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  • Reviews

Flushed with Success by Barbara Hunt

30/11/2018

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With just over an hour left in this year's competition, I have received an entry from Barbara Hunt in Australia. Best of luck in the competition Barbara.

Barbara says, 'I enjoy travelling, particularly to countries where the culture is vastly different to my own. I have had a few successes with flash fiction, short stories, memoir, and essay, but this is the first time I've written a travel piece.'

Flushed with Success 
 
Australian toilets are hotbeds for graffiti artists, so what a pleasant surprise it was when I used the pristine Japanese ‘loos’ at Narita Airport, Tokyo. What fascinated me was the selection of buttons on the handle to the right of the pedestal.

It had ‘spray’ and ‘bidet’ buttons, but the ‘flushing sound’ (dubbed ‘otohime’ – princess sound – after the Japanese folktale of Urashima Tarō) intrigued me.

Music makes white noise to help self-conscious women retain their dignity by masking those undesirable noises.

I did indeed feel like a princess when I emerged, head held high, my indiscretions disguised. 

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Underground by Gouri Prakash

30/11/2018

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A warm welcome to another newcomer, Gouri Prakash, with her last-minute entry to this year's Travel Highlights Competition. Will her entry be the last?​

Gouri Prakash
Gouri seizes every opportunity there is, to travel in order to discover and re-discover the world that we live in and to write about it.
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Underground 

A baby lizard, slithering across the damp wall, froze in its tracks, as I shone my torch over it. The bat, however, decided to continue its meditation. 200 feet beneath the Earth’s surface, I was inside the murky realms of Onandaga Caves.

Reddish-brown stalactites, clung like unlit chandeliers, to the cave’s ceiling. One hollow after another, a hut here, a hermit there, Nature’s sculptures abounded and embellished. Constant drizzle suffused the musty air.
​
The door was the deformity. I pushed at it. Sunlight streamed. I stepped out.  It felt, nothing short, of a rebirth, from the Earth’s womb.

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5 Travel Highlights by Sarah Owens

30/11/2018

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With only hours left in this year's competition it is a pleasure to feature five travel highlights from Sarah Owens, another newcomer to our travel writing contests.

​BIO:   I live and work in Cornwall and travelling is my passion.  I love writing about my travels, alone as a woman of mature years.
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I KNOW WHAT HEAVEN LOOKS LIKE
 
Our guide smiles revealing perfect white teeth. 
"Hello, my name is Heaven, welcome to Botswana."  So that's what heaven looks like: lean blue-black limbs, long neck and a smooth handsome face.  He poles our mokoro canoe parting the reeds of the Okavengo delta with a soft swish and calls to the other guides in his melodic voice.  I lie against my rucksack and settle into a dream like state.  Bright dragon flies dance above the surface catching droplets of water, sunlight blazing through their turquoise and emerald wings.  My fingers brush creamy water-lilies as we glide by.

WAKING IN DARJEELING 
 
The solemn sound of chanting wakes me.  Softly at first it grows louder and louder until it crescendos with drums banging. I part the thin curtains and sunlight streams in.  I catch my breath, Darjeeling bathed in a red glow from the early sun, sprawls out down the valley, prayer flags fluttering in the breeze.  In the distance, the snow-tipped Himalayas gleam sharp against cobalt skies.  The back breaking journey to get here is forgotten.  Throwing open the lattice windows, I lean out and breath pure mountain air.

​TO BE YOUNG AGAIN 
 
Siesta approaches and the busy streets of Granada empty.  I find a quiet plaza and sit with a coffee and sugary churros. Water sprinklers gently saturate the air spreading a soft mist scented with jasmine.
"Senorita, I play for you?"  I look up as a young man emerges from the shadows, his guitar slung low against his hip.  He smiles at a beautiful girl sitting at the table opposite and, resting his foot on a chair, plays bold tremolo scales and flamenco rhythms.  Vivid gypsy colours fill my mind, swirling skirts and stamping feet.  Oh to be young again.

WELCOME TO VIETNAM
 
Waves of bicycles, trucks and rickshaws flow around me.  I'm in Ho Chi Minh City the day before Tet and the crowds are vast.  The scent of sweet incense and fried rice mingles with rotting fish and ammonia from the Saigon River. The streets blaze with sunflowers, lanterns glow and dancing dragons shimmy to a throbbing beat.  At midnight golden fireworks illuminate the sky. A little girl dressed in Ao Dai embroidered with golden bamboo and peach blossom offers me candied ginger.
"Cam o'n ban," I try.  She giggles and hides behind her mother.

