I’m a freelance travel writer, editor and photographer, a Cubaphile and Cuba travel expert. I write and photograph for 12 travel guides to

the island.

Over the last decade I’ve also become a Guatemala, Laos and Vietnam travel expert, and I’ve happily got lost in the imperial cities of Morocco
for several publishers.

I write and photograph for guidebooks, magazines, newspapers
and online media, and I’ve edited more than 30 country,
regional and city guides for UK publishers.

My most recent trips include exploring the coconut and chocolate paradise of Baracoa in remote eastern Cuba, vintiquing in Havana,
getting the scoop on the Cuban art scene, and extensive research
trips to Laos and Vietnam’s northern highlands.

My latest Cuba books include Frommer’s Cuba, 5th edition (February 2011), Michelin Must See Havana (October 2011) and Michelin Like
a Local Cuba (April 2012). My most recent Southeast Asian books are Footprint Vietnam, Footprint Laos, and Footprint Vietnam, Cambodia & Laos.

An exhibition (Cuban Stories) of some of my Cuba photographs is
currently being held at Casa, Floridita, London (www.floridita.co.uk/cigars/). The images were also exhibited at Rich Mix, an East London gallery, in  2010. The Guardian is profiling these images at: www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/gallery/2010/feb/04/cuba-photography-exhibition-rich-mix

I have appeared on BBC Radio 4’s Excess Baggage talking to presenter John McCarthy about travel in Cuba and on Simon Calder’s LBC Travel Show travel show talking about Hanoi during its 1000th birthday celebrations.

I started my writing life as a qualified journalist in Kent before the lure

(school geography lessons plus Redmond O’Hanlon’s travels) of South America saw me backpack from the glacial tail of Chile to the steamy tip
of Colombia. After a run-in with a piranha in Bolivia, becoming trapped
in a sea lion flash mob in the Galápagos, and a sand boarding accident
in Peru, I was hooked.

I moved to Barcelona to learn Spanish before becoming fluent in the Peruvian Amazon where I volunteered to capture snakes, frogs and

lizards for a rainforest charity project. A flesh-eating tropical disease,

followed by a stay at the unit for people under the influence of foreign

critters at University College Hospital in London, only strengthened my

resolve to return to Latin America.

Inspired by a friend’s tale of hearing Elton John’s eulogic Candle in the Wind, set to reggae in the barrios of Cuba, and the knowledge that Pope John Paul II had requested Fidel Castro reintroduce Christmas Day as a public holiday, I left for the Caribbean.

I arrived in Havana a few days before Christmas 1998 with a Mum-made Christmas cake. Cuban customs insisted the cake went through X-ray, quizzed me about its cultural connotations and gasped at its monster weight. I’ve been returning to Cuba ever since.