New Articles for Private Air Magazine

During October, I wrote three articles for the bi-monthly Private Air Magazine – and they have all just been published. Two are foreign investment pieces, and the other is a destination piece. You can read the openings of each below…

Shenzhen: A Better Investment than Hong Kong?
“For more than half a century, Hong Kong has been one of the world’s great economic success stories. Thanks to a mass influx of Chinese immigrants and foreign business people during the mid-20th century, the autonomous city-state boosted its economy to impressive levels, and so established itself as one of the biggest financial and investment centres not only of Asia, but of the world. However, in recent years Hong Kong has had to cope with an ever-growing threat to its established global position – and it’s a threat coming from next door.” // Click to read more

Ukraine Again: Is Real Estate Investment Back?
“On 2nd October 2012, the Ukrainian government passed an amendment to their Land Code that allows non-citizens to become land owners when they buy real estate. It’s an attempt to combat a property market crisis that has enveloped the nation since 2008, and to tempt back the scores of American, British and Middle Eastern investors who helped grow the economy so dramatically at the turn of the century. The question that really needs to be asked is whether Ukrainian property remains an attractive opportunity for foreign investors.” // Click to read more

The Call of the Cayman Islands
“The Cayman Islands may be best known as an offshore tax haven, but any regular visitor will attest that this charming corner of the Caribbean has far more to offer than pinstripe-suited bankers and fat cat financial lawyers. These Caymans are also bewitchingly beautiful holiday havens…” // Read more

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Jordan’s Surprise Luxury Tourism Trend

“It was 200 years ago that explorer Johann Burckhardt rediscovered the Nabataen city of Petra. The ancient architectural masterpiece, in which stately façades are carved from pink sandstone cliffs, immediately caught the collective imagination of the Western world and was swiftly transformed into a booming tourist attraction.

However, over the last decade there’s been a concerted effort in Petra – and Jordan at large – to play down this mass tourism appeal and target the niche luxury market. From high-end hotels to haute cuisine, there’s now a trend for quality over quantity…”

This is the beginning of a new web article for Forbes Travel Guide, and you can click here to read it all. With thanks to Mövenpick, Royal Jordanian and Bacall Associates.

Heart of Seoul: Five Grand Palaces in Two Days

“It’s 10am when the drum beat starts. The heavy thud-thud-thud of anticipation. The crowd falls silent – even the breeze drops to a whisper – as the relief guards appear at the gate. Resplendent in uniforms of crimson and cornflower, holding colorful banners aloft and accompanied by a cacophony of bugles and conch shells, they slow-step in synchronicity across the palace courtyard towards the on-duty sentries.

The Changing of the Guard at Gyeongbokgung Palace is one of Seoul’s oldest traditions. This display of military might first took place in 1469 and today guards are changed six times a day, on the hour, in a festival of color where ceremonial costumes, instruments and weapons whirl past in all directions. A rare and welcome celebration of prestigious past in a city – and country – preoccupied with the future…”

This is the introduction of my latest article for Serendib, SriLankan Airways’ inflight mag. You can read the rest here.

Travel guide writing for Forbes

During the last couple of months, I have been employed as a Travel Guide Consultant for the renowned Forbes Travel Guide, contributing a variety of content on cities across Europe for their new online platform Startle.com.

To date, I have completed ‘Question and Answer’ projects for ten major cities throughout the continent, namely Edinburgh, Glasgow and London (Great Britain), Frankfurt (Germany), Prague (Czech Republic), Salzburg and Vienna (Austria), Stockholm (Sweden), Warsaw (Poland) and Zurich (Switzerland), and with any luck there will be more guides to come soon.

You can keep track of every contribution on my Forbes biography page.

Travel Guides Now Online

Good news! After putting it off for a disproportionately long time, I have finally, finally, uploaded all the travel guides I have completed in the last year to this very website.

