In the glittering world of literature, where dreams of bestseller lists and critical acclaim fuel countless hours of solitary toil, there is a darker underbelly that stalks the writer. As an author wh...
Ah, the life of a writer. From the outside, it looks glamorous. Sipping coffee in some exotic locale, tapping away at a keyboard while inspiration flows like a fine vintage Bordeaux. Ha! If only. Let...
Ah, Sumba, you are so far away, so much so that today, we refer to you as the 'forgotten island,' a label that reflects the island's isolation and the lack of attention it receives compared to its mor...
On those days when I wake early enough, my morning ritual is to head to the beach, and if I time it right, I will arrive to witness yet another spectacular sunrise. It never fails to disappoint as the...
Standing at the foot of Mt Ijen contemplating the steep sides of this mighty colossus, rising some 2,800 meters above sea level I find myself weighing up the pros and cons of a steep 3 km trek to the...
On the 18th of February 2020, the Governor of Bali in Indonesia made a painful decision. As of midnight that day, the island was to be shut off from the rest of the world. In 2019 Bali welcomed almost...
Ah, to be a travel writer, wandering the globe and getting paid to write about it. It does, when you think about it sound terribly romantic and, at times it really is but, without trying to sound arro...
I have always subscribed to the notion that the 'even' years are better than the odd ones. Good things always seemed to happen to me when the numbers were rounded off, all perfectly aligned, neat and...
A thin cuticle of a new moon casts its weak light across the deserted port town of Padangbai on the east coast of Bali. The strip of bitumen leading into the harbour is intermittently sewn together by...
Another day, another COVID PCR test. I have looped back from the island of Buru on the overnight ferry to the city of Ambon to catch yet another ferry to my next destination, Seram, the second largest...
(I've been missing in action for a few weeks due to a liaison with a certain virus) After 18 months of living through the COVID-19 pandemic, the pesky disease that's changed the world as we know it de...
Once filled with the sounds of suitcases rattling over the slightly uneven pavements, pulled along by bewildered tourists, my local streets now echo with the sound of children's voices playing outside...
Six months ago, I delivered a proclamation to anyone who would listen, and, if truth be told, there weren't many of those. My declaration went along the lines of, "I'm not cutting my hair until this b...
Ignorance, thankfully, is something that we can cure. Stupidity, on the other hand, is terminal. For example; " We are at a moment of truth and a crossroads. Will we allow these people to use fear and...
This very morning I received an email from my publisher, who kindly sends me quarterly updates regarding sales of my novels as well as a detailed report of the royalties associated with those sales. T...
It has been a time of covering our faces, isolating ourselves from others and watching the world go by on television. When COVID hit Bali, we actively discouraged friends and associates from visiting...
2020 was undoubtedly 'slow.' It was a time when sloth and procrastination, to which I have been addicted to for a few years now provided me with ample time to bring these two laconic bedfellows to a s...
2020 is the Year when life as we knew it suddenly went on pause and for many, it has proved to be an exhausting and an isolated time. It was all so sudden this disruption after the festivities of Chri...
( This article was written on 5th November 2020 but I am happy to report that it looks as though it the Don has been dusted ) It’s early morning in Indonesia. A shaft of brilliant sunlight spears thro...
Waiting. It’s a fact of life that waiting takes up some part of our everyday lives. We wait for delayed flights to take off, wait for doctors in bland waiting rooms, wait for an exam or test results,...
Sometimes there is a sure and strange delight about walking down an empty street alone; however, lately, the emptiness of those self-same streets seems to have taken up so much more space. The abundan...
Over the past seven months, the COVID-19 pandemic has, with frightening speed, turned our worlds upside down. It has confined us to our homes, cutting many of us off from family and friends, compellin...
Who would have thought that a microscopic virus would have applied a vicelike leash to my wandering spirit? For me, life without travel is fast becoming a dance without music. Its got to the point whe...
Today is day number 151 since the start of my ‘semi’- lockdown on the island of Bali. I have long since lost track of days and have now reached the point where a Wednesday could very well be a Sunday...
Today marks day number 125 of my life in 'lockdown'. To be fair, lockdown in Bali has been a little bit of a hit and miss affair as, apart from the mandatory rule that everyone must wear a mask when v...
