This blog traces my journey as a writer and solo traveller. It aims to record the beauty discovered, the issues encountered and the lessons learned.

I’ve called it Chasing the Intangible because this captures what drives me to explore places and people. All the tangibles in life that we can see, touch, smell and hear, have buried within them the intangible accessed through emotion and contemplation, like meaning, significance and future implication. These help us to develop our perspectives on justice, ethics, freedom, faith, planet stewardship and humanitarianism. True, those do have – must have – their tangible manifestations such as architecture that embodies cultural heritage, but much of the significance and meaning that passes between people in their body language; what they do or fail to do or say – and the consequences that follow – is often in the realm of the intangible where our beliefs, morals, happiness, equilibrium and spirituality reside – the place where we know truth, appreciate beauty and distinguish between right and wrong, hostility and love. For me, essential truths lie in the intangible concept of contrast.

The stories will touch on recent and past journeys (not necessarily in chronological order) as well as focus on the ups and downs of writing and of expat living. I’d just returned from a three-month, around-the-world journey when Covid sent the world into rolling lockdowns. Then, soon after travel restrictions were lifted in 2022, I moved to Chiang Mai in June for four months of writing, and later explored Chiang Rai, Bangkok, Singapore and Penang before returning to Sydney. From July 2023, I plan to be in Europe.

“There can be no lotus flower without the mud.” Thích Nhât Hanh.

This beautiful quote can be interpreted in many ways. I like to apply it to travel.

When on the road, attitude is key; beauty is not always obvious; we sometimes need to search.

Accepting diversity is not a given. We need to focus with compassion to recognise a lotus obscured by mud.