Tag: Travel Narratives

After NaNoWriMo Passes, Inertia Sets In
December 2, 2010

After NaNoWriMo Passes, Inertia Sets In

First of all, I finished that novel(la):     So yes, yes I did write that blasted thing. At work, my stack of writing to mark grew to unfathomable heights (sorry kids!) and my mornings and nights and weekends were spent trying to squeeze out …

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Absolutely Nothing to do with Shanghai and Everything About Writing
November 11, 2010

Absolutely Nothing to do with Shanghai and Everything About Writing

So I am knee deep in Nanowrimo, or perhaps only shin deep, as I am not sure 15,059 words out of 50,000 can count as a knee. I’m also still sicketty sick sick, which has made me a barking machine. This means I’m not posting …

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Huh? Efendim? Ting Bu Dong: Opening Your Door to People You Can’t Understand
September 6, 2010

Huh? Efendim? Ting Bu Dong: Opening Your Door to People You Can’t Understand

In Istanbul, at the last flat I lived in before we left Turkey in 2008, my upstairs neighbour- a middle-aged woman in a house dress and slippers- used to ring my doorbell repeatedly at all hours. If I was in the shower, she’d keep ringing …

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Awesome Things We Ate in Myanmar
August 10, 2010

Awesome Things We Ate in Myanmar

Before we went to Myanmar, we really had no idea what to expect, food-wise.  It wasn’t a cuisine that was well represented in the South East Asian culinary repetoire internationally. We knew it was just across the water from all things Indian and Bangladeshi, and …

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Can I Show You a Bit of Myanmar?
August 5, 2010

Can I Show You a Bit of Myanmar?

And we’re back. And I’ve been floored with a tummy bug that whacked me over the head sometime last night, after we got back into Shanghai in a taxi that thought it had a jet engine. After 7 white-knuckle flights in a month (3 of …

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On travelling and on staying put
July 24, 2010

On travelling and on staying put

We’ve been in Myanmar about two weeks now, travelling close to the ground (usually about 6 inches from the pavement when facing backwards on a trishaw) and grinding our way from Yangon to Moulmein to Kyaiktiyo to Yangon to Mandalay to Hsipaw and I’m tired. …

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On the road to Mandalay, eventually
July 19, 2010

On the road to Mandalay, eventually

You can actually fly to Mandalay from Yangon for about $75US, so the romance of the road is somewhat lessened.  After bouncing around the Mon State south east of Yangon for the past week, I’ve come to value the brevity of flights. I’ve learned a …

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Notes on Yangon (which is also Rangoon)
July 12, 2010

Notes on Yangon (which is also Rangoon)

1. Burmese script initially reminded me of the patterns woodbugs make when tunnelling into a two-by-four, then I decided it looked like binary code without the 1s, as seen through a wonky dot matrix printer, and now I’ve finally reconciled myself to the idea that …

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From Yangon, with sanity
July 11, 2010

From Yangon, with sanity

Obviously no one briefed the censors that I was coming. This site is one of the only things out there that isn’t blocked.  Thank you for your trust, Junta. Appreciated.     We arrived yesterday morning after a long (and yet not long at all) …

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Best Little Whorehouse in Cairo
April 28, 2010

Best Little Whorehouse in Cairo

  In Tahrir Midan, the Picadilly of central Cairo’s circuses, after a long, hot, dusty day spent being shadowed by touts and hissing men, we searched for dinner, for a beer, for a rest. But trouble in Arabic was brewing above a teahouse on the …

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Harbingers of Dumplings
April 25, 2010

Harbingers of Dumplings

“Привет!” Our presence in the tiny Russian cafe was heartily acknowledged by the old Chinese man in the fedora who had just entered, elbows linked with his small, silent wife. “Er, nihao? Hello? Hi?” “Я думал, ты русский” I thought you were Russian, he explained (in …

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Rose Petals and Orange Peel
April 24, 2010

Rose Petals and Orange Peel

Sometimes a girl just needs a jam jam jar filled with steeping, fragrant blossoms

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