With under two weeks left in this year's competition, it is my pleasure to feature another two highlights from Alan Passey.

The Blessing by Alan Passey
 
We agreed that he was beautiful. The young shaven monk, twenty years old at most, amber robed and with skin as smooth as silk, sat smiling contentedly at the ungainly Westerners ranged before him. Each of us would receive a blessing, when, in turn, we shuffled forward, place our palms together and bend in supplication. He acknowledged each ungainly wobble on knees no longer fit for purpose. 
A short prayer in Khmer, for our knees, probably. A red band tied around our wrists to signify the blessing.
Six weeks later I still wear the band. My knees are holding out.

A warm welcome back to Sunny Lockwood with her first entry in this year's Travel Highlights Competition.

A Taste of Time Travel 
 
My Peruvian taxi driver says the most popular soft drink in the nation is Inca Kola.
 
"What's it taste like?" I ask.
 
He smiles mysteriously, "Unforgettable."
 
Suddenly, despite historic churches and monuments, all I want is to taste Inca Kola.
 
I get my wish.
 
Inca Kola is yellow.  Not pale yellow like lemonade. Piercing yellow like neon on a rainy night.
 
One sip and I'm immediately a child again, standing at our local grocery candy counter. Dusty sweetness. Excitement. Little kid giddiness. What time travel magic!
 
Another swallow and I understand.  I get it.

Inca Kola tastes like bubble gum.

Sunny Lockwood lives with her husband in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Western North Carolina (U.S.A.). Both retired, they write travel memoirs about their various adventures. Their books, available at Amazon.com, have won awards and fans from around the world.
 
Some of Sunny's favorite authors: Laura Ingalls Wilder, Loren Eiseley, Viktor Frankl, John Steinbeck and Alexander McCall Smith.
 
Her heroes include Albert Schweitzer, Nelson Mandela, Vaclav Havel, Prudence Crandall and Harriet Tubman.

It is a pleasure to feature two more entries from Helen Bing in our 2018 Travel Highlights Competition. 

In a Caravan Built for Two 
 
Thirty six hours from New Zealand to England, with 3 children, ready to
spend our first night of our 3 month stay in my sister-in-law’s 12 foot
caravan. That included the tow bar!
 
We’re jet lagged, and overwhelmed after a day with the extended family.
 
We’re tired.
 
Now it’s just us, the luggage and the caravan. We need sleep.
 
The sling style top bunk for you my daughter.
 
The divan bed below is for you, my son.
 
In between Mum and Dad, young one.
 
Sleep well, one and all.

Broome, Western Australia
 
Early this morning, the sun had turned the water a gentle turquoise, and the silvery light danced on the surface. Now the tide has filled the bay and the colour has intensified. A light breeze touches the surface.
 
The coastline that this morning sizzled with rich reds have now morphed into softer, sandy tones by the sun’s shadows. Scraggy trees silhouette the clear skyline. Gulls screech across the water.
 
It’s raw. It’s pristine. It’s Western Australia.

Kia ora.
 
My name is Helen Bing and I’m from New Zealand. Travel has been an important part of my life. Through travel, I met my husband and brought him home with me. This has meant we have family spread widely apart, so that has been another reason for us to keep travelling. In 1991, we took our 3 children back to England to connect with the extended family. My sister-in-law lent us her caravan for the 3 months, which was somewhat smaller than we anticipated, and, we found that the awning leaked. However, with a few tweaks here and there, things turned out just fine.

SUNSET 
 
From the sandstone bluffs
that rise abruptly
above the sand at Atlántida
the summer sun had not yet set
From the perspective of the beach
it was just disappearing
and a ripple of clapping
rolled into a wave
A mostly standing ovation
for this day’s duration
thank you for the sun now done
Applause crept up the bluffs
until all about me
homage was paid
to the sun
for the day it had made
​

Syd Blackwell

I was born in a little ski town that used to be a gold mining town in the mountains of southeastern British Columbia.  I also lived on the coast, on Vancouver Island, in the north, and even in northern Alberta for a decade.   I visited every province and territory in Canada, and more than 40 other countries.  I was an educator, an innkeeper, and an assisted living facilitator.  My life was rich with experiences before I left Canada less than two months before my 61st birthday.
​
Uruguay, has been our home for more than a decade.  My wife and I share our home with our five dogs. And quite a few visitors.   We have found time in our retirement to do things we never seemed to find time to do before.   I have found time to be a writer and an artist.  Both give me great pleasure.  We have continued to travel, particularly in South America.

