Couchfish

People often say “if only we’d known then what we know now,” and so it was the other day, when I stumbled upon a 2006 Overseas Development Institute working paper by Caroline Ashley. Titled “Participation by the poor in Luang Prabang tourism economy: Current earnings and opportunities for expansion” it shows that people did know. If you’ve ever wondered just where your money goes, you should read...

This is the third part in a series I’m writing about tourism in Southeast Asia. Part one looked at World Tourism Day and part two at sustainable tourism . So with sustainable tourism behind us, what about its bedfellow, responsible tourism? To be honest, on the clarity stakes, matters don’t improve much, but it does give us some better bones to build upon. The term is often used in a synonymous fa...

Today, I’m looking at sustainable tourism and what it is. This could be a very short post as I could simply write “nobody agrees on what sustainable tourism is,” but I’ll try. While you’ll see it used with both tourists and industry in mind, at heart, it’s an industry-directed term. I was going to go through a potted history of sustainable tourism , but thought the better of it. In summary, its ro...

Tuesday September 27 was World Tourism Day . You didn’t know? You’re not the only one. As my mate Ian at Travel Massive pointed out, on one website, National Chocolate Milk Day got more shares than World Tourism Day. Slow clap fellas. I’d planned to write a piece to coincide with the day, but I’ve been a bit off health-wise and, as regulars would have noticed, posts have been, to say the least, er...

A few years ago, in the late 15th century, as Islam supplanted Java’s Majapahit Empire , Java’s Hindus edged east. For a spell, they clung to Java’s eastern reaches, especially around modern-day Banyuwangi, but over time, most crossed the Bali Strait to, well, Bali. One of those making up the eastward move was Dang Hyang Niratha . A Shiva-Buddhist high priest, with purported psychic and supernatur...

As this Couchfish leg, from Kuala Lumpur to Medan, will be the only flight of the entire itinerary , I thought I’d write a bit about flying. Also, for a bit of fun, I’m giving away eight annual subscriptions (worth US$70 apiece) to Couchfish—all you need do is tell me the answer to any one of the photo quizzes below. Answers are only accepted here, in the comments —not on Twitter, email or by post...

Just a quick administrative note. While this is, strictly speaking, a part of the itinerary series, as I’m finishing up mainland Southeast Asia, I thought I’d send it to the whole list. Any post I link to from this one has been un-paywalled, so if you’re a free subscriber, please have some fun poking around a bit. Plenty of travel is needing to get from here to there. You pull out a map, find wher...

Leaving Ko Phra Thong behind , it was a straight run up the coast to Ranong , the wettest provincial capital in Thailand. A funny little town, little more than a bowl of winding roads with a sizeable fishing port perched on its western rim. The port does a heavy trade in fisheries, but also in labour— legal and otherwise —and drugs—just otherwise—thanks to its location on the frontier with Burma....

Apologies for the radio silence. A couple of weeks ago my laptop imploded and it has taken north of two weeks to sort it out. The other day I came across a post about Norman Doors. If, like me, you don’t know what a Norman Door is, you can start here . Better still, read You should not open a door and see someone pooping on Experimental History . Don’t want to read either? A Norman Door is a door...

Many years ago I was researching for Travelfish on a Thai island. It is a popular one, heavily developed with a tonne of visitors. Responding to this demand, it also had a tonne of hotels. While there was some beach time, there was much trudging from one mediocre hotel to another. One place I looked at had a good beachside location. It wasn’t perfect, many of the cheaper rooms looked onto the car...

On my second trip to Laos, in the mid-1990s, I was on a slow boat from Huay Xai to Luang Prabang . If you’d like to read about a competitive traveller I met on the trip, read this . Today’s piece though isn’t a gripe about annoying travellers. A few hours south of Huay Xai , I guess about halfway to Pak Tha , the boat moored at a small village. “All foreigners off please,” the boat dudes asked, “b...

The water cooler at immigration offices around the world is a happening place it seems. Every now and then, when there is nothing else to talk about, the topic of “digital nomad visas” pops up. Thailand has had it. Vietnam has had it. Indonesia has had it. Cambodia has had it. As have countries elsewhere on the planet. It’s an ideal one to shoot the breeze over between deportation reconciliations....

