Month: October 2013

Bangkok, in search of temples. Outside the Grand Palace I met the person who turned out to be my host for the next four hours, a tuc-tuc driver who told me his first lie of the day, that the Grande Palace was not open until 12.30, but in the meantime he could take me to a few places (nudge nudge, wink wink, say no more).

Ah, to be buried in Père Lachaise!! What more could you want? Jim Morrisson nearly went apoplectic trying to get the Parisian authorities to allow him to be buried there, and eventually succeeded, and, if his grave isn’t the most ideally situated, lost as it is behind a gigantic edifice to some French writer, it is still one of the most visited.

Trim by name, not by nature, for this sprawling mass of old masonry known as Trim Castle cries out for Hugh de Lacy, its original owner, to come back from the grave and set things right.

I had seen a postcard of this beach before I ever came to it, and I thought, no, it couldn’t be that beautiful.

Resplendent, smiling, wreathed in writhing snakes and adorned with skulls and talismans, the amazing carved goddesses gaze down from the ancient walls of the replica of the universe that is Angkor Wat.