Notes from Riyadh After making my third trip to the Middle East I finally attempt to put pen to paper. Unlike most trips when I manage to get a few notes jotted about what I have seen those made to the East have been without my muse. Its hard to know why exactly. Perhaps the…
Leaving Riyadh A young soldier too skinny to be credible lounges on the side of an aircraft container loader. His olive green helmet rounds out his head, a dark browned one and incongruous in this place. Or perhaps not where the gritty jobs go to those not in the family. The sound of a fountain…
(Follows from “Heading for Ho Chi Minh City” ( I ) A tone which sets impressions straight away is the tide of motorcycles, although we would call them scooters and the branding type might insist on Vespa (though we saw Yamaha doing extremely well). We were sucked out of the airport at peak hour —…
October 2004 We bumped out of Singapore through muscled clouds that flashed and dropped rain on the Straits, finally clearing across their boiling tops into bright sunshine and a slight feeling of relief. As we bore north the hazy coastline of Malaysia kept us company on the left until geography and navigation separated us and…
I discovered Lumpini Park ten years ago. Countless thousands of Thais and others found it before me but it was a discovery nonetheless. It is a jade green oasis in the middle of a gritty city which offers some respite from the madness of the streets. Back in Lumpini, with my throat catching on the…
The heat hammers off the asphalt and at 45 degrees everything shimmers to attention. Or sags completely. The last puddles, quite deep enough to sodden socks in shoes last night are now mostly gone. Indeed, footprints left in a mud patch last evening are now fossilised. None of this is allowed to get in the…
The sand and dust create a haze around the sun but not sufficient to ease the 46 degree heat or the glare that radiates off buildings, and walls, even those whitewashed ones on either side of the lane down which we bounce. Acacias bend in the oven wind and move their shade from one side…
This morning I am doing the American thing – sitting in a hokey little New Jersey Greyhound terminal waiting to catch a bus to New York. But there is a home feel to this adventure, for Frente is being playing on the radio. A small touch of home although if it wasn’t such a unique…
Tiananmen Sqaure is a terrific melting pot. All sorts of people congregate there at all hours. Many are there simply to soak up the site, to say they have “been there” before moving on to other icons around the city. The majority of visitors are Chinese who seem to wear an air of surprise –…
In the backblocks of Beijing, up a filthy lane heaped high with refuse and rubble (the best places always are) is one of thousands of restaurants which feed the hordes. We stumbled into one, late in the evening, that advertised an English menu. The owners were true to their word but they could not read…