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Moor Adventure, Amed, Amed (2026)

Family from village of 🇬🇧In search of a better way to live; blue skies, good food & balance 🌎 Travelling, learning & looking for our utopian dream👩 媽媽👦B10🧒B6 #學中文

19/07/2026

After scootering in different places, navigating long distance, traffic, passengers and luggage I would consider myself experienced. But the universe always finds a way to challenge me, remind me that I am not as experienced and not as skilled.

In the green rolling rice fields and mud tracks of the Kampot countryside I got stuck in the mud.

In reality it was a minor hiccup but my internal monologue experienced extreme highs and lows. The low of being laughed at by onlooking locals and my children as my feet sank further into the jammy clay, the spinny wheels spattering mud all over my legs, my frustration at the lack of strength to lift the scooter high enough to free it. The panic of being stuck there flooding my brain. It took a while for my brain and body to align.

My brain always panics first, it’s the flighty one. Only after several minutes of wrenching at the bike could I rationalise the actions needed and find the mental acuity to unstick us.

Doestevsky wrote: Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart. These are the attributes I hope to cultivate, in myself and my children. Hardships help lead to a deeper conscious. If I’d stayed back home where there’s a saftey net, a life on auto: with community, family, the state to catch us and always pick us back up I would not get stuck in the mud but would lack the space to reach my potential.

Some places are desirable for this very reason; the safety net. There is a trade off to living with a saftey net. Like an overbearing parent who lawnmowers everything before us to make our lives easier- a state that gives us a solution to everything- eventually intrudes, inhibits and limits our growth. It grows and extends into every aspect of our lives; legislates and limits, becoming hungrier, demanding more and more from us until the fulcrum tips it the other way and it becomes unsustainable. Crushing taxes, costs that are crippling and absurd policies.

Away from what is familiar we can only rely on ourselves. If we find experiences that develop our inner world, our cerebral and spiritual selves as sovereign people, instead of simply existing in a capacities of consumer and contributor we can learn to free ourselves.

06/04/2026

90 day tourist visa in Malaysia offers more than a travel window. It allows us depth: learning, routine, health, activities, and maintaining friendships. That kind of time changes the nature of travel—from observation to participation. Shared home cooked meals and pool days are elements that support consistency, eating well, and meaningful social connection.

We took a year-long lease on a condo in Penang last summer, primarily to establish a functional base in Southeast Asia. The benefits are practical: genuine rest, days at home, and a rhythm closer to how a local family might live. But Penang is not a proxy for the rest of Malaysia. It's a bubble—a very international one.

A single day might involve speaking only English with other worldschoolers, then listening to a Danish mother conversing in their native tongue with her sons, or a Malaysian Lankan family blend Manglish, Tamil and Hokkien. In the pool, there's a Shanghai grandmother who moved to Penang with her daughter and grandchildren. On weekly hikes, we meet native Cantonese speakers who've relocated from KL or Hong Kong, and a local uncle—ethnically Chinese, fluent in six languages.

Southeast Asia's diversity here isn't abstract. It's layered. People retain distinct identities, cultures, and languages while also integrating. Consider the Peranakan—ethnically Chinese with Malay heritage—who developed their own cuisine and culture, notably the Nyonya style. Linguistically, Penang is predominantly Hokkien; KL, Cantonese; further north into Thailand, Teochew.

But the political context matters too. Malaysia and Singapore's separation in 1965 was a painful schism. That rupture forced both nations to define, quite explicitly, what integration meant and who belonged. Devolved nations back home in the UK—Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland—never got to make equivalent sovereign choices about immigration and identity in the same period. Devolution came late and by then, the post-colonial framing of belonging had already hardened around a British-centric model.

