During a brief stopover in Kyushu in the early 1990s, British broadcaster and former Monty Python Michael Palin stopped in at Huis Ten Bosch, a faithful recreation of a Dutch town, replete with gouda, tulips, windmills and a clock tower … Continue reading
How many Tokyoites can you squeeze into a Mini Cooper? How many times has Godzilla attacked Tokyo? Why was Paul McCartney banned from having bananas? All the questions you never had about Japan’s great capital, answered here before you’d ever … Continue reading
The people of the Arabian peninsula know it as ‘The Empty Quarter’. The Bedouin know it, more simply, as ‘The Sands’. Whatever name you give it, its unforgiving vastness comprises 650,000sq km of sand – the largest sand desert on … Continue reading
Good old Wilfred Thesiger. The explorer’s five years in the heat of the UAE desert have inspired countless expats to dip their toes in the shallows of the Rub’ Al Khali, and his books and artefacts have become a small … Continue reading
When I first arrived in the UAE, I met up with a family friend who’d spent more years in the Middle East than in his native Ireland. Keen to impart some of his local knowledge, we arranged a trip to … Continue reading
Kathmandu: the end of the hippy trail, and about as far from the bling of the UAE as you can get. It’s an amazing airport to arrive at. The plane doesn’t descend so much as the valley rises to catch … Continue reading