"Short stories and travel reports from my life adventures around the globe".
April 2010. Home to a succession of Chinese emperors, The Forbidden City served as the political heart of China for over five hundred years. Virtually unrivalled in scale and grandeur, some historians claim this is Planet Earth’s largest palace complex! It’s certainly China’s biggest compound of ancient buildings, with over nine hundred temples, pavilions, halls, […]
Read MoreShangdi, Beijing. The sleepy, unremarkable Beijing neighbourhood of Shangdi in Haidian District stands as the dictionary definition of a non-place. There is very little to see and even less to do. As a result, very few foreigners pass through Shangdi. And yet somehow, this is where I lived for two years teaching English at a tiny […]
Read MoreApril 2010. If you only have time for one Beijing temple, make it the grand Lama Temple. This is the largest Tibetan style temple in the world outside of Tibet itself. My visit here came way back in 2010 during my first year living in China. Make no mistake, this is an incredibly popular attraction. […]
Read MoreJuly 2014. Only in a city as contradictory and confusing as Beijing could a place like 798 Art District exist! The complex started out as a huge network of factories built by the East Germans in the 1950s. However, by the mid 90s the entire area had fallen into a state of disrepair. It was […]
Read MoreVienna, Austria. October 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. However, in the end it just didn’t happen. I suppose I could blame it on the rain, […]
Read MoreAfter nearly five years as Leighton Literature, the time has finally come to relaunch this little blog of mine in order to better reflect what it is I actually do.
Read MoreToday I published my 500th travel report with my article on Tooting Bec Common in London. This is cause for celebration because a) five hundred is a sexy number and b) I never thought I’d get this far! Now I kinda like the sound of 1000. These articles of mine have evolved over time from simple […]
Read MoreIt’s Leighton Literature’s 4th Birthday! It’s been four years since I launched Leighton Literature and this last twelve months have definitely been my most transformative. It was over the summer that I felt like LL had arrived at a sink or swim moment. After so much hard work and only modest progress, I saw two […]
Read MoreIt’s Leighton Literature’s 3rd Birthday! One of the scariest things about getting older is the ever-increasing rapidity of the passing of time. I mean, how can it possibly be three years since I launched Leighton Literature? I was in Beijing at the time, my second stint. Between now and then I’ve been to South Korea, Singapore and […]
Read MoreAugust 2009. If like me you’ve spent a fair amount of time exploring Asia, you’ll know that there comes a moment when you get all templed out. So by the time I rolled up in Shanghai I decided to limit my temple explorations to the charms of this A-list structure on West Nanjing Road. Welcome […]
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Traveling the world, one country at a time.