As anyone who has been to Ko Lipe in the last decade or so will know, the island I’ve described over the past two days no longer exists . The island, at least pre-pandemic, was home to over 100 hotels and north of one thousand rooms. Damaged reefs, pollution, water access and various social and land-ownership issues are common. This is a transition Thai islands are well familiar with, with the cou...

In late June, news outlet Kompas reported on an increase in admission fees for Komodo National Park. Commencing August 1, 2022, the fee will increase to US$260 (3.75m rupiah) per head, with no word on a lower rate for Indonesians . This represents an increase from the current 150,000 rupiah (5,000 rupiah for Indonesians). The argument presented for the increase is “conservation” and talking heads...

On Saturday, Indonesia’s Coordinating Minister for Maritime Affairs and Investment took to Instagram . This in itself isn’t unusual—many government departments and ministers here are active on the platform. What he had to say though, was a little out of the left field. The Minister announced his decision to limit the number of tourists visiting Borobudur to 1,200 per day . Alongside the revised vi...

At the moment I’m reading a novel by British journalist Monisha Rajesh titled Around India in 80 Trains . It traces her journey through the country, much of it with a profoundly irritating companion. Her companion though isn’t the sole irritant. On a train in Rajasthan , Rajesh recounts a meeting with “a younger version of Neil from The Young Ones .” Neil, it should be said, could easily be me—I c...

Given my efforts so far you might be thinking I have it in for Penang. I’ve covered wrong-headed missionaries , wonky UNESCO efforts and unhinged travellers , but it isn’t all bad news. I’ve had many a fun time there, most often spent wandering, poking around a little and eating a lot. This is where George Town excels. Like anywhere, it has its mainstay sights—restored houses, and some museums for...

I’m working on a story at the moment and when done, you’ll be reading it here first on Couchfish. That said, it isn’t done, yet here I am writing about it. The idea started out as the simplest of thoughts—something I rode past while on the bike trip in Java . I didn’t pull up for a better look at it as I still had a while to go, but as I rode on towards Bali, it became all that I thought about. Si...

Riding home this morning from Medewi in West Bali , I pulled up at a pretty spot, took a photo and posted it to Instagram and Twitter. It took all of 30 seconds. Getting to where I took the photo was a little more involved. I’d spent 45 minutes dancing between farting buses and belching trucks travelling east along Bali’s coastal thoroughfare. Without traffic, it’s a pretty and scenic ride. Having...

A little to the north of Candi Dasa in East Bali the forest-lined road winds up a ridge, leaving the beach behind. Before you start down again, towards the turn-off to White Sand Beach , there’s a point over-run with macaques. To the east, a bumpy road runs out of sight. Quite a few years ago, I followed the bumpy road as far as I could go. When the road tapped out, I parked and walked. After a bi...

So where did that all go? For a brief moment I thought about writing 300 things worth doing in Southeast Asia, but be thankful I came to my senses. After all, the last 300 days’ worth of itinerary posts does that already. Well, except for Sihanoukville . So far we’ve been through a large chunk of Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, Malaysia and Singapore. Looking back over the itinerary so far thou...

So this is the point where my Java tale draws to a close. I hope you’ve all enjoyed the trip as much as we did! For free Couchfish subscribers, you could consider the last week of emails a look behind the curtain at what paid subscribers receive. The paid itinerary has its 300th day coming up this week, and if you upgrade to the paid list you get access to the full archives—you can see every post...

It feels like Bali is a lot further than 357 km away as we rise for our morning visit to Tempak Sewu waterfall. It’s taken us five days to get here and given my previous record for time taken to get to a waterfall was about four hours, this one better be good. It’s a five-minute ride from D’Corner Homestay to the deserted waterfall parking lot. Deserted save for the ever-present ticket dude who fr...

Google Maps tells us we have three options for reaching our homestay near the waterfall. The northern route on Route 3, a coastal route, and one in between. All are estimated to take around three hours. I stare at the map for a while. On Route 3, I figure we’ll have s**t traffic, while the coastal route will probably be a s**t road. Like is full of choices right? We decide to make our decision on...

School done for the day we pack and tally our losses. Yesterday it was a charging cable, today it is earphones. The perils of cabled travelling I guess. After checking the previous hotel to see if they were there, we grab a replacement pair for 75,000 rupiah at a local minimart. When we stop later, Will notes they work, “sort of.” Get what you pay for. Today’s target is Jember, around three hours...