Category Archives: Rural Palm Sunday. Hotel Cartier, Quillan. My husband and I sat in the hotel breakfast room, people-watching surreptitiously over our coffee and croissants. The only other occupant of the room was a woman in walk-pants, about my age, with a round quirky face and short curly hair. She sat in a booth opposite us, unhurriedly drinking café […]  Take isolated communities growing rice and raising cows and chickens in rural Cambodia where few roads reach, and you have a need. Take some rail track in disrepair, a bamboo raft and a small motor and you have a solution. Meet “The Bamboo Railway”: the ear-splitting, bone-rattling, wind-in-your-hair, bushes-in-your-face solution to transporting goods and people […]  The English word ‘souvenir’ comes from the same word in French; in French le souvenir can be the memory itself, or, as it is in English, the keepsake in which the memory is signified. Photographs are my mementos, my souvenirs, but some of my clearest memories of our long walk in the Pyrenees never made it onto […]  Thailand goes to the polls this Sunday. For weeks, the streets of Bangkok have been lined with colourful political posters: posters with pictures of bland-faced politicians and their pork-barrel promises of fiscal payouts to just about every demographic; posters of “everywoman” in her tennis whites and “everyman” in his golf gear; posters depicting the candidates […]  We were in the car, in Australia, driving to an appointment last month, when my husband remarked: “You know, it took us two weeks to walk this same distance!” It’s true – we routinely cover great distances driving without giving it much thought. When I’m walking, on the other hand, I’m acutely aware of the […] |
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