Travel stories in the spotlight

Paris by the balls: Paris, France

Watching rugby at Paris’ Stade Jean Bouin is like no other sporting experience reckons Matthew Genner, who sets about getting to grips with Parisian sporting culture.

Only in Paris, a city that embraces individuality, can ten thousand people arrive to watch a rugby match dressed in pink replica shirts, waving pink flags and holding heart-shaped pink balloons.. more....

Top Ten: Ways to Kill Aiport Time

Boredom isn't an option for Olivia Hambrett as she mooches around Athens airport.

At 4.35am, deep in the bowels of Athens airport, I felt a rush of pure, unadulterated delirium come on. It is a specific type of delirium, brought on by a stretch of seemingly endless hours spent at an Airport.. more....

Tales from the table: Dordogne, France

Kimberley Lovato gets a taste for the Dordogne (spiced by the recipes of chef Laura Schmalhorst).

Dreams are often born in the most unsuspecting places. Mine happened to be delivered by the postman. The postcard depicted the most beautiful village I had ever seen, enveloped in fog and huddled against a cliff at the edge of the Dordogne River.. more....

Born survivor: Vietnam

Abandoned at birth in Central Vietnam and mauled by a dog, a baby boy suffered devastating injuries. Elka Ray discovers how the kindness of strangers is helping to turn this child’s life around.

Dressed in a yellow t-shirt and orange trousers, Ho Thien Nhan stands staring at his sneakers, a worried look on his face. Aged 20 months, the boy, who lives in Vietnam’s capital, Hanoi, is being coaxed to take his first steps, and it’s clear that he’s petrified. . more....

Lessons in conservation: Costa Rica

Ellie Garwood volunteers for the turtles in Costa Rica.

I’d given up my job and city lifestyle to volunteer with non-profit organization The Friends of the Osa whose goal it is to guarantee the health and ecological success of the sea turtles nesting on the Osa Peninsula, Costa Rica. Now here I was, talking about machetes. Not that I minded . more....

Finding Flipper: dolphin swim, Melbourne, Australia

With the announcement that dredging is to go ahead Chris Ordremembers a swim with at risk dolphins in Port Philip Bay and wonders if it they'll survive for another encounter.

Dolphins have long been associated with miracles. And it just so happened that I was in desperate need of one. . more....

Meaty matters: a guide to German sausage

Nadia Stadnyckireckons sausages – especially the German kind – are a stand-alone food group.

The humble sausage belongs to its own food pyramid arena – specifically the “foods whose exact contents I try not to think about while ingesting” arena. That’s actually a building block of the top triangular point of the pyramid, in with the equally ambiguous fats, sugars and sweets. And, although you are cautioned to eat from that section sparingly, Germans thumb their noses three times a day at that suggestion when it comes to the consumption of their beloved “wurst.”. more....

Hokey pokey in Hollóko, Hungary

S.E.Whelan journeys back in time to uncover a grandfather’s heritage.

My grandfather had a big heart and an even bigger Hungarian accent. I revered the foreign place, and my hands held onto the only gift I had received from the homeland — a small doll dressed in layers of underskirts and brightly embroidered overcoat. . more....

Between a rock and a hard place: Rockaway Beach, USA

Kyle Tregurtha tries to find a slice of sandy paradise in Queens. With rose coloured glasses, you'd say he suceeded.

Covering my unimpressed eyes with a straw hat while the mucky sand shat on my face I thought on the words of the lone fisherman on the beach: “Oh no!” shaking his head and up curling his lips,” I wont eat anything out the waters here, I’ll catch 'em but I’ll throw 'em back, I don't trust these waters.”. more....

Poetic justice: Gustaf Fröding, Sweden

When an English couple signed up to host some visiting Swedish families in the 1970s, they had no idea that it would lead to a newfound passion and change of country.Anna Maria Espsäter interviews a leading English light of Swedish poetry.

Mike and Pat McArthur’s falling in love with Sweden was unexpected but perhaps, looking back, inevitable. After hosting several Swedish families keen to bone up on English in situ, one thankful guest presented a book of Swedish poetry. . more....

Arabian knight: explorer Sir Wilfred Thesiger

Dave Wise converses with one of the last of the great Victorian explorers.

Sir Wilfred's weather-hardened face creased into a smile as we shook hands. He supported his lean six foot frame with a walking stick but nevertheless climbed with relative ease the steep stairs at the retirement home that led to his small room. Framed photographs lined the walls. Arabia, Morocco, family memories. A book case sagged under the weight of classics - Lawrence's Seven Pillars of Wisdom, Conrad's Lord Jim and volume upon volume that he'd written about his own life. . more....

Interview: author Tim Mackintosh-Smith

Dave Wise chats to Tim Mackintosh-Smith, the prize winning author and broadcaster once labeled as ‘a latter day Lawrence of Arabia’, about living in Yemen and his most recent travels.

So far I've followed Ibn Battutta from Tangier almost to the southern tip of India – admittedly with some big gaps, but I'd never planned to track him slavishly – via Egypt, the Levant, Arabia, Turkey and the Crimea. . more....