Before I launch into this brief diatribe, I would like it known that recent rumours of my demise have been very much exaggerated! It is just fourteen weeks since the dreaded COVID19 made its presence...
Isolation; it’s a strange old time is it not? Given that I usually spend much of my time tapping away at a keyboard, isolation was pretty much the norm for me and truth be told, I have been self-isola...
When disasters strike without warning those experiences we endure during the calamity may never really end. There is no doubt that this pandemic will eventually disappear, only this time the future wi...
Its 5.00 am on a Friday morning. The dawn spreads soft light over the gardens, lush and green after the recent rains. The sky, a hue of purples, oranges and indigo will soon turn a bright, azure blue...
Sumba is a large, squat - shaped island that appears to have tumbled out of the southern Indonesian archipelago to sit alone, not far to the north of the continent of Australia. Here there are no stee...
It’s 2020 and the Christmas and New Year celebrations have come and gone This past festive season was a memorable one as my two daughters with their respective spouses in tow made the long journey fro...
The Indonesian island of Sulawesi rests in the Sea of Celebes resembling giant a spider that has fallen awkwardly from the ceiling and spread its legs across the azure blue waters as if desperately tr...
I have to admit that I have always had and always will have a weakness when it comes to horse racing. I am not a gambler so, wagering my hard-earned money on a flutter at the racecourse was never real...
Scores of brightly clad race stewards guide two massive buffaloes into the shallows of a flooded rice paddy. After lumbering into the mud they stand absolutely still, knee-deep in the muddy water as i...
Africa has a way of seeping under your skin. All at once it is seductive, a place full of promise and vitality and yet it is infused with an undercurrent of primal fear. It is an enigma, an exotic tal...
Here in the tropics, the heat sometimes induces chronic inertia forcing one to take an extended siesta most afternoons. During my time here I have followed this practice religiously and justify this r...
To those of you who occasionally read my pieces might not know that I am a hopeless tragic when it comes to rugby. I simply adore the game for, as a fan, it provides all the agony and ecstasy one can...
There is nothing quite like walking the streets of London. In a word, it's pure, unadulterated entertainment especially if you choose locations of the calibre of London’s East End. When I lived in thi...
Imagine if you will, being in Beijing and trying to get from one side of the city to the other. Pretty easy one would have thought as one can simply hail one of the thousands of taxis that cruise the...
For the last couple of months, I have been in and out of London, using it as a base for for our various sorties to Europe and Ireland. As always, London is a delight in the summer and, on the surface...
I’m in the town of Bantry, a pretty place wrapped in mountains on three sides and then tucked neatly in between the Sheep’s Head and the Berea Peninsula. It's blessed with expansive water views and sl...
On one of England’s hottest days on record it was perhaps fortuitous that I had a ticket to see Shakespeare’s “As You Like It ‘at the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford thus allowing me to escape...
South Africa is arguably home to some of the most magnificent roads anywhere that traverse deserts, farmlands and mountains, effortlessly linking quirky villages and towns with the large metropolitan...
A crecent shaped moon rises slowly above the gigantic Makgadikgadi Pan, seemingly held aloft by children with long sticks. This illusion is caused by the branches of long dead trees that line the dist...
There are certain moments in one’s life when things change, perhaps forever. That particular moment happened to me at around 4 pm on the 27th of December 2018 after returning from a swim in the pool w...
With the rising prosperity in China, both Foo Foo and Moo Moo, a pair of six - year old terriers are now enjoying the high life – literally. Every couple of months these pampered pooches travel by pri...
It's just on one hundred years ago that architect Walter Gropius had a vision that inspired him into transforming a cloistered German art school into arguably the most influential modern design academ...
Management has been a little concerned about my well - being of late and perhaps with good cause. You see, I tend to spend an extraordinary amount of time on my own these days doing, well, not a lot r...
I have taken the liberty of using the title of Alan Paton’s wonderful novel as the headline for this piece as in many ways it is appropriate for the subject matter that follows. Like millions of other...
Just lately, I have developed a bit of a ‘soft spot’ for an inanimate object, the humble pebble. If you think about it, not many people take much notice of this small, round stone and yet, it has some...
