Tag: personal

  • On Moving to Bangkok and Gripping the Second Trapeze

    On Moving to Bangkok and Gripping the Second Trapeze

    I moved to Bangkok. Forgive me for the blunt delivery, but when I came to write this post I wasn’t sure what I want to say about it. I didn’t want to say, “Look at me and my jet-set lifestyle – I just casually moved to Bangkok!” because there’s been…

  • The Kraken & the Warrior, a Personal Story on Mental Health

    The Kraken & the Warrior, a Personal Story on Mental Health

    I think… I think I’m ready to talk about my mental health. I think it feels like time. I think it’s important that you know what’s been going on and it’s especially important because I guarantee that someone you know is struggling with their mental health right now. That someone…

  • Chasing Home | A Few Thoughts On Being Between Places

    Chasing Home | A Few Thoughts On Being Between Places

    Hey guys. So, I recently participated in the World Nomads Travel Writer Scholarship programme, where I wrote a piece on the theme ‘a place that is unfamiliar to me’. Devastatingly, I didn’t win the scholarship (next year, perhaps?), so here is my entry published here instead, entitled Chasing Home:

  • Pico Iyer: Movement is Nothing Until You Stand Still

    Pico Iyer: Movement is Nothing Until You Stand Still

    I’ve been back in the UK now for four months. I’m still reluctant to say ‘back home’, but I’ll admit that it’s slipped off my tongue more than once. Like travel writer Pico Iyer says in his TED talk, ‘Where are you from?’ and ‘Where is home?’ are more complex…

  • Why Moving Back to the UK is Harder Than Moving Away

    Why Moving Back to the UK is Harder Than Moving Away

    Yep, I’ve turned into that girl who starts all her sentences with, ‘When I lived in Hong Kong…’ My room is filled with knick-knacks from places I can’t pronounce. I can give advice on jet lag, fear of flying, travelling with only a carry-on and finding cheap flights online. I…

  • 16 Things I Would Tell My 16-Year-Old Self

    16 Things I Would Tell My 16-Year-Old Self

    We now interrupt this scheduled programme of backpacking-related blog posts to bring you something completely different. Time travel. I thought that moving back to the UK this Christmas would just feel like my annual Yuletide visit, and that the fact that I don’t have a return flight wouldn’t hit me until…

  • Here I Am Without a Cello

    Here I Am Without a Cello

    This summer I worked with an eighteen-year-old Etonian. He spoke of ‘bumping into’ David Cameron at chapel, meeting Elton John, as well as hobnobbing with Damian Lewis and Tom Hiddleston at alumna events. He wore the uniform of penguin tailcoats to school every day. Dubbed as one of the best…

  • Europe should be a dream | Brexit abroad

    Europe should be a dream | Brexit abroad

    ‘Europe should be a dream.’ He was a professor at the University of Padua. He had lived all over the world. He brewed his own prosecco, and it tasted delicious. He was Italian. He had the words ‘Will you marry me?’ tattooed onto his chest. That was how he proposed…

  • Sometimes to go forward you have to go back | Italy 2016

    Sometimes to go forward you have to go back | Italy 2016

    What am I doing? It was a question that had fluttered into my mind on the bus on the way to the airport, then on the plane to Doha, then on the second plane to Milan, upon landing at 6AM Italian time, and finally when I was ripped off at…

  • Why Now? | Some Thoughts On Starting a Travel Blog

    Why Now? | Some Thoughts On Starting a Travel Blog

    So the question is… “Why now?” It danced around my brain as I literally googled, “How to start a blog,” elected a domain name and navigated my way around WordPress. It repeated itself like a catchy jingle as I opened a new Word document to draft the first post and…