Category Archives: Travel writing: the fun stuff
Outskirts of Bangkok: the monk, the BMW and the Death Railway
Dispatch from Bangkok
Sat 3/23/02 12:28 PM
It was 90 degrees in the shade today.
Fortunately, we spent most of our time in the air conditioned sixth car of the weekly government excursion train to the River Kwai Bridge.
The highlight of today’s 15-hour, $5 roundtrip rail adventure obviously was the bridge, which we were able first to walk [...]
My first encounter with Communist China: And I’d thought Wal-Mart in America was cheap!
Dispatch #2 from Kunming, China
Tue 3/19/02 8:46 AM
In this Chinese city of 3.3 million, there are few outward signs of communism.
On the contrary, Kunming is a grimy, bustling semi-metropolis teeming with commerce. It has more in common with what I expected to find, and did find, in Hong Kong than with what I expected from [...]
Macau confidential: “Happy! Happy! Happy! Haw! Haw! Haw!”
Dispatch from Kunming, China
Sun 3/17/02 6:25 AM
Dear Friends,
We’re now in Kunming, capital of the Yunann province of the People’s Republic of China. We’ll be here only long enough to arrange permission and transportation for the Burma road, then we’ll head out. In the meantime, we’re enjoying spending $12 USD per night for a hotel room [...]
In Hong Kong, a shampoo Jean Valjean
From: jeremyhildreth
To: triplist
Date: Fri 3/15/02 3:35 AM
Subject: Dispatch from Hong Kong
Dear friends,
As I travel the world for the next three months, I’ve promised to keep in touch with all of you as much as possible. Please feel free but not obligated to reply to these dispatches.
I arrived in Hong Kong two days ago, [...]
Heat Treatment ‘02: Revisiting the travel writing that started it all
In 2002, just before coming to England to do my MBA at Oxford, I burned up three and a half months by taking the most extraordinary journey I may ever take.
And writing about it.
Adventure in Timor 4: A destination in the making
Day 7
Leaving my hotel about ten o’clock on Friday, One Last Bar is where I went first. Here I met a UN adviser named Scott who advised me that the next bar to go to was a Brazilian place down by the beach called Exotica. I took a taxi (it’s just outside of central Dili, [...]
Adventure in Timor 3: “The warrior spirit” embodied
“The warrior spirit” embodied
Adventure in Timor 2: Xanana’s hideout
In East Timor, Jeremy lifts the floorboards and climbs into Xanana Gusmao’s hideout.
Adventure in Timor 1: Something extraordinary happened here
Note: I wrote this in 2005; it’s only ever seen the light of day in the Saffron-produced ‘how to sell East Timor’ book I wrote and directed for an identity project in this tumultuous country. But I loved Timor. The country has just celebrated 10 years since its people voted for freedom from Indonesia (a [...]
Dispatch from Ghadames, Libya
With Saint-Exupery in a tent in the Sahara.
Jeremy Hildreth




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