Book Binge

I know that fashion and beauty blogs do 'shopping haul' posts showing off their latest high-street sprees, purchases and bargains. Much like them, i too went shopping today but the most exciting thing (for me) are the new additions to my bookcase. :DDD

The Great British Bake-Off Everyday: 100 Foolproof Recipes. £13 down from £20.

8pm on a Tuesday Night is my favourite time of the week. It means inspiration, giggling uncontrollably and empathising with bakers sitting next to their ovens like crazy housewives. I love to bake and GBBO gives me great new ideas, my cakes never come out as perfect and my kitchen is always a mess but anyone who knows me knows that baking is like breathing to me. My baking inspiration used to be my nan and her antique cupboard filled with intricate icing flowers, but now inspiration strikes religiously every Tuesday. The show's presenters are hilarious -Sue accidentally elbowing someone's muffins last week was priceless- and i'm glad that the rest of the world can now see how much fun it is to get covered in flour. This recipe book is the 3rd or 4th in my collection (i'll definitely be stealing some of my mums when i move out) and the Macaroon cake inside is first on my list to try!

Rachel Joyce, The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry. £7.99.

I wanted to buy this book when it originally came out but i was studying at the time and my reading list was stocked with classics and secondary sources for my dissertation! According to the blurb Harold Fry  unwittingly embarks on a journey across country 'to save someone else's life' and that image struck a chord with me. Harold Fry just sounds like my dad- a sweet little old man- and it's nice to already have a person in mind. A Sunday Times Bestseller and much hyped up by my own brain i hope i'm not disappointed. Especially considering Rachel's got a new novel out- 'Perfect'.

John Williams, Stoner. £1 down from £8.99 with the 'Buy 1 Get 1 for £1' Offer.

'The greatest novel you've ever read' Vintage have been tweeting about Stoner all week. A special podcast and constant retweets of recommendations and i was sold... what is this book and where can i get it? Ashamedly i haven't heard of John Williams nor his novels, and it's weird that a classic is having such a revival- and on Twitter nonetheless. I'm usually a fan of fast paced action but i'll make an exception, i'm still a literary fiend and made my way through Joyce's Ulysses last year so i'm looking forward to immersing myself in Stoner's world this week.

Thailand's Top Tours #2: My Favourite Beach

There are some pretty amazing beaches in Thailand, it's half the reason (if not all) that people have made it such as huge travel destination in the past couple of years. On each island there tends to be a most popular beach- Chaweng Beach in Koh Samui, Haad Rin in Koh Phangan (home to the famous full moon party), Sairee Beach in Koh Tao and Long Beach in Koh Phi Phi. However, i found that the best beach label attracts so many people that the beach loses its sparkle. The sand gets littered, the water gets cluttered with boats and boards and the stretch becomes too full of outlets. Chaweng Beach is a perfect example: the water is shallow, rocky and full of speedboats and the sand is covered in loungers and sellers. All up for the hustle and bustle for the most part i eventually went searching for a bit of idyllic peace...

Maenam Beach in Koh Samui doesn't get a massive write up, it's close to the pier which never sounds idyllic and just off from the airport that hardly promises peace. But this beach is magnificent- just look at the picture below.

There are a few restaurants and some family targeted bungalows, a couple of sellers who wander up and down the beach with the usual corn and mango, and a solo boat floating on the waves. The sea is a gorgeous blue, deep enough to swim (amazing after shallow Chaweng) and there's no litter in sight! The sand has those small grains that you find in your bikini when you shower and let you know that you're truly on holiday and not just in rocky Brighton! Best of all is the peace. I went on holiday looking to relax in the day and go out at night but that becomes difficult in the hotstops of Thailand. Finding a sweet spot like Maenam was a dream and i wish we had time to go there more than once.

Maenam beach is a half an hour scooter ride from the hustle and bustle on the other side of the island, it reminds me of the places my parents used to take me from 'Alastair Sawday's Special Places to Stay' when i was a kid. Good company, a page turner and some cash to grab a Thai curry at one of the bungalows is all you need. Hopefully it will stay somewhat untouched and remain blissfully unaware of the party scene next door.

