March 2010. Life in Singapore was the usual round of sybaritic bar-hopping, jungle exploring and expeditioning to nearby tropical islands for spicy food or monkey-spotting. In a word, easy — but a tiny bit boring. Down at the Crazy Elephant bar on Clarke Quay, the cover band was pumping out…

My childhood was spent in a picture-book English village. Jam for tea, a crumbling vicarage (and vicar), whiffy spinsters and grubby knees after school. Real end-of-empire stuff. The house I grew up in was a big rambling place in the middle of the village. On the front edge of the…

Gerik is a small town in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of Malaysia. It is, in my opinion, home to some of the best roti prata in Malaysia if not the world, and scene of one of the most memorable motorcycle accidents I’ve ever been involved in. Roti…

There’s this bar in Singapore, called Number Five. It’s an institution; it has been for the last 30 years. One year, it gave us a big Christmas surprise. Number Five counts loan sharks, SPGs, expats, chancers from every country in the world, bankers, gangs of tourists, ah bengs and more…

There I was, at the side of the road under a massive underpass, bang in the middle of sweaty, gritty, buzzing, throbbing, and humid Bangkok. …

Almost 200 years ago, a ship called the Eliza III set sail from London, bound for Van Diemen’s Land. On board were 115 women convicted of stealing, cheating, immorality and possibly annoying English toffs. One of the convicts was called Jane. Jane was a seamstress, a convicted lace thief and…

March 1982, Argentina. Tens of thousands of people were ‘disappeared’ by anonymous men in the hours of darkness. Suspected communists were being taken away, tortured then thrown out of military aircraft over the south Atlantic. Soldiers with assault rifles stood outside all important buildings. …

I first met Aliyah at a posh art exhibition in Singapore. Singapore has lots of boozy events masquerading as cultural happenings; this was just one of many that month. Aliyah stood next to me at one painting, and asked me what I thought of it. …

Whalesharks are big in Donsol. Also in Donsol, Jesus is black. We had gone to see the whalesharks, but got mixed up with Jesus. It’s that kind of place. The largest recorded whaleshark (that’s butanding in Tagalog) came in at a squeak under 19m long, and was estimated to weigh…