On a brilliant, bright, sunny Saturday afternoon in Sydney, Australia in 1990, Lara and I took a taxi to the slowly-gentrifying working class suburb of Rozelle. We were armed with three bottles of wine and were on our way to dine at a restaurant called Tetsuya’s ran by a Japanese expat chef named Tetsuya Wakuda. … Read more
After getting a little misty-eyed while musing on our pre-Civil War travels in Syria and the special people we met, I decided it was time to look on the bright side and a destination recovering from a very tragic and violent past: Cambodia – and in this case Battambang. In Cambodia, the past is still … 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
The last time we were in Syria, back in 2009, there was a sense of optimism in the air. Or at least the illusion of optimism. New hotels, bars, restaurants, and boutiques had been popping up in the old towns of Damascus and Aleppo, and tourism – thanks to the magnificent castles, atmospheric souks, expansive … Read more
It was Australia Day yesterday, 26th January, and while we always feel conflicted on this day that celebrates the official ‘founding’ of Australia in 1788 when the First Fleet arrived from Britain, despite Australia being occupied by indigenous peoples for around 40,000 years previously, it was wonderful to see the images of Sydney on social media. … Read more