Not in China anymore
Coming out of Nanning train station was like seeing children rush out of their classrooms on the last day of school. All I saw was a sea of black heads, streaming down the steps...
Category: stories
Beijing, revisited
Something’s missing, I thought. It’s not the hutongs, it’s not the Great Wall, it’s something else. It was my second time in Beijing and something had changed. The city was different. It annoyed me. It...
Bad start in Ulaanbaatar
The sound of car horns all around you. Not short, little toots but long, drawn-out angry blasts to intimidate. Coming at you from left, right and centre. Brakes screeching. More horns. Shouting. Then- crash. Welcome...
Diamonds over Siberia
This is my first night in a proper bed but I cannot sleep. For five nights, I was soothed by the gentle left-to-right rocking of my train. This same rocking put me to sleep...
Motorcycle diary
I heard the motorbike rattling behind me before I actually saw it. The sound got louder and louder, which meant that I was being followed. The noisy bike caught up with me...
Walking the Great Wall
What could be more humbling than the combination of slippery ice, lack of exercise and a crumbling wall? I certainly couldn’t think of any- me, a tiny speck moving slowly on China’s...
Who follows you when you travel?
All those times I travelled alone, I was never totally convinced that I was entirely by myself. I heard my mother’s voice when I was in Beijing in January ’05. It was the...
Barefoot
We were in The Haight, San Francisco, when I saw her. She was sitting cross-legged outside a tattoo parlour in frayed olive green trousers, a long-sleeved black top and beads around her neck....
Sleepless in Shenzhen
I will always remember the train from Guilin to Shenzhen as the train where I did not sleep. It all began with the Man Who Snored. He came on board when the train stopped...
My Happy Un-honeymoon
The young couple had been smiling at us for more than half an hour. It’s like they know something we don’t, I thought. I couldn’t tell what it was. Finally, the guy spoke up....
