Inspiring Travel Writing from Graham Reid
Born in Scotland and educated in New Zealand, Graham Reid travelled extensively in Europe, Asia and the United States during his years as a senior feature writer for the New Zealand Herald. He is a highly respected and widely read writer with columns, interviews and essays in the New Zealand Herald and various political and entertainment magazines.
Graham was previously both Entertainment and Books Editor at the Herald, but more recently his travel and political writing have won him considerable acclaim. A hallmark of his work is his ear for local music and eye for the arts, and a dry sense of humour.
In 2003, among other acknowledgements, he received the prestigious Media Peace Award for his articles on the volatile politics of the Solomon Islands. He is a regular contributor to the award-winning political website www.publicaddress.net and has a weekly travel column of unusual encounters in the New Zealand Herald. His website contains numerous travel stories, his biography and a list of journalism awards, photographs from his journeys, and some of his essays on music and art. He has stayed in luxury lodges and cockroach-infested motels and writes about them all with equal ease and observant wit.
He considers Asia, the Pacific, the United States and Europe his regular beat, and often travels for months at a time with no agenda other than to see what is around the next corner. It seems to have served him well; his first book Postcards From Elsewhere (Random House) won the Whitcoulls TravCom Travel Book of the Year Award in 2006.
He is currently a freelance travel writer living in Auckland, is married to photographer Megan Stünzner, and has three adult sons.
www.elsewhere.co.nz
Graham was previously both Entertainment and Books Editor at the Herald, but more recently his travel and political writing have won him considerable acclaim. A hallmark of his work is his ear for local music and eye for the arts, and a dry sense of humour.
In 2003, among other acknowledgements, he received the prestigious Media Peace Award for his articles on the volatile politics of the Solomon Islands. He is a regular contributor to the award-winning political website www.publicaddress.net and has a weekly travel column of unusual encounters in the New Zealand Herald. His website contains numerous travel stories, his biography and a list of journalism awards, photographs from his journeys, and some of his essays on music and art. He has stayed in luxury lodges and cockroach-infested motels and writes about them all with equal ease and observant wit.
He considers Asia, the Pacific, the United States and Europe his regular beat, and often travels for months at a time with no agenda other than to see what is around the next corner. It seems to have served him well; his first book Postcards From Elsewhere (Random House) won the Whitcoulls TravCom Travel Book of the Year Award in 2006.
He is currently a freelance travel writer living in Auckland, is married to photographer Megan Stünzner, and has three adult sons.
www.elsewhere.co.nz
Articles by Graham Reid
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Cross the world’s tallest bridge
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Graham Reid
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France
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Midi-Pyrenees
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Millau
The world’s tallest bridge is at Millau in Southern France. Drive across it or sit beneath it, but Sir Norman Foster’s bridge spanning the valley at Millau is industrial design as poetry, and the first great piece of 21st century...
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Think big
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Graham Reid
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United States
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Florida
Cape Kennedy Space Center. When you reach for the stars, you have to think big. Everything here, from the width of the runway to the trucks which haul out the massive rockets, is very big indeed. And, consequently, you feel small.
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Sing with the King
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Graham Reid
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United States
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Tennessee
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Memphis
Sun Studios, Memphis, Tennessee. There is a frisson of delight in standing at the microphone Elvis sang into, and having a conducted tour of a room no bigger than your lounge at home. Walls steeped in history and music which changed the world.
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Going to the Source
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Graham Reid
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France
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Bordeaux Region
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Bordeaux
As I looked across the manicured box-hedge to the garden where peacocks ambled, and then on to the orderly rows of grape vines marching towards the 18th-century chateau, the thought occurred to me: if the prettiest part of Paradise - with a cellar...
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Travelling Riverside Blues
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Graham Reid
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United States
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Mississippi
The intersection of highways 61 and 49 near Clarksdale in northwest Mississippi doesn't look particularly special: there's a car yard, a service station, a couple of kids listlessly kicking a ball outside Abe's barbecue shop - just the usual stuff....
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Outback Pub Crawl
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Graham Reid
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Australia
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South Australia
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Adelaide
On a hot and cloudless morning in the arid Outback, Doug taxies his single-engine Cessna onto the rocky runway at Arkaroola, a strip of man-made flatland some 500kms north of Adelaide. He makes a routine safety check, kicks the plane into fast-...
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Where the Girls Are
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Graham Reid
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Thailand
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The North
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Chiang Rai
Pale fingers of mist weave through the tree tops of the jungle. At just past dawn it is almost silent, only the faint call of birds and the distant putter of a long-tail boat on the Mekong River beyond the hill. I step onto the terrace of my hotel...
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You Have Been Warned
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Graham Reid
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Italy
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Campania
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Naples
"The thing with Napoli,” said Alfonso leaving a pause for effect, “is the tourist people they love it or they do not. But I understand why they do not. The city, she is . . .” To be honest, I can’t remember exactly what he said next about his...
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Another Brick in the Wall
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Graham Reid
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Germany
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Berlin Region
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Berlin
The first thing you see when you come out of the Bernauerstrasse underground station in Berlin is the ruin: no houses down one side of the road, just overgrown and scrappy wasteland spotted with slabs of crumbling concrete and rusting reinforcing...
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Three thousand fingers of rock
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Graham Reid
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Vietnam
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North West
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Halong Bay
Halong Bay, Vietnam. Three thousand fingers of rock point out of the ocean, created either by a dragon, wind and water erosion, or the carving hand of God. You decide. Graham Reid