Global Travel Writers: Articles

Cambodia sans croissants

Tue, 09 Mar 2010 05:07:00 -0500

The French do it. The folk in Siam do it (they even annexed it once). Angelina Jolie does it too. We all fall in love with Cambodia. We fall for the majestic Angkor Wat temples bursting out of their centuries-old jungle embrace; for Cambodia�s aquatic fluidity during the rainy season; for Tonle Sap, the biggest lake in South East Asia, home to thousands of water dwellers

Battembang street Fishing boat on Lake Tonle Sap

A Day on Sisowath Quay

Sun, 11 Oct 2009 02:47:00 -0400

Sisowath Quay, on the riverfront in Phnom Penh, is emerging as one of the world�s great promenades. New caf�s, boardwalks and landscaping making the whole boulevard one of those rare cityscapes that immediately invite the visitor to linger and enjoy. The peninsula formed where the Tonl� Sap and BassacRivers meet is for now little more than grazing land, but things are changing fast. Phnom Penh's Municipal Governor dreams of turning this area into a �City of Tomorrow�, which will attract tourists from around the globe.

Crocodiles can raise welts

Tue, 18 Aug 2009 17:56:00 -0400

I was just a little unnerved at being nipped on the hand by a baby crocodile - one that I'd previously even patted. I thought it liked me! But such minor suffering is as nothing compared to the pain willingly undergone by those undergoing crocodile tattooing in the villages along the Sepik River in Papua New Guinea. The skin is scarified and the wound filled with mud, so that when healed the tattoo stands above the skin like a rampant crocodile. The tattoo subjects fortunately don't take on the demeanour of their crocs, like all their countrymen remaining polite and hospitable in the extreme.

Making a difference

Mon, 04 May 2009 07:09:00 -0400

The town of Cunnamulla, in SW Queensland (outback Australia) is one of the most disadvantaged communities in the country. But the efforts of one remarkable teacher - Neil Spencer, who has been art teacher at Cunnamulla State School for the last 17 years - have led his talented young students to produce some quite extraordinary artworks. Spencer manages to get equally good results from both his Aboriginal and other pupils, and as a result he has succeeded as few others have in bringing the different communities of Cunnamulla together.

Crossing the island of Rarotonga

Sat, 28 Mar 2009 18:37:00 -0400

The four-hour cross island walk began as a single lane road winding into the foothills, past ramshackle villages struggling to keep the fast growing jungle at bay. Rarotongan village kids ran beside the road giggling and waving while the dogs were as laid back as the adult villagers, barely lifting their heads in the tropical heat to give us more than a brief glance as we passed by.

We�d hitched a lift with a truck driver to the start of the track, saving our strength for the challenge of the energy sapping jungle instead. Swinging down from the truck tray at the end of the bitumen, the driver directed us to a barely discernible break in the wildly overgrown jungle: the start of the cross island walk track.

Ascending rapidly across the gnarled tree roots which served as steps, our mid point destination at over 400m above sea level, The Needle was occasionally glimpsed through the dense foliage. Startling the odd bush chicken scratching in the dirt, seemingly the only inhabitants for miles, we brushed past vines, contorted ourselves under fallen tree trunks, trekking silently onwards and ever upwards.

Apparently beyond the canopy there was a financial crisis crippling the industrial world, but who would ever know such a pall of gloom existed here in the glorious Cooks?

Contact Fiona Harper if you'd like to commission this article.

Finding Dylan Thomas in Old South Wales

Tue, 10 Mar 2009 01:22:00 -0400

You don't have to go searching for Dylan Thomas in Old South Wales. Quite the contrary - Dylan Thomas will come looking for YOU. Through exhibitions, museums, festivals, statues, cafes, pubs, street names, paintings, posters and snatches of words still hanging in the salty air.

Good Celts them all, the Welsh share the Irish bent for tale telling and, around Swansea, so many of the best ones concern the man Hollywood legend Shelley Winters dubbed "The Horny Welshman'. In 1950 she took him home for dinner where he drank pitchers of gin martinis served up in milk bottles by flatmate Marilyn Monroe while singing Welsh songs; the sort of ditties he'd learned at The Mermaid and The Antelope, his Swansea pubs of choice when "this sea town was my world."

