Travelogue
Jomtien Beach - The Quiet Neighbour - 15 May 2025
Jomtien is the quiet junior partner of its noisier more crowded neighbour, Pattaya. It caters to those not wanting the nightlife, the traffic, flashing lights, pumping music, and the crowds. It’s a second home for affluent Thais wanting to escape Bangkok 100kms away for holidays and at weekends. It’s home to expats who retire for the warmth, the sun, and where they can get many of the things they have at home, but at half the price and in an exotic setting. Lately, it’s become somewhat of a refuge for Russians escaping the draft, and Ukrainians fleeing the war feed by the draft. It’s popular with Scandinavians too, holidaymakers and those retirees escaping the long dark winters for tropical sunsets. Jomtien wouldn’t be everyone’s taste, it’s not mine, but it can be a relaxing stop en route to somewhere else or for many now, a destination in itself.You can reach Jomtien easily from bus stations, airports, and hotels in Bangkok. I travelled by minibus from Trat, six hours away to the east. A journey along 250kms of Thai highways largely built-up the whole way. Housing, roadside stalls, strip malls, intersections, high-rise developments, warehouses and factories, some deserted and others derelict. Thai towns can look scruffy. Concreted shophouses left unmaintained in tropical heat will turn paint and building material grey then black. Of no particular architectural redeeming features, they are mainly anonymous, the product of rapid urbanization of a largely rural society
Trat - The City of Half-a-Hundred Islands - 14 April 2025
The road from the Cambodian border to the eastern Thai city of Trat is a great drive. Vehicles in Thailand drive on the other side of the road (the UK side) from Cambodia where I’d come from, so closest to you on the left (the passenger side) are the turquoise waters of the Gulf of Thailand and to the right, the hills and jungle of the Cardamom
Phnom Penh to Koh Kong - 8 March 2025
Roads in Cambodia have come a long way since my first visit in 2004. The main land entry point from Thailand at Poipet for example, was along a dirt road badly rutted, virtually impassable in the wet with rudimentary one-lane bridges comprised of bare metal frames laid roughly across waterways. Vehicles inched on to them one wheel at a time
The Road from Koh Kong in 2006 - 22 January 2025
I’ve traveled the road between Koh Kong and Phnom Penh several times over the years in both directions starting in 2006. The first time was from the Thai border to Phnom Penh in a Cambodian taxi the durability of which was testament to Toyota’s engineering skills. Last month I made that journey again in the opposite direction starting in
Kampot and Kep - Salt ‘N’ Pepper - 20 December 2024
I’ve been to Kampot in southern Cambodia a few times over the years but this was my first trip back there since the pandemic. I was interested to see what had changed and more to the point what had not, because Kampot has historical charm that you wouldn’t want to see gone. What you would want is that charm maintained and hopefully restored in
The Aswan High Dam and the Temples of Philae - 10 November 2024
The city of Aswan in Upper Egypt is home like many of that country’s cities to much ancient history. Aswan though has something different, something other Egyptian cities do not have; a monument of more recent times which, like those from antiquity, is an equally awe-inspiring feat of engineering. I find some examples of engineering fascinating
The Valley of the Kings and George Bush - 1 September 2024
My first visit to Egypt was to the Sinai Peninsula a journey down the coast as far as Sharm El Shiekh. The second trip a couple of years later was across the Suez Canal to the largest city by population in Africa, Cairo (if you count its neighbour Giza) and from there south to Luxor one of the oldest most continuously inhabited cities in the
George of Tahir Square and the Pyramids of Giza - 28 June 2024
The Suez Canal is just 193kms long and one of the world’s key waterways, a strategic asset, and also a choke point, a bottle neck. The canal connects the “Med with the Red” seas and separates two continents, Africa from Asia. The canal saves maritime traffic the 8900kms journey around Africa which takes most ships on average about 10 days, quite
Dahab, the Sinai Peninsula, and the Meaning of Cool - 30 May 2024
The Sinai Peninsula is a land bridge between Africa and Asia and is the only part of Egypt in Asia. Originally called Arabia Petraea it sits between the Mediterranean and Red seas and was once called Rome’s Arabian Province when annexed by the emperor Trajan. Trajan was famous for pushing the Roman Empire to its greatest territorial extent