It is a real honour to be able to feature the latest two entries in this year's Travel Highlights competition. They are from a newcomer to our travel writing contests, well-known writer, Adrian Sturrock.

Drowning in Berlin 

​I’m sitting in a bar with a friend, just a few hundred metres from a stretch of remaining Berlin Wall that flanks the river on this side of town. It’s late October, it’s well past dusk, and the rain that has consistently fallen since I arrived in this city is busy reflecting and animating the electric lights of surrounding buildings, passing cars, and the occasional glare of the overhead trains that intermittently rumble past our window. My first impression of this city is that it is hard, brutal, monochrome. Why then do I instantly feel comfortable here?​

Berlin East 

​The bar is ambiguously lit, allowing each table complete anonymity amongst the dark corners of the room. I laughingly describe the décor as ‘heroin-chic’; it is stark and decaying. This isn’t my usual type of haunt, but I do find comfort in it. The graffiti that has grown like wild ivy outside, consuming concrete and metal, appears to have spread its way in through the doorway and infected every aspect of the building with its imperative to communicate. It’s ugly; it’s unflinching; it’s reassuring. It says that Berlin is owned by its people, not by statesmen or sterile corporations.

Bio

Adrian Sturrock is a writer, occasional musician, teacher, and ethnic minority (except when in Wales), specialising mostly in observation and unconsidered opinion. He currently lives in Buckinghamshire, England, with wife, Natalie: his travel companion best friend, and the person responsible for keeping him out of trouble on social media. Adrian has written articles for a variety of online publications, as well as having excerpts of his poetry/lyrics displayed alongside those of Benjamin Zephaniah in Luton Town Hall. His first book, The Sat Nav Diaries has achieved a string of 5-star reviews on both sides of the Atlantic, resulting in it being nominated for the 2018 Kindle book Awards. His second book, RANDOM, is due for release in February 2019.
 

Latest entry in our 2018 Travel Highlights Competition is the third from Mark Boyter, winner of this year's Travel Stories Competition.

A Thai Swim 

My skin has turned the colour of hazelnuts. I float, and it glistens below the surface and catches the white filament lines from the sun. Nut brown in aqua. A wave laps into the sand, thins, dissolves, and is gone. Then another. Then quiet.

The steps at my hut are sandy and they burn against my bare feet. Coconut wood, baked silver and warped in the sun. It is just noon. Hang my towel on the clothesline. The horizon shimmers, azure over emerald. There is another island. The palms rustle, and then again, and then quiet. Like yesterday. Like tomorrow.  

Mark Boyter

Mark is a traveller and writer and a marathon runner. He loves wine with a good mouth-feel, films that make him laugh, and a good rack of BBQ ribs (which begs the question; is there such a thing as a bad rack of BBQ ribs?). His first book, the travel memoir Crescent Moon Over Laos, was published in 2014. His other writing includes smaller travel pieces and of the commonalities and influences that shape and inform our individual and collective lives. A college instructor by training, Mark has lived and taught in both Nagoya and Kyoto, Japan, the Emirate of Sharjah in the UAE, and both Toronto and Vancouver in Canada. At 59, he finally took the plunge and married his long-term partner. He lives, with increasing contentedness, in Richmond, British Columbia, with his new wife and their two cats, and when he isn't running or writing or drinking wine, tends the grape vines in their garden and marvels at what sun and water and time can create.

A warm welcome back to Elizabeth Moore with her first competition entry this year. 
Her highlight is a particularly poignant one for this Remembrance Day weekend.
Many thanks for sharing your experience Elizabeth.

