There are trolls in Norway. Real trolls, not those socially-stunted, hate-fuelled nuisances that lurk on messageboards and shout abuse at every rational, reasonable comment and make jokes at the expense of 13-year-old suicide tragedies. No, I’m talking real trolls, 13-foot monstrosities that live in the woods and eat goats. Now, I’ll admit I didn’t see…
I spent two nights couchsurfing in Los Angeles, California, and didn’t even see the Hollywood sign. I did, however, enjoy an evening with an amateur dramatic group in a public library. Yes, friends, that cliché is true. Everyone in LA is an aspiring actor or actress. If anyone tells you different it’s because they want…
My host in New York City led me blindfolded to Times Square. I’d only met Mike that morning so for all I knew he was leading me the opposite direction to some underground prison where he’d do weird things to me involving coleslaw and shoelaces. But thankfully, and perhaps not surprisingly, that didn’t happen. After…
I love long bus journeys. Whether it’s getting from Venice Beach to downtown LA on a city bus that takes several hours to go a couple of miles, or a 30-hour cramped coach journey down the coast of Chile, I love every second. I said to my friend I travelled to Israel with, “I’ve never…
There are a lot of strange travel traditions that you hear about while on the road. Always wearing the same underwear for flights, cooking a meal from your country for every host you stay with, collecting every bus and train ticket to later make into a 16-page scrapbook to bore your family to death with….
I flew over New York City in a helicopter. I’d like to say it was because Michael Bloomberg owed me a favor after I rescued his dog from being run over by a truck in Brooklyn, but it was actually just because I was so good at not spending my student loan on anything other…
There are a lot of all you can eat restaurants in Buenos Aires, Argentina, known in Spanish as tenedor libre (“free fork”). And I’m not talking about the same all you can eat restaurants that you find in America, with extra-sized bottles of ketchup on the table and a soda cup big enough to drown…
I once spent an entire day waiting for a jungle bus. Most of the day was spent sitting in an abandoned petrol station in a small town called Salvaccion, in the Manu National Park, in Peru, in the Amazon Rainforest. Now that I’ve got your attention, here’s a picture of a lorry in a river:…
I’m British. I like comedies. I especially like British comedies. But I spent one night couchsurfing in San Antonio, Texas, with a guy who knew more about British comedies than I did. From Grandma’s House to Bread via some inexplicable and awful little-known one-season abomination with a title so unimaginative I’ve completely forgotten its name,…
In 2009, I spent three months in the Amazon Rainforest in the Manu National Park in Peru. At the end of the three months volunteering, it was a 10-hour journey back to Cusco, the closest major city. The transition from leaving the jungle to rejoining civilized society is a stranger sensation than when you find…