Over the years I’ve returned sporadically to places like Penang, Chiang Mai and Kathmandu, those watering holes where I and so many others ‘chilled out’ (in today’s parlance) along the great Asian overland route in the 1970s. Once or twice I have sought out those same fabled flophouses, the seedy Chinese hotels and the [...]
Posts in category Asia
Tell Them to Get Lost: Back on the Ba...
Over the years I’ve returned sporadically to places like Penang, Chiang Mai and Kathmandu, those watering holes where I and so many others ‘chilled out’ (in today’s parlance) along the great Asian overland route in the 1970s. Once or twice I have sought out those same fabled flophouses, the seedy Chinese hotels and the [...]
Japan: Still Sometimes Lost in Transl...
These beds were relatively comfortableFive in the morning, still dark beyond the rice-paper windows, but I’m awake, snug under my futon (quilt). Need to get up and leave the room, but must try not to wake my companion: sleep doesn’t come easily to middle-aged Anglo-Saxon limbs when forced to do without mattresses.
As in most ryokan, tra [...]
The Way of Tea in Japan
Tea ceremony, Kanazawa Japan
Tea is not to be trifled with. Indeed when you’re the tenth generation entrusted with creating pots for ritualistic tea ceremony, tea is life. Master potter Chozaemon Toshiro, known simply as Tenth Generation, and awarded a Person of Cultural Merit award from the Emperor, has serious clay credentials. With lineage [...]
Taiwan: Lanterns & Dumplings
Taiwan Lantern Festival in the Year of the Dragon
Tantalising steaming broth shoots onto my fingers as my chopsticks pierce a delicate, perfectly formed dumpling. Catching the juicy flavours of pork, shrimp, ginger, garlic in my spoon which also contains soy sauce, vinegar, slivers of ginger and slices of chilli, it’s an enticing combination [...]
Chasing the Dalai Lama
Most of India swelters in July-August, but there’s no better time to make tracks for India’s ‘Little Tibet’. The Dalai Lama thought so, too.
Flying over Nun and Kun in the Hindu Kush, en route to Ladakh
The fabled land of Ladakh, a geographic and cultural outlier of Tibet, fits somewhat uneasily within the State of Jammu & Kashmir. [...]
Burma regains a place in the sun
Burma is the latest destination to be (re)discovered by the western world, basking in the warmth of a new-found approval by the PC brigade.
Young woman, Burma
The last time reporter Zoe Daniel from the Australian current affairs program Foreign Correspondent visited Aung San Suu Kyi, she had to sneak into the country under the guise of a tour [...]
Negotiating the labyrinth – a v...
I’m heading back to India soon, an opportunity too good to miss. But first, the formalities…
Indian border security conjures up images of khaki-clad troops and paramilitary police, propped on folding chairs outside semi-permanent tent camps, flipping idly through passports or fingering their cumbersome rifles. Flies buzz, gaunt ca [...]
From the Killing Fields to a Future: ...
At the age of 14, Ponheary Ly died and came back to life. At least, that’s how she describes it. The year was 1977, and the Khmer Rouge was on its deadly rampage in Cambodia. After seeing her father killed, along with 13 other family members, Ly was on the run and in hiding when some soldiers accused her of stealing food. They marched her dee [...]
The Weight of Silence: Invisible Chil...
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Lurching along the dirt road, I gaze out the window at the town of Cuttack in northeastern India as the car bounces over potholes, [...]
Wonders of the Universe: Shaivites Ru...
One night recently I sat down in front of the box to watch an eager and boyish British scientist explain the origins of the universe in just four episodes. I confess I was mainly watching because I had caught a glimpse in the trailers of Pashupatinath, the great Hindu pilgrimage and cremation site, outside Kathmandu, where I had recently spen [...]
Bloggers and bludgers
Kamchatka and the Kurile Islands in the Russian Far East are amongst the most amazing places I’ve been. Read all about my journey there, with the readers of The Star in Kuala Lumpur; and here (since removed) and here again.
Annihilate, annihilate...
Hold it right there! Quoting selectively for the purposes of review is an accepted pract [...]
Do travellers need to take lessons?
Seen the TV series An Idiot Abroad? It makes me cringe – but only because I know this is exactly the way I’ve behaved in the past.
I remember arriving at the ferry terminal in Surat Thani, in Thailand. I thought I’d walked into a time-warp. Here were a whole bunch of “freaks” looking as I had been trying to look twenty year [...]
Postcard from Sapa
‘You buy from me? You buy from me…’
That phrase has entered our vocabulary since my photographer-husband, Gordon and I, made a recent trip to Sapa in the far north of Vietnam.
There is a ‘frontier town’ feel to the place. You can be shopping for the finest silk dresses or heritage silver jewellery, then step outside and see water [...]
India’s first casino
India’s first live casino has just opened in Gangtok, capital of Sikkim.
“In order to avoid fraudulent practices, dealers will be changed every twenty minutes,” said a spokesperson for the casino.
Maybe gamblers should be changed every twenty minutes, too.
Check out Graham’s story from Sikkim: Mountains, Monasteries and Mach [...]
Two Koreas: living on the fault line
This story seems particularly relevant at this time…
Sixty kilometres from Seoul, a metropolis of twenty million, Stalinist troops, pumped up with fear and loathing, will shoot on sight to defend the impoverished hermit kingdom of North Korea.
Observing North Korea from Dorasan Observation Tower
For my visit to the world’s last Cold War [...]
