On Laundry
So this rather hot Kiwi chap in his 30s hit on me in the hotel last night. Obviously, I completely failed to register it until...
Category: Places
The Night Bus
So, the night bus in London. Squabbling teenagers. Aggressive crackheads spouting bullshit at the bus driver in pursuit of a free ride home (or wherever)....
You are Nine, Going on Nineteen
So Z got dumped by his girlfriend. Or did he? It came up the first time in a moment of anxiety atop a sand dune...
Hounds, Bikes and Dunes
Z and I are sitting at a roadside stall in Mui Ne, Vietnam, watching a very cute, extremely solemn and phenomenally determined toddler hounding an...
Ladybird Hats
In South-East Asia, we’ve been spending a lot of time on the back of bikes. Call them motos, xe om or motorbike taxis, they’re generally...
The Unwilling Soldier
The Cu Chi tunnels, twenty miles or so outside Saigon, make the trenches of Flanders look like R&R in Bangkok. More than 200 kilometres of...
Cambodian Food
There is an old Khmer saying which runs roughly as follows: “Eat anything that has four legs except a table, eat anything that flies except...
A Tryst Arranged
One quiet evening, Francois’ brother played Mendelssohn on the balcony of our Phnom Penh guesthouse, and he played it well. Francois is a writer, two...
I Heart Cambodia – Part 3
Angkor Wat. The icon of a nation. One of the wonders of the world. Tens of kilometres of bas-relief. Acres of lawns. Sacred pools which...
Best Train Journey Ever? #1: The Bamboo Train
Z will contentedly nap on motorbikes, ride the tailgate on pickups, sit on the edge of a boat and stand up in the back of...