Langkawhat? Langkawho? Langkawhich? Etc. I’d never heard of Langkawi prior to two months ago, when I was looking at a quick and affordable way to escape the Beijing smog before heading back to the UK for Christmas. In fact, Langkawi turned out to be was one of my favorite holidays ever. The island has so […]

Or “When timing goes terribly, terribly wrong”. Please, for the love of God, leave early.   Taal Volcano is nestled in a lake, on an island in the Philippines. Within the volcano is a lake, and within that lake is another island. Which means that island is in a lake in a volcano in a […]

It really is though. Temples   From the beautiful Kinkaku-Ji in Kyoto, to the Ninja Temple in Kanazawa which is full of secret passageways and traps, to the zen gardens of Tofukuji – the temples in Japan never fail to impress. Even if they’re not really your thing, you’re bound to find at least a […]

I’ve been living in Beijing for just under a year now, but have had a fair few visitors so I’m something of a reluctant expert on how to get from the airport to the city centre. As with many things in China, the straightforward can often be made more complicated than necessary so here’s a […]

Kanazawa seemed like a bit of a mystery to me. The tourists I met up until then hadn’t heard of it, but it was raved about it Japan guide books and blogs. It was on my route around Japan, just before I hit Takayama, so I decided to give it a go despite my lack […]

With all this talk about Burma, I’ve seen a few things cropping up on tourist websites and travel blogs about the beauty of Bagan, Inle Lake, Rangoon and other attractions. They’re very nice articles, with tips on transport, accommodation, food and money. But I think it’s something of a shame that travel bloggers tend to […]

I’ve been living in China on and off for almost a year. Despite this, I still find the language impossible as ever. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve given up learning and restarted again, and no amount of inspirational language blogs, telling me how to hack Chinese, have managed to really helped […]

As I write this, I’m sat on a train twisting further up into the Japanese Alps, the sun setting over the green hills. I’m headed to Kanazawa, a place I have literally no expectations about, apart from that it’s got a castle, has something to do with the origin of samurai and is “quite nice”. […]

As we prepared for our trip across the Cambodian border into Vietnam, yet another backpacker dispensed the same advice we had already heard countless times. “You’re doing Vietnam in 9 days? Impossible. Can’t be done.” Seriously though. We got this phrase so many times that we eventually came up with private jokes and pre-agreed key […]