In 2006 Francine and I broke the winter monotony with a most enjoyable cultural trip to Thailand. Towards the end of it we visited Kanchanaburi, notorious site of The Bridge on the River Kwai, part of the Thailand-Burma railway, the…

I’ve already mentioned that the Singaporeans are wedded to TLAs – Three Letter Acronyms. The first sign of this obsession that a visitor might typically get is when they have arrived at Changi airport and they get whisked downtown on…

Being just a few minutes walk away from the so-called old market area in Siem Reap, where there are many choices of restaurants at reasonable prices, we’d wandered down there to eat on two of our three evenings here. Just…

As if eight temples yesterday weren’t enough to more than satisfy my RYA [Recommended Yearly Allowance] for 2013 of piles of old stones, today we were timetabled to see three more. The icing on the temple was a 4:15 AM…

Pardon the Americanism in the title; for those unfamiliar with yet another slip into Americanization, 101 refers to a starter class rather than being a count of the temples which are here. I knew we were coming to Cambodia mainly…

It was a leap of faith for us to book Jetstar flights to and from Cambodia while we were still in the UK. Let’s face it, it was an act of faith to pick Cambodia as a destination, anyway. In…

Day 2 in Singapore started in much the same way as Day 1 in Singapore, at about 3:00 AM when my body clock, adjusted by an 8-hour time shift, decided it was morning and I should jolly well be awake.…

Close encounters of the Odonata kind began today. We are at the back end of the so-called north-east monsoon and the weather is, shall we say, interesting. The sky today was very overcast but it wasn’t actually raining so our…