Nori and Scott Brixen

There are over 100,000 photos tagged #jamesbondisland on Instagram. Guys with six pack abs, women testing the limits of their bikinis, Muslim ladies in swimming hijabs, kids doing the ‘happy beach leap’ – all posing in the same spot with that famous limestone spike behind them. They look happy. It’s all good fun. What these […]

At the base of the mountains, near a shabby army camp, three young boys loped alongside our car until we had mercy and bought them a couple of watermelons. We passed no other cars during the long, hot drive back out of the Bekaa Valley and over the Lebanon Mountains. Halfway up, I left the […]

It wasn’t a long drive from tiny Shrewley, England to St. Davids, Wales – a smidgen over 200 miles – but the fastest route (via Bristol, Cardiff and Swansea) didn’t appeal to me. Instead, we left the M5 near Worcester and cut Southwest through the heart of Wales along pleasant, uncrowded rural roads. We saw […]

“Boys! Welcome to Greece!” I shouted from the front seat of our taxi. This was Tai and Logan’s 33rd country; Drake and Kiva’s 31st Nori and I had been to Greece once before; a wild two weeks in Athens, Aegina and Corfu around the 2008 Olympics. “No!” the driver groaned, as if I had garrotted […]

Sailing out of Kawthaung on the Sea Gipsy, a wave of contentment washed over me. The tendrils of stress that had gripped my heart were already withering. In a few weeks, I would quit my job and probably leave finance for good. Two months later, our family would say zaijian to Asia and embark on […]

Galicia, that rugged, rain-soaked corner of Spain that looks more Irish than Iberian, would seem an incongruous location for ‘tropical island’ tropes: beaches as fine and white as baby powder, pellucid waters ranging from teal to turquoise, that sort of thing. Yet here they are, three islands whose heavenly beaches routinely make it onto the […]

Getting to the base of Wat Chalermprakiat was easy enough: a one hour drive north of Lampang on a newly paved road. From there, things got more challenging. First, we piled in the back of a 4WD songthaew for a perilous drive up a nearly unclimbable access road. Next, we trekked 25 minutes up an […]

Our goal was the Bekaa Valley, on the other side of the mountains, a world away from Beirut’s skyscrapers, beach clubs and liberties. Just beyond the ski resort town of Mzaar, we passed the first of many military checkpoints we would encounter. The soldier was cradling a machine gun and looked shocked to see us.“Too-reest,” […]

I quietly donned my warmest clothes and stepped out onto the balcony. It was 5am. The black sky was softening, but it was still very cold and rain fell on my outstretched hand. No matter; I had already resolved to go. More than a decade ago, an image in a travel magazine had captivated me: […]

“Dad, can we go wine-tasting again?” Logan asked, his eyes wide with anticipation. I knew what he was really asking. “Oh, don’t worry. There will be a lot of wine-tasting,” I replied. Travelling with four young, energetic boys, the hardest thing for Nori and I to find was ‘downtime’. We never got to sleep in. […]