The impact of that history lingers. In Malaysia, even with ongoing ethnic tensions, there is a public vocabulary for celebrating hybridity—Peranakan culture, language pluralism, communal co-existence—because the nation's very survival depended on some version of it after 1965. In the UK, the absence of a similarly decisive, locally-owned reckoning with integration means immigration debates often default to anxieties about what is foreign v familiar. That may explain why a poolside conversation in Penang with a Shanghai grandmother or a six-language-speaking local uncle feels ordinary here, while in some parts of the UK, especially at the moment such casual multicultural fluency can still feel politically charged.

The contrast is not about one place being "better." It's about whether a society has been forced, through historical rupture, to decide what it wants integration to look like—or whether it has simply kicked the can down the road. Where are other places in the world where multiculturalism still works?

Slide 1: when coach offers to take 2 kids to the movies, and ends up with 6 of them.
Slide 2: young enterprise day, George’s 5 minute hand massage for 10RM. He made 50RM.
Slide 3: Alex winning at yoga with
Slide 4: 6 languages barefoot uncle
Slide 5: animal flow with
Slide 6: dumpling day at my stay home time of my life
Slide 7: getting up to no good with 天
slide 8: saving up for toys from only £1200!!!
Slide 9: self portrait by George with .my

PeranakanCulture

16/02/2026

I’ve enjoyed many great feasts while we’ve been in China. On this occasion we were seated on bangseok, Korean style, all of us on the floor at the same level. Other times we have gathered around expansive round tables, lazy Susans turning steadily loaded with delights. There is something special about both arrangements.

On the floor, as in the traditional anbang of a Korean home, no chair is higher than another, no one presides from the head of the table. On folded knee or cross legged we meet one another eye to eye. The body understands what the mind sometimes forgets: we share the same ground.

The round table carries a similar message. In the legends of King Arthur, no knight sat above another; in depictions of the Last Supper, Christ and his disciples recline in intimate proximity. A circle refuses hierarchy. It insists on mutual regard.

At this Joseon style feast we enjoyed chicken and ginseng soup, restorative and warming, bowls of banchan, and fried silkworm pupae. The silkworm is an immigrant creature, cultivated, traded, transported across borders to spin wealth from leaves. Its threads becoming silk, silk becoming garments, garments became status and power. And yet we often forget the hands — and the backs — that spin prosperity.

What happens around our dinner tables, in company, too often fails to shape what happens beyond them. There are many who are denied a seat altogether. Nations whose labour and resources have long fed the appetites of wealthier countries now find their people unwelcome at the very banquet they helped prepare.

Billionaires, politician puppets and compliant media outlets point accusatory fingers at Black, brown, and Asian faces. We are cast not as contributors but as intruders — labelled thieves, leeches, layabouts. The very communities whose toil built railways, mined tin, copper, steel, staffed hospitals, harvested crops, cleaned offices, wove textiles and coded software are told they are a burden. Anti-immigrant rhetoric thrives on amnesia. It erases history and points fingers to distract from the profligate wealth of the few. I have yet to see a brown or yellow Jim Radcliffe point out there’s too many white British immigrant pensioners in Malaysia or too many American veterans in the Philippines.

If we all sat at round tables facing one another, eye to eye - we are seen. Our appetites are visible; our manners are on display. We self-regulate. We pass dishes. We consider whether others have eaten. The round table does not merely symbolise equality; it cultivates it. Shared space encourages shared responsibility. It tempers excess. It makes greed conspicuous. Bangseok seating deepens this lesson. When everyone rises from and returns to the same level, hierarchy is softened. There is no top of the table or lofty vantage point from which to eyeball newcomers.

If lessons could be learned from other cultures the politics of many European/ American aligned countries would be less divisive, immigration would not be framed as invasion but as invitation. A new guest brings new flavours, new stories, new ways of seasoning the broth. Immigration does not impoverish a table; it diversifies it. Yes, accommodation requires adjustment — an extra bowl, a little more rice, a willingness to shift our elbows — but scarcity is manufactured by hoarding, not by sharing.

