Year: 2012

  • Loads to talk about

    er literally …  How does he work the bike’s pedals ? The truth is that a billion and more people makes for a lot of people and getting around is a bit of a nightmare at the the best of times but businesses often cannot wait and so they look at the fastest way to transport…

  • Thai Treasure

    Perhaps the biggest treasure in this rich land was this picture of this adorable little girl who to me is the most precious gift to Thailand and to her pround parents. She was worshipping at Arun Wat.

  • Bangkok Heights

    Wat Arun the temple of Dawn dominates the skyline and it is worth climbing to the top to get a wonderful view of the city, enjoy ringing the bells and the gongs and to listen to the monks chanting. The Grand Palace is one of the capital’s favourite landmarks and it is home to the…

  • Bangkok Sights

    The flight was chocker as they say. Indians off on a jaunt,  just like us, to Bangkok. For the majority, I suspect, it is shopping in the countless malls that are dotted around the city – judging by the number of plasma screens that came back with us on our flight they must be a bargain out…

  • Taxes = Infrastructure =/= not here

    I have lived in India for three years and in that time I have written about the road I travel on every day.  The road has open sewers, so floods quite badly but especially so in the monsoons. In the first year we came the road was repaired almost as soon as the monsoon was over. The second  year…

  • Indian enterprise

    Indians are an enterprising people and they come up with interesting business ventures to plug holes in the market or in this case catch insects – after my salad bowl centipede this popped into my home with the morning paper. The title “ESCORT” might start your imagination moving in interesting directions but hold your horses…

  • Independence Day celebrations 2012

    The Rashtrapati Bhavan was looking majestic, the serpent fountains were working, the big urns on the roof were full of water cascading over, though one was clearly overflowing, the dignitaries were arriving in their hundreds and being led, this time, to the wonderful Moghul gardens. The clouds overhead were threatening, but the rain held off…

  • Happy Independence Day India 2012

    Happy Independence Day to India today as it celebrates its 65th year of Independence. And just to make sure I was not taking it for granted in anyway, look what I found in my salad bowl as I reached for it.

  • The Acropolis

    No trip to the Greek world would be complete without a visit to the Acropolis and the last time we were here my eldest was a knight in shining armour brandishing a plastic sword on its ramparts. Interestingly he was the most keen to return. If you go, do not miss the new Acropolis Museum…

  • Scorpios – Onassis island

    I have seen pictures of Aristotle Onassis and Jacqueline Kennedy alighting on the island from the yacht bearing Onassis’s daguhters name “Christina”, I have followed the tragic history of both families and often wondered about this little island paradise and now many many years later I came across it and swam to its beaches. The…