ReConsidering Cambridge

Out of a combination of a day off, a visitor to show around and bad weather elsewhere i ended up in Cambridge on the weekend. Apparently i had been there as a kid- an excursion on our yearly holidays on a river boat- but i couldn't remember a thing!

Since it was sunny i expected to have serious transport problems but unlike Brighton and Blackpool, which are obvious destinations, the trains weren't packed and the town centre not too jammed. Having said that, we did miss the train from London Liverpool Street and then boarded one to Southend costing us about 2hours on our journey because we had to backtrack and start again. The journey took about 4 hours instead of 2! Not my finest hour. We arrived starving and dashed to a pub recommended by my dad (who is a walking talking good pub guide for England and Wales) called The EAGLE. Huge yorkshire puddings, pork and apple sauce and great roasties went down a treat with a bottle of cider. The pub is really sweet, traditional and clearly massively popular, but there are a lot of seats so it's not a massive problem. Roasts were about £8 which is also pretty good.

Walking around the town could be done in a couple of hours. It's a pretty small area and the best things to see are compacted around the river and the town centre. Plus, many of the historical sights are university property so they're out of bounds. Once again i didn't visit the churches (gargoyles screeching per my other blog post) but i did see that the staff were incredible pretentious- shouting at visitors for walking on the grass and walking the wrong way around the church. Not exactly tourist-friendly.

We spent the day wondering around, stopping to eat and watching the punting. I just spent most of the day hoping to see someone fall in the river; either the over arrogant boyfriends trying to show off or the Cambridge students whose hair could probably do with a good wash in the water. Competition between punters (is that what they're called?) bordered on annoying as we were asked if we were punting today about a million times. I'm always an advocate of letting your customers come to you.

Unlike the food, stores were overpriced and i ended up paying £10 for 2 boxes of Pop Tarts at Mr Simms Olde Sweet Shoppe. But i'd never seen cookie dough and chocolate fudge flavours before and i couldn't resist- plus, it's hard to not spend irresponsible when you digress into a kid surrounded by candy canes and lolly pops.

The nicest thing about having a visitor to show around your home and country is that you end up motivated to see things that you wouldn't normally feel bothered about. When you think about a weekend break or day out you may not think about Cambridge, but it turned out to be a classy historical town with more than restricted churches to offer. Interest in the University is not the only prerequisite to a visit, you just need a love of poptarts and roast dinners.

Thailand's Top Tours. #1

When you return from your travels people always ask 'how was it?' 'tell me everything,' 'what was the best bit?' and it's easy to be lost for what to say. How can you put into words the things you saw and did? How can you choose the best experience when it was just the feeling of escape that triumphed all? Well, to make a start of compiled a list of the best things i did in Thailand, expelling a few myths about what make it so famous and recommending some particular companies that i believe were head and shoulders above the rest.

Elephant whispering: Baan Chang Elephant Park

Seeing, riding, feeding and bathing elephants is probably the most popular excursion in Asia and can be a spectacular experience. However, many (probably most) elephant 'sanctuaries' can actually leave you with a bitter taste in your mouth; worrying about the health and well-being of the animals and guilty for helping to finance this. I met many travellers who had bad experiences with companies and it seemed the norm rather than the exception (in the words of Gigi from He's Just Not That Into You). One girl i met had apparently been chased down a river by a wild elephant as her non-english-speaking guide tried to face it off. As a result i researched long and hard to find a great place to go and ended up at Baan Chang Elephant Park in Chang Mai, which had excellent write ups from TripAdvisor and Lonely Planet.

I booked the excursion online with only 48 hours notice but the company emailed me back quickly and they arranged to pick me and my friend up from our hotel for the trip. There was a group of 7 of us on the day, and we promptly changed into our gear and covered our cameras in waterproofs when we got there. The staff were really friendly and informative about the origins and nature of the elephants and firm about the fact that they were rescued and we had to be careful around the ones who had obviously been traumatised. I felt totally at ease that the staff had the elephants best interests at heart and that this was a genuine sanctuary.

When i was in India our tour guide arranged for us to drop by where the elephants are kept at one of the sites where they provide rides, but seeing them painted and needing to be supervised just to be near them wasn't the best experience. Here we got to feed them as they all hung out in an outdoor area; there were several staff cluttered around cleaning them and checking we were all being sensible (i.e. not sticking our hands in the elephants mouths). Yes they were chained but they explained that this was because elephants naturally fight.

