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In June and July I took my biggest trip to date, a 10,000 mile adventure from London to Vietnam entirely by train. In two months of intense travelling I went through Paris, Brussels, Bremen, Berlin, Poznan, Warsaw, Vilnius, St Petersburg and then Moscow. From there I boarded the Trans Siberian Railway, through Yekaterinburg, Irkutsk, Ulan-Ude and on into Ulan Bator, Mongolia. All that was left from there was Beijing, Guilin in Southern China, and finally the last big stretch was Hanoi, the capital of Vietnam. While I was travelling I wrote all the time; notes, thoughts, stories and dramas. A portion of these writings appeardRead More →

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If I had to do one thing for the rest of time, I would walk the streets of Hanoi. There’s magic in those streets, where every sense tingles with a vivid intensity. The colours, sights, smells and sounds you take in with every step and the thunderstorm of motorbikes and taxis that explodes every day. And the food, ah the food. Those delicate but powerful flavours of the noodles cooked just that little bit differently in each street restaurant, the little baguettes with a myriad of mysterious fillings or the barbecued pork that smokes as it grills on a street corner in the warm eveningRead More →

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Dear all.. so it’s official now I’m going on a big trip (or maybe a farce) starting in two weeks, travelling from the UK to Vietnam by rail, including the Trans Siberian Railway. It’s a reckless ‘end of 20s meltdown’, during which I will be spending a disturbing amount of time in small train carriages with questionable toilet facilities and no doubt a good cross-section of bodily odours. Can’t wait. And before I go I was wondering if peeps might be able to give me some tips….Read More →

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You can feel the energy around you change as you approach London. It’s something in the atmosphere; the pressure rises and the speed increases as though you were approaching some great vortex. The view out of the window of the train becomes busier, harder, greyer, denser. The eyes have less space to see out to and more details to focus on. Perhaps it’s just nerves. It’s a journey I’ve taken too many times to count but more often than not there’s some big reason to be going back to the city I lived in for four years, the place where my career began. Usually it’sRead More →

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St Pancras stood cool and strong, a serene rock. I cursed my own bad planning and dashed red-faced from platform to platform, as though if I moved stealthily enough I might be able to slope across the grand old station and avoid its disapproving stare. It had hardly been the smartest preparation for another big slog. I’d only groaned through the front door eight hours ealier, ragged and feeble after a day of travelling, and already the four o’clock alarm was screeching in my ear. It was pointless setting one, looking back. I had hardly sunk into anything more than a thin stream of unconsciousnessRead More →