Most travellers visit Hanoi for the fantastic food. That’s why we went. After motorbikes, visitors to Vietnam’s capital find themselves dodging street food stalls and the footpaths are littered with locals perched on tiny stools tucking into something. Yet the Hanoi art scene is doing well to compete for attention with the city’s food scene. Here’s … Read more
It was the ever curious travel writer Gertrude Bell who wrote so eloquently about the apparent anomaly of the conical mud-brick houses found in Twal Dabaghein and Sarouj east of the city of Hama, Syria. Comparing them to nothing found outside of “illustrations to Central African travel books”, Bell had the same feeling we did … Read more
This is the fourth installment of a series reflecting on the Syria we knew and the Syrians we befriended in the years we travelled to the country before the Civil War. Parts one and two were on the Storyteller Abu Shady and Jazz Duo Rasha Rizk and Ghazwan Zerkli. The Old City of Damascus had … Read more
I wanted to share a moment in time from Damascus in 2009 for the third part of our series reflecting upon Syria and the Syrians we knew before the Civil War. That was the last time we visited Syria, to work on a handful of stories for magazines. We were also developing a book project … Read more
For the second part of a short series in which we’re reflecting on Syria and Syrians before the Civil War, the places we travelled and the people we met, we want to share a story we wrote for a magazine about the traditional storyteller Abu Shady, who we last interviewed way back in 2009. The … Read more