The Tropics. You know the place, that deliciously warm band of the planet situated five degrees north and south of the equator. For those poor souls currently experiencing a Polar Vortex, close your e...
Even with its brash, new look, festooned as it is with gleaming high-rise apartments and office towers, Phnom Pehn still tends to wear the remnants of its dark history indelibly stitched into the fabr...
It has been many years since I last visited Ho Chi Minh or, to give it its original name, Saigon and after just a day I vowed to try and get here on a more regular basis. This sprawling city is now a...
As 2018 draws to its inevitable close I spend hours re-reading my notes from the previous twelve months and comparing them to the year before. This was a year when I seemed to be constantly on the mov...
Its been a few years now since I left the big, bad world of advertising and, although I don’t miss it too much I am still drawn to every form of advertising I see, hear or watch. Its one of those prof...
Consider this if you will: You are a young, presentable, bright twenty- three - year old with a brand new degree from a reputable university. You have worked diligently over four years, achieved excel...
For the first time visitor, Tokyo can be a little daunting but actually, this mega - city is one of the friendliest, safest and, dare I say it weirdest cities on the planet. Tokyo is home to a stagger...
Its been barely three weeks since a massive earthquake struck the island of Sulawesi in Indonesia. Already the international press and television coverage of this appalling event has quietly slipped f...
Recently, I was compelled to visit Australia’s Gold Coast to attend a wedding of a dear friend meaning I once again found myself in a city that I called home for over two decades. To those unfamiliar...
Ah, to be a travel writer, wandering the globe and getting paid to write about it. It does, when you think about it sound terribly romantic and, at times it really is but, without trying to sound arro...
Dublin, that most endearing of cities has had a bit of a tumultuous ride in the last fifteen years or so. Before that nasty GFC brought everything tumbling down and burst its bubble, it was hailed glo...
Francesco Russo is a native of Venice who makes his living selling Venetian glass from a small store on one of the winding lanes that surround the Doge’s Palace. He has a prime seat from which to obse...
“When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life.” Samuel Johnson. Mr Johnson’s timeless quote can, for a resident of London, ring a little hollow when enduring a long, drawn-out grey winters livin...
For the last three and a half months, my travels have taken me to some of some of Europe’s grandest cities, replete with majestic cathedrals, wide, bustling boulevards, museums and art galleries, burs...
Its been a few years now since I tired of scribbling copy for products I never believed in, carefully crafting words for a certain target audience convincing them to buy items they didn’t really want...
“I like trains. I like their rhythm, and I like the freedom of being suspended between two places, all anxieties of purpose taken care of: for this moment I know where I am going.” Anna Funder, Stasil...
To those of you who are regular readers of my beBEE posts might have gathered that my association with the two-wheeled mode of transport has caused considerable consternation in the past. (see; “Bikin...
Arriving in any city for the first time when grey skies, driving rain and cold conditions dominate is never that pleasant as often weather conditions can, and do leave a poor and sometimes an undeserv...
“By day Lisbon has a naive theatrical quality that enchants and captivates, but by night it is a fairy-tale city, descending over lighted terraces to the sea, like a woman in festive garments going do...
" The haunting of history is ever present in Barcelona. I see cities as organisms, as living creatures. To me, Madrid is a man and Barcelona is a woman. And it's a woman who's extremely vain." Author:...
Perched atop a series of rocky mounds that rise from the arid plains of Don Quixote’s La Mancha, the small city of Toledo is a veritable giant when it comes to Iberian history. Until the 16th-century...
This is now my seventh year of living in Indonesia and somehow I really do think I shall never leave….I do so love it here. The Indonesian constitution is pretty firm on the issue of foreigners (like...
Sometimes, getting from A to B on a trip is often the downside of travel. The stress of getting to an airport when traffic is bad, long lines at check-in, immigration and then the tedious experience o...
There’s something inherently romantic about train travel and, even now, when we can cross continents in hours by commercial aircraft, there is nothing quite like the leisurely pace of covering the sam...
In just a matter of weeks, the city of Cape Town will run out of water! This majestic metropolis, with a population of over 4 million, perched on the southern tip of South Africa will carry the onerou...
What is it that triggers a memory? A hint of a smell this morning of jasmine embedded in a bar of hotel soap for some reason caused a flood of memories to suddenly invades my consciousness with vision...
