Writing & Photography | Travelling for Tea

Currently: Renovating in Alentejo, Portugal after 4 years digital nomad-ing

The Blog

Short essays on our travels and tea,

random musings and rants

and galleries of our photography

Cameron Highlands, Malaysia

Welcome!

You will find, from Elizabeth:

An ever-growing series about the Teas of the World
Travel essays and our musings on country and place
Good ol' fashioned philosophical rants and random but fun pieces

And from Vientiene, galleries of his photography.

We try to publish every few weeks so subscribe to avoid missing a post!

Enjoy!

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Gallery 29: Silver Coast in Lockdown, Portugal 2020

May 4
2 min

Gallery 29: Silver Coast in Lockdown, Portugal 2020

Wow. 5 months since our last post, December 31st 2020. This is the longest we've gone without posting our surely-completely-essential-to-the-meaning-of-life travel blog...and for that we apologise for the detrimental impact this has had on all your lives. This winter-spring has seen a very very busy and non-photogenic lockdown for us, focussing on progressing and occasionally completing Portuguese bureaucracy, and renovating the upstairs apartment down to all electrics and pl

Gallery 28 Animals of the Gers, France 2019

Gallery 27 Occitanie, France 2019

Gallery 26 Nong Khai, Thailand 2019

Gallery 24 Prague, Czechia 2019

Galleries 22 & 23: Penang, Malaysia 2018

Gallery 20: London, UK 2018

Gallery 19: Vienna, Austria 2018

Jul 15, 2019
2 min

Gallery 19: Vienna, Austria 2018

Vienna is a jewel box. A city made of several hundred palaces (not a typo), connected via grand boulevards and narrow cobbled streets. In keeping with this opulent ambiance, and the key reason we visited Vienna, was to see the Spanish Riding School. These stunning white Lipizzaner stallions ('grey' in the horse world) were shipped all the way from Spain, the home of the Escuela Alta and the very peak of international dressage. Why the journey? A too-long and too-complex histo

Gallery 18: Busan, South Korea 2018

May 23, 2019
2 min

Gallery 18: Busan, South Korea 2018

We spent a couple weeks in July 2018 exploring Busan, a dense coastal city full of museums, beaches and flame-grilled pork. Lots and lots of of Korean barbeques which were fun and delicious! Especially one particular little back alley one close to our airbnb, where they just kept bringing us amazing things....and charging accordingly it turned out :-) We left fuller in stomach, lighter in wallet, and happy. It was fun to be in a city that spoke so little English unlike the do

Gallery 17: Animals of Malaysia 2018

Feb 10, 2019
2 min

Gallery 17: Animals of Malaysia 2018

We spent a full two months in Penang in 2018 (Georgetown the capital to be precise), including a driving weekend to the mainland to visit Ipoh and the tea highlands. Simply put, we loved Penang. There is an incredible cultural mix with ethnic Malay, Straits-Chinese, mainland Chinese, Indian and international (i.e. non-Malay which make up a significant minority of 9%). Similarly, the religious side is similarly split between Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Christianity and Chinese

Gallery 16: New Orleans, USA 2014

Dec 4, 2018
3 min

Gallery 16: New Orleans, USA 2014

We visited New Orleans for a family Christmas and New Year in 2014-15 and what an interesting experience it was: the culture, food and music....and the in-your-face inequality. It's a very pleasant city and we enjoyed some exceptional restaurants at all price ranges, a jazz concert and random jazz on the street several times. Highlights which we would recommend were trips to beautiful and serene bayous and swamps and the New Orleans Museum of Art and Sculpture Garden, which a

Gallery 15: Madrid, Spain 2014-16

Oct 5, 2018
2 min

Gallery 15: Madrid, Spain 2014-16

With a significant amount of time in Madrid, I was surprised to see how few photographs I took over the years! Happily though I took enough to fill a gallery :-) Madrid is one of our most favourite places and cities in the world. It is Spanish in a way that Barcelona isn't (which is so touristy and international that you could be in another country), and is most definitely one of the classic grand European capitals with its boulevards and palaces. Surprisingly given the lack

