Blogging is a habit that, once escaped, proves surprisingly hard to recapture. But I was prompted by an email from a reader to put paws to MacBook and am aiming to post more regularly again (although I believe I wrote something very similar in my last post in—cough—summer 2021, so I wouldn’t hold your breath). So, what is new? Everything and nothing. Despite a couple of long stints back in the UK, I’m still based on Bali, still in the same house, in fact, demonic fishpond and all. Currently it’s the water pump that looms largest in the galaxy of broken things. In fact, I’m very much based on B ..read more

Over the last year or so, I’d begun to come to the conclusion that – perhaps as a result of having dengue twice – I might have a decent amount of immunity to Covid. The plague is rife in Indonesia and systematically under-reported. The health minister recently accused unspecified regions of reducing testing to acquire green zone status, while one citizen science project suggested deaths were at least three times higher than the official numbers, and a recent seroprevalence study found that, in September and November, Bali’s official case numbers were out by a factor of 53. Cases among the fore ..read more

During the heady days of 2020 when the pandemic was a new arrival and lockdowns a short-term novelty, popular wisdom among travel industry folks held that the arrival of vaccines would spell both the end of the pandemic and the reopening of good, old-fashioned travel. But, sadly, it doesn’t seem to be playing out that way. First, the good news. More workable vaccines have been developed more quickly than pretty much anyone thought possible. This is a huge achievement and a great sign for the future. Now, the less good news. We have no idea how long the immunity from these will last — or, in th ..read more

The turn of a year is usually a time for optimism, for chucking out the carcass of a bad year and looking forward to a bright new start, or celebrating a good year and anticipating one that’s even better. But the closer 2021 comes, the more intense becomes that sense of impending doom that’s been such a feature of 2020. Which isn’t to say my 2020 has been bad, in the grand scheme of 2020. I still have (some) work. I’m in Bali, where there are (currently) a lot of freedoms. I’ve not lost any loved ones, contracted long Covid (or, indeed, any form of Covid) or been consigned to solo lockdown. Th ..read more

Since I bailed from Dubrovnik with Covid on my heels at the end of February, Zach and I have stayed, exclusively, in a little flat overlooking the River Ouse (pronounced ooze) in a Norfolk country town. That is, at the time of writing, almost five months, or the longest I have spent without a night away somewhere in all my adult life. Grateful as I am for the flat – which my aunt rented as a base for whoever was looking after my brother when he was in the depths of Stage 4 cancer – the pandemic still sucks. I had a raft of plans for the next five years: a long lease in Bali to provide Zach the ..read more

Long, long ago in the times BC (Before Covid), when 2020 was the start of a new decade rather than the dawn of the fire-flood-locusts-plague-unrest end times, I started thinking both about finding a purpose and decarbonising my life. Naturally, flying came up. When you write about travel, you see, you don’t just tend to fly a lot. You tend to encourage others to take flights. Often, many, many flights. And the performative greenness of composting, shunning air-conditioning, reducing meat consumption, school striking etc pales into comparison if your work involves writing copy and articles that ..read more

Bruges is crazy beautiful. Every bit as pretty as you’d expect a Hanseatic canal city to be, and even more opulent too. Particularly in January, it’s easy to wander cobbled streets and arcing bridges, soak up stepped gables, medieval squares and Brabantine Gothic belltowers, and pause occasionally for Belgian beer, chocolate or modern Flemish fine dining. But what bewildered me about Bruges was the city’s wealth. During medieval times, it was a centre of the decorative arts, from painters like Jan Van Eyck to the unsung women who created gorgeous tapestries under men’s brand names and phantas ..read more

Inspiration for a myriad Middle Eastern dictators, sundry competing Habsburgs, and, of course, the Trump Organization, Versailles needs no introduction. It’s as big, and as gilded, and as ostentatious as you can imagine – truly a place for visiting ambassadors to quiver at the might of the Sun King, Louis XIV, the man who Made France Great Again™. But if you travel beyond the main building’s 2,000-odd rooms and past the suitably gargantuan water features, you can find a gentler, more tranquil scale. It is, of course, the Hameau (or hamlet), where the much-maligned (if far from beautiful) Mari ..read more

Zermatt, a painstakingly gorgeous Swiss valley town, where medieval hay barns preserved complete with hay do battle with watch stores, designer ski wear outlets and pounding aprés-ski for the village’s soul, is one of Switzerland’s adventure capitals. The climbers’ graveyard, by the tranquil church above the river, pays tribute to some of the 500-or-so alpinists who died attempting—or returning from—the Matterhorn, which towers proud, high above the town. A jagged triangular shard thrusting skywards above glaciers and valleys like a shattered antler, frosted with snow even in the midsummer he ..read more

Switzerland in winter is every bit as beautiful as you imagine it. Limpid mountain lakes; proper snow-capped Alps; cutesy choo-choo cogwheel trains; clumps of snow clinging to the pines and even the fruit trees like cotton wool; and chalets so adorable you expect a cuckoo to pop out of the top window at any moment. (And, yes, having been very firmly corrected by a luxury watch dude on this topic, I now know that cuckoo clocks are Bavarian, not Swiss.) Our first encounter with it? This little beauty, Thun. Set at the head of a 10-mile mountain lake, with medieval sluices, a turreted Gothic cas ..read more