Recent Entries

• In defence of American beer

  by What's trending in travel? Mon at 8:46 AM
  Talk of American beer is peppered with snorts of derision and a pervading air of superiority on this side of the Atlantic. But the assumption that the Yanks are all blindly slugging back Budweiser is about as accurate as the idea that Aussies love nothing better than chugging a chilled Foster’...

• Airports that lie about where they are

  by What's trending in travel? May 4
  One of my most painful travel memories is landing in Sabiha Gökçen Airport at about three in the morning and hopping straight in a cab to get to my hostel in Istanbul. This is an agonising recollection because, when I reached my final destination, the fare had clicked up to a pretty eff...

• Wild and indecent: a new adventure sport in Scotland

  by What's trending in travel? May 3
  Last weekend, I was having a bit of 
an Action Man moment. Crashing through a pine forest on my mountain bike, I was stopped short by a glittering lake. Hauling the pack off my back, within minutes I had used its contents to assemble a raft and paddles. Next, I dismantled the bike and tied it secur...

• Leave Heathrow alone!

  by What's trending in travel? April 26
  Yet again, Heathrow Airport is at the eye of a national shit storm. Those of the glass-half-full variety are so goddamn gloomy, I can only surmise they must be nursing a warm piss in said glass, as the hysterical calls of “Olympics chaos at Heathrow!” continue to ring around the country...

• The rude French: quit bitching!

  by What's trending in travel? April 12
  Travel divides people as much as it brings them together. For every holidaymaker who comes home raving about their time abroad, there’s another without a kind word to say of the city/ country/ people they’ve encountered. Take some American friends of mine who recently came to stay. Afte...

• Inland Iceland

  by What's trending in travel? April 5
  I always figured Iceland was a pretty well-worn stop on the tourist trail (the country, not the shop), but a whistlestop visit this week proved me wrong. It was while I was eating pancakes with the president ‘round his gaff that I realised, far from being the sort of chap only too happy to cl...
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• The secret to getting an upgrade

  by What's trending in travel? March 29
  There is one travel experience that continues to elude me in this cruel life of mine. It is the upgrade. I have had my bikini bottoms stolen by the endangered Arabian Oryx as they dried beside my private pool on a sheikh’s personal desert reserve; watched dolphins frolic in the sea from a roy...

• Make your mark

  by What's trending in travel? March 23
  English Heritage has revealed that 70,000 listed buildings – churches, monuments, anything considered important to the country’s heritage and history – were damaged by graffiti and vandalism in the last year. According to heritage minister John Penrose: “When historic buildi...

• Travel makes you smarter: fact

  by What's trending in travel? March 15
  It’s not unusual to be confronted with a damning example of humanity’s rapid decline from ‘intelligent life’ 
to several leagues below pond scum, 
but a recent survey showing that more than half of Britons think Everest is 
the tallest mountain in the UK pretty much takes the...

• Bigging up Britain

  by What's trending in travel? March 9
  “Why go all the way to Bondi when you can come to Bridlington?” asks Harry Potter star Rupert Grint, barely containing the shivers behind his grin as he bravely sports a wetsuit on the Yorkshire coast. It’s all part of the government’s new ad campaign to 
try to keep Brits in...

• Budget: the new black

  by What's trending in travel? February 24
  Has the word ‘budget’ ever been so in vogue? Being on a budget used to be a shameful detail of one’s life that obligated secrecy; a trip to Lidl for the weekly shopping called for MI5-standard stealth, lest you be caught carrying the supermarket’s mercilessly tactless primary...

• Death of the guidebook

  by What's trending in travel? February 24
  I’ve heard a lot of talk lately about 
how ‘the guidebook is dead’. This is 
a sentiment being shared among travel industry insiders, bloggers, and – the absolute worst – a snooty brand of backpackers who think themselves 
too intrepid to so much as consider another per...
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• Couch surfing 2.0

  by What's trending in travel? February 19
  I must admit that when social travel company 9flats.com  pitched 'couch surfing 2.0' to me, I thought it sounded a bit naff. The idea is that, like with traditional couch surfing (couch surfing v.1?), you stay at a local's flat when travelling abroad, as opposed to a hotel or hostel. The d...

