Travelogue
Melaka - Guns, God, and Museums - 12 June 2011
One of the wonders of travel is that you go somewhere you’ve never been before anywhere in the world, know not a soul, arrive tired, hungry and with nowhere to sleep, and within a relatively short space of time be settled in like you’ve been there all your life. I can’t replicate the appreciation of that doing anything else. Early morning in Singapore and I walked across one of Singapore’s many housing estates from the metro to the Golden Mile Complex. From here the “Super VIP” buses leave to points north. In many countries you’d be vulnerable to being cut to pieces but in Singapore anyone can venture out relatively unmolested. I arrived drenched in sweat. It takes four-and-a-half hours by bus from Singapore to Melaka (Malacca). The bus was comfortable with seats three abreast and left on time through the rush-hour along tree-lined highways. There were traffic jams, yes Singapore has those too. Singapore once had a plan to plant one million trees and doubtless achieved it. The road passed massed container cranes and huge industrial complexes with names like Sony, Panasonic, Halliburton and Coca-Cola, symbols of the island state’s formidable economy. At the bottom of the HSBC tower the poster said “The world belongs to those who can appreciate its potential” whatever that means, and was accompanied by an amazing statistic that today there are five times more people in China learning English, than there are people in England. At
Singapore - Waiting To Exhale - 9 June 2011
Singapore is a sea-level blip barely north of the Equator. Once upon a time it was sparsely populated, disease-infested island ringed by mangrove swamps. Needless to say it had one of the unhealthiest climates in the world and was the kind of graveyard that killed off people in their droves. Until the early 1800s it was a backwater, a
Asuncion - The Mother of Cities - 31 May 2011
Asuncion is the capital and largest city of landlocked Paraguay, a country rarely on the radar and for most, off the beaten track. Steamy tropical heat, tin-pot dictators, violence, tragedy and cultural melting pot, Paraguay seemed to fulfil stereotypical views for many of Latin America. True, during its history, Paraguay has suffered
Potosi - Smoking TNT and Drinking Dynamite - 22 May 2011
It has been said that if the bones of all the slave labourers who died toiling in Potosi’s silver mines to make Spain rich were laid end-to-end, they’d stretch all the way from Bolivia to Madrid. Before Britain and its Commonwealth, there was another empire on which it could truly be said “the sun never sets”. The Kingdom of Castile
La Paz - Every Breath You Take - 16 May 2011
La Paz is one of the highest capital cities in the world. Life there is highly stratified, culturally, economically and geographically. Affluence is measured in altitude, with more of the former equating to less of the latter. The higher up you live, the poorer you are. By the time you get to the city airport, life is barely subsistent.La
Lake Titicaca - Living Between Water and Heaven - 30 April 2011
Lake Titicaca is the second largest lake in South America and at 3800 metres above sea level the highest navigable lake in the world. The lake is part Bolivian and part Peruvian, the border between the two snakes its way across the waters which are 80 kilometres wide at the broadest point and almost 200 kilometres from end to end. At over 8000
Cusco - Stone Temple Pilots - 25 April 2011
Cusco, the ancient capital of the Inca, sits high in an Andean valley. The modern name is a Spanish corruption from the Aymara and Quechua languages, which drew on mythical origins to name the city.The origin of civilisation in Peru can be traced back 20,000 years before the Incas, making the country one of the cradles of ancient cultures
Machu Picchu - The Temple of the Sun - 20 April 2011
Peru’s Machu Picchu has survived 500 years of rain, earthquake and landslides. The mountaintop religious retreat and citadel city is one of the world’s greatest archaeological achievements, built by Inca emperor Pachacutec probably in the 15th century, to prove his place among the gods. It’s an early start in the cold morning at Cusco
Nazca - Secret on the Desert - 10 April 2011
Nazca is a dusty town located on the Pan-American Highway between Peru’s second city Arequipa and the capital Lima. People usually pass through on their way from one city to the other. Just outside town is located one of the mysteries of the world, the Nazca Lines. The Nazca Lines are a series of ancient hieroglyphic drawings and symbols