ELEPHANTS 
 
Scrambling up a termite mound I watch a mother elephant wade into the Zambezi river, but her family hesitate. She sucks in water and swirls her trunk spraying them. The herd join her but a bull calf remains on the bank.  His mother winds her trunk around his body and coaxes him in to join the fun, all the time she strokes and encourages him.  As they move away, the mother flaps her ears and turns her gentle eyes towards me. She's not threatening, just acknowledging my presence. They move off silently into the dense Zimbabwean bushveld and disappear.
 
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Rock, Paper, Scissors by Alan Packer

30/11/2018

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Our second featured highlight on the final day of this year's competition is from Alan Packer, another newcomer to our travel writing contests. 
​

Alan is a new travel writer splitting time between the Scottish Borders and Kosovo.
​
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Rock, Paper, Scissors 
 
Spring sap urged a final swell to the Mallorcan olive root burrowing in a rock crack. Wood won and three tons of limestone crashed into the Torrent de Pareis.
 
We were not there, just scrambled over the evidence.
 
Then came water carrying a whole tree downward until it broke its trunk, smashing into boulders and stopping. Rock won. The torrent scoured it clean of bark.
 
We climbed over the trunk, afraid. The flood had gone but, trapped, we swam through the deep pools to escape. The cold scissored our breath.


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Tea by Vernon Lacey

30/11/2018

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Today is the final day of the 2018 Travel Highlights Competition. It will be closed to further entries at midnight (UK time) and then opened up to a two-week public vote.

Our first featured highlight today is the second submission from Vernon Lacey. It is a true story adapted from his memoir South to Barcelona. If you haven't read Vernon's book yet then I would highly recommend it.

Tea 
 
‘¿Hay té?’ I ask the supermarket assistant. Is there tea?
‘¿Como?’ – Pardon- she says, puzzled.
I’m English. New in Spain. I’m pronouncing té the English way - tea.
‘No entiendo,’ the assistant says. I don’t understand.
I improvise. ‘Los ingleses – lo beben mucho.’  The English – they drink lots of it. It’s clumsy Spanish. I lift an imaginary teacup to my mouth.
Finally the penny drops. ‘¡Ah! Si. Si,’ the assistant says, all smiles. ‘Ven conmigo.’ Come with me.
She leads me to the back of the supermarket. There, to my shame, she points at the alcohol section.

Vernon Lacey 
​
I grew up in Cheshire, UK. I teach Philosophy, Drama, and English in Munich. Before moving to Germany I taught in Barcelona where I met my German wife. We have three children, Hannah, Myriam, and Aódhán. 
​

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At the Beatles Museum, Liverpool, standing next to George Harrison's guitar
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Day One on the Camino by Hannah Standen

29/11/2018

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On the penultimate day of this year's Travel Highlights Competition, it is fantastic to be able to feature another newcomer to our travel writing contests, Hannah Standen,

Hannah is an Australian writer currently based in London, England. As an adventure seeker and explorer at heart, she spends any chance she can travelling the world.

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Day One on the Camino

It’s hard to tell if it the drops of water running down my face are sweat or rain.
It is pelting down, my boots squelch in the mud.
Counting to ten as I put one foot in front of the other. Repeat.
My body aches, I peer up the mountain, searching for the peak.
Thick fog surrounds me, I put my head back down.
One, two, three.
I am deep in concentration so do not hear him at first. ‘Not long now’ he repeats flashing a cheeky smile.
He powers past as I begrudgingly sigh, ‘Only 29 days to go.’

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Tokyo Twilight by Suzy Pope

28/11/2018

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Our third featured highlight today is from another newcomer to our travel writing contests, Suzy Pope. Thanks for getting involved Suzy and best of luck in the competition.

Tokyo Twilight
 
Steam from the yakitori grill blurred the mushroom parade of umbrellas down Omoide Yokocho. Rain lashed Tokyo’s streets.
Quietly sipping an Asahi I planned my escape. Salarymen with rumbled shirts and loose ties passed around a microphone.
“Billy Jean is not my brother,” they screeched to tinny beats.
I’d accidentally crashed an anniversary party.
The microphone reached my end of the bar. I stood up to leave, but red-faces pleaded with me. I was 5,000 miles from home. Nobody knew me. I sang my heart out, off-key. They bought me enough Saki to see me through to 5am.  

