Ten months in Korea as an English teacher and another New Year. Ah, I'm feeling reflective. Time for a long overdue disjointed and chaotic entry on my time in Seoul during 2011... Don't Believe the Hype And so, flashbacks to the beginnning of the previous New Year, when I was first considering coming to Korea... And naturally I was interested in trying to understand what this small country, surrounded by three of the greatest powers in history - China, Japan and Russia - was all about. And what type of experience I could expect teaching overseas in a country that, shamefully, I could have exhausted my entire knowledge in a few syllables - Park Ji Sung. I recall that, as usual, my background research was very sophisticated and involved the crude Google “Teaching English in Korea”. ... read more

I’d read a lot of stuff about Seoul before I got here... A bizarre city drowning in neon madness to the frenzied synthesized rhythms of Grandmother Techno, with students belting out cheesy ballads in noraebang (Korean karaoke joints)... “Questionable English” rife... An energy drink called Coolpiss… A fast-food chain often spelt Bugger King... Public toilets "Out of Control"…... A country steeped in ancient tradition... A line of more than one hundred kings stretching back thousands of years... Buddhist temples... Shaman rituals... Confucian-style formal ceremonies... The fascinating – but tragic – recent history of Korea... A country shattered and fractured by shocking violence in the Korean War, a conflict that I must confess I knew little about, with it seemingly overshadowed by World War II and... read more

In dense, exotic and pristinely preserved cloud forests, on the isolated "buffer zone" of Parque National Manu on the Amazon basin frontier, I watch the forest treetops sway tentatively in the breeze as still grey clouds and fresh oxygen usurp the heat, humidity and stale air of the morning, all in ominous anticipation of the approaching storm... Then the rain starts to fall... A steady, cumbersome shower that progressively builds into a heavy deluge as the clouds turn angrier and the river, usually reflecting the lush green jungle landscape in tranquil glassy brilliance, is transformed into dark, muddy and malevolent rapid, reignited by the aggressive downpour... Distant thunder draws closer and the impenetrable ink black blanket of night falls over the forest until brilliant white sheets of lightening illuminate the sky, spidery silhouettes of the treetops ... read more

¨Travel is the best form of education. Personal encounters with people who are different from ourselves make us feel more sympathetic. Intolderance often arises from ignorance of another person´s needs and way of thinking.¨ So says my little book of Buddhism that was randomly gifted to me in Chinatown, Singapore by someone who assumably thought I looked like I needed help... But I´m inclined to agree... But thus far, still under two weeks into my three month excursion through South America, I must confess that I have felt very much on the periphery out here. And I think it can be attributed to one factor... Language. And the problem is mine and very much an English one. Not Spanish. As someone who grew up in the Home Counties, a part of the world where many people ... read more

Born of radical communism, the Khmer Rouge marched into Phnom Penh in 1974 after Cambodia had endured five years of foreign interventions, bombardment and civil war. Initially received with joyous celebration, the Khmer Rouge quickly initiated the systematic extermination of its own population. By the time the Vietnamese drove the Khmer Rouge into their Thai camps in 1979, between one and two million Cambodian's were dead... It is hard to imagine a more tragic and heartbreaking history. And in Phnom Penh, once known as the "Pearl of Asia" and regarded as one of the most beautiful cities in Indochina, you might expect a city that has endured so much darkness would be shrouded in an endless gloom, survivors swallowed in a vortex of grief and bitterness and a new generation struggling with the burden of a ... read more