After this we had some instruction from the mahouts about how to ride and instruct the elephants. A mahout is described as 'a person who rides an elephant' online, but there they were described as the elephant's best friend. When one sat atop his mate and dropped his sandal the elephant casually picked it up and slotted it back onto his foot. Immense. Certain words shouted with enough conviction got the elephant to sit down so we could sit on it, turn left and right, move off and stop. Each word came with a gesture, squeezing your thighs or touching their ears, but none of them could hurt the animals even if you did so too hard. The best feeling is riding atop an elephant, nervous as anything and higher up than you thought, shouting out a word and feeling the elephant stop in its tracks- reacting to your instruction. Surreal. 

The excursion comes with lunch and drinks, and some cute hammocks to rest in, which came next, and then we got to put our new found tricks into practice and rode the elephants bareback through the jungle. Scary, incredible and once in a lifetime. We washed them in the river at the end, used their showers and jumped back in the vans to head back to the hotel.

If you've never seen an elephant before it's easy to take the first opportunity in Thailand and not do enough research around the company. Seeing them in the flesh can be breathtaking, but its worth not ruining it with questions in the back of your head. Do the animals get hurt? Shouldn't they be in the wild? Baan Chang answers all of these and makes this experience more authentic and magical. I worried that no sanctuary would truly care about the animals, given the fact that the animals have been used for economic benefit for so many years, so seeing the amazing relationship that the staff had with them was unexpected and incredible. Definitely Top Tour #1.

Notes, Pads, Books and Logs.

Most people who read a lot as a kid end up developing some sort of strange obsession with stationary; whether it's getting a new pencil case every year or stock piling highlighters. For me, notebooks are a vice- i still get them as Christmas presents, always take advantage of offers in Smiths and had about hundred diaries when i was a kid. I always try to get a notebooks when i go away, i've got a gorgeous craft paper pad from India that feels like papyrus (i'm too scared to write on it) and a thick sleeve book with removable inserts from Malaga that i use for quick notes.

Some i use for recipes, others for University, one was for my dissertation and a couple for job applications and internships. The biggest use for them is for travel; buy one in one place and write in it at the next. I have a pretty bad memory so i always write down all the places i've been too, the restaurant names, city names, excursions and dates. Without my notebooks i would be lost!

For this very reason i sometimes think i should have been raised hundreds of years ago, dipping ink and writing on scrolls. I stare longingly at the kids in Harry Potter who for some reason haven't quite found pens, paper and computers- and yet the dementors manage to destroy the Millennium Bridge in the Half Blood Prince. I've tried writing my notes on word, compiling recipes with internet bookmarks, 'Notes' for IPad, NotesTab for my mac and computer stickies, but it's just not the same. No matter how far technology reaches i'll still be keeping my notebooks and buying new ones every year :). You can't teach an old dog new tricks.

Travel advice on a shoestring.

So when i travelled around Southeast Asia (Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos and Malaysia) i required a travel book. Firstly, for the advice that i obviously needed and secondly, because i just wouldn't feel right without one. Lonely Planet's guide was perfect because i didn't want to pay for five individual books and it covered all the above countries, a feat that itself was hard to find. However, this very fact and several of the other benefits of the guide came with massive downsides and i'm ashamed to admit it became more of a bulky burden than a saving grace.

Although the guide included all the countries i was going to, and one extra that was added on at the end, it still contained five countries i wasn't; not to mention the many cities i didn't go to within the countries i did. I carried nearly 1000 pages around with me for 2 months and 350 of them were never relevant. This is normal of travel guides, but 35% irrelevance is a massive stake.

There are many amazing cities in Southeast Asia and i would never want to be discouraged from visiting any of them, but i began to feel like the authors of the guide had no real opinions and preferences. Every city was 'the most captivating', 'most atmospheric', every beach the 'most popular back-packer stop', 'favourite back-packer idyll'. A lot of the comments in the guide were just massively generalised and offered no help at all when deciding between destinations. 'Whatever your flavour, no matter your taste, it's all here in Phnom Penh' was the silliest comment of them all because i didn't even end up liking it there.

