Blanketed almost entirely as a Unesco World Heritage listing, the near-mythical Luang Prabang is often cited as being amongst the most beguiling places in South East Asia. For travellers weary of the traffic, the non-stop sales pitches and the wonderfully manic nature of much of the region, the temple-dotted green hills of Luang Prabang provide…
Category: Travel
One Year Of Adventures In One (Longish) Paragraph
Exactly one year ago today I flew from Auckland to Bangkok having closed a chapter on 11 years of working for The Radio Network, 10 years of living in my downtown apartment and 20 years of life in New Zealand. With a childhood spent in Malaysia I’ve often felt the pull back to South…
The Japanese Earthquake & The Real Origin Of Bruce Springsteen’s My City Of Ruins
Bruce Springsteen from the Born To Run shoot. A great friend of mine named John Budge, the man who got me started in radio back in the late 90s, sent me an email a couple of days ago reminding me of a Bruce Springsteen song I’d somehow forgotten about. It was a song Budgie –…
Climbing Lindeman Island’s Mt Oldfield For 360 Degree Views Of The Whitsundays
One of the best things you can do in the Whitsundays is to climb one of the many peaks for views over the more than 70 islands clustered just a short boat ride from the mainland. Be that as it may, I’d say that more than half the staff here at Club Med, Lindeman Island…
Lindeman Island, Whitsundays 2011: Surviving Two Cyclones, An Evacuation And An Unexpected Return
Right now is the first time in more than a week I’ve been able just to stop, relax and think about what has been happening. Granted, on one of the days in the past week I was being saved not from cyclones but from baddies and mock-collapsing subways by Superman and Batman at the Movie…
The Music Star Who Kept All His Tennis Stats Since The 70s – What If I’d Been Doing The Same?
Nadal and Federer. With the Australian Open on and men’s tennis at one of the undoubted peaks of the modern era with the Nadal / Federer rivalry, it’s got me thinking about my own epic tennis rivalries and what if I’d kept all my stats. I’d interviewed the great songwriter Jimmy Webb (MacArthur Park, All I Know, Witchita…
Just Who Or What Is Glenn’s Dance?
Click here to link to Glenn’s Dance Glenn’s Dance is a new blog I’m collaborating on and this is the rundown according to the site’s ecstatic welcome note: Starring a Club Med set designer, this website is where you can enjoy the unique and at times controversial dancing of Glenn Davis, a phenomenon which takes…
The Bests Of 2010: Best Day, Best Scare, Best Celeb Encounter, Best Beach….
With the year nearly over and almost a year of traveling behind me, here are my “bests” of the year that was. Best Day: Venturing through the Green Canyon in Pangandaran on the southern coast of West Java with a great bunch of mates including Chris “Card” Andrade, Djoeke “The Duke” Van Dijk, Teatske “T-Dog” Van Dijk, Rosey…
What Would Your Version Of ‘Eat Pray Love’ Be Called? Merry Christmas From The Whitsundays, Dec 2010
I spent the last nine months of 2010 travelling through Asia, Canada, the States, Australia and a little bit of New Zealand (just to keep my Kiwi-ness topped up) and wherever I was around the world I saw people (mainly women) reading the Elizabeth Gilbert memoir Eat Pray Love. The book follows a wealthy, recently divorced…
Living In The Whitsundays – Where No-One’s Heard Of Leslie Nielsen!
Living on an island, you can be more than a little isolated from the outside world, particularly here in the Whitsundays where reliable Internet access is about as common as a score past 30 from Kiwi cricketer Craig Cumming. No newspapers on Lindeman Island, little time for radio and TV, just intermittent Internet checks to…
The Arcade Fire & My Favourite New Song Of 2010
I’m not going to lie, it’s not a short flight from Vancouver to Auckland, particularly when you’re enroute to Brisbane enroute to Hamilton Island enroute to Lindeman Island. Needless to say, I had a bit of time on my hands and discovered this song by Canadian band (and fellow Springsteen fans) The Arcade Fire called…
The Mad Fun Of Vietnam: From Halong Bay To Ho Chi Minh City – My 3-Part NZ Herald Series, 2008
In 2008 I spent a couple of weeks travelling down the Vietnamese coast from Hanoi and Halong Bay in the north, through Hue, Hoi An, Nha Trang and in the centre of the country, and finally into Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) in the south. For a blend of cultural history, war history, beaches, jungle,…
