Inspiring Travel Writing from Stuart Wolfendale

Stuart Wolfendale is a writer based in Hong Kong where he has been, for some years, the city?s best known English language columnist. In conjunction with that, he has written widely on travel in China and South East Asia. Born in Lancashire in 1951 and educated at The Manchester Grammar School and Cambridge, he began as a journalist in 1984 after a decade as an administrative civil servant in the United Kingdom and Hong Kong governments where he might have continued as a servant but would not have remained civil.
Since then, he has written for a wide spread of Asia based publications and, occasionally, for newspapers and magazines in the United Kingdom and the United States including The Times, the Evening Standard, the Los Angeles Times, Travel and Leisure and Punch although his greatest claim to fame in print is being mentioned in The House of Lords? Hansard.
As a freelancer, Stuart has lived for periods in Bangkok, Phnom Penh, Jakarta and in Los Angeles where he wrote on everything from Asian immigration issues on the West Coast to spas. He continues to wander the Far East as he insists it still is, with occasional forays into Europe. Doggedly unpublished between hard cover, he also continues, with less ease, to write a book on modern Asian monarchy of which there will be none left by the time he is done.
His website can be found at: www.stuartwolfendale.com
Since then, he has written for a wide spread of Asia based publications and, occasionally, for newspapers and magazines in the United Kingdom and the United States including The Times, the Evening Standard, the Los Angeles Times, Travel and Leisure and Punch although his greatest claim to fame in print is being mentioned in The House of Lords? Hansard.
As a freelancer, Stuart has lived for periods in Bangkok, Phnom Penh, Jakarta and in Los Angeles where he wrote on everything from Asian immigration issues on the West Coast to spas. He continues to wander the Far East as he insists it still is, with occasional forays into Europe. Doggedly unpublished between hard cover, he also continues, with less ease, to write a book on modern Asian monarchy of which there will be none left by the time he is done.
His website can be found at: www.stuartwolfendale.com
Articles by Stuart Wolfendale
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Berlin: The Reich comes home
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Stuart Wolfendale
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Germany
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Berlin Region
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Berlin
My first trip to Berlin was in 1968. I was seventeen and seeing ‘superpower stand-off’ live and at its most demented. It was the ‘Year of Student Unrest’. De Gaulle threatened to recall the French army on the Rhine to put down Paris. In Berlin, Rudi...
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Lhasa: The long-time home
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Stuart Wolfendale
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Tibet
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Lhasa Region
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Lhasa
1988 must have been one of those years when China thought it had the Dalai Lama licked. Foreign journalists were being allowed into Lhasa. Actually, we were just a bunch of travel writers out of Hong Kong being treated to the tops of our bellies by...
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Palm Springs
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Stuart Wolfendale
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United States
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California
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Palm Springs
After a few days at the Ingleside Inn, Palm Springs, they asked me how I’d enjoyed myself in the Garbo Room. She’d stayed there in the Thirties. That explained the ethereal voice whispering to me in the middle of the night. “Moof over fatso. I vant...
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Before You Die: The Peak
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Stuart Wolfendale
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China
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Hong Kong
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Hong Kong City
Assuming cloud is up or gone, experience the view from The Peak, Hong Kong, still one of the most astounding in the urban world. It makes you feel giddy, not quite ready for it. Stuart Wolfendale
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Before You Die: Collegiate Choirs
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Stuart Wolfendale
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United Kingdom
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South East England
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Cambridge
Collect yourself some divine credit and go to Cambridge, England, stay in the Garden Hotel on the river Cam, and listen to the pedigree collegiate choirs in the University colleges - Kings and St John's are always the sleekest. But more than that,...
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China: For
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Stuart Wolfendale
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China
You aren't poor or a dissident or a foreign businessman being swindled. You are a tourist and over the last 10 years, life has been improving speedily for you in the PRC. Bathrooms still raise the occasional eyebrow, but hotel facilities are now...
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Taipei - wish you werent here
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Stuart Wolfendale
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Taiwan
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Taipei
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Taipei City
Out of the Pandora’s workbox of handy travel cliches, writers are fond of grabbing a familiar line. “This or That City,” they will tell us, “offers a surprising array of...” and then they will go on to mention restaurants or museums or mink pelt...
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Warriors to Hoteliers - the Princes of Rajasthan
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Stuart Wolfendale
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India
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Rajasthan
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Jodhpur
Rajasthan, a province of India’s northwest, is Steven Spielberg type of place. Above the heat haze, hostile mountain- sides are held down by monumental forts. Along city streets of carved ochre stone, stride men with wildly wound turbans of...
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Ten Cautions of Rome
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Stuart Wolfendale
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Italy
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Lazio
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Rome
It has become fashionable to write about the “10 Best” features of a popular destination; in reponse, for future travellers, here are "10 Cautions" over Rome. Number One. If you use any Italian railway station, you will catch occasional sight of a...
Reviews by Stuart Wolfendale
Bangkok-Young lovers and old colonials | Stuart WolfendaleLovers in Asia who want a getaway where they will not be found can forget the distant island lagoons of Tahiti, or hiding amongst the Korean honeymooners on Cheju Island, or a two hour outrigger canoe ride to Porta Gallera on inaccessible Mindora...
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