I came late to the Welsh bard. Before Under Milkwood and Do Not Go Gentle, at least for me, it was Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Thomas is there on the front cover of the 1967 Beatles album, in Peter Blake's esoteric collage above Marlon Brando, beside Aldous Huxley, nearly clipped by cowboy Tom Mix' hat. Blake has confirmed that John Lennon - who is said to have sometimes carried a battered volume of Thomas on his person during his Hamburg and Liverpool leather years - was insistent on the inclusion.

As I leave Swansea and wind around its bay to Mumbles and the Gower Peninsula, on the pilgrimage trail to the Dylan Thomas boathouse and writing shack at Loughnarne, there's a copy of his Selected Poems on the car seat beside me. The back cover blurb is the right length for a traffic light stop. "Most notable for his verbal inventiveness, image-making power and almost pagan metaphysics, Dylan Thomas celebrated the glorious particulars of inner and outer landscapes in the face of weakness, mortality and decay." Not hard to see why Lennon liked him.

Abu Dhabi powers ahead

Sun, 11 Jan 2009 18:55:00 -0500

Dubai may be the fastest-growing city on the planet. But its neighbour Abu Dhabi is rapidly emerging as the most powerful of the seven emirates making up the United Arab Emirates. As Abu Dhabi emerges from behind the shadow of the flashier Dubai, Glenn A Baker pays a visit to find out just why this is so.

Arabian Nights

Sun, 11 Jan 2009 16:25:00 -0500

A fervently religious country, Saudi Arabia is the birthplace of the prophet Mohammed and of the religion he founded, Islam .

In fact, every year, thousands of religious pilgrims visit Mecca, pouring in from Muslim countries around the world to attend the Haj during the religious month of Ramadan. During this time, Muslims do not eat or drink from dawn till dusk and it is forbidden even for non-Muslim foreigners to eat or drink in public.

Foreigners are required to exercise discretion in dress while in Saudi, never more so than during this time. Women and girls over 10 must wear completely body covering clothing so as not to reveal any skin. Many resident foreigners even adopt the local black abbaya rather than suffer the penetrating glares of Saudi men and, if venturing out of the main cities, a head covering as well. Saudi women dress from top to toe in black. Apart from the abbaya, they also wear a full head veil with only their eyes showing through narrow slits.

Sand Through the Fraser Island Hourglass

Sat, 10 Jan 2009 21:35:00 -0500

Like sand through the hourglass, these are the days of our long-suffering feet. Eschewing the need for a 4WD to explore Fraser Island, Fiona Harper decides to explore by foot instead, walking the sand trails that crisscross the worlds largest sand island.

Traversing over 100km of walking trails that pass through forests, along beaches and through the lakes district, the Fraser Island Great Walk can be undertaken in short day walks or on an extended overnight trek.

Contact Fiona Harper if you'd like to commission this article. Images are available.

Bridges across the Arafura Sea

Wed, 10 Dec 2008 17:34:00 -0500

Bridges across the Arafura Sea: For thousands of years, the Yolngu people of Arnhem Land traded with Makassan seafarers from Indonesia. Now, musicians at the annual Darwin Festival are rebuilding these cultural bridges. The group Tanah Merege is a groundbreaking collaboration between the Arnhem Land band Yilila and villagers from Watublapi on the Indonesian island of Flores. Yilila�s band manager Tony Gray and songwriter/lead singer Grant Nundhirribala on a recent visit to Flores found that Watublapi was used by the Macassans as a staging post on their trips to Australia. �There is still a lot more to learn in terms of shared language and culture�, says Gray. Also at the Darwin Festival, Arnhem Land singer Gurrumul Yunupingu performed on-stage with Ego Lemos of East Timor. Yunupingu, described in the Sydney Morning Herald as having �the greatest voice this continent (Australia) has ever recorded�, will be performing at Carnegie Hall in New York on January 22, 2009. See image preview: http://www.photographersdirect.com/simmons/search.asp?lb=9343