Dying With Dignity (Part 2), Mexico

Lyn Fox gets to grips with Mexico’s fascination for death but comes away learning more about its antithesis.

The gringo/Latino death-perspective-gap can also be found traveling southeast from the Bajio. I arrived in Bernal one weekend along with swarms of tourists. The village had few services, dirt lot pay parking, and rental toilets with extra charge for paper. So, why was everyone there?. more....

Dying With Dignity (Part 1), Mexico

Lyn Fox gets to grips with Mexico’s fascination for death but comes away learning more about its antithesis.

My life in Mexico began with the cockroach incident. First morning in my new home, a toilet wouldn’t flush and a rising desert sun promised to bake the unsavory contents. I stepped into the shower.. more....

South by south wilderness: Tasmania, Australia

Four litres of cask wine saved Greg Clarke's life on a sea kayak adventure exploring Bathurst Harbour in Tasmania, Australia.

Cardboard vino has for too long been unjustly maligned, for as an elixir it is surprisingly wonderful and, with liberal doses, superbly numbing. Stick with me here. An epic tract of Tasmania’s southwest is a World Heritage wilderness that gambols over 600,000 rollicking hectares. The Southwest National Park is the largest park in Australia’s only island state. . more....

Trip of a wife time: Australasia

Mark Woodsdecides marriage is a perfect excuseto run away...with his intended.

Ok, ok, so it’s the cheesiest title you’ve ever had the misfortune to read – but if you can’t have a hint of fromage when you’re getting hitched, when can you?. more....

Bus or bust: Brazil

Being a clueless tourist doesn’t always mean getting ripped off writes Helen Clark.

Manaus, the sweaty, noisy capital of Amazonas, Brazil, and my goddamn translator friend had put me on the wrong bus. I was screwed. I’d paid a lot for a ticket to Boa Vista . more....

Epiphanies of Erinskey: Ireland

George Torode discovers a slice of surfing’s original soul amidst a group of journeyman on the battered coast of Erinskey, Ireland.

It is late evening and resident surfers of the remote Irish village of Erinskey are huddled around a TV in the local pub. As winter winds howl bitterly outside, their concentration is fixed on the next morning’s weather forecast. It finishes, the surfers breath again . more....

APEC vs G20

Just which city was more ridiculous? By Matt O’Callaghan and Eva Clarke.

I was drunk and it was late. I was sitting on an old stool at the bar of my favorite late-night bar in Hanoi, my head resting on my arms as I listened to the city’s ex-pat matriarch, . more....

Tower of strength: Spain

Participation in local culture is one of the best bits of travelling, says Craig Platt. Unless that means you’re a brick in a human pyramid. And you’re at the bottom.

“Cuando empiecen, no levante la cabeza; no mires parriba,” says the stocky, bald Spaniard beside me. I respond with “no comprendo” - pretty much the only Spanish phrase I know.. more....

Delhi: a city unimagined

People can pidgeonhole a place all they want, but the reality of actually being there never fails to shatter all preconceptions. Sharon Nichonchuir finds as much on her first exploration of Delhi.

Friends’ warnings rang in my ears as I stepped onto the runway in the middle of a steamy Delhi night. “It’ll be worse than anything you can possibly imagine”, they said.. more....

Never too old

Chris Robinson writes that sometimes the best trips happen over many years, and are with your Dad.

I can’t remember exactly when it started, but at some point one of my favourite things about coming home to New Zealand was going surfing with my Dad.. more....

Dictatorship of the spectator

Two continents and the weight of hometown familiarity gifts Jason Murphy a new perspective on the art and wonder of travel.

This is a story of slow understanding. It plays out in Venice, but it starts in Beijing’s inner south, in a small youth hostel in a traditional grey hutong, where I met a twenty-four year old named Andrea. . more....

Life on a coral caye

Alice Mutasa samples marine conservation, local rum & some serious lazing in the Belize sun.

Waking up on Franks Caye, you could be forgiven for thinking you are still asleep, and that the white sand, palm trees, & solitary jetty stretching out into a perfect azure blue sea is all just a lovely dream…. more....

Rebuilding Cambodia: one woman at a time

Karoline Kemp forgoes the beach and backpacking scene to help capture something that will make an altogether different impact in Cambodia – echoes of evil and sounds of hope.

Thyda looks like any other young girl – only she’s lived through trauma most of us could never imagine. At the age of 12 her mother sold her to a friend for $300.. more....

Life on the inside: foreign prisoners in South East Asia.

Just what motivates someone to risk their life as a drug courier through South East Asia, and what is life like for them when imprisoned a long way from home? With nine Australians facing drug charges in Indonesia, and Schapelle Corby’s trial continuing, Ari Sharp tells of meeting some of the foreigners detained at Thailand’s notorious Bangkwang Prison.

Lazing around at a backpacker hostel in the Khao San district of Bangkok, I came across this on the notice board:. more....