13/02/2026

Joseon

China at the North Korean border was as far away as we could get from the Euro-American centric global perspective. Here, North Korea is not called North Korea but 朝鲜 ‘Joseon’ in China and also in Japan. Interestingly in Taiwan they retain the Western moniker of North and South Korea. Joseon- the name of the dynasty that had ruled the entirety of the Korean peninsula.

There are a multitude of reminders of this break in history. The broken bridges that were bombed repeatedly in the 1950’s. The retired warship the Dandong moored 10 minutes out of town- was a treat for the boys who loved clambering it, inspecting the ropes, the knots and cabins. Further out was the FuShan section of the Ming dynasty Great Wall - a gruellingly steep but mercifully short ascent that offered a glimpse into Joseon朝鲜 life. In summers farmers, labourers? can be seen working the land but in the bitter winter all we saw were what we believe were cloaked guards pacing the frozen dirt paths where people were most likely to try and cross or trade at the border.

George’s literary diet is mature beyond his 11yo and has read more about the Korean wars and the conflicts that shaped this part of the world. He remarked upon how many wars America had been involved in - in defence of democracy and ‘its way of life’. An accurate observation I thought though we don’t all need to defend the things we believe in this vigorously or violently. We can also opt out. There are third ways; ways to live sustainably, reciprocally and enjoy multiculturalism and resist the things that we don’t believe in. With so many liminal spaces of bridges and borders it really brought this home.

I have met so many families who have remarked upon how different the news and world seems outside of the BBC and msm echo chamber. These are typically people who are trying to throw off the yoke of money, mortgage and convention. Where school, scores, car, house and job have less and less meaning. They’re not all leftie leaning, tree hugging, moon gazers though these are all worthwhile activities- but just normal people who don’t want to continue living in systems that don’t care for them, lifestyles that don’t make them feel good or accrue things that don’t have any meaning.

Help: I have been slowly disentangling ourselves from our relationships with the Googles, Amazons, Walmarts, Estée Lauder and PG but it is difficult and have found it harder than I thought so any recommendations for smaller, ethical and sustainable alternatives much appreciated!

07/02/2026

In the China-N.Korean border town of Dandong 丹东, we found Korean iron pot-cum-paella.

I love a border town, it’s where a line is drawn and on paper and people are supposed to be different but still blend in all the many ways that humans do. This was North Korean canniness making 2 dishes from 1- Jin family iron pot bbq 📍金家高丽火盆.

First the highlights, blood sausage with rice, porky belly, velvety tofu & myriad of vegetables. Then reincarnation as fried rice with sauce until a crispy bottom forms. Listen to the sizzle.

For dessert the boys got papped by woman at neighbouring table who obviously found them too mesmerising. Their smart response: you need to pay us for pictures, 31元 (£3.25). Polite laughter, haha, but don’t take pictures of children, especially without permission.The boys withdrew their permission- politely, humourously but firmly.

As mixed kids, particularly in Asia- I feel the boys benefit from the many hidden advantages and there are many. They’re different but the same & that bridge consistently fascinates people. There are many compliments, many doors open & often gifts or freebies are dispenses but the boys also learn to cope with the downsides, the irritations- the staring, the questions & sometimes challenges.

At various points I’ve watched the kids try out different responses. Alex has put his entrepreneurial skills to task and offered to have his picture taken with strangers in exchange for cold hard cash while in Mindanao in the Philippines, with considerable success. George with characteristic fearlessness has simply asked please don’t take my picture- it’s effective.

It’s all good and well to say strangers shouldn’t take pictures of kids; in western culture personal space and boundaries are a thing & upheld (generally) but IRL in different countries and cultures there are different sensibilities, different ways to be- a multipolar multicultural world. In many Asian cultures children are raised by a community, a village, a collective - time and again I hear how amazing it is for families with kids in Asia and this is why.

Sometimes, this is a blessing, allowances are made for children; those lack of boundaries create space and understanding, but there are other times your kids sit with their hoods on their faces so the waitresses will stop papping and touching their faces.

