Travel
Faces of Macau 澳門
I've always found Macau intriguing. Like Hong Kong it was a colonial possession (handed back by Portugal to China in 1999) but its path to the 21st century seems to have contradicted the unrelenting businesslike shininess and efficiency of the city at this side of the...
Shenzhen 深圳 – facades and flowers
When I first passed through Shenzhen 深圳 in 1985 just before crossing the border into Hong Kong, it was a collection of run-down shacks. I still had an unused entry on my current Chinese visa, which expires on Thursday, and I've been unwell all week and unable to...
Niseko – cho
We're planning to go skiing in Japan next March. I won't have been skiing for 6 years and I've never been very good at it, having learned only at the age of 38. Generally if, like me, you have a fear of speed and steep slopes, skiing can be a challenge. I like the...
Oasis
Hong Kong has felt increasingly tense in the last few weeks. I'm not going to talk about the protests and their reasons here because, though I have formed my impressions, I'm not really qualified and it feels a little patronising from someone with the privilege of...
Cambodia by the sea
The final days of our Cambodian holiday were spent at the seaside. I’d originally booked a hotel in Sihanoukville but a Twitter friend warned me just in time to rebook that this town is currently a building site taken over by Chinese building dozens of casinos. He...
Beach work
Cambodian sadness
Generally I’m the sort of person who needs to know a bit about a place before going. The Maldives and other paradise holiday destinations like Thailand, Singapore, Egypt, Israel, India all have various ways of disrespecting people’s human rights. Dubai is built on...
Angkor Wat
We visited Angkor Wat, the vast temple complex the size of Manhattan that dates back to the height of the Khmer Empire in the 12th Century. Originally constructed by Suryavarman II as a Vaishnavite Hindu temple, depicting stories from Hindu epics the Ramayana and the...