The Travelling Buncebury's

covering 21 - 22 August 2019 There are several places in Thailand I’d like to see, Be Bop a Lula, Boom Bang-a-Bang and Wop Bop a Loo Bop amongst them.   Unfortunately I haven’t been able to locate them on a map – yet, but I’ll keep looking. the raised metro line above Si Lom It’s hot and sticky at this time of the year in Bangkok but then I think it is all the rest of the year too.   Now though it has the added attraction of being the monsoon season which we understand tends to be an afternoon downpour rather than all day long unrelenting rain which is what I’d always thought monsoons did.   We’d arrived at 6.00am after an overnight flight and caught the airport rail link into the city.   It was the usual fun game of trying to understand a new transport system.   Here we bought black tokens which operated the turnstiles at the stations.   It was all very well signposted and no problem although rush hour was already in progress by 6.30. ...

covering 21 May to 29 May 2019 from the walls of Erice yes, this car is parked and it isn't an unusual technique here We were now heading up to the north west corner of Sicily with a couple of calls to make on the way.   We thought that the Trapani salt pans would be worth seeing but I was definitely underwhelmed by them.   The best I can say is that they were salty and flat although we did have a plate of chips, suitably sodium chlorided at the café. windmill at the Trapani salt pans Erice is described in Lonely Planet, not always the most accurate guidebook, as one of Italy’s most spectacular hilltowns and I cannot gainsay that.   It was indeed spectacular with wide ranging views over land and sea from the south side where the castle sits.   It isn’t possible to get any views of outside the town from most of the sinuous and tangled mass of narrow, mostly pedestrianised medieval streets.   It was just how you might imagine and...

Covering 15 May to 20 May 2019   a particularly good flowery roundabout in central Sicily To me, one of the most surprising things about Sicily is the number of world class archaeological sites even though I now know a bit more about their varied and warlike past.   I always have trouble though visualising much of what is in front of me when what’s there is a litter of masonry.   However, there is enough at the sites of whole cities here where only a few structures stand to be mightily bird hunters checking out a tree for thrushes impressed.   After views of a few hill towns which tend to become indistinguishable after a remarkably short time we did head into the centre of the island to visit the Villa Romana del Casale, noted, and rightly so for the remarkably preserved mosaic flooring.    The superstructure on the buildings is modern and meant to be seen as such.   The result is impressive and it looks like one of those small rec...