Blogs

I have got into the habit of taking my laptop with me on trips these days. At the end of each day I commit memories to a rolling document which is then easy to shape into a trip narrative. I also back up and edit the day's photos while the lid is up. Sometimes this takes a matter of minutes, sometimes it takes several hours, but either way I have the bones of the stories that revealed themselves that day.

When I get home it doesn't take much of a re-write, just odd word-swaps with the flow pretty much how it first came out. After a bigger trip where thousands of photos need to be sifted through, making pages for the websites can take all week, depending on whether the objective is extended captions for photos or a longer blog entry.

I enjoy putting the words to the images just as much as creating the images themselves, As for the blogs, the photos are more about decorating the tale, and on this site it is just one shot per blog anyway.

I have added a map to each blog so you can track down the detail of the trip if you want to follow up, or are putting together your own itinerary.

Left: The Star Ferry, Hong Kong

Bike Blogs

Over the years I undertook several mini-trips by bike. In the early days, travelling overseas, you could just put your bike through with the luggage, no box or bag, then wait at the carousel for it to appear with the pushchairs. Later it was bag-box or no-go, plus a fee for carrying the bike. All this was pre-GPS and suchlike, just a guidebook and a compass on my handlebars (see pic)! Navigation certainly had its challenges.

Meanwhile, I cycled every weekend where I was living in Vietnam, Thailand and Japan. Considering how long I lived in Vietnam (10 years), I have almost no photos of rides - too busy with the peloton of colleagues nipping in and out of the motorbike mayhem and other mad traffic.

One thing about being on a bicycle, you don't skim across the country, you are very much in it and will likely be given a part to play. Having a little notebook to hand I was able to jot down words, 'brain confetti' as I called it, which could act as dots to be connected later to form a narrative.

Right: Outside Mae Hong Son, on the road to Pai