Category Archives: travel

Satisfaction

8 Mar

The road to a good time is paved with good intentions. I’m pissed. Again. May Allah strike me down, I’d every intention today of settling in a quite coffee house, cool and airy, to pass a few hours perusing my … Read More »

We do not Already Know

7 Mar

My mission takes me deep into the covered market. I pass though its outer quadrang­ular layer of dried fish – pungent but not unpleasantly so – and lethal ironmongery, into the penumbral heart where more banal items are sold by … Read More »

Glimpses

6 Mar

On a bicycle with “up yours Germaine!” emblazoned on its belly, it could not look more incong­ruous. Insinuating its all-things-considered remarkably graceful path across the tarmac to my feet, the eighteen inch Mekong Catfish dodges tyre and sandaled foot alike … Read More »

Graceful gestures

5 Mar

I see friends shaking hands, saying ‘how do you do?’ They’re really saying, ‘I love you’. I don’t suppose I’ll live to be a thousand but it’s scarcely less likely that, if I did, I’d see anything more beautiful than … Read More »

Motorbiking II

3 Mar

In  my  highly  acclaimed  Motorbiking  I  –  written last  year,  also  from Vietnam  –  I  told  of  fishing  boats  and  traffic  chaos,  towering  Buddhas  and  downing  beers,  curving  alleyways  and  writhing  sea  snakes.  I’ll  return  to  snakes  another time;  this  … Read More »