Kid’s Art in Laos

The Kindness of Strangers

Take a bow world. People, pat yourselves on the back. Goodness and decency flourish. Kindness, laughter and generosity of spirit rule. Like Blanche Dubois we are constantly amazed, warmed, delighted and thankful for the generosity and warmth we’ve encountered from total strangers on our travels. Here are some of the stars of our show, people […]

The Stairs of Death

One of the many delightful inevitabilities of aging are the nocturnal peregrinations. On this trip my bladder has been in a constant state of horrified disbelief. Our hotel in Bangkok is groovy and retro in a street lined with hidden cafés and hip bars. A thin building, with a normal staircase that gently winds to […]

Pad Thai-riffic

You look out for the long winding queue… (the restaurants next door have few diners and, inevitably, long faced restauranters who no doubt dream of slipping arsenic into the bubbling vats or releasing rats and cockroaches into the kitchen) but you can’t miss Thipsamai – and as you can see from the photo above very […]

Temple of Taste ~ Siem Reap

Beautiful little Siem Reap is justly famed for the eye popping splendours of Angkor Wat and the many surrounding temples. Who would have thought that this small country town holds not one but two extraordinary places to sample fusion Asian cuisine blending the recipes of Cambodia with its exotic herbs, vegetables, fruit with a modern […]

Cool Cats’ cafés Hanoi

Hanoi’s Hidden caffeine hits Our last loving look back at Hanoi. Sigh. What a Gal ! The war is over. Give Peace a chance. Everything old is new again and the young of Hanoi are creating a grungy hipster scene with a nod to the colours of Cuba, all styles of music, the furniture of […]

Cambodian Festival of the Big-Booby Giants

Sadly leaving Phnom Penh today on our way to the now familiar Giant Ibis bus depot, our tuk tuk drove us past these vivacious gals, who once a year put on their glad rags and collect alms for the needy. Those donating obtain blessings and good fortune for themselves and their family (just so all […]

The Strange Fascination of Mee Kee Mao

Phnom Penh 2

The monks glow like embers in the streets of Phnom Penh. We ambled north along the Mekong as it rushed and eddied south, and saw the inevitable companion buildings to any port or harbour town, cafes, tourist dives, girly bars with names like “I get you and you get me”, (what it is, exactly, that […]

Outré Otres

Sihanoukville and Otres 1&2 We would have posted some photos but since the gi-normous big bad Chinese casino development just up the hill was (according to the locals) doing something iffy with the electricity we did not. Instead we sat glumly in some dubious pod chairs battling (quite unsuccessfully) the swarms of giant mosquitoes as […]