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.
It’s the heady mix of ‘West meets the rest’ as Doug Hendrie checks out assorted collisions between the developing world and the new ideas and technology. Doug travels to South Korea to see how videogames have become a national sport. He visits the Philippines to obser...
I flew Southwest Airlines the other week, from Fort Lauderdale, Florida to Nashville, Tennessee. Not because I wanted to (although Southwest was absolutely fine), but because American Airlines wouldn’t sell me a ticket. I was in the British Virgin Islands when I tried...
I flew from New York to London the other day, earlier the same day Mark Shand, emerging from a New York hotel bar, tripped, fell, hit his head and died. Mr Shand was the brother of Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, wife of Prince Charles, so in the British media it was a ...
Seems like every city I visit these days – from Taiyuan in China to the San Francisco Bay Area in the USA – has rolled out a bicycle share scheme. I’m a regular user of the Barclays Cycle Hire scheme (aka Boris Bikes after London Mayor Boris Johnson) when I’m in Lo...
My interest in electric vehicles continues. I’ve recently tried the Tesla Model S in London and back in 2011 I spent a couple of days charging around the Swiss Alps (well discharging actually) in a Tesla Roadster. I’ve also owned a Prius (it’s electric for short spell...
Bad Lands – my foray along the Axis of Evil, President George W Bush’s trio of Iran, Iraq and North Korea, plus six other ‘bad’ countries, was published in April 2007. A revised second edition came out in mid-2010 and I commented that remarkably little had changed: ‘T...
▲ I like statues of national heroes popping up far from home. Near my home in London this statue of the Ukraine national hero St Volodymyr (aka Vladimir the Great) has been flower bedecked recently as the struggle with Russia grinds on. It's on the corner of Holla...
Having explored the art deco architectural masterpieces of South Beach I eventually ended up in the Wolfsonian Museum where I stumbled upon an Irish delight: the Harry Clarke Geneva Window. Clarke was a noted book illustrator in the early part of the 20th century, but...
Lonely Planet’s website has a story on Seven Amazing Fakes, reproductions of exotic structures – like Foamhenge, just like Stonehenge, same size even, although it is made out of Styrofoam rather than stone. ▲ Nashville’s Parthenon is rather better than an amazing f...
The Miami Design Preservation League at 1001 Ocean Drive in South Beach, Miami, puts on daily Art Deco Architecture walking tours of the Art Deco district of Miami Beach. The tours kick-off at 1030 am daily, there’s no need to pre-book, they cost A$20 and last 90 minu...
© Tony Wheeler’s Travels 2013