Navigating identity, race and culture is something we all need to learn to do but I am continually impressed by the boys approach to these cultural nuances, sometimes it’s a hardline, sometimes it’s soft stance.

It wasn’t really a paella, but a universal practice making the most of what you have; folding leftovers, or a hodge podge of ingredients into something belly filling. Heat, the one absolutely vital thing in Dongbei winters and so rice that is heated until crispy bottomed.

03/02/2026

It’s easy to point out differences and attribute them to an increasingly polarised world, where religion, culture and skin colour set us apart. In reality we are all so similar, in terms of our beliefs; we all hold them strongly, with our metathesiophobia; our anxiety of the unknown & fear of change, especially where our food is concerned.Takeaway or delivery from the local Chinese and Indian are often considered unhealthy; loaded with salt, fats, sugar and MSG and yet remain ever popular palimpsests of their cultures cuisine. Prawn crackers and poppadoms obviously the hors d’oeuvres of choice for the Chinese and Indians; sweet and sour or korma - the totems of Chinese and Indian cuisine. Assumptions made and fingers pointed accusing these cuisines of an insidious endeavour to enfeeble and debilitate the health of the British nation. In the past cultures that ate rice as their staple starch, predominantly peoples of Asia were considered soft and effeminate like the velvety rice itself - particularly through Eurocentric eyes. Deeply held prejudices and generalisations were formed about rice, about wider food, and about the people, that still persist today. I grew up with snide questions about whether my family sold dog or cat meat in our restaurant. Then came the salt conspiracy, then the MSG and sugar chicanery. Once upon a time my cultures food was the great yellow peril endangering the pale faced natives who feared being bewitched; suspicious of so much flavour and texture.Interestingly on the other side of the world the exact same thing seems to happen; Chinese families visit Western restaurants that offer broad brush menus. Headliners include pizza, pasta, burgers, grilled steaks of meat, perhaps a salad or 2 and of course fries. Often an amalgam of the Caucasian lived experience, from Europe right across to America, replete with knives and forks and ketchup. Ironically though ketchup is an export with its origins in southern china and Cantonese. On the Chinese side of the world widely there is a belief, particularly in older and more traditional quarters that Western food lacks depth, lacks flavour, lacks fire, ergo their hospitality must also lack warmth. Not for the first time I have been asked do western people lack 人情味 a phrase which directly translates to ‘person feeling flavour’ and means loosely humanly sentiments. Their food has no flavour, so perhaps they don’t feel? conclusion: they’re cold. Westerners dont feel Confucian piety, familial warmth. Instead they value freedom, have in built individualism- a selfishness that is typified by the way they eat their food! It’s not even shared, everyone has their own plate! Much like in the UK, the cosmopolitan tier 1 city’s of China and among the younger generations- appreciation of cultural nuances and regional cuisines have emerged. In China there are creperies serving Breton style galette. There is coffee culture of all origins- Italian, American.Meanwhile, the last decade in London and Manchester we’ve seen Sichuan cuisine flourish and become ever more popular, and more recently the emergence of hearty Dongbei food & Xinjiang style cuisine too.If we openly share culture and cuisine from the outset, rather than make assumptions based on pre-existing fears and biases we would all understand each other better. Chinese migrants were afraid they would not be accepted and so early on they hid their varied, rich history and cuisine behind a disingenuous sauce of sweet and sour. Meanwhile, China still very much feels like a continent that doesn’t need or want anything from the West especially in the current geopolitical environment. In spite of decades of opening up to markets, China has seen a departure of western brands. The likes of Burger King struggling to expand when faced with steep local competition, selling out to a local Chinese consortium who are better placed to operate.As the world reshapes into a new multipolar era, maybe our food landscape can evolve too: toward more collaboration, more understanding, and more joy in what makes each culture unique—not what sets us apart.Here’s to more flavor, more fire, and more feeling—on all sides of the table. ❤️🌍。 Queuing for frog in -14 in Shenyang, 6元 for males, 28元 for female frogs.

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