Gallery 14: Tokyo, Japan 2017

Jul 27, 2018
2 min

Gallery 14: Tokyo, Japan 2017

In 2017, we spent 6 weeks in Tokyo with family. After 28 years in Japan, they were moving to Hong Kong later in the year and so we thought it was a good time to see them as well as Tokyo and its nearby towns and cities. This also included a trip by bullet train to the countryside a few hours north of Tokyo. Our family took us to enjoy a Ryokan, a type of traditional traveller inn which has existing for well over 1000 years in Japan. The classic Japanese dinner of more than 2

Gallery 13: Singapore, 2018

Jun 6, 2018
2 min

Gallery 13: Singapore, 2018

In 2018, after our year in India, we desired a little break in a location where we didn't need to be so alert when walking the sidewalks, and so opted for a week in Singapore. 'Twas an expensive week, but we really enjoyed it and left it with opinions differing from all the criticisms we had heard - such as it is a 'boring' and 'clinical' city. We stayed quite central in a high-rise hotel but still were surrounded by streets of low rise shophouses full of hipster cafes, stree

Gallery 12: Vermont, USA 2017

Apr 13, 2018
2 min

Gallery 12: Vermont, USA 2017

In 2017 we spent several weeks in the US, with the galleries on Minnesota and New York having already been published. Most of our time was of course in Vermont with Elizabeth's parents, arriving in the middle of winter. Winter in Vermont is a very white and pine affair, with temperatures falling to -10C while we were there (although it can get much colder). For Elizabeth and I this is far too cold (for any real length of time!), but we still enjoy it very much as a change of

Gallery 11: Hong Kong, China 2017

Feb 27, 2018
3 min

Gallery 11: Hong Kong, China 2017

In 2017, we were lucky enough to visit Hong Kong on three occasions (although this gallery reflects just the first two). The first visit was surprise-organised about a day or so before we left - by a family member who was moving to Hong Kong and needed to visit to pick out a flat. This made for a less common experience, as we flitted between potential flats across Hong Kong with the estate agent and their 8-seater van and driver. One of many hundreds and thousands sprinkled a

Gallery 10: Kochi, India 2017 (Living Kerala Series)

Feb 15, 2018
1 min

Gallery 10: Kochi, India 2017 (Living Kerala Series)

[Gallery 10: Photographs from our time Kochi, India 2017] Finally! A gallery of our favourite photographs of this Keralite city. Please enjoy the gallery of photographs: please click the photo above, the title, here or visit the Galleries page at https://www.travellingfortea.com/photography Vientiene ------------------------------------------------------------- P.S. For any photography enthusiasts or professionals reading: I use a Panasonic G5 (micro four-thirds), and mostly

Gallery 9: United Kingdom, 2016-2017

Jan 7, 2018
1 min

Gallery 9: United Kingdom, 2016-2017

[Gallery 9: Photographs from our time in Scotland, Wales and England] We returned home to the UK for the winter of 2016-2017 including a wonderful Christmas and New Year with family, before travelling to the US. Special thanks to all our friends for the dinners, Scottish birthday party (and gin distillery tour) and English Christmas dinner with morning-after outdoor winter barbecue, and many other occasions. We had a really fantastic time. :-) ---------------------------- On

Gallery 8: The Canaries, Spain 2016

Jan 1, 2018
4 min

Gallery 8: The Canaries, Spain 2016

Gallery 8: Photographs from our trips to Tenerife & Gran Canaria in 2016 In 2016 Elizabeth and I were living in Madrid and made use of the wonderfully cheap flights to the Canary Islands on two occasions in the April and June. Despite not having visited there recently (a family holiday when I was a child), we had already decided we wanted to live there at some point in the future due to their ticking of so many boxes in yet another of our spreadsheets. (Spreadsheets for every

Gallery 7: Minnesota, USA 2017

Dec 18, 2017
2 min

Gallery 7: Minnesota, USA 2017

Gallery 7: Photographs from our trip Minnesota, USA 2017 Earlier this year as a birthday present to both of us my parents-in-law very kindly sent us to Minnesota to visit Elizabeth’s oldest friend near Fariboult (outside Minneapolis-St. Pauls), where she lives with her husband and son and a small menagerie. Our friends were immensely generous too with their planning and time they spent with us, touring us around MN in the middle of their busy lives. This included my first vis