Tripping Out Alone

I did comment that you can’t recreate the past, but you can catch up wth it. A turn of events after ruminating in the depths of Kuta decay led me to accept an invitation to a beautiful occasion, the BIASA Fashion collection trunk show, held at their flagship store in Seminyak. Dressed in white linen I stepped into a world of elegance, charm and surprises.  One of the first of those was meeting an ex-student, now a global modelling sensation living in New York, and her mother a talented photographer living here in Bali. Old friends, familiar faces and that special element that creates comfort, welcoming ambience and connection, how ever light or brief.  Later, in the evening Edward and I headed over to the newly refurbished The Orchard , that used to be a pub with live music that supported local musicians to perform original music to a well mixed crowd. It’s bigger, it’s air conditioned and people smoke inside. This makes your clothes smell. The Hydrant were playing their Elvis...

 December and January I am tripping out on my own again, I have made plans, let's see what happens with that. Bali, Bangkok, Suvannakhet, Varuna Royal Yacht Club, Hua Hin, Butterworth, Ipo, Cameron Highlands and Penang before back to Bali and a return to Darwin for the start of the school year. I have bought a particular suitcase, a particular brand and it comes in a particular size that I can muster on to planes, trains and what ever form of transport required to get me to all these places.  I am on a mission to connect with friends living or staying at these destinations and it feels like I am emerging again into a globally connected being.  I got this message from the suitcase manufacturer, and they are going to share a part of the journey  as I add images and short notes to my Instagram kaytype account. I think that is what happened to the blogging, instagram made it photo based and comments were short, which was great for all the adventures I have had in the com...

 Hands by Kepsibel , This is the Happy New Year card for this year and formed part of the work from Kepsi's graduate show at RMIT and now at All the Very Best Art Gallery in Abbottsford in Melbourne. I've included it in this blog as Kepsi is now an honours graduate and tripping out alone in her own style. 

 December 9th 2025 Yeah, I have finished out my first entire year living as an Australian Citizen, and as a permanent employee at the Department of Education, NT. I have an apartment near the famed Nightcliff Foreshore, I drive a car to work and I exercise regularly. That's so grown up!  I'm off to four countries, Indonesia, Thailand, Laos and Malaysia to catch up with friends living in South East Asia and making the effort to get out and about in a region of the world I truly enjoy being in. And I am on my own again, travelling solo, open to adventure, facing the fear of flying through the therapy of constant exposure and enjoying the luxury of taking trains.  I have a great book to read "In the Green Heart" by Richard Lloyd Parry and a copy of Tourmaline by Randolph Stowe. I am also attempting to travel very light with only carry on from Indonesia on, that's because I need to take 2 k of cheese to Bali and some items for the house in Pupuan. This is just the beg...

 Deciding to remain in Yirrkala due to my recovery from a fall despite the world opening up around me and family and friends visiting many of my favourite places has given me time to sort through the images of travel that are filed away under various platforms such as facebook, external hard drives and Google photos.  Looking at these collections it could seem that nothing existed prior to facebook, or before I got my first smart phone. Somewhere along the digital path some crumbs of travel have gone missing somewhere.  Similar to the trip I took to India in 1988 when none of the films I shot developed properly.  As I began to go through the files, the back ups and the duplicates I thought it might be useful, to me to create a list of my travels to be able to better arrange the storage. That then begs the question why, why file and formalise the memories and contain them in photos?  Will they help me remember, I don't think so, will they make me nostalgic, maybe...

I headed out at the end of June to visit family and friends in Europe for a ridiculously short trip of ten days - it involved a stop over in Bangkok on the way to catch up with friends, two days in Paris, four in my 'home' town of Caversham and three in London...and then back to Bangkok. I flew Gulf Air and while not a fancy as Emirates it got me there, and back to Bangkok without problems. My only advice would be not to book the gluten free meals, they are far too weird.

January New Year 2015 was spent in Bangkok with a complicated departure to Australia early in the year when Air Asia, while confirming their flights up until the last minute had to cancel flights to Melbourne. It meant a swift change of plans and a last minute ticket on Virgin to meet the girls in Melbourne before flying up to the Gold Coast and then on to Byron. A beautiful few days with family and friends, time in the rainforest and a great day at the beach complete with dolphins set us up for the week and then it was back to Melbourne for three days before returning to Bali. February A trip to Vietnam with the Year 12's to promote the GINBali 2015 conference saw me in Hanoi just before the TET Festivities, freezing cold and lots of activities to do as well as negotiating a return in the summer with music venues and bars. I left the school group to go to Saigon while I went to Hoi An to meet Green Shoots school and Laureen, who would be part of the summer trip. I flew b...

Christmas in Bali Wet season is on the island, the tree in the garden is dropping red flowers everywhere and the ground floor is awash in what looks like hibiscus tea. It's the ending of the year and my bags are unpacked until January 1st when I head of for Australia and Byron Shire, life in the forest for a week with Severen. Closing down the year of travel and going over the remarkable journeys I have taken with a combination of cheap flights, advance planning, hospitable friends and generous hosts, I am, again, in awe of how wonderful my life is. I live with a sense that at each turn of fate I have some how had a lucky escape, and while each person has their own interpretation of happiness and freedom mine exists in my ability to see, engage and experience many different aspects of global living. Even though I am not the explorer or the gung ho writer of youthful ambition I still manage to satisfy my instinct for curiosity and adventure. 2011 brought me to Singapore twice, th...

 It's July 2022, and hard to figure out what happened to my Tripping Out Alone Blog..  I think I just stopped blogging because I stopped tripping out alone, then I stopped tripping out.  Since January 2020 I have not left Australia... however before that... The last post was post my trips to Aceh, Africa and China.. "I went to five countries in Africa and China - China twice and about to go again.. I have discovered more, more or less on my doorstep and I keep going."  I did go to Shanghai, then Beijing, then made a fantastic adventure trip with Joe, Robi and Nee to Yunnan Province, that  was in June /July of 2017 and I returned for my last year of teaching in Bali.  In 2018 I went back to the UK for Easter and in the summer  I went to visit friends in Myanmar and Bangkok and I went on a three or four day tour of Java with the band Navicula who were doing a 31 day tour, and by August I was flying to Darwin and taking up a position in Tennant Creek Prim...