Scampering through a break in the rain we’re fishing our way through another notably irregular lane in Kyoto looking for our dinner tonight, hidden behind yet another one of those discrete doors that offer promise and suggestion more than invitation. For a month we’ve had our eye irresistibly dragged towards these suggestions, these promises all […]
Just when we thought that this great adventure was taking its final bow with the spotlight slowly dimming to cast the once bright features into shadowed shapes, a little visit to the island of Miyajima set fire to the stage for an encore to thrill the crowd. Far from the introspective amble that followed our […]
The band is back together, Ken doll is joining us and Aki who’s name henceforth is Barbie, for a day trip to Ise and the grandest, most important Shinto shrine in Japan, Ise Jingu. With amazing grace and beauty preserved in Japan at every turn it can be hard to know exactly where to look, […]
The morning of the rising sun, our first Japanese dawn; I had to use that cliche just once. In truth there’s little romantic glory about this almost hangover fatigue that welcomes us to our tiny apartment that’s a little too hot, but who cares, we’re in Japan where beauty is an asset of even the […]
Six weeks or close enough not to matter is how long it’s been, six weeks of small red plastic chairs and random guesses at what we were about to eat. We sauntered into Vietnam knowing that the food would be good and that street food was a juggernaut that shouted on the world stage, and […]
In the rainy pen of Hanoi we settle and slow our pace in contradiction to this city that is anything but slow of pace, we’re seeing the sights before the food storm descends upon our lives, a calm before the storm. The Ngoc Son temple sits in a lake near our hotel, this gracious setting […]
You know that sensation when you know something’s a little wrong but you don’t want to admit it yet, don’t want to make it real by giving it a name? It’s the nagging sensation like a lover that has become a little distant or your own declining fitness; that concrete evidence staring you in the […]
Nothing to do and nowhere to go, we’ve been yearning to say that for a few days now as this sleep in time has no finish time we can determine. There is one thing that must happen today of course and that’s to top up on our junkie fix with another bowl of Cao Lau, […]
A new dawn, a new day; unlike most dawns of untainted promise this day carries some of the frayed nerves from the past two days of toil and trouble. But the sun does rise, it is a new day and what’s more we’re in Hoi An, the town that many describe as the pinnacle of […]
It’s time to pay the bill, but we don’t have any idea how much we’re to be paying and only a slight idea what we’re paying for; we’re sure we ordered something with beef in it but was there beef in dinner? Yousef hands over some notes and a young boy stands stuck to the […]
Charlie and Steve's Excellent Adventure 