I am standing on an extremely crowded dock on the foreshore of the nondescript and, dare I say it, forgettable town of Sorong, located on the northwest tip of Bird’s Head’s Peninsula on the island of...
Its just after 3.00 am when a voice outside my cabin door calls softly, telling me that its time to go. I make my way gingerly up the internal staircase from below decks in pitch darkness, careful not...
This story was first published in my short story anthology entitled, " Looking For Lionel & Other Stories. I thought it pertinent to repeat it here...enjoy! Saint Peter sat back and watched his faithf...
First published in Arabian Airlines in-flight magazine November 2017. When we think, or read about “Bordeaux,” one’s immediate impression is that this is a city built on wine. This is partly true as a...
This will mark the second article this week covering the eruption of Bali’s Mt Agung. The excellent piece by fellow bee, Vanessa Campanago takes a slightly different slant, but is certainly worth a re...
For those bees travelling Europe in the next few months and find yourself in Italy, don’t miss Milan, the most charming of cities Ah, Milan, one of my favourite cities in Europe! This is a city that s...
First published in Newas Magazine October 2017 There are times when an assignment lands on my desk which can be a little confusing. “We need a 1500 - word piece on Mestia by Friday …can do?” Now, if y...
First published in Arabian Air, October 2017 It’s a stifling hot day, the sun beating down from an azure blue sky as I make my way down the twisting, crooked passageways and lanes laid out like an int...
Lately, when I travel I am often asked the question as to where I live and, when I give my answer the reply is almost always “why?” Now, I do tend to find this question to be a little strange as for m...
Its 8.00 am on a Friday morning here in Bali and, as usual, at this time of year the weather is picture perfect with not a cloud in the sky. A light breeze, soft as gossamer wafts across the terrace,...
Don’t you just love Fridays? I guess I am a little fortunate in that Fridays for me could be a Monday, a Wednesday or for that matter a Sunday. It’s a little bit cool to be a freelance travel writer!...
In July, I once again had the privilege of re- visiting my beloved Africa, only this time I found that it was a slightly sobering experience. A pessimistic mood seems to be hovering over South Africa...
The title of this piece is attributed to Robert Anderson who wrote the melancholy play of the same title. I buried my father a few years ago. Buried is perhaps too loose a term as his body had already...
This is the second article to appear on beBEE covering Chefchaouen this year. Nicole Leigh West's excellent piece, “Kif in the Rif” summed up exactly why this town is a must for any traveller. I was r...
First published in the Arabian Airlines in-flight magazine July 2017. There will always be days in Venice when tourists seem to outnumber locals by at least two to one, especially in July and August....
I am sitting on the terrace of my hotel on the La Rambla, Barcelona’s famous pedestrian walkway. It’s just on seven a.m., and the city has yet to stir from the previous night’s revelry. Looking westwa...
Ok, I live for perhaps seven months of the year in Bali and for the remainder of the time I travel for both work or pleasure which really, when you think about it is really cool ! When management and...
It’s just on 5.00 am. As I leave the comfort of my hotel room in pitch darkness, a crescent moon hangs low, like a scimitar on the horizon, its light almost no match for the billions of stars that pep...
Twenty odd long years between visits is, as George Orwell once said,is a little like 'coming up for air.' In a different time, when the world was younger than today, my parents brought me from England...
I often receive some rather, " we need it now!" requests from magazines and this piece, written for the July edition of Turkish Airlines was one of those. Its primarily a, 'what to do' article but mig...
In hindsight, perhaps I should not have read, “ First They Killed My Father,” Loung Ung's harrowing and deeply disturbing autobiography of her time during Pol Pot’s misguided revolution (1975 – 1979)...
If there is one thing I have learnt after many years of travel, it is the trick of, ‘travelling light’. Excess baggage is nothing more than a cumbersome millstone when boarding planes, trains, boats o...
Imagine if you will, a pleasant, sunny Friday afternoon when the working week is almost complete and the weekend looms with the promise of time to do exactly what one feels like doing, when suddenly t...
. Welcome to Beirut, recognised as one of the oldest cities in the world where Archeologists have dated human habitation here to over 5000 B. C. This picturesque city is perched on a thin peninsula th...
