Michael Batson

Michael Batson is a travel writer with a particular interest in Southeast Asia’s Mekong countries, especially Cambodia. He was bitten by the travel bug early on and since then he has travelled widely in the region, visited countless places on and off the tourist trail, many of them more than once. His interests include the events that have led up to today from: ancient kingdoms to the impacts of colonialisation, independence and post-independence, globalisation, and the place of Southeast Asia within the Asia-Pacific region, and in the wider world.

Over the years, in between stints in other parts of the world, he has spent time based in Cambodia where he worked for different organisations and got to know the place, its people, and something about their lives. It is a country, he says, “where even the ordinary can be absorbing, and is often photogenic.” He also runs guided tours of Phnom Penh looking at some of the more interesting but lesser-known features of this fascinating city, where he is once again based.

His work has been published in magazines, newspapers, online, and he has been interviewed on radio.

Some of his writing covers a range of other interesting destinations and topics around the globe. A lifelong football fan, his work also explores the world’s biggest, most popular sport.

This website is his blog and evolving archive of articles and photos.

Sayings to guide the travel writer

"[Travel] is life. Anything that happens before or after is just waiting" - Steve McQueen (the actor, not the director)

"Some people believe football is a matter of life and death, I am very disappointed with that attitude. I can assure you it is much, much more important than that." Bill Shankly, Manager, Liverpool FC (1959-74). Also a philosopher, wise cracker, quasi-spiritual leader, and later, a cultural icon. "The best thing to happen to football since goalposts".

"Empathy is perhaps the most important quality for a foreign correspondent. If you have it, other deficiencies are forgivable; if you don't, nothing much can help" - Ryszard Kapuscinski

"The starting point is observation, travels, that which I see, that which I encounter, people, what I myself live through. But all of that is to be able to impart universal truths, to lead to wider reflection, historical reflection" - Ryszard Kapuscinski

"In places such as these, you are a missionary, mercenary or a misfit" - New Zealand doctor working in Papua New Guinea (2002)

"The essential in daring is to know how far one can go" - Jean Cocteau

"A tourist is someone who thinks about going home from the moment that they arrive, a traveller might not go home at all" - from the film The Sheltering Sky

"I’m not in the middle of nowhere, but I can sure see it from here" - from the film Thelma & Louise

"I travel a lot; I hate having my life disrupted by routine" - Caskie Stinnett

"By the time I had crossed the frontier from Mongolia into Irkutsk, the temperature was so low you would have been required to get down on your hands and knees to see it" - James Cameron

"I wasn’t lost; I just didn’t know where I was for a few weeks" - Jim Bridger

"Leap before you look" - old Slavonic proverb

"Nothing ever bridged the gap between the man who went, and the man who stayed behind" - John Le Carre

"I haven’t seen everywhere, but it’s on my list" - Susan Sontag

"When you come to a fork in the road, take it" - Yogi Berra (attrib.)

"For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel’s sake. The great affair is to move" - Robert Louis Stevenson

"The writer must be universal in sympathy and an outcast by nature; only then can he see clearly" - Julian Barnes

"If you don’t know where you are going it is the best way to get somewhere you have never been" - from Seinfeld (the Bette Midler episode)