Clermont-Ferrand, in case you don’t know it, is a charming city with a two thousand year history right in the middle of France “at the crossroads of the main highways of Europe”. It is also at the heart of the Michelin company, so we are here while my husband attends meetings at his head office. As […]
Category Archives: Every Day Life Some trips are such a jumble of colours and textures that they more closely resemble a crazy quilt than a tidy tapestry. So it was for me on the short trip to Attapeu Province in Southwestern Laos in January: a mix of Wats (temples), waterfalls and monuments; rural plantations and rough-board housing rubbing shoulders with […]  I was in Japan several years ago with three other reasonably well-travelled adults. We had arrived into Tokyo late in the evening and were tired and hungry. We went to a shiny restaurant of chrome and formica across the road from the hotel and were met at the door with a “Hai!”, given menus, and shown to […]  “How long does it take to get to the school?” I asked Khru Apichart who had just turned off a minor road into an even more minor road. “About 45 minutes,” he replied. Then, with a twinkle in his brown eyes, he added: “Twenty minutes when I don’t have passengers!” He was very proud of […]  Luxurious resort accommodation in developing countries offers up some interesting dilemmas. On the one hand, development for tourism brings money and job opportunities into otherwise under-developed communities. On the other hand, it highlights the contrasts between the have-very-littles and the have-a-lots. The Bintan Resorts complex, on the north coast of Bintan (Negeri Segantang Lada), the largest of Indonesia’s […] |
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