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
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
Last weekend, following a three-day ceasefire agreement reached during the Syria peace talks in Geneva the previous week, the UN evacuated some 700 Syrians from Homs’ old quarter, a rebel-held area besieged by Syrian government forces for some 18 months. A further 300 people were able to leave a few days later. Sadly, as they … Read more
How to eat like locals when you travel? We bust some myths and share our best tips. There’s an abundance of advice out there, some good advice and some bad advice: slurp soup from a street food stall, sample home-cooked food at a local home, savour creative cuisine at a secret supper club, or… eat … Read more