What is it so many world leaders, renowned entrepreneurs, inventors, artists and authors all have in common in their pursuits for excellence, their chasing of dreams? Surprisingly, it is not high IQ, or work obsession, access to buckets of money, or absurd luck, although all those things would be very nice. The one common denominator … Read more
You may glean from the photo of the bookshelf above my desk that that I am a bit of a Lonely Planet fan. Having romped my way across over 85 countries, it is my primary travel guide of choice. But even so, I have found other great, unusual and possibly confronting uses for a Lonely Planet guide than just reading it; here is my Top five:
At the southern end of Anzac cove, a concrete bunker lies blasted and crippled, tilted on an angle and lapping in the water, its sides pockmarked by bullets. I climbed into its claustrophobic cell, crouched and peered through the narrow gun slot. In front of me panned the sparkling blue water of the Aegean Sea, a strip of sand, and the steep cliffs and ridges above. It was a beautiful setting, an ideal place for a resort – if it wasn’t a cemetery reserve.
I had always dreamed of being backstage in the ‘green room’. Mingling with other ‘stars,’ I could indulge in outrageous demands such as having coconut water shipped in from a remote island or insisting that I receive a foot massage every thirty minutes.
To achieve that fantasy I probably shouldn’t have been presenting at a school-run book festival. But the green room at the Gold Coast’s Somerset Celebration of Literature remained a highlight.
I had dreamed of travelling around Vietnam for many years. Sailing Halong Bay, riding sleeper trains into the deep north, sipping coffee in Hanoi and crawling through war tunnels. The only small hurdle to this vision of lazy independent wandering was that I was no longer a solo backpacker. My travelling entourage now included my wife and two kids aged 13 and 11. Still, when the travel siren called I knew I had to act, so the plan quickly morphed. I would don my old backpack, pack up my family and hit the road, spending less time in dorm-bed hostels than I had once envisaged.