My favourite Beijing skyscraper, the CCTV headquarters. I never expected Beijing to be so clean. Sure, the air isn’t quite like Aotearoa’s, but even the infamous Beijing sky managed some genuine shades of blue while we explored. On a 9-day adventure with the outstanding Wendy Wu Tours (see more at wendywutours.co.nz), I was on assignment…
Tag: Travel
Hidden, Historic Luxury In The Auckland CBD – Braemar B&B
Braemar Bed & Breakfast, Auckland, NZ. For my girlfriend’s recent birthday I wanted to surprise her with a night somewhere special. Though with “somewhere special” being such a terrific / terrible hospitality cliche, I opted instead for calling my chosen location the much more creative “the secret place”. In the couple of weeks before her…
Dodging Kangaroos: NZ Herald Queensland Outback Road Trip + My Top 60 Photos, Incl 19th Century Mansions, Farm Stays, Rainforests, Mud Baths & Statues Of The Bee Gees
The view from Bunya Mountains National Park. My longest ever published travel article was in Tuesday’s New Zealand Herald – a 3000-word epic about a Queensland road trip I did in May. Given I drove more than 2000ks, it seemed appropriate to go whoppingly large for this piece – I hope you like it! The…
Skiing In A City Where It Never Snows – How Auckland’s Snowplanet Got Me To Oregon
A huge thanks to the team at Snowplanet in Auckland for not only getting me ready for the ski slopes of Oregon, USA, but for probably going some distance in making sure I made it home in one piece. When I got a call from my editor at Let’s Travel magazine asking if I could…
My NZ Herald Room Check Article: Royal Mail Hotel, Dunkeld, Rural Victoria
Royal Mail Hotel, Dunkeld, Victoria* Almost a year ago I stayed in a town in rural Victoria so small that the hotel is essentially the entire town. With only 461 people calling Dunkeld home, a substantial chunk of that number have some connection to the historic Royal Mail Hotel. If you click here you can…
Malaysia’s Tioman Island – My Herald On Sunday Article + My Top 50 Tioman Photos
A couple of weeks ago the Herald On Sunday published my feature article on Tioman Island in Malaysia. In case you missed it, here’s the link: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/travel/news/article.cfm?c_id=7&objectid=11639305 In the article you’ll hopefully get a sense of why I love this island so much and keep finding myself going back. There’s also an incident involving monkeys,…
Dog-Sled Riding & Other Adventures – My Top 40 Central Oregon Photos
Dog-sled riding on the snowy slopes of a volcano, hiking through a rock-climbers Mecca, driving a brand new Chevy Impala through a snow storm, visiting the American city sometimes referred to as “Beer Disneyland” – all these adventures plus a few more are in my trio of Oregon articles in next month’s Let’s Travel…
Bee Gees Way Favourite Photos – Redcliffe, Queensland 2016
Here are my favourite photos from Bee Gees Way in Redcliffe, about 30-minutes drive north of Brisbane in Queensland, Australia. I was there on Saturday night as part of travel writing trip for the New Zealand Herald, promoting tourism to southern Queensland and in particular, “Queensland Big Sky Country” self-drive adventures. You can see more…
Mangarara Eco Lodge, Hawke’s Bay: My Top 50 Photos From A Very Different Sort Of Farm
Standing with my head dangerously close to the cow’s buttocks, I’d been assigned the task of attaching the suction cup apparatus to the teats. I hadn’t milked a cow since the 80s and it was oddly satisfying how each cup would so neatly swallow their assigned teat. Equipment attached and with a brief surge of…
My Trio Of NZ Herald Articles About Intrepid Travel’s 16-Day ‘South India Unplugged’ Tour – Top 15 Photos From The Trip
Mayhem. I always think of “mayhem” as a positive word and if there’s one word that sums up my time in India on Intrepid Travel’s 16-day ‘South India Unplugged’ tour then it would have to be that. Mayhem to me is thrill of riding a tuk-tuk at night through the crowded, narrow alleyways of Madurai….
Why ‘Bayview At 91’ Is The Place To Stay In Whitianga + My Top 40 Coromandel Photos
You’d think there’d be more of a song and dance about one of the initial landing spots for Captain Cook in New Zealand. After the first-placed Cook Landing Site Historic Reserve on Kaiti Beach Road in Gisborne, the evidently humble, picturesque spot of Simpsons Beach in the Coromandel is right up there historically for the adventures…
Tauranga’s French Country House: Why You Don’t Need To Be Beachside – Top 50 Photos Including Waterfalls, Forests & The Mount
The view towards Mount Mauganui from the French Country House, Tauranga. I wanted to stay by the beach. It was January, the middle of the Kiwi summer, and not only that, I was going to be in one of the most iconic seaside destinations in New Zealand – Tauranga / Mount Maunganui. Only problem was, everybody…
