Nosy Be: Island Hopping
MADAGASCAR | NOSY BE: Winter, in August, had Cape Town by the scruff of its neck. A climate refugee, I washed up on the shores of a tropical Garden of Eden for two weeks of island-hopping. (Publication: ‘Travel Africa’)
Captivating, Confounding Cuba
SOUTH AMERICA | CUBA: I’m not sure what I expected of one of the world’s last five self-styled communist countries. What I got was a whiff of fragrant Cuban leaf as the plane’s doors opened, adverts for booze and cigarettes in the arrivals hall, trolleys loaded with teetering towers of shrink-wrapped aircon units, TVs and stereos, and buxom, mini-skirted officials in khaki, sporting epaulettes and fishnet stockings. (Publication: ‘Intrepid Explorer’)
Bushmans Kloof: An African Tale
SOUTH AFRICA | NORTHERN CEDERBERG: I knew how Cinderella felt. The morning after and the Cessna had changed back into my Exa. The private air-strip, the chef who’d cooked for Clinton, (and no, it wasn’t goose) the two thousand bottle wine cellar … gone … as though they’d never been. All was as it had been before – and yet, not quite. (Unpublished)
Kathmandu: The Land that Time Forgot
NEPAL | KATHMANDU VALLEY: Not again. Not another designer frolic in some far-flung corner of the globe. What is it this time? Ice-skating in Patagonia? Sun-bathing in the Sahara? Sniping in Sarajevo? (Publication: ‘Sunday Life’)
Taiwan: Behind the Bamboo Curtain
TAIWAN | TAINAN: In Taiwan, the past hovers over the present like the smoke of burning ghost money. Ghosts oversee the living while gods parade the streets. (Publication: ‘Sunday Life’)
Thailand: When Worlds Collide
THAILAND: Amid the overt symptoms of Western influence, the infestation of Western brand names and consumer fever, there are reminders still of the old Siam that lies beneath the glossy veneer of contemporary Thailand. (Unpublished)
Kathmandu: Valley of the Gods
NEPAL | KATHMANDU: If the Himalayas are a mystical region of fabled creatures, high adventure and tales as tall as the peaks themselves, then Kathmandu is a name to conjure with; a traveller’s incantation: ‘Zanzibar and Timbuktu; Mandalay and Kathmandu’. (Publication: ‘Marie Claire’)
Thailand’s Islands
THAILAND | KO PHI PHI, KO PHA-NGAN, KO CHANG: Close your eyes and picture a snaggle-toothed horizon framing a turquoise sea and powdered beaches of white sand. (Publication: ‘Sunday Life’)
Bureaucracy Blues: Teaching English in Taiwan
TAIWAN | TAINAN: I caught a brief glimpse of the island like a thumbprint on the sea, before it was swallowed up in smog. The plane was cocooned in it when we touched down so that my first impression of my new home was the dingy utility of the airport and a chalk-scrawled notice announcing the arrival of my plane. (Unpublished)