Buffalo Soldiers: Living for Death in the Tana Toraja
“Are funerals like this in London?” asks my new Torajan friend. The dead man’s drum-shaped coffin emerges from the matrimonial bedroom where he has “slept”,...
Category: World School
Mr. Confidence
Sometimes, something happens which makes you look at your child with new eyes. This morning, Z and I were at Poring Hot Springs, the sulphurous...
Buddhism: the Planet’s Whipping Boy?
It’s often said, generally by Christians of the scary-to-very-scary variety, that folk can be far ruder about Christianity than any of the world’s “great religions”...
Sign Language
One of my spawn’s many endearing qualities is that he generally, as here with his new friend Solène, looks as though butter wouldn’t melt in...
Into the Deep
Why learn to dive? Well… Scuba diving opens up an entire new world. There’s the fluid, graceful movement in three dimensions, moving up or down...
At the Orphanage
Our first volunteering stint as a family brought us to Baan Kingkaew orphanage, a home for orphaned children aged from three months to six years...
Seeing the Light
There’s a brilliance about the light in the medieval temples of northern Thailand. It glints off mirrored mosaics, gold buddhas and gilded towers, off gaudy...
Global Time = Quality Time
My son and I set out to travel the world together in January. I’d imagined many wonderful things about the journey. What I hadn’t imagined is the sheer quality and quantity of time together.
Making Incense, Vietnam
Incense is part of daily life in Vietnam. Joss sticks are offered at the altars which grace every business and almost every home, sold by...
Unschooling. Or Learning as You Go.
It’s a truism that one learns by travelling, and a cliche that travel broadens the mind. From the days when English noblemen embarked on that...