Author: CBT
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France
Day 1 France! Western Europe! Well-developed infrastructure! This should be a pleasant change of pace from jungles and deserts. I can travel with ease and comfort. Well, that was what I thought right up to the moment when I got lost searching for the hotel in the dead of night and all the streetlights suddenly…
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Why are white palm fronds painted on Amazigh houses?
Tiout was quite an ordinary village, but in a way I found very appealing. It was so ordinary that it formed a perfect archetype of what an Amazigh village should be, with its lush palmery, half-pristine, half-ruined kasbah, and hilltop marabout. The stripes of purple or blue paint that outlined the occasional doorframe and window…
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Morocco
Day 1 By the time I’ve got off the plane, picked up my luggage, humiliated myself in front of the immigration officer by forgetting the names of the places I’ll be staying, and left the airport, the sun is setting. My first host, Saïd, is waiting for me, and drives me to my first destination…
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Why is Singapore so militarised?
Singapore has a number of notable elements. There’s the grey business of the skyscrapers, the glitzy consumerism of the shopping complexes, and the bright colours of the tourist magnets like Sentosa and the Gardens by the Bay. It seems unexpected, then, that another notable feature is the number of military sites. There was one just…
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How much Korean cultural influence is there in Thailand?
In the midst of Bangkok’s teeming ecosystem of adverts, all over the walls of the metro and infesting the huge shopping centres, something occurred to me. Thai people can have a wide range of skin tones, but the people grinning and holding up products in the adverts were exceptionally pale. This could be attributed to…
Wandering/Wondering 