I have been asked more times than I can count: “How do you actually plan a trip to Bhutan?” It is a fair question, because Bhutan does not work like anywhere else I have travelled to. You cannot book a flight, land, and figure the rest out as you go. Almost every visitor arranges their entire trip — guide, driver, hotels, permits — through a licensed...
Punakha is a beautiful valley and one of the most visited tourist destinations in Bhutan. While the Punakha Dzong is a gorgeous piece of architecture, Punakha offers some naturally beautiful places to visit too.
I went to TMAG expecting an hour, maybe ninety minutes. I left four hours later, and I still had not seen everything. If you take one thing from this post, take that: budget more time than you think you need. The main entrance signage for the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery in Hobart, with an exhibition banner for artist Jodi Haines visible alongside. TMAG sits...
I planned this one for a Saturday on purpose. Salamanca Market only happens once a week, and I did not want to be the person who turns up on a Tuesday and wonders where everyone went. So I built my whole Hobart afternoon around it: market first, then up through Kelly’s Steps into Battery Point, then a loop through the oldest streets in the suburb before heading...
Most guides point you up Mt Wellington for sunset. That is fair advice. But the mountain is a long drive, the weather turns without warning, and if you have only a couple of evenings in Hobart you might want something closer, quieter, and easier to reach. That is where the eastern shore comes in. I spent four nights in Hobart in January and gave myself two evenings...
Getting from Hanoi to Sapa means either a night on the train or about six hours on the road, and I chose the night. I had one evening in Hanoi, a vague idea that the mountains in the north were special, and a friend who said, without much explanation, just take the night train. So I did. A few years ago I boarded the SP1 at Hanoi station just before 10 pm, fell...
Wineglass Bay is the photo that sells Tasmania. That perfect curve of white sand and turquoise water, wrapped around by the pink granite peaks of the Hazards, ends up on every postcard and guidebook cover for a reason. In 2026, Time Out ranked it 21st on its list of the World’s 50 Best Beaches, and seeing it in person, from the lookout, on a clear day, it earns...
The easiest way to get from Hobart to the top of kunanyi / Mount Wellington is the Explorer Bus: A$55 for adults, about 2.5 hours return with around 30 minutes at the 1,271-metre summit, and it’s the one service that can still go up when snow closes Pinnacle Road. You can also drive the 21 km yourself in about 30 minutes, join a guided tour, or hike up from...
Some places you remember for a single view. Bruny gave me a dozen. Sea cliffs dropping straight into the Southern Ocean, a thin ribbon of sand with ocean on both sides, an empty beach curving away into low cloud, and a lighthouse balcony with the whole wild south of the island laid out beneath it. I went on a grey, drizzly January day, and it was still one of the...
Brow Head, near Crookhaven in West Cork, is the true southernmost point of mainland Ireland, not Mizen Head, as almost every guide assumes. It’s a wild, unmarked headland reached by a short walk from the coast road, with sweeping Atlantic cliff views, a ruined Napoleonic signal tower, and a remarkable connection to Marconi’s earliest wireless experiments...