Suzy Pope likes the boring parts of travel best. Timetables, waiting rooms, long train journeys, planning, and research. It’s probably because she’s a librarian as well as a freelance travel writer. She’s taken some of the longest, rockiest, most scenic and luxurious trains in the world and delighted in planning every second of the journey.
​

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Let there be Dragons by Deb Bott

28/11/2018

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With this year's Travel Highlights competition rapidly drawing to a close, it is a pleasure to feature this entry from Deb Bott.

Let there be Dragons by Deb Bott
 
Indonesia’s ‘Komodo Island’ is not for the faint hearted. The tour briefing said: not to run if we had a dragon charging us ‘yeah right’.
 
You smell them before you see them. Weighing in around 90 kilos and 3 meters long, the Komodo dragon is a frightening sight.
 
At the epi center eight dragons lazed in the hot sun. A staffer threw them some chicken carcasses and holy moly. All the dragons took off like grease lightening to get their share.
 
Now they were disturbed, crawling around the ground, slobbering, tongues smelling, they now wanted more and were looking at us!



Deb Bott 
 
If someone said to me 30 years ago I would be a sailor exploring the world’s oceans in my 50’s, I would have laughed in their face!
 
Until the year 2000 my entire boating experience was an overnight trip on a ferry from Melbourne to Tasmania at the tender age of 12.
 
During 2000 to 2009 we pottered about Moreton Bay, Queensland in three different sailing boats.
 
In 2010 we sold our home and moved on to our beloved Matilda.  
 
We retired in 2014 to enjoy sailing the east coast of Australia. We have sailed south to Eden, New South Wales and to the most northern point of Queensland to Cape York.
 
2016 was the year we left Australia bound for South East Asia.
 
My sailing experiences are what I base my entries on.


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Ferry to Albania by Vernon Lacey

28/11/2018

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A warm welcome today to Vernon Lacey with his first entry in our Travel Highlights competition.

As he explains, "It describes the approach to Albania I made by ferry in 1996, a few years after I'd qualified as a teacher when I was a) unmarried b) had no kids c) had way more time."

Ferry to Albania 

​A seabird hovered in the upper air, and then fell like an arrow, disappearing in the sea haze. I watched from a ferry deck as the boat chugged across the Ionian sea, Corfu distant, and the port of Saranda in Albania fast approaching. It was 1996. I’d volunteered for a summer-long, charity project renovating a maternity hospital in the north of the impoverished, ex-communist country. I’d read stories of violent gangs on remote roads. Ambushes. Dress like a pauper, we were told. In that hyphen of time, gliding over the sea, danger seemed impossible, and my heart was at peace.


Vernon Lacey

I grew up in Cheshire, UK. I teach Philosophy, Drama, and English in Munich. Before moving to Germany I taught in Barcelona where I met my German wife. We have three children, Hannah, Myriam, and Aódhán. 
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At the Beatles Museum, Liverpool, standing next to George Harrison's guitar. 
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See you later, Alligator by Katie Parry

27/11/2018

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Our second featured entry today is from Katie Parry, another newcomer to our travel writing contests. Best of luck in the competition Katie.

See you later, Alligator

​Disney World Florida. A whirl of candyfloss and creepy mouse costumes.  In the Everglades, we can finally breath.  Canoeing with alligators is to be the highlight.  Alas, I get over-competitive during a race home and tip myself and my mother into the swamp.  Panic!  We thrash around, desperate to get out of the water.  Our passports sink without trace.  Back on dry land, I am in disgrace.  My penance?  To sit for hours turning individual pages of our weed-covered bird book to stop them from sticking together.  And, much worse, no sour jelly beans for the rest of the holiday.


Katie Parry is an aspiring writer who longs to give up her day job and retire to a cottage by the sea with her two (currently imaginary) dogs and her (also often imaginary) notebooks.  Katie was brought up in the Scottish Highlands and loves mountains and swimming in cold water.  She has lived in the UK, France, Sierra Leone, Kenya, South Africa and the USA.

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