Articles by Sarah Anderson
>Arriving at the Central Station in Amsterdam means being able to walk to any hotel near the centre. We were staying at the Hotel Rho - conveniently located off Dam Square; the rooms are fairly basic but it had once been a theatre so you walk into a large airy atrium.
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Much has changed since “unbroken beech-forests clothe the mountainside up as far as the line known as the upper tree level” (E.Lucas Bridges, Uttermost Part of the Earth, 1947); now there are practically no trees left and there are many differences since Bruce Chatwin wrote In Patagonia in 1977 when “The blue-faced inhabitants of this apparently childless town glared at strangers unkindly”.
By the end of next week I shall be back in England. So much has happened in the last three months yet I’m no closer to knowing what I want to do next with my life. I had hoped I would bump into something or someone that would help give me some inspiration knowing that, in reality, arriving back at Heathrow with my life sewn up would be a bit too neat - although I have thought of giving lectures on the history of travel literature to tie in both the bookshop and the Online pieces I have been writing.
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The Mekong is the longest river in southeast Asia and, by volume, the tenth longest in the world; it rises in eastern Tibet, its exact source only having been definitively located by Michel Peissel’s expedition in September 1994 and its mouth is in the South China Sea - ” … the river had been a central part of south-east Asia’s history before its existence was known to the western world, and that later its lower reaches had been the setting for European rivalry both commercial and religious” wrote Milton Osborne (The Mekong, 2000).
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On a promontory between two rivers in the jungles of northern Laos nestles a small, gentle town of mouldering villas and shuttered shopfronts. By day the dawdling streets of Luang Prabang are dotted with parasols. By night, the black skies are clotted with stars and thick with the scent of frangipani,” wrote Christopher Kremmer in Bamboo Palace. Things have changed. In 1995, Luang Prabang was designated a World Heritage site; many of the ‘mouldering villas’ have been renovated and building work on the others is in full swing. Shops are open and the night market, a traditional event banned in 1975, is again a daily occurrence.
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In Mark Twain’s Following the Equator, he describes Hobart as “an attractive town” and adds: “It sits on low hills that slope to the harbor - a harbor that looks like a river, and is as smooth as one. Its still surface is pictured with dainty reflections of boats and grassy banks and luxuriant foliage. Back of the town rise highlands that are clothed in woodland loveliness, and over the way is that noble mountain, Wellington, a stately bulk, a most majestic pile”.
Driving through the Outback is really the only way to get an idea of the vastness of Australia and, having driven five hours north of Melbourne, we stayed the night at the Grand Hotel in Mildura, opened in 1891 and now owned and run by Don and Anna Carrazza.
In her latest exclusive dispatch for Times Online, Sarah writes an e-mail from Lord Howe Island, off Australia.
Lieut. Ball R.N. first sighted the island in 1788 from his ship HMS Supply which was en route to Norfolk Island – two months later they landed, but no one settled there until the 1830s possibly because the charts said “pigs and onions but no maidens”.
Pinetrees has been run as a guest house for 150 years by generations of the same family who arrived in 1842. It is comfortable and the friendliness of the staff seems to rub off on the guests; it is the only hotel on the island offering full board and goodness, the food is good – daily fresh fish kingfish, tuna and trevally.
I was quite relieved to leave America - there was a tendency towards post-election despair among the people I knew, and although I had a good time their despondency had somewhat rubbed off on me.
I arrived in Sydney in the early morning on what turned out to be a scorching day, and made my way to the funky and eccentric Hughenden Hotel (14 Queen Street, Woollahra 93634863). Although my room was small and a little shabby, the general atmosphere with its occasional pianist, friendliness of the staff and outside sitting areas were more than enough compensation.
“Don’t you find that your emotions are heightened in the air?” I was at a dinner party and the conversation went back and forth with one guy saying that although he never cried in movies on terra firma, in the air he sobbed uncontrollably. A woman interjected that she found reading on a plane so engrossing that she always remembered everything that she’d read. I was intrigued - although I wasn’t sure I agreed. I cry easily at movies on the ground but I’m not sure that I’ve cried watching a film in the air. And as for retaining what I read - do I ever? As one friend put it: “No need to retain what I read. I am not studying for an exam”.