INTELLIGENT TRAVELLER It seemed to me that most of Syria had been visited, inhabited or invaded by Phoenicians and Egyptians, Romans, Mamluks and the Knights Templar. TE Lawrence, Agatha Christie and Roosevelt had all made pilgrimages; even the cheery folk from Mossad took time out to make a day trip and detonate a car bomb in Damascus on the day of my arrival. The pull of the place was undeniable.
GUARDIAN Pretty nineteenth century Plantage Middenlaan is the unlikely setting for one of Amsterdam’s newest museums. The Amsterdam Tattoo Museum is incongruously housed in two Belle Époque mansions; bourgeois painted flowers and fancy plasterwork interiors provide an unlikely counterpoint to the frankly fetishistic nature of the exhibitions. Continue reading
INDEPENDENT I’m not what you’d call an adrenalin junky, macho thrills’n’spills aren’t my thing. But when the ratchet shrieked and yards of fishing line zipped out across the waves I was beside myself with excitement. Adrenalin rush? I was faint with it… time to eat my words… Continue reading
INTELLIGENT TRAVELLER Music is embedded in the very DNA of Sao Vicente; a fact that becomes rampantly clear in the run up to carnival. Its capital, Mindelo, positively thrums each weekend between Christmas and Lent as rival teams devote themselves to outdoing their neighbours with drum practise. Continue reading
GUARDIAN After a swift glass of grog Chico was only too happy to chat. “Of course I knew Cesaria Evora” he said. “I played with her on a tour of the United States; hey, she was first discovered singing at my piano!” It soon became apparent that there were many in Mindelo who’d known perhaps the greatest exponent of morna there ever was. Continue reading
ORYX MAGAZINE IT’S HARD NOT TO FEEL OVERWHELMED WHEN FIRST ENTERING THE RAINFOREST. This secretive, primeval world, with its dark, brooding vegetation wreathed in tendrils of mist, is alive with incessant insect chatter and shrill birdsong. Continue reading
GUARDIAN I guessed argan was a rare gas or a spear-carrying lard-arse in Lord of the Rings. It is, I discovered, a slow growing thorn tree similar to the olive that’s found in just one place on the planet, southern Morocco’s coastal strip. Continue reading
THE TIMES Hong Kong has earned a gaudy reputation as a metropolis where consumption is nothing if it’s not conspicuous. China’s new emperors of bling revel in flashing the Yuan and deliver master classes in glitz. Fortunately, for a city so obsessed with economic might, it’s still possible for those with more modest monetary means to visit without stir-frying their finances. This is the way to do the city on a budget without skimping on style. Continue reading
DAILY MAIL Who’d have thought a Deux Chevaux could happily off-road along deeply rutted tracks, over foot-high boulders and negotiate steep mountainsides? If it’s the real deal sporting eight legs rather than the four wheels on some tinny French car, then anything’s possible. Continue reading
DAILY MAIL An ethereal, ghostly mist shrouds Hanoi before sun-up and the city’s early morning traffic is nothing but a quiet hum. Yet there’s more life on the street than you might expect at this ungodly hour. Dozens of locals gather beside the shores of West Lake in the Tay Ho area to gently practise tai chi and insomniac fishermen wobble precariously on stepping stones as they cast their lines into the grey waters. Continue reading
Nick Maes 