But most annoying of all were the countless restaurants i looked for that i couldn't find. Whether the information was outdated or my navigation skills not up to scratch, it's probably better to recommend restaurants that are a little easier to get to. 

Being an avid advocate of paperbacks, and one of those people who loves the smell and feel of physical copies i really hate the fact that i spent more time on my IPad researching hotels and destinations than i did with my nose in this book. Southeast Asia didn't end up being on a shoestring, but this book certainly was; fragmentary information, outdated restaurants and yet still the heaviest thing in my backpack. 

However, this post isn't all criticism because i understand that this guide would be perfect for people with more time to explore each place, and more time to hit up every country. A great idea would be to develop a paper guide created for backpackers travelling for a few months. Removable sections (for when you know your not going to every country) and more specific information that really labels each city for a particular type of traveller, because travel writers should be honest that not every place is for every taste and flavour.

Going round in circles: a walking tour of London town.

I've lived in London for my entire life and as such you would have thought that i have been responsible for helping thousands of tourists to successfully venture around the city. From accompanying friends and making tours to pointing people in the right direction and lending a hand with our geographically inaccurate tube maps. However, as it turns out i don't know any of the names of buildings, get lost and wildly underestimate walkable routes. More than anything i've been responsible for sending people in the wrong direction. So with a foreign friend on the way i took the time to do a little research and find a great route to see the best of London town.

My route: London Eye, South Bank Centre, The Globe, Borough Market, Tower Bridge, The Tower of London, St Paul's Cathedral, Covent Garden, Trafalgar Square, Leicester Square, Piccadilly Circus, Regent Street, Oxford Circus, Bond Street, Hyde Park, St James Park, Big Ben and The Houses of Parliament.

Starting Point: The London Eye
Obviously a visual masterpiece, the Eye is a great place to start a walking tour on a high. Prices for a 'ride' are astronomical but the view from the river is excellent regardless of whether you go up or not, and from here a great walk down the river commences.

Walking along the river and down the South Bank Centre is one of my favourite things to do. Always dressed in bright colours the arts centre has an incredible marketing team who have created a strong, fun and friendly theme for the area that has transformed it from the skater park it was 10 years previous.

Continue walking along and you will get to one of my favourite places: The Globe. Standing tickets to any production, and there are many options if you're not a fan of Shakespeare, are just £5 and gorgeous if the rain stays away. Otherwise, the outside looks a treat and has excellent views of St Paul's over the river, and the Tate Modern and Bankside gallery next door.

There are several other attractions on the way to the next place: The Clink Prison Museum, The Golden Hinde Ship and Southwark Cathedral. But Borough Market is the best place to stop! Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays there's a massive food stall market, big English burgers, pans of paella, giant wheels of cheese and cakes galore. Anyone coming to London should make it their business to have lunch here; grab your favourite and sit down on the grass of Southwark Cathedral to give your legs a break from the route so far.

Still along the river the next stop is Tower Bridge, and walking along it to the Tower of London takes you back hundreds of years to a time of royal power and heritage. At this point the best idea is to get a big red bus along the North side of the river; not only an important experience in London but a physical necessity given the amount of walking so far! Depending on your religious stance a stop at St Paul's is a good stop on the journey aswell, however not personally my cup of tea as gargoyles sometimes shriek when i get too close.

You can get off the bus just before Charing Cross and head up Bedford Street to Covent Garden. An expensive place to grab food, Covent Garden is a really nice place to explore; there are artists clattered around sweet shops to meander around. Long Acre road (the road of the station) takes you to Leicester Square, Trafalgar Square and then Piccadilly Circus, both obvious places for tourists and easy to walk through.

The best and most iconic shopping can be done from here on. Regent Street leads to Oxford Circus, which connects Bond Street and famous Selfridges. Although you can get a bus if you're not up for more walking i wouldn't recommend it; the roads get massively congested and your bound to find shops you want to stick your nose in making the oyster fare null and void. Aligned to the left of Regent Street is a cluster of Italian restaurants that are great for dinner, and to the right is Carnaby Street, which has several little eateries with bistro food and bakeries.

At the end of Bond Street is Hyde Park, and at the end of that is Green Park with Buckingham Palace standing regal. Follow Spur Road down to the river and you've reached Big Ben, the Houses of Parliament and back to the beginning again- a view of the Eye. 

