Phi Ta Khon Festival Thailand

Phi Ta Khon Festival: Thailand’s Haunting Festival of Ghosts and Masks

Why is it that when you give someone a mask they will never fail to show you their true face? For Phi Ta Khon festival, or the ghost mask festival, the normally shy, polite and retiring villagers of Dan Sai reveal themselves to be fun-loving, dance-crazy, non-stop party people. The festival, held in Loei province, is a vibrant interweaving of religion and art.

Mask makers spend the months leading up to the big event constructing and painting their lavish costumes in exquisite detail. When finished, the complete outfits resemble colourful monsters, somehow managing to be both fearsome and fluorescent. Dancing and continuous cowbells announce to the world that the ‘ghosts’ are in town.

5 mins read

Can Air Travel Ever Be Sustainable? Taking Responsibility for Our Carbon Footprint

It’s no secret that air travel is harming our environment. Global aviation is responsible for 2% of human induced C02 emissions, and while this figure might seem low, let’s not forget that we’re burning fossil fuels at an unsustainable rate and damaging the environment as a result.

What’s really staggering though is that the demand for air travel is expected to double over the next 20 years. We’re facing a very real risk of over expansion and this increase will only worsen greenhouse gas emissions and local air quality around airports.

We need to find a balance that means we can protect our planet and reduce C02 emissions without sacrificing travel altogether.

7 mins read

5 Unmissable Vegetarian and Vegan Cafes In and Around Bournemouth

With my family’s new home base being in Dorset, I set out on a hunt for delicious vegetarian and vegan cafes in and around Bournemouth. The area isn’t exactly known as a vegetarian and vegan scene compared to more alternative UK cities like Brighton and Liverpool. But there are some real veggie-friendly gems to be found.

4 mins read

I Want to Move to Taiwan, but I Don’t Speak Mandarin

Reader Question: How difficult it is to learn Mandarin and is it isolating to move to Taiwan if you don’t speak it? The language barrier is my biggest fear, especially because I plan to travel in there by myself.

Is Mandarin really hard to learn?

7 mins read

Tipi Camping & Stargazing at Dancing Ledge

I never got round to sharing my birthday weekend from back in August. Now that autumn has well and truly overtaken in England, I’m really missing the long summer days that we had. That’s not to say that autumn here isn’t incredibly beautiful, but everyone likes the sunshine right?

There was no exotic destination for my birthday this year – but that doesn’t mean there wasn’t any travel for me at all! Instead of just spending the weekend at home, Luke and I dug out my family’s tipi which hadn’t been used for years and headed just half hour away from the house to the Dorset coastline.

3 mins read

How to Keep Fit and Stay Healthy While Travelling

Between the odd long haul flight, seemingly endless bus journeys and train rides across countries, and small towns where you end up just snacking on white buns and pre-packaged foods when passing through, travelling can sometimes leave you feeling unfit and unhealthy.

If you don’t take good care of your body while travelling, you can wind up feeling exhausted. It’s natural for travellers to want to make the most of their time in a new place and pack in as much sightseeing as possible. Too often though, that’s at the expense of their health and fitness and eventually leads to a complete travel burnout.

7 mins read

Tourism Disrupts Turtle Nesting in Ostional, Costa Rica

A year ago, Luke and I had an incredible experience witnessing the turtle arribada in the small Costa Rican beach town of Ostional. During an arribada, thousands of turtles come onto the beach to lay their eggs in the sand.

We were surprised not only by how breathtaking it is to see these creatures come out from the sea, but also how deserted the small town of Ostional was when we were there. One year later, I was horrified to read that swathes of tourists had prevented the turtles from nesting on the coast.

5 mins read

Coastal Paths, Clean Beaches and Local Heritage in Porthtowan

In England, it’s not unusual to take a family holiday to the same familiar seaside town, often just the closest one to where you live, or one of the really popular ones that actually have sand rather than pebbles.

Every year you pack up the car with too much stuff and a bag of Starburst. You go, you build sandcastles on the beach, eat Mr Whippy ice creams, probably eat fish and chips too, walk along the pier and play on some penny machines in an arcade. That’s what family holidays were like for me when I was growing up.

Like most people in the UK, I have a lot of nostalgia about seaside holidays.

4 mins read

Teaching in Taiwan: An Interview with Teacher Amelia

Teaching in Taiwan is something I often get asked about by people who are thinking about making the move and starting a new career on the island. What I always emphasise is that everyone’s experience of teaching in Taiwan is different – variables such as school and branch, workload, location, personality and whether you’re going solo or as a couple can be make or break. I’m interviewing different teachers in Taiwan to find out their thoughts on island life, ESL teaching and travelling. This interview is part of the Teaching in Taiwan series.

8 mins read