September 2005. The Belgian university town of Leuven will always hold a special place in my heart. I arrived in the autumn of 2004, feeling excited by the prospect of a fresh start. But while my personal life was about to unravel, Leuven itself proved so charming it would ultimately drag me through the hard […]
Read MoreJanuary 2005. In the autumn of 2004 I found myself at a major life crossroads. Should I take a tempting job offer in the south of Italy? Or move to Belgium with my new girlfriend? Naturally the girl won and I packed my bags, heading off to the land of chocolate and waffles. Based in […]
Read MoreOctober 2002. My maiden voyage to the Austrian capital, Vienna, certainly didn’t turn out as I’d expected. I landed in town with a couple of friends, loaded with ambitious plans for a weekend of high culture. But in the end it just didn’t happen. I suppose I could blame it on the rain, which didn’t […]
Read MoreOctober 2008. You would never guess it just from gazing up from the outside, but things are not quite as they seem at Casablanca Cathedral. This impressive Neo-gothic building, peppered with Art Deco and Muslim touches, announced itself to the world in 1930. At that time Casablanca was under French rule and indeed the church’s […]
Read MoreMay 2015. My travel mates and I had just arrived in the village of Juara on the eastern side of Tioman Island. It had been a long and eventful seven-kilometre hike, but we were finally here! It was already late afternoon, so we keenly made our way to Juara Turtle Project, a sanctuary dedicated to […]
Read MoreMay 2015. I fell in love with Tioman Island the moment it came into view from our boat as we whizzed across The South China Sea. In fifteen years of travel I’d never really done the tropical island thing. But actually Tioman would be my second secluded paradise in as many weeks. I’d just come […]
Read MoreMay 2015. It’s weird to think that my blossoming travel career was already in its fourteenth year before I finally got round to crossing ‘secluded tropical paradise’ off my bucket list. Sure I’d seen plenty of beautiful beaches and islands over the years, but I’d always wanted to experience something a little more on the […]
Read MoreMay 2015. It’s a somewhat complicated story how I ended up in the strange Malaysian city of Johor Bahru. This had never been part of the plan, but sometimes fate sends you off in unexpected directions. In April 2015 I spent a month backpacking around Thailand, a country I loved so much I decided to […]
Read MoreDecember 2015. During my wanderings around Cambodia I met plenty of fellow travellers who didn’t even bother stopping in Battambang! I can’t help but feel they really missed out. The city itself has an excellent café and restaurant scene. And if you venture out, you’ve got the unmissable beauty and history of Phnom Sampeau. And […]
Read MoreDecember 2015. The curious little Cambodian city of Battambang offers visitors a handful of unique sights that stand right up there with the best of the country’s must-see attractions. One of these is Phnom Sampeau, a massive limestone mountain 12 kilometres outside the centre. It’s a steep forty-five minute walk up to the top and […]
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