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From the Arabian Gulf to the Norwich City Classroom

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At the beginning of the year, I sent my CV to three language institutions in Norwich to see if there was any teaching work around. Only one replied, and they could offer only summer holiday work — which didn’t really suit me, as I already had full-time work throughout the kids’ six-week summer holiday at the surf school in Cromer. For a while, I honestly wondered whether I would ever teach again. Then, months later and seemingly out of nowhere, a new director at one of the institutes got in touch in June with a last-minute offer of two weeks’ work in early July. I haven’t completely lost hope of returning to a life overseas, despite the clouds that melanoma has cast over some of those plans, and this opportunity felt like I was stepping back onto a road that might eventually lead me to the Gulf — or somewhere else — to resume my passion for teaching English and, perhaps, collecting a few more riyals along the way. There were, however, a few hurdles to clear before the offer could beco...
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Oman: Turtles, Karak Tea, Warm Seas and a Change of Heart

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Much like Cyprus, the run-up to my Omani adventure was full of tension and uncertainty linked to Trump and Israel’s war on Iran, and the angry Iranian reaction all over the Gulf. While Oman’s capital, Muscat, was never attacked during the Iranian onslaught, a couple of its ports were bombed. Therefore, the trip only became certain when the plane took off from Istanbul and lurched towards the edge of the Strait of Hormuz. My companion for these travels was an old friend, Jonathan from Norfolk, who visited me on Siargao Island and Ayoke in 2014 and with whom I’d kept in touch across the years. He’d felt particularly low through the dark English winter and had surprisingly accepted my invitation to join me as a practical way of lifting his spirits for a few days at least. Actually, the trip began with a 12-hour stopover in Turkey’s capital, where I got to show Jonathan around a city I’ve visited a few times over the past couple of decades. The day started with a train/ferry combinat...
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Location: Muscat, Oman
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Cyprus: An Island of Little Discoveries

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After my family and I picked up the pace of our travels in 2025, it didn't seem time to slow down in 2026, so we lined up a trip to Larnaca in Cyprus for early spring, following Algeria. Annoyingly, a stray drone, reportedly linked to Hezbollah or Iran, or possibly something else entirely, slammed into the British base there a few weeks before we left, ramping up the tension as to whether this trip would even happen. EasyJet cancelled loads of flights in the wake of the attack, but ours went ahead without an issue, landing safely and bringing my country total to 61. As a hangout of a typical Brit, this is hardly an island I would usually visit, and the presence of small crowds of British drinkers in Larnaca's bars didn't change my mind straight away. But there is so much more to Cyprus than strips of beach, hotels and bars. That was the side of the island I was determined to see. I knew before arriving that I'd need private accommodation rather than a resort, so w...
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Location: Nicosia, Cyprus
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Algeria: Into the Never-ending Desert

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It's probably worth mentioning that our departure to Algiers was immediately preceded by a clear skin check at Norwich N&N Plastics Department. I had expected it to be clear. Honestly, I know how to spot a melanoma and any other skin lesion. I know my skin. I know when something doesn't look right. As usual, the dermatologist was not from the UK, was a trainee, and didn't really check everywhere. I mean, how the heck can he tell if I've got a melanoma on my scalp if he doesn't look there? Or on my butt? Or on my feet? But I signed up for these ongoing checks and, if this is what I get for free, they're definitely better than nothing. And at least if something does crop up in the future, they'll cut it out relatively quickly.  A week later, my wife Miras, my son Raf and I were heading to Gatwick for a night at our favourite airport hotel: the Travelodge. We totally had the airport wired after last year's trips and had found a non-standard path to the ...
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Location: Djanet, Algeria
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The Italian Detour: Bologna, San Marino & Us