Since the beginning of 2011 I have written dozens of guides, itineraries and reviews on everywhere from Cardiff to Cancun – with particular focus on my joint residences of the UK and the Czech Republic – and they are now available for everyone to see!

Visit my new Travel Guides page here. Or read my GuidePal guide to Prague here.

GuidePal City Guide to Florence

As it’s been an unforgivably long time since my last post, I thought I’d take a couple of minutes to point you in the direction of the thing that’s been keeping me so goshdarn busy… the incomparable GuidePal city guide to Florence. That’s right – I did a guide.

As the world’s leading smart phone travel guide application, this is officially the best free downloadable guide to Florence out there. Probably. So if you’re lucky enough to be heading to this cultural capital, why not take my wise words along for company?

Incidentally, if you’re heading to Prague or Edinburgh, I wrote those city guides too…

Europe’s Best Cemeteries #2

Old Jewish Cemetery – Prague, Czech Republic

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The Old Jewish Cemetery in Prague is, rather predictably, a cemetery for old Jews: specifically, those who snuffed it between 1439 and 1787. During this time the Jewish community was kettled into a tiny ghetto, having to stuff their stiffs into a 60-metre-square graveyard, and so over three centuries it was crammed with around 100,000 bodies. Which explains why it has Europe’s highest concentration of tombstones.

FUN FACT!!! Prague’s famous cemetery only survived Nazi occupation because Hitler wanted to preserve it as ‘a museum to an extinct race’.

You can read the whole article – Killing Time in Europe’s Best Cemeteries – in the August edition of stalkingElk

Weird Beards and Other Bohemian Oddities

I have had a travel article published in the May issue of stalkingElk – a brand new comedy satire magazine, for which I’m the official ‘roaming correspondent’. It’s all about the more hidden and unusual side of Prague, and here’s how it starts:

“The Czechs have given us many great words over the years: from ‘pistol’ to ‘polka’, ‘robot’ to ‘howitzer’. But when it comes to haughty pomposity, nothing beats ‘Bohemian’. A drama student’s wet dream of a moniker, it tells the world you are both somebody with artistic leanings, who refuses to conform to the conventional standards of behaviour, and a pretentious tit. So surely Prague, as the capital of Bohemia, is the world’s least conventional city. Well, if that means it has some weird shit then yes. Yes it does.

Here’s just a small sample of Prague’s many peculiarities…”

If you’d like to read more of ‘Weird Beards and Other Bohemian Oddities’, you can click here for the whole article. Or if you want to read more of the kind, you can visit the stalkingElk website and buy the whole mag for just £3. Bargain!

Bohemian Oddity #3: Mezi Ploty Festival

Prior to the late April release of my new travel article in stalkingElk, I’ll be previewing a few of the Bohemian oddities that will be featured. This final post is about Prague’s maddest – in every sense – music festival.

There are some amazing music festivals in Europe. If you were so inclined, you could start the party season at the multimedia, Renaissance subculture festival Netmage in Bologna, take a break at the arty, classical ponce-fest that is St. Magnus on Orkney and then end your summer with the intimately Arctic mish-mash rave of Iceland Airwaves in Reykjavik. But for all Europe’s unusual, eclectic music festivals, none come close to the bizarre two-day summer music and theatre bonanza that is Prague’s Mezi Ploty. Continue reading

Bohemian Oddity #2: Two Pissing Men

Prior to the late April release of my new travel article in stalkingElk Magazine, I’ll be previewing just a few of the Bohemian oddities that will be featured. This time it’s an interactive urine-based fountain sculpture. Yes, really.

David Černý is a man who courts controversy. Whether it’s by submerging Saddam in a big tub of formaldehyde or lampooning a continent with a stereoype-fueled European Council installation, the Czech sculptor is always plotting new ways to ruffle the collective feathers of the middle classes. But nothing has got the Prague public talking more in recent years than his bizarre yet poetically-titled fountain sculpture Piss. Continue reading