A wedding, a pregnant wife, and a busy evening job at the Herald has meant my blog’s gone unloved for months – which is a shame because I’ve had some great adventures. A while back I abandoned my seriously morning-sick lady for two weeks and sailed to the Auckland Island and Campbell Island groups in […]
What a pleasure it has been travelling with Jim. Seventy-four and snowy bearded, Jim joined us from Kathmandu to Khumjung, walking with us up to 3700 metres before heading off on a ramble down valley. Not only was Jim a mountaineer, he also taught religious studies at Canterbury University, lived in India for several years, […]
I love to go a-wandering Along the mountain track And as I go I love to sing, Rebecca’s knapsack, plus my own, On my back. Val-der-ree… A week ago Rebecca and I set off up valley to cross the 5380 metre Renjo Pass. It was ambitious of us, considering our rubbish fitness, the tough time […]
Though I know it was shot on the cheap in the LA Chinatown, the hokey Eddie Murphy film The Golden Child still shapes the way I see Kathmandu. We fly in on a warm morning, drive through town, and the city looks like the too-cheesy handiwork of a set designer who needs to learn some […]
Adios, folks. Rebecca and I are off in the morning to Nepal, where I’d count it one of my peak life experiences to see one of these in the wild: Realistically, that’s about as likely as Don Brash performing a haka for Queen Elizabeth – but I dunno… sometimes I think I was kind of […]
In lieu of anything exciting happening to me this week, I thought I’d post the last of the Laws accidental poetry – I actually put the concept into a book proposal and sent it to some publishers. Random House sent back the standard gracious, thanks-but-no-thanks form letter; Allen & Unwin were cautiously keen before backing […]
Since getting back from Malaysia, I’ve found my ideas about travel changing. For me, travel has always been about going places in sturdy footwear. About having your loins clad in the reassuring prickle of polypropylene long johns, and having your fingers forever rummaging in your – if you’ll excuse the expression – damp sack of […]
So it turns out that the Perhentian Islands in Malaysia kind of under promise and over deliver. I just got back from a week there, courtesy of Tourism Malaysia and AirAsiaX (read the Dominion Post article here…), and it went a bit like this: ‘Today? Oh, snorkelling very bad. Too cloudy – no see shark, […]
I’ll be filing this one under the ‘rules to be me, sucks to be you’ category on the blog: at the end of February I’m flying to the Perhentian Islands in Malaysia to do a story for The Dominion Post and Stuff.co.nz So far, the itinerary lists “snorkelling, diving, swimming with turtles, nature treks, beach […]
A while back, travelling in Egypt, I met a guy who had been shot by some dope growers. They were locals who saw him walking in the hills near their crop, took a pot shot (so to speak), nicked his leg, and then realised when he ran off that this guy – Ahmed – was […]