I can’t even show you the CD. Why? Because I threw that five-track motherfucker straight into the Chao Phraya River, Bangkok’s crystal clear aquatic thoroughfare. As a Dive Instructor, I should’ve known better – eventually it’ll end up lodged in the colon of a sea turtle, and I’ll be no better than Tony Abbott or…
Our guide sunk his comically large paddle into the bank and pushed us away.
While I half-expected us to gracefully sink into the river like Jack Sparrow's Black Pearl, we stayed afloat. Once we gained distance from the raucous restaurant, a peaceful silence settled over us as the boat cut through the silken black water.…
In the North of India, lost somewhere in the heart of Rajasthan, near a tiny town with a single dirt road, I went looking for tigers. In a national park as big as a small country, the way you look for tigers is simple: you drive and drive across prairies and through forests, around lakes…
It was the night before the Thai new year festival of Songkran, and we were spending it in the luggage hold of a bus. We curled side by side, facing each other, hemmed in on every side by holdalls, suitcases, and backpacks. Even in the darkness, we could feel the sticky heat of the Thai…
The finest and best restaurant on Koh Tao is a cosy little place called Mama’s. The eponymous Mama is a middle-aged blob of a woman, chubby and churlish, who makes the best chicken soup you may ever set spoon to in your entire life. Her husband is Yeh, a chuckle-faced and kind-eyed man with a…
A harsh light pierces my eyes from a low swinging globe above my face. I am lying on a bed. No. It’s a gurney. It creaks in rhythm with the tight pulling of my arm. A young Thai woman sits on a wooden stool next to me, threading me back together like a seamstress. She…
I abandoned my job teaching at a school in Thailand to volunteer at an organic farm. I'd heard about a beautiful property outside this place called Chiang Rai; it was described to me as "a little volunteer community in the mountains with rice paddies, yoga and organic food". Sold.
I pictured myself working in the…