So I Found a Cobra in My Bedroom
I’m normally fairly sanguine about snakes. Well, about as sanguine as a Briton can be. We don’t really have snakes in Britain, by which I...
EscapeArtistes Blog
Why I’ll Never Be a Professional Travel Blogger
There have been a flood of posts lately explaining why being a travel blogger is really, really hard. It isn’t, obviously. It’s not subsistence farming...
On Hospitals in Indonesia
On Tuesday, Zac had surgery – to finally remove the metal plate installed at huge expense after our helicopter evac from Mongolia, where he’d broken...
The Friday Photo: Hobbit House
This is Hobbit House, Manila, a regular on lists of the world’s weirdest restaurants. It seems, at first blush, like an absolutely horrible concept: a...
Do Atheists Celebrate Christmas?
Procrastinating on Twitter the other day, I saw a thread about the “most irritating questions atheists are asked”, courtesy, of course, of Richard Dawkins, whose...
The Friday Photo: Jellyfish Lake
Ever snorkelled with jellyfish? Deliberately, I mean? We did, in the jellyfish lake on Kakaban Island, in Indonesia’s Derawan islands, off Borneo. Kakaban is a...
The Friday Photo: The Leang-Leang Caves
Maybe 17,000 years ago, maybe 40,000 years ago, someone scrambled up to the wall of this cave and left his handprint. It’s a large hand...
Bali Stories: Winnie Part 2
By now, my voice is more than familiar to the woman at the vet’s. I dial in of a morning, not really expecting an update...
The Friday Photo: Our Mahakam River Boat
I felt like Madame Mao taking this photo, signalling from the bank to get the boat in what I hoped was an appropriately scenic position...
Bali Stories: Winnie (Part 1)
In Bali, one often acquires a pet without really thinking about it. In fact, once known in the neighbourhood as a soft touch, folk can...