By the time Tony co-founded Lonely Planet Publications in 1973, he already had the travel bug. And ever since, travel and discovery have been at the heart of his life and career.
I’ve recorded several podcasts, interviews, conversations recently.
At London Business School Maureen and I recorded Journeys, a conversation with Rajesh Chandy the Professor of Entrepreneurship in the Developing World at the Wheeler Institute. People seemed to enjoy it, someone suggested that we ‘looked like two teenagers our to start an exciting adventure,’ not business like at all.
With Tyrel Cameron Eskelson I talked on his Interlocutor podcast about my travel life, starting in Pakistan when I was a small child right up to travel in recent weeks and for the rest of 2025.
Nanning's bus station is conveniently adjacent to my hotel, and worryingly empty. Sure enough, they can sell me a ticket but there's a new station out of town. 'You must hurry,' the ticket seller told me, pointing out the connecting bus to the other station. ...
There's really no reason to come to Nanning; it's simply a transit stop between somewhere and somewhere else - Kunming and Wuzhou for me (and in fact, Wuzhou is only another transit stop before Macau). On the other hand, it's an interesting mid-size city (1.5 million ...
The Western Hills, or Xi Shan, make a popular day trip for Kunming residents. The hills rise up beside Lake Dian and from the top there are superb views over the lake and back to the city. A bewildering tangle of footpaths connect lookouts, restaurants, temples, pavil...
It's the main city in the colourful Yunnan region, way off in the southwest of China - I'm not sure what I was expecting from Kunming, but it's what the city is not that really strikes me. This is not a developing-world city. Kunming is far, far closer to Boston, Sydn...
It' s pre-dawn as the train rolls in to Lao Cai, the Vietnamese border town for China. The border doesn't open until 7am, so I wander around and stop for a bowl of pho, the all-purpose Vietnamese noodle soup, before taking a motorcycle taxi 2km to the border and walk ...
Drizzle: it has got steadily hotter as I've travelled north from Singapore, inverting the usual climatic rules and peaking in Hue. Hanoi is noticeably cooler and all day it tries to rain. It's also Monday, when most museums are shut, so I spend the first half of the d...
Today's plan is to leave Hoi An very early, catch a train from Danang to Hue and then have most of the day in one of Vietnam's most interesting cities before taking the train to Hanoi in the late afternoon. Danang's train station, with its neat row of little all-in-wh...
Provence. It reminds me of Provence. No, despite the long French colonial period Hoi An doesn't look anything like the south of France, but there is the same feeling of being too pretty for a postcard. There's the same mix of trendy little cafes, bars and restauran...
My train rolls into Nha Trang station just after 6am, and just before 9am I'm underwater. I've found a hotel, dumped my gear, had breakfast, found a scuba diving centre, signed up for the morning's dive trip, joined the boat, got out to the dive site and there I am wi...
To get to Macau by the evening of 17 April is definitely going to be a race but until today I haven't felt rushed. I've only had to do one overnight train trip and I usually have the morning or afternoon (all day yesterday) to look around. It's actually felt quite rel...
© Tony Wheeler’s Travels 2013