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.
▲ Our MGBs lined up in front of our hotel in Jingdezhen ▲ Jingdezhen as been a centre for Chinese pottery and ceramic works for nearly 2000 years. There are constant reminders of that history from shops to sculptures of ceramic workers on the bridge across the Chan...
Never heard of Yichang? Nor had I until I got here. Well it has a population of 4 million and it’s the jumping off point for the Three Gorges Dam, which we visited today. It’s another Chinese city with energy, buzz, life and clearly a lot of disposable income. The fla...
Day 24 of the 102 day drive from Bangkok to London along the Silk Road by MGB and Day 7 into China brings us to Chongqing. Population 7 million and one of China’s go go cities. ▲ It’s evident in the architecture, like the Qianximen Bridge across the Jialing River, ...
I’m driving an old MGB to London, following the Silk Road on a trip that will take us through Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Iran, Turkey, and assorted countries in Europe. ▲ Here’s our route on the door of my car...
▲ It’s been 25 years since my first visit to Angkor Wat and things have certainly changed. For one thing you didn’t pay US$62 for a three day pass to visit the Angkor ruins back in 1992. ◄ On that occasion there were probably more straggling Pathet Lao troublemaker...
I’m back in Vientiane in Laos for the first time since 1974, when I was here working on the very first edition of Southeast Asia on a Shoestring. I’m sure it’s nothing like it was when I came through in 1974, I seem to remember at the time we were all trying to drink ...
◄ A short visit to Bangkok, prior to setting off on a longer trip, and I made return trips to some familiar sites. Like Wat Po with its gigantic reclining Buddha figure, all the way from the top of its head to to the tips of its toes. ▲ Stupa figures in the Royal P...
On my way to Cambodia and beyond on what will become a rather long trip, we stopped at the Khao Yai National Park, 170km north-west of Bangkok in Thailand. The park has a wide variety of vegetation types in part because it sprawls over a range of altitudes. ▲ Durin...
Lots of places in the world electrical wiring can be a confusing chaos, a mad cobweb of wires going in every direction at once. ◄ In Thailand this week I saw lots of wiring which was certainly chaotic, but in a kind of chaotically organized fashion. There was far t...
I’m in Bangkok, Thailand and about to set off on a three month trip, I’ll be putting up more on that in a couple of week’s time. Meanwhile some Thailand observations starting with the ‘Dangerous Market”. Maeklong is on the coast in Ratchaburi, just south-west of centr...
© Tony Wheeler’s Travels 2013