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For the first time in many years, my wife Miras and I headed off on a trip together without our son Raf in tow. He'd been such a fixture on our lifetime of adventures since his birth back in 2010 that it felt super strange to be heading to an airport hotel without him. But he was enrolled in an online school now, and they care about attendance, so a couple's trip it was. I guess we couldn't have chosen a more romantic location: Bologna in Italy, with a side trip to the microstate of San Marino. And we made the most of every minute, behaving more like teenagers than the older couple we'd become. Yes, holding hands all the time was back, along with sweet moments over coffee, pizza and flickering candlelight, followed by nights when we rediscovered a little of the carefree abandon we'd thought we'd left behind. I can't pretend my ongoing shoulder problems didn't follow me to Italy too, but the depressive slump I felt whenever I saw the bumps in the Nort...
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Location: San Marino
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Qatar: The Gulf Called Again

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A pattern had begun to emerge. Whenever things were getting worse in the UK, I booked a solo escape to somewhere that reminded me of the expansive, limitless, good life I used to lead in Saudi and elsewhere. Yes, that was the main reason I had booked a fairly last-minute trip to Qatar. It would take me back to a lifestyle where everything felt good: warm evenings, incredible food and that unbeatable Arab vibe. So, what were my Qatar wanderings like? Well, from the minute I landed in Doha, I just felt so at home. I arrived in the late morning, but the relentless 38-degree heat didn't bother me at all under my rather huge hat. The ease of the metro astounded me. It was so fast, easy and efficient. I reached the souq district and found a classic resto to enjoy a multi-plate Arab breakfast — so tasty and incredibly photogenic. Then, en route to my hotel, I got a quick haircut for £4 from a super-friendly Bangladeshi guy and wondered why the same cut in the UK costs a ridiculous £17. ...
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Location: Doha, Qatar
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The End Didn't Feel Like the End

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I could hardly believe it! After following Gerson Therapy fairly faithfully for almost two years — not travelling for over a year, obsessively juicing carrots, apples and greens every damn day, shoving coffee up my ass at least three times a day and not touching alcohol or anything artificially sweet — something arose to deprive me of the joy of a slow transition back to something like a normal life. You see, I had fallen off a small ladder in the summer. I didn't feel much at the time, but several weeks later shoulder pain began to build, and the function loss and pain were so bad by early September that surfing became impossible. Gerson had brought mixed success with it. Three more melanomas had appeared, although one was already visible in photographs before I started and the others might have been lurking on my skin back then too. My blood pressure had normalised within weeks and eventually some inflammation markers, including my neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio, returned to no...
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Paris, Brussels & Luxembourg: A Whistle-Stop European Adventure

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While I've been to Paris a few times and France several times, my wife and son had never been to either before we boarded the Eurostar in late spring and positively flew across to France at speeds of up to 230 kph, through the Channel Tunnel and straight into Paris Gare du Nord. Once we reached the city, we checked into a slightly shabby hotel strategically located within easy walking distance of the station. It was early evening when we arrived, so we crashed pretty early, eager to make an early start the following day. The next morning, we made the most of it by rising at first light and embarking on a fairly hectic schedule that took us from the Arc de Triomphe to Place du Trocadéro for some photographs, up the Eiffel Tower for magnificent cityscape views, along the River Seine to see the newly reconstructed Notre-Dame, and through the fabulous Louvre area before finally ending the day in the Montmartre district. But this trip wasn't all about Paris. In fact, I was det...
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Location: Paris, France
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A Melanoma Met or a BCC?

