501 Places

I don’t know what it is about travelling, but we seem to be particularly aware of the extreme levels of service when we are away from home. We all have stories of the appallingly bad; whether it is imcompetence, incomprehension or service given with added undiluted hostility. Occasionally though we also experience the very highest [...]

I view tipping with a sense of distaste and see it as a sad legacy of a class system that should have died out decades ago. In a nutshell I don’t see why service staff aren’t paid a decent salary so they don’t have to beg to customers in order to make up for their [...]

In SE Asia, and no doubt elsewhere in the world, there is a growing trend for tourists to visit ‘tribal villages’. These are marketed as communities of people living in accordance with their ancient traditions. By inference, we are encouraged to believe that the state provides protection for these minority groups and that we, as [...]

Among my hundreds of photos from a trip I seem to have relatively few of people. I still can’t get over that discomfort of asking someone for a photo, even when they seem happy about it, and often stand back when others are clicking away. As a result there are a number of people we [...]

Phnom Penh was one of my favourite stops on our SE Asia trip. Considering I spent a large part of one day there (Christmas Day to be precise) in close proximity to our hotel bathroom, that is quite a compliment. It’s not a pretty city, with only a few buildings of note. The Royal Palace [...]

For many visitors to a country their interactions with local people form the highlight of their stay, and create their most vivid memories. And of these encounters the ones with children inevitably tug at the heart strings and foster feelings of joy and, too often, sadness and helplessness. It was no different for us in [...]

Using Bangkok purely as an entry-exit point to SE Asia, we ended up with three nights and only one day in the city. It was our final day, and we were relaxed at the fact that we would do little more than scratch the surface of this giant city. We have so many plans to [...]

I wish we’d had more time to spend in Cambodia. The little we saw of it was captivating, and the warmth of the people along with the delicious Khmer cuisine meant that we were sorry to leave when we did. I am grateful at least that we did get to see a little of the [...]

We had arrived in Siem Reap in the early afternoon and made plans to visit the Angkor Wat temples for the next three days. So after a painfully slow check-in we set about exploring a little of the city. I took a strong dislike to Siem Reap at first glance, and while I did learn [...]

Angkor Wat was without doubt the most famous and most visited stop on our SE Asian journey. I don’t think I met anyone who was travelling in Cambodia for whom this wasn’t the main purpose of visiting the country. Yet I have to confess that by leaving Angkor Wat to the end of our itinerary [...]