• What is there to do in Kosovo?

  by What's trending in travel? February 19
  On my way to Berlin this weekend, I read an article entitled '12 things to do in Kosovo'.   It looks like they ran out of ideas right around number 5:  

• Sex with strangers

  by What's trending in travel? February 9
  One in 10 travellers aged 18-25 have lost their virginity to a stranger on holiday, according to a new survey. Last week, I mused on whether whisking a new love away for Valentine’s was a good idea, in light of the ‘warts ‘n’ all’ that travelling tends to bring out...

• Is travel sexy?

  by What's trending in travel? February 2
  Valentine’s Day next week will no doubt cause a flurry of last-minute bookings for those whisking the object of their affections away for all manner of ends (sealing the deal; a limping apology; perhaps even romance). But is travel really that sexy? Sure, there are moments of giddy elation: h...
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• To go to Tibet, or not to go to Tibet?

  by What's trending in travel? January 26
  “Shame upon @tntmagazine for promoting #tourism to occupied #Tibet.” Seems lobbying group Tibettruth wasn’t too impressed with our Tibet travel feature last week, and took to Twitter to denounce us.    The organisation’s anger poses an interesting question: how fa...
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• Captain Coward

  by What's trending in travel? January 19
  I think it’s fair to say that ‘Captain Coward’ Francesco Schettino isn’t the most popular guy in the world right now. For me, his apparent betrayal of the passengers on the Costa Concordia dredges up the most deep-seated fears that I have about travelling: putting your life i...

• Too fat to fly

  by What's trending in travel? January 12
  Fat people should pay more to fly, former Qantas boss Tony Webber reckons, because the added weight means extra fuel costs for airlines. His admittedly controversial statement in the Aussie press saw a flurry of carriers (Tiger Airways, Virgin, Qantas itself) rush to disagree and reassure portly pas...
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• Tourism suicide

  by What's trending in travel? January 5
  With all the new year’s optimism of a lemming refusing to reconsider his cliff-side compulsions, 2012 appears to be ushering in an alarming new travel trend – tourism suicide. Take the bizarre decision by the president of the Maldives to ban luxury spas on the Indian Ocean resort island...
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• The year in travel

  by What's trending in travel? December 15, 2011
  It’s been a bit of a weird one, 2011, hasn’t it? ‘Instability’ seems to sum up the mood of the year:political instability in the Middle East, sending tourists away in droves; the instability of our natural environment, cruelly felt by Japan as an earthquake and tsunami saw vi...

• Travel into 2012

  by What's trending in travel? December 8, 2011
  The last New Year’s Eve I had at home that didn’t turn out to be a damp squib was over 10 years ago, and even at that party I ended the night weeping on my then-boyfriend’s mother, snivelling that I wanted to dump her son. So it didn’t quite amount to a roaring success. I ha...

• Immersive travel: The real deal?

  by What's trending in travel? December 7, 2011
  It’s easy to be cynical about the trend for so-called ‘immersive’ travel experiences. I’m writing this note from Brufut, The Gambia, in a hotel that has a website proclaiming it is set “in the heart of a real African village”.Remembering stories from fellow travel...

• Notes from The Gambia

  by What's trending in travel? November 29, 2011
  Big Five? Big Deal While eastern and southern Africa are unremittingly romanticised by the tourism industry - climbing Kili, safari in Kenya, Victoria Falls in Zambia and Zimbabwe, the mighty South Africa - western Africa barely gets a look in. Just compare the number of people you know who have he...

• Feeling cheap

  by What's trending in travel? November 24, 2011
  While reminiscing about past travels this week – a diversionary tactic employed to trick myself into forgetting to clean the bathroom – I remembered a pair of people I met who perfectly embodied what I like to call ‘utter insanity’. The scene: after a tough two days of trekk...