Read stories about travel, community, history, culture and more.
Trying and almost failing to leave Belgium!
It was the last day of our weekend break. Sarah and I had booked a last minute cheap deal for a few days in Brussels, hoping to escape the forecast storms in Manchester. We had enjoyed it for the most part, a definite highlight was getting lost on the way back from Bruges and inadvertently traversing…
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The Elephant Jungle Sanctuary – caring for elephants, not riding them!
Chiang in Thai means elephant. This means that Chiang Mai is quite obviously known as a city of elephants. When you visit it is very apparent that they are an enormous part of the tourist industry here, with virtually all of the tour operators and guesthouse a offering one kind of elephant experience or another.…
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Sometimes, just like ‘real life’, traveling can be tough.
When I moved to Canada 3 years ago, I learned that going to new places on your own leaves you vulnerable and very open. Some days were hard and emotional, some weren’t, but I learnt very quickly that travelling can so often be very far from idillic. It is tough because your character is constantly…
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Budget hotels in KL, our cautionary tale!
Booking a hotel in a new city can have its challenges; you don’t know the area, you’re not entirely sure of how much things should cost, and you generally are just a little unsure of the what to expect. It’s fairly straightforward to overcome these challenges with the easy access to online booking sights, reviews…
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Steve and Ye Olde Vic
This is a short story about Steve and his pub, The Old Vic. https://vimeo.com/157462548
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Will Kaufman on Woody Guthrie
During my final year at university I took a course which involved making documentaries with a historical perspective. On this course I had the great pleasure of meeting Will Kauffman, a professor from the USA who as a cultural historian has spent a large part of his life researching and writing about the music of the…
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Ostend – making the most of getting lost!
Something that we discovered in Belgium is that the trains are exceedingly difficult to navigate! This is partly because of a language barrier on our part (with a fairly basic knowledge of French for me and a working knowledge of French and German for Sarah) but in the main part due to the lack of…
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On a tiny Greek island there is a huge abandoned hotel… and it’s amazing.
About an hours ferry ride from the port of Piraeus in Athens is a small island called Aegina which is famous for stunning beaches, monasteries, ancient temples and growing pistachios. One of the smaller towns on the island is Agia Marina, a small fishing town with a few bars and hotels. The town is fairly sleepy when…
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feathers – my first tattoo
Feathers McGraw, My First Tattoo It’s been at least ten years since I first thought that I would like to get a tattoo. That time was spent mainly resisting the urge to get the first thing that popped into my head and trying to work out something ‘meaningful’ to put on my body. Something I…
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the little BIG explorers 