Recently I came across a file containing part of a novel I started writing a number of years ago, then put away and more or less forgot. Since re-reading it I’ve been trying to continue the story, which has allowed me to “travel” in this time of Covid, since the novel is set in northeast Thailand near the Cambodian and Vietnamese borders.

I pulled out books of faded photographs, guide books, one of Thai phrases and even a journal and settled down to recall the excitements and challenges I experienced travelling alone to an unknown place, where I didn’t know the language and where I had committed to teaching English at a teachers’ college for six months…

Thais are a wonderfully hospitable people. I was assigned a house on the campus and frequently taken to town to shop and eat out and…