Just 24 hours - Paris to Amiens
 
An early train from Gare du Nord. The hotel waitress named Matilda. World cup games streaming in the foyer. An early start to Hamel. Site of the 93 minute battle. An allied victory. The trenches still outlined in the soil. Surrounded by wheatfields. Poppies growing among the sugar beet. Driving to Villers-Bretonneux. Passing the lonely road taken to battle. The graves in white military rows. The beloved family name chiseled in marble. A time to talk to one never met. Tears for the life never lived in full. Lest We Forget.
​

Elizabeth Moore

Elizabeth has lived in Australia all her life. She is happily married, a mother of two, grandmother of five and devoted assistant to one very bossy tortoiseshell cat named Lucy. Her working career began as a speech pathologist and later morphed into the totally unrelated field of retail manager in a university science centre and planetarium.
​
Travel has always been a focus and yes – there has always been a bucket list. This was brought into stark relief when she was diagnosed with breast cancer and following treatment, a travel timetable began to take shape. Guam was first, followed quickly by European and North American adventures. Illness nudged another long-held interest to the fore and Elizabeth began chronicling her trips with extensive photography, promising herself she would also write about her exploits. 

The latest entry in our 2018 Travel Highlights Competition is from Julie Watson.  Thanks for taking part Julie.

Not eating noodles the right way

I enter the brightly lit noodle shop and point. The house speciality, please. Knotty brown noodles in a seaweed soup. My first day in Japan - a gaijin, fresh off the plane.

I sit, wait, nervously twiddle the bamboo waribashi, practising my chopstick technique. A steaming bowl arrives. I dip (don’t spear), clasp firmly, raise and suck.

Help! I’m being watched. A Japanese family. All eyes glued on me. What’s wrong?  Uncoordinated chopsticks? Slurping?

“Hidari-kiki?” asks the mother.

Left-hander?  Then a lightbulb moment.  Yes, I am!  Rarely seen in this land of 90% right-handedness. But my table manners went unnoticed.

It is always a pleasure to welcome newcomers to our travel writing competitions. Today I am privileged to be able to feature a travel highlight from ​Elizabeth Gowing. Many thanks for getting involved Elizabeth.

Cinderella in Përmet
​
My plate had been studded with amber, jade and ruby. These were Përmet’s famous ‘gliko’ sweetmeats, made from walnut, aubergine and pumpkin.
 
The secret lies in first soaking the rinds in lime. Then they’re boiled in sugar and lemon juice with geranium flowers to produce a tender, fragrant treat.
 
With lunch finished I was now trying another southern Albanian indulgence – the nearby warm springs.
 
There had been no-one at the natural pool so I’d stripped, and lolled here in the blue water feeling the sulphur-softness on my rejuvenated and sweetened skin; experiencing what can happen to pumpkins in Përmet.

Bio:
​
Elizabeth Gowing has lived in Albania for the last five years. She is the co-founder of The Ideas Partnership charity working in the Balkans on education, environmental and cultural heritage projects, and the author of four books on the region. Her translations from Albanian to English have been published by Rrokullia Press. She is a frequent contributor to BBC Radio 4's 'From Our Own Correspondent'.
​

A warm welcome back to another of our regular contributors, Syd Blackwell, with his third entry in this year's Travel Highlights Competition.

VIBRATIONS 
​
Winter driving in northern British Columbia is tough.   My whole body was tingling.  I found a motel.  I just wanted to flop on the bed for an hour.   I switched on the room light and then I saw it!   I had a Magic Fingers Vibrating Bed !   I´d never seen one.  However, I didn’t need more motion.  I just flopped on the bed.  And it started vibrating!  Then it stopped.  I got up, checked the bed, checked the coin box, and then warily lay back down.  Nothing happened.  Later, at the restaurant, everyone was talking about the small earthquake.

Syd Blackwell

I was born in a little ski town that used to be a gold mining town in the mountains of southeastern British Columbia.  I also lived on the coast, on Vancouver Island, in the north, and even in northern Alberta for a decade.   I visited every province and territory in Canada, and more than 40 other countries.  I was an educator, an innkeeper, and an assisted living facilitator.  My life was rich with experiences before I left Canada less than two months before my 61st birthday.
​
Uruguay, has been our home for more than a decade.  My wife and I share our home with our five dogs. And quite a few visitors.   We have found time in our retirement to do things we never seemed to find time to do before.   I have found time to be a writer and an artist.  Both give me great pleasure.  We have continued to travel, particularly in South America.
​