Travel related ideas, views, and news

Month: November 2018

Travel and Kexit: what the UK’s exit from the EU may mean for travellers

Presently, as I write this from China, I feel distant from the politics of the UK. But even with all the websites that are blocked by the Great Fire Wall, including the BBC’s, it is difficult to not get drawn into everything surrounding the United Kingdom’s exit from the European Union, which for some reason has been given a strange name, a very unimaginative amalgamation consisting of the first two letters of Britain and the word exit.

I don’t know who devised this word, but it is of the type that someone would think of without much thought, half-drunk, over a beer, on a Friday night in some bar somewhere in the UK. Whoever was responsible for this word, must never have imagined that it would eventually be entered into the Oxford English Dictionary.

This is without reference to its etymology being incorrect. That’s right, it doesn’t seem to have occurred to anyone that it is not even so accurate a word, if we take into account the fact that it is not only Great Britain’s exit from the European Union that is on the cards, rather that of the United Kingdom.

UK passport

A 2017 issued United Kingdom passport

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Phnom Penh: The Indian Transportation Takeover

It was a late arrival at the small Phnom Penh airport on the outskirts of the atmospheric city, ever bustling with street-food, motorbikes and people busy under the dim street-lighting and the warm, humid, night sky. We got into our 1980s Jaguar, began discussing with the driver about Sinn Sissamouth, Ros Serey Sothea and the other great singers and musicians of pre-war Cambodia. It felt good to be back in a country I’ve been to many times since my first visit in 2004.

Jaguar in Cambodia

Vintage Jag outside the Pavilion, Phnom Penh

But this time there was something different about the streets. And it was only a year since our previous visit. My first thought was that we’d boarded the wrong flight and ended up in Delhi. Of course ignoring the Khmer language and the drivers on the right-side of the road.

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Plastic, Plastic: Plastic and Travel

There is little reason to write too much about the massive burden that plastic in all its forms is placing on our planet; everyone knows this, it’s that we have become so reliant on this damaging material, that knowing how to stop using so much of it is one of the greatest challenges presented to the modern world.

At home in a familiar environment we have a certain amount of control over how and when we use plastic, and how we dispose of it, but when travelling, reducing plastic usage or finding ways to best recycle what we do use can be a difficult task.

And it all starts when you board your flight.

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