You've gone round in a circle, seen the best that London has to offer and you will probably need a bath full of radox to heal your aching legs! However, since the route is circular you can choose which places to begin and end at, making this route incredibly due able. Plus, whenever you get too tired to carry on you can stop and return the following day. Either way, London can be ticked off your list and i can promise you that you won't get lost. Unlike when you stop me on the street i've checked my facts, road names and cultural sites and i am pointing you in the right direction.

Travelling Tom

My dad's favourite travel writer is Graham Greene and i didn't quite grasp why when i had to read Journey Without Maps in an English class, as illustrated by the fact that it hasn't made it onto my bookshelf and instead has fit nicely amongst his old Penguins...

Instead, i've got my own favourite travel writer. I was given Short Walks From Bogotá by Tom Feiling as a Christmas gift (books are the go to present in my family) because i'm currently dating someone from Colombia. It's history is pretty heavy, especially when you have to get your head around Colombia's complicated political and cultural struggles for the first time, and so it was overwhelming at times. However, the history is indented with interviews and personal accounts and begins to feel like a collection of stories rather than academia. Even better is The Candy Machine, which basing itself around 'how cocaine took over the world' is a lot more applicable and relatable to us Westerners. 

I finally understood, not just the history, but how Colombia's war on drugs continues to this day as growers, distributors, consumers and politicians pass blame to one another. Learning about all the different agents was fascinating, along with the original uses and creation of coca in altitude medicine and certain fizzy drinks. I imagined Tom as Ross Kemp investigating the front lines of this war, speaking to individuals who needed to hide their identities. My ability to play out a book as a film in my head is always a great indication of its successful imagery!
I understand that Tom is an expert in Colombian history and works on campaigns advising aid, so i'm presuming a similar collection on other Latin American countries is unlikely. However, i'm still going to hope, and search for more of his books to make me an expert on Colombia when i eventually venture over there to.. dare i say it, meet the family.

The Name of the Wind

When you're as obsessed with your bookcase as i am, travelling book-light can be a massive challenge. Fortunately, small hotels and hostels tend to have little libraries, and if you can read a book in the time it takes to see a city, your completely set. Having said this, theres a limit to how many times i can read The Da Vinci Code and Fifty Shades of Grey, so it makes my day when beneath these modern 'classics' and their copies in every language, i find a little gem.

I would say that Tolkien's Middle-Earth is the ultimate fantasy world, his extensive and methodical creation of an imagined realm surpassed the detail attempted by other authors. I found an insane amount of these attempts in hotels, they all began with a map; mountains and regions, languages and make believe character types. When i first found The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss it had a map of 'The Four Corners of Civilization' and introduced it's lead as a wizard 'Kvothe' and i figured it would probably have as much substance as the other books that had failed, a thought substantiated by a single endorsement by Tad Williams on the back cover.

As it turns out, I LOVE THIS BOOK! Once i got through the first few chapters and Kvothe began to tell the story of his childhood, i became attached to his character. I felt a great sense of sympathy for him, and became interested in his life without magic along with being gripped by his mysterious and incredible feats. Being introduced to Kote as a mature Kvothe, the reader's desire is to witness the key magical events that gave him the reputation of 'dragon slayer, the renowned swordsman, the most feared, famed and notorious wizard' and yet i don't skip ahead to these parts and enjoy far more his day to day life with friends, at school and work. Kvothe is not only a fascinating wizard but a fascinating man. 

Usually the best books are the ones you can't put down, but i'm actively staying away from reading The Name of the Wind in order to delay my satisfaction and make it last a little longer. So, fortunately it's actually the first part of a trilogy and i've purchased the second now i'm home from travelling. I've even had to illustrate my post with a picture of the follow up because i immediately loaned out the first when i got home. It comes as no surprise to me that The King Killer Chronicle trilogy is actually a Sunday Times Bestselling series- it obviously wasn't when the original was published, popped on the shelf in my hotel in Thailand, and endorsed by a single fantasy writer. Now it has write-ups by Publishers Weekly and The Times, and it certainly deserves them. It was nice to find i loved a book before finding out the rest of the world does too!