I’m off to the sunny smile isle.
October 21st, 2011
I’m just about to jump on a plane to Singapore for the weekend. I’m doing three sessions/panels/talks at the Singapore Writer’s Festival where I’ll be waffling on about travel writing and my new book Tell Them to Get Lost. I’ve got a, what could be interesting/wacky session talking about travel and philosophy with Julian Baggini, plus a panel with a couple of local travel writers including Wee Cheng, who makes me look like a travel novice. He has been to 206 countries and territories over the last two decades and is is listed in the 2008 Book of Singapore Records as the most well-travelled Singaporean. And I finish off with a very 1974 slide show about my travels for Tell Them to Get Lost. It was in Singapore where I finished my travels in the same room at the Palace Hotel where Tony and Maureen Wheeler put together the first Lonely Planet South East Asia on a Shoestring. or as Tony Wheeler describes it: ‘This book was entirely put together, typed, proof-read, designed, laid out, and pasted up in room two of the Palace Hotel in Singapore. Any mistakes I blame on the noise from the motorcycle repair shop downstairs and the less than ideal working conditions.’ Except the hotel is now called the Madras Hotel Eminence and room No.2 is now half-room No.2 because the room had been divided into two smaller rooms and I didn’t know if I was room No.2 or half of room No.4.
Well, gotta fly. If you happen to be in Singers drop in for a sling.
P.S. That magazine ad for Singapore above is from 1974. Here it is up big…
