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.
Recently I suggested that I hope I never have to go back to Bali. I simply never want to sit through another hour of Balinese gridlock. The traffic is impossible, insufferable, intolerable. When you get to your destination you basically do not want to leave. A quick t...
▲ Southern Ocean Lodge & Hanson Bay Maureen and I spent four luxurious days – and nights – at the remote (and luxurious!) Southern Ocean Lodge on Kangaroo Island off the Australian state of South Australia over New Year 2008-2009. Eleven years later on 3 Januar...
My recent Bali retreat mainly circled around travel writers and their Bali-related books, including Bill Dalton’s classic Indonesia Handbook and my own South-East Asia on a Shoestring, but other authors also featured. ◄ The Painted Alphabet – A mythical story of Ba...
The boring, too often repeated, questions I field all the time are ‘what’s your favourite place – followed by what’s the most dangerous thing that’s ever happened to you – and then where do you never want to go to again.’ Recently I’ve been hearing from friends who ha...
▲ Liz Trump & Liz Truss All the media has been noting the comparisons. Trump on his knees before the US bond market traders was precisely the same outcome as Britain’s 49-day-prime minister Liz Truss falling out with the UK bond market. I noted the blue plaque ...
The Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards – that’s the state of Victoria in Australia, capital city Melbourne – is ‘the single most valuable literary award in the country’. The winner takes away A$100,000 as the big prize, plus another A$25,000 because they first have t...
I thought I’d added Bali to my ‘not going there again’ list, along with Israel and Saudi Arabia. I’m putting Bali on that list because the traffic is so absurdly intolerable and despite tourist money flooding in for decades the Indonesians have done nothing about it. ...
Far be it from me to be Anti-Woke, although in an all gender toilet in a restaurant in Bali recently an informal poll (somebody else was taking it) there was general agreement that the women would prefer a women’s toilet and the men would prefer a men’s. If there had ...
◄ ▲ There’s something about statues of despots, eventually somebody wants to pull them down. The fictional gold statue of Donald Trump which pops up in the Gaza Trump spoof video looks like a prime candidate for toppling. Doesn’t it look remarkably like ...
Oh dear, they’re dropping dead all around me. First it was Jane Birkin, born 14 December 1946 so six days before me. Died age 76 on 16 July 2023. Then Marianne Faithfull born nine days after me on 29 December 1946 and died age 78 on 30 January 2025. I’ve been fasci...
© Tony Wheeler’s Travels 2013