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Look it was obvious it was something. This stupid lesion had sprung up on my chest during a virus back in November 2024. My chest was full of them but only this one persisted. I had photographed it from early 2025. It caused a minor panic attack in Sarajevo when I became convinced it was something very serious and my wife Miras told me I had to forget about it while we were travelling. But I just couldn't forget about it. This was my life. The derm suggesting it was melanoma during my February skin check had pushed me over the edge. If only she had confidently diagnosed it as Basal Cell Carcinoma (BCC) in the first place. Now that would have saved me an awful amount of anxiety, but she didn't see it that way and even challenged the consultant, who said it needed removing but agreed with my diagnosis. You see, a BCC is a very common skin cancer and hardly ever metastasizes, so is far preferable to a primary or secondary melanoma.  About six weeks after the excision biopsy in...
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Malta Was Supposed to Be an Escape

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Riding on the train from Norwich to Gatwick felt more like an escape from my problems rather than taking a pleasant short break. You see, during my February skin check the trainee dermatologist had flagged a lesion on my chest as a possible melanoma. I didn't believe it - it looked far more like a BCC - but her mannerisms and confidence and insistence were more than enough to send me into another round of anxiety and what ifs. In March, the lesion was excised by an empathetic and talented surgeon from Sri Lanka, who said she'd send off the sample for analysis. Another six to eight-week wait - more than enough time to imagine the worst - lay ahead to find out the pathology result. From my perspective, if the derm was right, it couldn't be a new melanoma primary (it just didn't have the features) but could be a melanoma metastasis potentially upstaging me to a far more serious medical situation. Anyway, in the midst of this new despair, I fled to the airport with a thousa...
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Location: Malta
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The Balkans in Fast Forward: Sarajevo to Lake Bled

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Nothing much happened in our lives between arriving back from Tunisia to departing to our second destination of 2025: Sarajevo. This time, my family and I returned to the most convenient airport for us here in Norfolk - Stansted - to catch an unbelievably cheap £20 one-way flight with Ryanair to the Bosnian Capital.  I hadn’t thought much about this trip until it was almost upon us, which meant quite a lot of our choices were spontaneous.  In Sarajevo, we spent the morning checking out two museums and the afternoon taking a cable car to a snow capped mountain top and walking down an abandoned toboggan track. Whatever we didn’t see, didn’t matter. Onwards to Mostar on an incredible train track through the mountains to a town built around a stunning bridge for a one-night stay. Two vegetarian meals (for me at least) at Foodhaus were the highlight. Then into a private taxi to Dubrovnik, via a stunning waterfall, where we stayed for two nights in the heart of the old town. It was...
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Location: Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina
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Back to the Arab World: The Comeback Begins

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After a truly miserable 2024 - a year of multiple surgeries, thousands of coffee enemas and fresh juices, various consultations, no travel, and frequently wondering if I even had a future - I was determined to make 2025 a whole lot better. Unsurprisingly, I decided to prioritise family travel and booked several flights in late 2024 to give us all something to look forward to. In order to mimic our old Saudi life, where everything felt limitless and abundant, I chose a return to the Arab world, to the underrated North African destination Tunisia, as our first destination of 2025.  The airport of departure - Gatwick - used to be a place I dreaded going to, much preferring the convenience of Norwich or Stansted, but my mind was now in a very different place. I felt a surge of gratitude and privilege just being alive and well and strolling through Gatwick onto an EasyJet flight to Enfidha. Funnily enough, I hadn’t even checked exactly where the airport was in Tunisia at the time of bo...
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Location: Tunis, Tunisia
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The Door That Changed Everything: From McDonald’s to the Guesthouse

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In the midst of a now typically heated argument with my mother about whether God had abandoned us, I shouted I need a job now! You see, I couldn’t wait any longer. McDonald’s was killing me physically and mentally a little more each day, but we needed the money too much for me to just quit. We’d already suffered catastrophic financial losses in the wake of the super typhoon, endured a total loss of peace from the merciless Chinese developing a five-star palace in front of our Siargao home and I’d personally experienced the horror of multiple melanomas. All these terrible things had already shaken my faith to the very core. Now, just day to day living in England was becoming too much to handle. That’s why I had shouted. I wondered if God might finally listen to the desperate cry of a broken person and actually do something good about it.  Amazingly, within days of the argument, I received a call from a local guesthouse. I had applied for at least 25 local jobs in the wake of the ter...
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Location: Cromer, UK
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