INTELLIGENT TRAVELLER Ibo Island was once the thriving Portuguese capital of Cabo Delgado province, Mozambique. But over the last century it has gradually flexed into ruinous beauty becoming – to my mind – one of the most haunting towns in East Africa. Continue reading
DAILY MAIL My star-spotting credentials are a little dubious. I once enjoyed a drink with a nice guy called Johnny; utterly oblivious to the fact that his surname was Depp. And on a film set I casually asked an actress her name; a puzzled Barbara Streisand soon put me right. This lousy track-record needed improving, so I set out to four of Hawaii’s islands to hone my skills and unearth some of the places where A-list stars hang out. Continue reading
INTELLIGENT TRAVELLER Shanghai’s modern skyline would be recognised immediately by Buck Rogers. The ever taller and preposterously capped skyscrapers look like they’ve been designed en-masse by a comic-book illustrator from the 1950’s. It is, quite simply, a wonderful twenty-first-century futurama of both beautiful and ugly architecture. Continue reading
The obvious portal to south Shropshire is Ludlow, a delightful township couched beside the river Teme and below the dramatic folds of Clee Hill. It’s a small medieval and Georgian market-town with an astronomic gastronomic reputation. And although I’m not cursed with a shopping gene; when it comes to buying good food my DNA helix goes positively cock-a-hoop. Continue reading
INTELLIGENT TRAVELLER I was dropped off on Kenyatta Road just as a call to prayer wheeled out from a nearby minaret and spiralled into the sky. I stood besides the car half listening, half hunting for change when an old friend greeted me. Continue reading
GUARDIAN I was warned that Madeira is no place to build sandcastles; but quite how depleted it is of sand still came as a surprise. Its intriguing primordial rawness – a result of ancient volcanic activity – is omnipresent. Toothy mountains tower dramatically above the capital of Funchal, prod clouds and alter the weather patterns on this Atlantic speck. Beaches are pebble-dashed with boulders. Continue reading
GUARDIAN Not everyone enjoys shopping, especially not blokes, and in particular not this bloke. That anyone can wring a scintilla of satisfaction from trawling around a store baffles me. But then I suffer from a rare congenital condition: I was born without a shopping gene. Or at least, I thought that was so. It seems that I’ve undergone a Damascene type conversion on the road to, er, Damascus. Continue reading
GUARDIAN Siwa Oasis has always been difficult to get to. A Persian army of 50,000 men perished while trying to reach this tiny speck in Egypt’s Great Sand Sea. Admittedly that was 500 BC, but the brutal landscape has remained pretty much the same ever since. Continue reading
GUARDIAN A Fairtrade holiday sounds as if it might be just a little too worthy and smug for its own good. Two weeks of unbleached cotton and a diet of organic lentils followed by the inevitable, if constipated, self-righteous after-glow doesn’t, frankly, tick any of my boxes. I actually like to enjoy my hols. Continue reading
GUARDIAN I wouldn’t normally associate a haunt like Xitang with the toothy gleam of Hollywood royalty. It’s hard to imagine high-octane players like Tom Cruise kicking back in an ancient Chinese water-village and much easier to picture the place filled with decadent opium dens and people idling on sampans. But incontrovertible proof was there to see: up on the wall in a restaurant – and it will soon be seen by many more on silver screens worldwide.
Nick Maes 