Hobbits

Hobbiton was at the top of my list for NZ North Island. Having seen lots of countryside locations where Lord of the Rings had been filmed, I was now keen to see something that had been built especially for the film. Hobbiton is big business, with 3,000 people a day visiting in peak season. Although,…

Starstruck in Marlborough Country

Touring the vineyards in Marlborough made me feel like a film fan doing the Hollywood celebrities’ tour, ‘Ooh, look – it’s … Villa Maria/Wither Hills/Brancott!’ as famous name after famous name rolled by, and I leapt out of the car to snap a pic. With my liver’s best interests at heart, we didn’t stop at…

Mad museums on South Island

I have to say that some of the strangest museums I’ve been to are here in New Zealand. They have the world’s only steampunk museum on South Island, with some very unusual displays … sort of Dr Who meets Narnia in Steptoe’s yard – But the descriptions were the highlight for me. This – if…

In which I discover that Fox Glacier isn’t a mint, after all

Apparently, there’s an entry on many a bucket list which reads, ‘heli hike on a glacier’. It’s not on my bucket list because I’d never even heard of heli hiking before I got to New Zealand, and once I found out about it, I wasn’t really sure how hiking on a glacier differs from slithering…

What sound does a Sound make?

Fiordland, in the south-west of South Island, is full of Sounds. To be honest, I wasn’t quite sure what a Sound (with a capital ‘S’) actually is, so I had to look it up. It turns out that a Sound is a large sea/ocean inlet, formed when the sea fills a valley, so it’s surrounded…

Albatrosses and Orcs

We landed in New Zealand at Christchurch, and the temperature was 32 degrees. We just accepted it, having become used to Malaysian and Australian weather – but it turned out to be a fluke, and as we drove south to Dunedin the temperature dropped by more than 20 degrees, until it was just ten above…

Doing shots in Tasmania

This is a shot – Tassie style – It’s an oyster shot – – sake with wasabi, pickled ginger and a plump, fresh Tasmanian oyster … delicious! The seafood here is so good – – I devoured these six scallops cooked with brioche crumbs and herbs in about three minutes, in a little restaurant on…

Melbourne: trees in skirts

Having spent a few days in Melbourne, I feel just that little bit hipper and cooler. I’ve been hanging out in bars with uber-cool names like … which has a series of unusual collages on the walls – And Melbourne’s the sort of city where you can get a Shiatsu massage in the market –…

Question: What’s the weather like in Perth?

Answer: It’s Perth-fect! I’ve never been in such a perfect climate … wall-to-wall sunshine with horizon-to-horizon blue sky all day, every day, and with a slight breeze to stop it getting too hot. This is what the sky looks like all the time – So … apart from the flawless weather, what else is Perth…

What a whopper!

To wrap up my time in Malaysia, we did a little strawberry picking up in the Cameron Highlands – – it must be the unique climate that makes them grow so big … The Highlands are ideal for growing tea, and in some places there are tea bushes as far as the eye can see…

Krabi … but not Crabby

After a hectic Christmas day at the pool – and an exhausting evening posing around the Christmas tree at the Majestic Hotel – We were definitely in need of some R & R on Boxing Day, so headed off to the beach in Thailand. Krabi was not quite what I was expecting. Despite the severe…

Taiwan: Temples, Trains and Toilets

Taiwan is an intriguing mix of the old and the very new – Taipei 101, shaped like a piece of bamboo, was the tallest building in the world until 2004 – – and it’s considered cool to have your picture taken perched precariously on a wet and slippery rock halfway up the mountain behind the…

Street food in Taiwan

When you tell anyone in SE Asia that you’re going to Taiwan, they roll their eyes ecstatically and say, ‘Ooh – the food!’ So when I arrived in Taipei, getting to grips with the local food was my number one priority. I really like walking food tours, where the tour guide walks you around an…

Two weddings and a funeral – and a blow to my ego

I feel that I’ve hurtled at breakneck speed towards the end of my final term at school here in KL. The tempo increased when, sadly, I had to make a second flying visit back to England, just three weeks after Sam’s wedding, for my dad’s funeral. Once back in KL, it was a sprint…

A week of Thai feasting – part two

Life lessons continued: 3. When you go to visit a friend abroad and she asks what you’d like to do while you’re there, say that you’d like to do a food tour, thereby disguising greed as cultural appreciation. That strategy found me on a food tour of Bangkok with Angel – – here we are…

A week of Thai feasting – part one

Life lessons: When a chef brings a pot of his own Thai green curry to a potluck supper, you make a beeline for it. When a friend then invites you to dinner at that restaurant, you accept with alacrity and Old Siam is even within walking distance for me … result! Pad Thai is…

Crazy Rich Asian Parents

It’s not just Singapore that has Crazy Rich Asians – the Chinese Malaysian parents in KL are up there with the best of them. The most ridiculous thing I’ve been asked to date by a parent, was whether I thought it would be a good idea for a five-year-old to start learning Latin ‘because it…

Wedding number one …

As I have recently learnt, having just the one wedding when you get married is SO last year – in fact a friend in KL is having three, so I wasn’t surprised when Sam and Alice announced that they would be having two weddings. Wedding number one was yesterday – a beautiful sunny autumn day…

Feeding my addiction

Mindful that I will be leaving KL at the end of the year, and will be cut off from my new favourite foods, I put out a plea on the local residents Facebook page – I got a few suggestions for using salted egg powder instead of the real thing, which just wouldn’t be the…

White Supremacist joins KL school

I’m constantly shocked by the number of spelling mistakes in the teaching materials at the language school where I work. In a recent lesson on Sherlock Holmes, we had two creatively spelt names to contend with – I can only assume that Dr Whatson is a relative of Dr Who. Then we had a worksheet…