Stories behind the stories. By Travel Writer, Amy McPherson
Lovers of Harry Potter and Pokemon Go can vouch for this: there is nothing more exciting than being able to find fantastic beasts or discover mythical creatures in our surroundings, even if it’s imagined. One of those things about travel is that sometimes, you can let you are imagination be carried away with you, and …
Some days, words just flow. I can produce a thousand word copy in an hour, and will have plenty of time to review and edit it before my deadline. Today was one of those days that I’ve lost the words, the sentences and pretty much spent three hours formulating a paragraph that I end up …
Resolutions are a thing of the past. How many times have we set resolutions only to completely forget about them by February? So I’ve decided to give up on resolutions and to set new year goals instead, and for 2017, I am going to lift that bar just a little bit higher. My personal KPI …
I am procrastinating (a fancy word to use when I hit the writer’s block), so I thought I’d use this time to tell you about my life in Surbiton. Surbiton is on the train line to Hampton Court and is officially a suburb of London, but besides the great transport links into the city, it feels as far …
Preparations are under way for this year’s Asian Women Empowerment Conference (AWEConnect 2016), an initiative started by Juno Kim of RunAwayJuno to share and connect with women on work, life and everything in between. I have known Juno virtually for a long time and I had attended the first ever AWE in Kuala Lumpur …
I think it’s important for everyone to look back to their year and recognise what they had done and achieved. It isn’t a show off exercise, but one that can give you the chance to sit down, relax and think of all the memories that you’ve accumulated in the year, revisit some of the happy …
As a traveller I don’t believe in politics. I believe in humanity and friendship and I have been avoiding this topic for a long time, but it seems that it’s time to talk about terrorism. News haven’t been pleasant recently. Humans are turning on each other, either on difference in opinion or on the …
Last in my interview series about family travel is with well known travel blogger Lois Yasay. She co-founded the We Are Sole Sisters website sharing her travelling stories, recommendations and advice, as well as encouraging more women to make travel happen for themselves, and is now also e-book author and motivational speaker. Last year, Lois turned …
I’ve started a small interview series because there has been a surge of people having babies at the moment. I guess I am at the age where friends and family are going to be thinking about adding the extra numbers to their little gangs. It’s delightful, because parenthood does make one happy (so I can …
I met Nila during the 2013 Asian Womens Empowerment Conference in Kuala Lumpur. She is the founder of Travel Sparks Indonesia, and the all inspiring Taman Bacaan Pelangi (Rainbow Reading Gardens), a non-profit organization focuses on establishing children’s libraries in remote areas of Eastern Indonesia. Like me, she is a keen traveller and 32 countries later …
People in their environment have always intrigued me. While meeting them on my travels and taking part in festivals and cultural events form the highlights of most of my trips, I also take a lot of time people watching, observing behaviours and actions as the inhabitants of a place go about their daily routine. …
So, as you now know, that it has been a year since our formal move to the UK. While we don’t actually live in ‘London‘ proper, we do spend a load of time working, studying and entertaining in London. While having explained myself numerous times, there are still questions about what exactly what I like …
Here’s a question I’ve been asked recently: “what does living unconventionally mean to you Amy?” It was on Twitter, so I was limited to 120 characters. In short, my answer was: I think that everyone needs to be true to who they are and what they want out of life, and not to follow a path …
I hear that some of you have been inquiring over me. Never fear, I am still alive, despite mum and dad’s insistence of not feeding me every time I actually need to be fed. I keep telling them by nagging and clawing at the door, but I get ignored each time. So I spend most …
We all have places where we go to just breathe, sometimes for a long time but more often just for a couple of days, where we escape the daily grind, away from the routine that is wake up, breakfast, train, work, lunch, work, train, home, dinner, sleep. Some escape to shop, others escape to enjoy …
Dad’s turn :) 爸爸寫: Dad writes: 法國人浪漫崇尚自由，巴黎被稱為浪漫之都. 艾菲爾鐵塔，凱旋門,羅浮宮,凡爾賽宮,塞納河,紅酒左岸咖啡,這些名詞都是我來巴黎之前所學到的． The French are romantic and adore freedom, and Paris is known as the romantic city. Eiffel Tower, Arc de Triomphe, Louvre, Palace of Versailles, Seine river, red wine and coffee are some of the words I associated with Paris before our visit. 這一次的歐洲之行，是女兒幫我們規劃的，法國是我們造訪的第四個國家. 我們從德國法蘭克福搭火車三個小時到達巴黎，女兒的朋友 Ching 已經在火車站等我們了，他將負責導引我們在巴黎三天的旅遊. This European …
媽媽寫: Mum writes: 女兒女婿親子來荷蘭接我們，由阿姆斯特丹坐快車到德國的科隆.科隆有世界著名的古教堂，高大宏偉壯觀是世界古蹟遺產之一，也有很大的廣場，在廣場的酒吧內第一次喝到了德國啤酒. My daughter and her husband came to pick us up after the cruise in Amsterdam, and we took an express train to Germany’s Cologne. Cologne has the iconic historical church, tall and grand and is one of the world heritage sites. 科隆的小餐廳並非以華麗取勝，而是有很多典雅的擺飾. 店內只賣啤酒和一些傳統的食物. 客人多為喝酒而來，侍者均以小杯呈上，不過會推銷無數次的續杯. Cologne’s small pubs and restaurants are decorated with …
My mother has been inspired to write a post about her journey in Europe. A first time writer, she decided to use my blog as a platform so she can share her story with her friends. This post is in Chinese, translated to English by me (sorry it’s not perfect, translation is not my forte!). …
Hello. Yep, that’s me. They put me in a cage, and I was not happy. So I wanted to write to tell you about the time I took the 24 hours flight. Mid last year mum suddenly disappeared on us for a few months. Angel and I were placed in the care of aunt Krista …
Hello. Yes, it’s the cat writing. I’ve been quiet for too long about this and it’s time to break my silence. Seeing that you have all been following what my mother gets up to trotting around the globe, I figured that you already know the pain and sufferance she has endowed upon me (not us, …
(First published on Huffington Post Blogs: 10 Reasons Why Travellers Make Terrible Friends) Yep. You know us. We are the ones who post photos and updates from exotic places on Facebook. We are the ones whose fashion collection make up of cultural rags from all the countries we have been. We are your friends. Your …
It’s been a running joke at work, because no one so far has done it this way round, that I had moved to the UK because I preferred the weather. I have (officially) been here for a couple of weeks now and have seen the weather turn from beautiful to horrid, most times within a …
I have a thing for sunsets, as you probably have gathered from my post about Chasing Sunsets. This particular sunset was captured on Baracay Island in the Philippines, taken by Peter Navea. It has been almost a year since our trip to the Philippines. We never made it to Baracay but it is certainly on …
I was driving home last night from the east side of Sydney back to the west. I haven’t driven this way for a while and at one stage took the wrong turn and instead of heading toward the main road that would have taken me directly west, I was heading east again. Then, like the …
