Picture the royal barge making its way along the Chao Phraya River from Bangkok to the summer palace at Bang Pa-In. It’s 1880 and the boat is carrying Queen Sunanda – the 19 year old first wife of King Chulalongkorn – and their daughter, princess Kannabhorn, not yet 2 years old. The boat runs into […]
Ah – How peaceful is this – and, stunning as Bangkok’s monuments are, I like the absence of gold and bright colour for a while! This is what’s left of the once great city of Ayutthaya. Founded in 1350, it would flourish between 14th – 18th centuries into a major urban centre of commerce and […]
I made up my mind, before I even set foot on a plane, that I wasn’t going to like Hoi An. Definitely a tourist trap, terribly overcrowded, undoubtedly full of aggressive touts and sounding more like a theme park than a traditional town. But – it had a few things going for it – it’s […]
*At-home burials – Rural families often bury their loved ones on their own property… Báhn Mi – I know – it’s just a bread roll to you and me but it’s a must have – at least once! Cultural Emersion Experiences! Dong. 22.000 VND that I forgot to spend – worth a whole 0.71 Euro!!! […]
Never meet your heroes and never go back… Alas, I think it might be true! I wrote the following in March, 2019, as part of an alphabetical journey (it was a very enjoyable exercise actually) F is for FCC ‘Of all the gin joints in all the towns….’ If I had to choose one spot for […]