Google El Salvador and it won’t be long before you find an image of heavily tattooed men staring out from behind bars. I guess that is why gang warfare is the first thing many people think about when they hear of the country. But there must be far more to…

And so I embark on a week in a country that spans Asia and Africa; that can trace its history back to the 6th millennium BC; that has the highest population in North Africa, the Middle East or the Arab world; and that has the only remaining example of the…

Ah Ecuador. A lifetime ago I had a girlfriend who lived there and sent back microscopically small handwritten letters about the Galapagos Islands, addictive soap operas and late night forest adventures. As a result, although I’ve never been, it holds a special place in my heart. …

I first heard of East Timor in 2000 when I was living in Kangaroo Valley Australia as a Willing Worker on Organic Farms. The man we were WWOOFING for was Peter Wesley-Smith, who had worked in Hong Kong and saved the resultant money to buy Australian land and return it…

I’ve never really been a fan or borders, and when you see an island cut in two by an arbitrary declaration of ownership it brings the flaws of nation states into sharp focus. I guess it particularly rankles given that I live in an Island that is cut into three…

There are at least two problems with Armchair Travelling to Dominica. The first is that Google finds it really hard to distinguish it from the Dominican Republic and the second is its tiny size. To give you some sense of what I mean, 18.5% of the world lives in China…

This blog is partly driven by my love of Birmingham’s multiculturalism and a desire to see how many countries’ food and culture I can experience without ever leaving the conurbation. Over the weeks I have found many fun little niche shops and restaurants, but Djibouti has stumped me. …

“Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.” ― Søren Kierkegaard Denmark, the land of Hamlet, Kierkegaard and Carlsberg makes some of the most challenging films in the world. I know this because at the turn of the millennium I had got briefly obsessed with the…

Czechia, formerly known as the Czech Republic, Czechoslovakia, the Czech and Slovak Federative Republic, the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic, the first, second, third and fourth Czechoslovak Republics, the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, and the Kingdom of Bohemia, has been a key part of the power plans of the Austro-Hungarians, the…