Hampstead I

Maybe we underestimated Hampstead. Not in the sense that we don’t value living here, we do, but in the sense that we underestimated the extent to which other people want a piece of it too.

This was a legitimate concern. After all, we were launching ourselves into the short-term rentals business and while we had no inclination (or desire) to run a hotel, we knew enough to realise that we had to appeal to the class of people who normally frequent hotels, i.e. travellers. And that bald fact raises an unavoidable question: who would want to spend their holiday in Hampstead and why?

We had no idea how to answer that question or even to start answering that question and after pondering on for a few uncomfortable seconds, we threw up our hands, threw caution to the winds and threw our properties into the merciless and capricious bear-pit that is the global travel business.

Come to Hampstead!

That done, we sat back and waited to be chosen like teenagers at a dance, afflicted with self-doubt, sweaty palms and nervous ticks; feigning nonchalance to mask the fear of the social obloquy of rejection. How could we possibly complete with sexy Kensington, handsome Knightsbridge or the wildly popular Covent Garden, for they too, were all at the ball?

Maybe, we thought, some hardy travellers from, say, Coventry or Salford, would take our hands on their way to their Annual Plastic Injection Moulding Conferences in swanky West End hotels where they couldn’t afford to actually stay without fiddling their expense budgets. Hey, so we get to dance with the fat, spotty boy with a bad haircut and halitosis but at least that’s better than being a wallflower, right?

But our fears were unfounded. We did dance at the ball. Over and over with suitors from America, from Italy, from France, from Spain, from Australia, South Africa, Saudi Arabia, Sweden, Germany, Argentina and Brazil. They all wanted to come to Hampstead. In fact, there were times when we only had time to utter the first syllable of the name before the excited guest had already punched the Paypal button and booked their stay.

We were not the wallflowers, we were the belles of the ball. And with good reason too.

David Carr

Special places I

Prague, the capital of the Czech Republic.

But it's full description is surely redundant. Everybody knows where Prague is.

And everyboody should see it, at least once.

At least!

Thailand (Part I - the Wai)

My first visit to Thailand was nearly 20 years ago. It was an all-too-brief leg of a honeymoon-tour of South-East Asia that consisted of 3 nights in the opulent Bangkok Novotel. Actually, it was long on the honey mixed with generous helpings of moon interrupted by occasional spasms of touring.

I am not averse to 5-star luxury and I take issue with those people who claim that one cannot "really experience" a country without getting down and dirty. Getting down and dirty can bring you down and leave you dirty. Mind you, I suppose that that too, is an experience. After a fashion.

I'm pretty sure that we took advantage of what the hotel had to offer - which was quite a lot, including the serenely unflappable Thai staff who performed the ritual Thai (hands together as if in prayer) greeting every time we passed them in the corridors. Being slightly embarrassed and acutely aware of our status as strangers-in-a-strange land, we reciprocated with the same gesture. We kept doing that until a helpful British tour guide explained that the traditional Thai greeting gesture ("the Wai") contained within it subleties that clumsy Westerners were entirely incapable of emulating. The Thais did not expect us to reciprocate and so we promptly stopped and submitted to our expected role of pampered tourists.

But not entirely. Guide book in hand, we tuk-tuked our way around the city, taking in not just the tourist-must-sees like the Grand Palace and the floating market but also sallying forth into the less well-documented areas of the City - the places where actual Bangkokians (is that a word?) actually work and live.

It was glorious. Really. Every minute of it. Bangkok had such an energy, for all its "otherness" to us. We were young, newly-married, in love and footloose in this heady, exotic and utterly alien world. But three days is a short time. Not enough to even really see that city, let along the country of which it is the capital. So we shopped in the street markets (day or night, counterfeit Gucci for sale) ate at the street stalls (fish sauce with everything) and tried to make ourselves understood to the tuk-tuk drivers by pointing to places on the map in our guide book.

We had barely skimmed the surface before we had to make for the airport and a flight to Penang (a whole other story). What I took with me, apart from a whole suitcase full of Thai shirts, was the smells of Bangkok - the sandalwood, the jasmin, the frangipani, the eucalyptus, the tiger balm and the sickly stench of the dung all mixed in and inescapable.

On the flight out, I made a promise to myself that I would return to Thailand one day. It was nearly two decades before I made good on it.

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