Accommodation 
Malaysia: Blue Mansion Hotel in Penang(6)
Stepping inside the cool front hall of the Cheong Fatt Tze Blue Mansion is like stepping into a bygone era. It is easy to imagine the soft padded footsteps of wives, concubines, children, relatives, servants, and hangers-on scurrying in long silk gowns through the high-ceilinged rooms, most likely whispering intrigues behind intricately carved ivory fans.
The [...]
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Bangkok to Penang: 24 hour International Express Train
Nowadays, the internet is the source of instant information and this is especially true for travel news. I forget how I found www.seat61.com but in no time, I was intrigued by the very detailed account of how to get from Bangkok to Butterworth, which is the railway station to get to Georgetown on Penang Island [...]
Australia: Far North Queensland
As my blessed mother would say “it happens in the best of homes” when something went wrong. She certainly did not have a complete computer crash – and an external hard drive back-up! – in mind, but that is what I had to contend with, at the end of my trip to Australia. I won’t [...]
Australia: Daylesford and Hepburn Springs
No, I didn’t find any alluvial gold in Daylesford, an easy two-hour drive north-west of Melbourne. Unfortunately, the days of panning the river bed for gold are over. But back in the 1850s, it was gold that made this small city rich, along with a host of others along the so-called Goldfields Touring Route (Ballarat, [...]