the relaxing riverfront in Kuching. “It’s got just the right mix of a quiet old town and all the modern amenities.”We clink icy glasses in agreement. Like me, Bob had travelled down Peninsula Malaysia from Kuala Lumpur,... > Read more

Norfolk Island: An island of great Bounty

22 Feb 2010 | 7 min read

“So, here we are on Norfolk Island,” said Richard as we stood by the baggage carousel and beneath the sign which read “Welkam tu Norf’k alien”. “Welcome to Norfolk Island,” I said pointing to the weird wording in the local dialect. He took it in, then added with the raise of an eyebrow: “And why not?” It is easy to be cynical about... > Read more

Kath and Donald: Norfuk es awas Hoem

Vancouver Island, Canada: Cocktails by the highway

8 Feb 2010 | 4 min read

My Canadian friend Bob would often tell me that there was a highway right outside his house, and then he’d laugh loudly. I didn’t think that was a laughing matter -- until I went to his beautiful ocean-side apartment in Victoria on Vancouver Island. As we sat on his patio sipping cocktails in the late afternoon he swept his hand towards the blue harbour in front of him and said,... > Read more

Uluru/Ayers Rock, Outback Australia: Into the great wide open

7 Feb 2010 | 3 min read | 1

>Uluru at the close of another cloudless day in the desert. In the designated “sunset viewing spot” a few kilometres from the big red rock, campervans and cars are arriving. In this tiny part of the seemingly endless landscape, largely silent except for the whistle of wind through scrubby Spinifex and myrtle trees, the air is alive with the sound of beer cans being cracked open,... > Read more

Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu: Djarimirri (from The Rough Guide to Australian Aboriginal Music)

Edinburgh, Scotland: Connected in the family

7 Feb 2010 | 3 min read

This may seem unusual -- especially given I was born in Scotland -- but it is true: my godfather was Italian. And I say that hoping never to be troubled again by pesky creditors or door-to-door religious groups. When I was born my parents, who weren’t especially religious, had me baptised and asked their good friend Dominic Valente -- whom we always called Uncle Dom -- to be my... > Read more

Golden Triangle, Thailand: Paradise without the soundtrack

7 Jan 2010 | 2 min read

What is that wise old saying: be careful what you wish for, you might just get it? Raymond got a wish come true, but I suspect it was mine. I met him at the luxurious Anantara Resort and Spa in Thailand's Golden Triangle where my room with a private terrace overlooking the steamy jungle cost around $1200 a night. After I had relaxed in the pool-sized bath with its rose petals and... > Read more

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia: Old and new, the same but different

26 Oct 2009 | 5 min read

In Kuala Lumpur which offers a colourful multicultural tapestry of life, it was a small but significant image: just before the expensive frockshop in the up-market Starhill Gallery opened the middle-aged cleaning woman in a headscarf snapped off the vacuum cleaner and answered her cellphone. Behind her on a massive flat-screen a barely dressed blonde gazelle in high heels hip-swayed down a... > Read more

Paris, France: Clubbed by culture

24 Oct 2009 | 1 min read

We were -- with a few exceptions in the café -- exhausted foot soldiers in the Art Wars. The small café where we found ourselves that late afternoon, on the corner of Rue de l’Universite about 15 minutes walk from the Musee d’Orsay in Paris, was our r’n’r refuge for an invigorating pastis, cold Belgian beer or coffee. Time to recover from a day of big ticket... > Read more

Melaka, Peninsula Malaysia: The cuisine capital of Malaysia

18 Oct 2009 | 6 min read

Bong comes out of her busy kitchen in the elegant Seri Nyonya Peranakan Restaurant to explain how she learned the Baba-Nyonya culinary style unique to the town of Melaka, here on Malaysia’s west coast. “No, they do not teach this in any schools,” she laughs. “You have to learn it from when you are very young. I learned this style from my family in the kitchen at... > Read more