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

VIBRATIONS 
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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.
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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.
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Today it is my pleasure to feature the fifth and final travel highlight from Ronald Mackay. He has been a tremendous supporter of our travel writing competitions this year, having entered the maximum five stories and five highlights.  Each of his entries have been a pleasure to read. Many thanks for all your contributions Ronald.

A Number Followed by Lots of Zeros 

“For your expenses, Sir. Please sign.”

The wad of twenty-eight million pastel-coloured Rupiah notes surprised me by their modesty.

I signed; locked most in my room-safe; attended my appointment.

“We’ll talk in the gardens created when Java was Dutch.”

We planned, reviewed, agreed all project details.

A screech, irate, blocked my exit from the restroom. The official hand demanded payment due. Uncertain, I selected a pretty note. A number followed by lots of zeros. The screech transformed into a prayer, hands pressed together in recognition of the divinity in me.

For whoever tips a year’s earnings indeed must be divine.

Ronald Mackay

​For much of his professional life, Ronald Mackay planned, managed and evaluated projects throughout the developing world. Slowly, he learned a great deal about how to live comfortably in very different cultures. Now he and his wife live a quiet life on the shores of Rice Lake in Ontario, Canada.

The latest entry in this year's Travel Highlights Competition is the second from Mark Boyter, our 2018 Travel Stories winner.

There’s nothing funny about the philtrum
 
When you are in Pokhara, Nepal, in a two-chair wood frame barber shop getting a straight razor shave, and after the barber has lathered your whiskers and dabbed your moustache and stropped the razor and proved it once, twice, through a square of paper and scraped clean your throat and cheeks and he takes you by the nostrils and pulls your head back and presses the blade firm against the hollow of tightened skin above your lip and in the mirror you see your friend pull his nose and snort, the most important thing to remember is not to laugh.

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.
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BRIEF ENCOUNTER #1

The hunky Swede I met by chance at a sidewalk cafe in Bangkok started to explain to me why he can’t tell anyone back home what he and his buddies saw (and did?) in Pattaya, the raunchy sex capital of Thailand. He seemed genuinely disgusted.

I am eager to hear the lurid details—practically salivating—but before he can spill them the driver of the van taking him to the airport blasts his horn.

I was so disappointed, but felt better the minute I moved Pattaya to the top of my list of places to visit. I can’t wait. 

BRIEF ENCOUNTER #2

Mosquitos? I’ve met many, but none were as excited to see me as the ones I encountered at a modest guesthouse in sleepy Nong Khai in northeast Thailand.

They laughed hysterically every time I slathered myself with repellent then buzzed with glee as they furiously attacked me gorging on my blood until bursting.

What’s worse? They ruined my chances for a sizzling tryst with a new friend, a rakish Dutchman. Apparently, he was put-off by my incessant scratching, scratching, scratching and my body (once so luscious) with dozens of ugly red bumps failed to entice him. I’ll never forgive them.

I have a real treat for you this Friday evening (or Saturday morning New Zealand time). Robyn Boswell, one of our regular contributors, has submitted three entries in one go to our 2018 Travel Highlights Competition.  I hope you enjoy them as much as I have.

Just One Day 
 
Blue, smudgy early morning light in Wells Beach, Maine. The grey clapboard houses standing shoulder to shoulder crowded the beach. So alien to my eyes, used to the South Pacific’s clear, sharp colours. I wandered down the hard sand and dabbled my feet in the cold crispness of the Atlantic Ocean. Hours later, late afternoon, in bold, brash, noisy Los Angeles. I took a taxi to Santa Monica, wandered down the soft sand by the pier and paddled in the warm Pacific. My ocean, but still not my home. One day, two great oceans.

Shaky Isles 
 
12am. Woke up as my bed slid backwards and forwards across the floor. Looked across the motel room at Julie sitting bolt upright in her bed. Said to her “Is this an earthquake?” No reply. Suddenly everything began to groan, crack and bang; cupboard doors crashed open and shut, open and shut. The beds kept sliding then  juddered as they bounced up and down. The land roared. Eventually Julie said “Is it supposed to last this long?” Slowly the movement stopped and absolute silence reigned. On reflection, a 7.8 was an overwhelming introduction to my first earthquake.

It’s a Small World 

After a few weeks in the dryness of the Australian desert, Innot Hot Springs was an oasis, promising a chance to soak our weary bones. My sister and I soaked in the motel’s hot outdoor pool under a cascade of stars, chatting to the only other guests, an Australian couple. Hearing we were from New Zealand, they said they only knew one person in New Zealand, in Dunedin, almost as far away from our home as it was possible to get. We only knew one person in Dunedin. Chatted further. Their friend was our friend’s brother. Strange, but true!

Robyn Boswell New Zealand

I live in the spectacular far north of New Zealand surrounded by the beautiful South Pacific Ocean. My family have lived here since the earliest days of settlement in New Zealand.  I love to travel and have been fortunate to have had the opportunity to travel to many corners of our wonderful planet. However, my heart always draws me back to the South Pacific. I have chronicled my trips through scrapbooking and journal writing so my memories are always with me.
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