Travel

These are my 10 favourite places to eat in London

Edmond Chan · Sep 18, 2018 · Leave a Comment

I often get asked by my friends to suggest places to eat in London. Eating and drinking are two of my favourite pastimes. London eating and drinking is very hit and miss. There's far more terrible and average places than good places and when London is so expensive, that means that most places are awful value for money. Here's my favourite places based on quality, atmosphere and value for money: 1. Padella, Borough Market This is the best pasta in London. It's great value and there's no reservations, so get there early or be prepared to put your name down and wait. The queue can be massive. Pop off to the Wheatsheaf pub nearby for a drink …

Advice to my mate for climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro

Edmond Chan · Aug 30, 2016 · 1 Comment

One of my close friends is climbing Kilimanjaro this November. Over a recent curry, he sounded pretty relaxed about it. I asked him what training he was planning to do. He said, 'A bit of cardio.' Is that all? 'Yeah, bit of running. What else do I need to do?' I thought I'd write this for him and anyone else looking for advice. I climbed Kilimanjaro in 2012. I did the Lemosho Route. Kilimanjaro is easy to underestimate and that's why I'm writing this. She's just under 6,000m, which is high, but no technical climbing is needed. There's even a route disparagingly called 'The Coca Cola Route.' So people of …

The selling secrets of Moroccans, the world’s greatest salesmen

Edmond Chan · Jul 17, 2016 · 2 Comments

I've just come back from a trip to Morocco, which was incredible. One of the things that struck me most was how damn good the Moroccans are at selling stuff. We bought so many things that we just didn't need! If you've been to Morocco, particularly Marrakech, then you know what I mean. The souks of Marrakech are filled with master salesmen. I've thought about how they do it and what we can learn from them. Make a connection, no matter how small The first thing a shopkeeper in the souks will do is to engage you. He doesn't care how he does it. He will say something to get you to look around. Even if you say 'no thanks', he …

How to successfully complete the 3 Peaks Challenge – a detailed guide

Edmond Chan · Mar 28, 2016 · 1 Comment

Introduction I’ve done this challenge twice now. Once in 2010 and again in 2012. It’s an awesome experience and I wholeheartedly recommend it. In 2010, I did it with friends from school, Dave Macaulay and Grant Rowley, and Dave’s dad, John Macaulay. In 2012, I did it with some friends I’d made from a trip to Kilimanjaro earlier that year. What is the 3 Peaks Challenge? You have to successfully summit and successfully come down the three highest peaks in Scotland, England and Wales (Ben Nevis, Scafell Pike, and Snowden) in no more than 24 hours. It doesn’t matter how you do it and in what order. So say you start at the bottom of Ben …

The End of the Road

Edmond Chan · Mar 27, 2009 · Leave a Comment

Seoul was incredibly good fun, but after five days, it was time to leave South Korea. We flew back to Hong Kong where I stayed just for one more day before boarding a flight back to the UK. I’m back! So what’s different? In Little Gidding, T.S. Eliot wrote: “We shall not cease from exploration, And the end of all our exploring, Will be to arrive where we started, And know the place for the first time.” It’s an absolutely gorgeous lyric about how travelling provides new lenses through which to view the familiar but I’m not sure that that Eliot was quite right! Being back is undoubtedly weird but contrary to Eliot’s …

South Korea – Extreme Sport Sushi

Edmond Chan · Mar 27, 2009 · Leave a Comment

THE first man who, having enclosed a piece of ground, bethought himself of saying “This is mine”, and found people simple enough to believe him, was the real founder of civil society. From how many crimes, wars and murders, from how many horrors and misfortunes might not anyone have saved mankind, by pulling up the stakes, or filling up the ditch, and crying to his fellows, “Beware of listening to this impostor; you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody.” Rousseau, Discourse on the Origin of Inequality FROM SHANGHAI, I took a train back to Hong Kong to prepare for my …

Some thoughts on China

Edmond Chan · Mar 27, 2009 · Leave a Comment

As mentioned, I went into China with some preconceptions, many with a degree of negativity and probably arising from years of exposure to Western media and also from the Hong Kong part of my heritage. In the West, China is usually painted as slightly sinister, repressive, and unaligned with collective Western interests, particularly as seen by its long-held tacit and not-so-tacit alignment with the more reprehensible regimes in the world such as Mugabe's Zimbabwe. Every Chinese action is heavily scrutinised; from its handling of domestic issues such as Tibet, the 2008 Olympic Games and the recent upheaval in Xinjiang to Chinese foreign …