I Was Born Under A Wandering Star

Yesterdays P&L: GBP287.00
Yesterdays Booze: 70cl Imperial Standard Russian Vodka, 3 x Large Gordons Gin & Tonic, 6 pack of Heineken Lager.

Lee Marvin on the juke box - Wandering Star! I often wonder about all the travelling I have done, it seems so natural to me. Even though my parents tried to give some stability to our lives, my family feels like it is fluid, in constant motion. So it was natural for me to be restless.

I have travelled a lot, Africa, South & Central America, North America, Europe (of course) and mostly in Asia. I love travelling and I still get a thrill when I am on a plane or ship heading somewhere. I realised fairly quickly that I am not the back-packer type, well actually I am to a certain extent, a friend in Indonesia once said to me you are the first 5 star backpacker I ever met. You see, I like to go off the beaten track, but I do like to travel in style. I enjoy staying in top hotels and flying first or business class. But then I also enjoy going to the dodgier parts of town and hanging out in the less salubrious places.

When I was based in Bangkok , I travelled to most of the regional hot-spots, (Ho Chi-Minh, KL, Singapore, Penang, Bali, Jakarta, Hong Kong), with regularity but I also liked to visit places such as Yangon, Manilla, Pnohm Pen, Guangdong, Pusan and lots of Indonesian towns that I am well acquainted with. The problem with going to so many places is that you forget how special they are. I have never been much of a tourist in terms of buying local bric-a-brac and taking photographs but I often wonder if perhaps I should have been. Many of the places I have been and the things I have seen will never exist in that form again. The world is changing and it is certain to change the places we visit. When I went to Shanghai, Pudong was little more than a swamp, but you only have to look at a photograph of it now to see the changes 12 years have made. I remember climbing up the ancient Hindu temple of Borabadur in Java to see the sun rise, all the Japanese tourists gasped and took pictures I had a nice cold drink, (booze of course). I remember being alone in the officers bar of the ship my father worked on leaning over the deck and stairwell outside Apapa quay in Lagos, Nigeria. The city behind me and the odd purple phosphorus glow of the water surrounding the ship - Heartbeat City by The Cars playing to me.

I often think that I am so unlucky to not see what will happen in the future, you know - will it be like what the movies tell us, but at the same time I feel sorry for the people who will never see the world as it was before this globalisation. Never be able to see countries like Thailand before it became a charter destination.