Travelogue
Living on Street 178 - Phnom Penh - 3 August 2019
Street 178 in Phnom Penh runs in a straight line west to east from one of the city’s main boulevards, Monivong, and finishing at another, Sisowath, at the Tonle Sap near the junction with the Mekong River. It is bisected by another of the city’s main thoroughfares, Norodom Boulevard – Street 41, which runs from Wat Phnom, from which the city gets its name, to the magnificent Vann Molyvann-designed Independence Monument, and beyond to the main road to Vietnam in Kandal Province. Also called Samdach Preah Sokun Meanbon Street (according to some references but Preah Ang Makhak Vann Street according to the street sign), in keeping with the renaming of the city’s street names in recent times, Street 178 is located in the Doun Penh District or Khan Daun Penh “Old Lady Penh” district of Phnom Penh. The city’s numeric street patterns date back to 1993 and the United Nations mission in Cambodia (UNTAC), at the time the largest UN mission ever launched. In the older parts of the city even street numbers run east to west while odd numbers run north to south. House and building numbers are less straightforward, the house numbers on Street 178 increase as you head west away from the river, and then commence again from number one on the other side of Norodom Boulevard. During the 1890s, the French constructed a large number of buildings in Phnom Penh, including some of those on or around Street 178, and was when much of the pre-independence street patterns were laid out. The
Kanchanaburi - On The River Kwai - 8 July 2019
The small city of Kanchanaburi sits at the base of the Tenasserim Hills on the edge of the flood plains of the Chao Phyra, the River of Kings, in what was once jungle. The hills border Myanmar and shelter the Kingdom of Smiles from the typhoons of the Andaman Sea. They also provide a physical barrier between the two countries, long-time rivals
Places I’ve Stayed – A World-Wide Guide – 31 May 2019
I’ve stayed in everything from a 5-star hotel in Singapore to a decrepit pension in Cairo resembling a building site, to a bed and breakfast in a high-rise in the backstreets of communist Budapest. I’ve slept in huts made of branches on the beach in the Sinai Peninsula, on a promenade in Monaco with the pavement for a pillow, bamboo huts in the
Seven Hours to Son My - 22 April 2019
I once spent over seven hours on the back of a motorbike to go from the tourist town of Hoi An south on National Route 1 to Son My in central Vietnam, and back again. The trip was an endurance test in how uncomfortable small motorbikes can be on large European frames on Vietnamese roads. Travelling on National Route 1 (or 1A), which runs 2300kms
Marble Mountains and China Beaches - 21 March 2019
South central Vietnam has its share of people-made wonders but hereabouts has its natural attractions also. Just south of Danang squeezed between the South China Sea and the rapidly encroaching suburbs of Vietnam’s fifth-largest city are the Marble Mountains (Ngũ Hành Sơn). Holy hideaways used down through the ages by the Cham peoples through to
My Son – Circles of Kings in Lands Below the Winds - 21 February 2019
One of the sights to see near the Vietnamese tourist hotspot of Hoi An is My Son, Vietnam’s most important centre of the ancient Champa Kingdom and another UNESCO World Heritage site in this most fascinating country. While Hoi An ancient town is regarded as an exceptionally well-preserved example of a multicultural Southeast Asian trading
Hoi An - Living in the Past - 24 January 2019
Hoi An is a firm favourite on the now well beaten tourist path in Vietnam. Together with the less popular destination for backpackers, Da Nang (or Danang, previously Tourane to the French), it marks about the half way point geographically in the “S” shape bend of Vietnam, the top of the bulge into the South China Sea. The tourists come here
Nha Trang - The Real Contender - 26 December 2018
Many places lay claim to being the best bay in the world, but Nha Trang has serious qualification and is a real contender. It is called the best beach in Vietnam, in a country full of beaches and is frequently ranked by travel magazines as among the best bays in the world. Locally it’s also known by some as the Pearl of Vietnam and by
Mui Ne - The Sheltered Cove - 30 November 2018
I went to Mui Ne (M-oo-e Nay) on my first visit to Vietnam in 2006. Back then it was, as it is today, a bolt-hole for the Saigonese, and had been added to the foreign tourist destinations a few years earlier. Tourists started coming here in the mid-1990s to see a solar eclipse albeit, thanks to certain guidebooks, by mistake, and wound up at the
