Not all new, and not in any particular order, but these have been on high rotation this year.

Josh Pyke Chimney’s Afire
Angus and Julia Stone A Book Like This
Lisa Mitchell Welcome to the Afternoon EP
Bloc Party Intimacy
Coldplay Viva La Vida
The Guild League Pulic Transport
Emiliana Torrini Me and Armini
Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers Wildflowers
Laura Marling Alas I Cannot Swim
Interpol Our Love to Admire
Ani DiFranco Red Letter Year
Gillian Welch Soul Journey
Beirut The Flying Club Cup
Sufjan Stevens Come on feel the Illinoise
Lucinda Williams Little Honey
Bruce Springsteen
Stereophonics Pull the Pin

I’ve read a lot of books this year. Barely any of them are on this list, and the books that are on this list weren’t all published this year. They’re the ones that have stayed with me, the ones that I enjoyed the most, the ones I know I will go back to.

Emily Ballou Aphelion

Jhumpa Lahiri Unaccustomed Earth

Jhumpa Lahiri The Namesake

Jhumpa Lahiri The Interpreter of Maladies

Tim Winton Breath

Jodi Picoult Change of Heart

Jon Krakauer Into the Wild

Stephenie Meyer Twilight

Debra Adelaide The Household Guide to Dying

Monica Ali Brick Lane

Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman The Long Way Down

Charlotte Bronte Jane Eyre (reread)

Esther Freud The Sea House

This photo has been featured as the daily photo over at Planet Earth. How exciting!

Heading for the Vietnamese border. Unfortunately there is no footage of Kyle and I belting out the karaoke version of Colours of the Wind from Pocahontas, much to the amusement of the Cambodians on the bus, and the despair of the bus driver.

When I tell people I’m due to go to India, via Bangkok in a couple of weeks, with Thai Airways, it generally elicits a smirk and a shake of the head. Admittedly, I’m not flying to India via Bangkok (but rather Kathmandu via BKK), and I’m not going anywhere near Mumbai (only Delhi), but still…what a situation.

I’m mostly concerned about the flights. From what I understand, should the protest still be going on (and will Suvarnabhumi be in any state to receive planes anyway once this is over, particularly if it gets violent?), I’ll be put on a flight with another carrier. There’s not a lot of airlines that actually fly to Kathmandu, so I have my fingers crossed there won’t be any delays.

The not knowing is frustrating - and chances are, if the airport in Bangkok is still out of commission, I’ll have no idea right up until the day of the flight. But I will not be cancelling anything. No way, no need.

I still can’t believe I went to New York.

It was a completely unexpected turn of events for the year. I had never been to North America, and I certainly wasn’t expecting to go anytime soon. It was my job that sent me there, and it was possibly the most exciting week of my life (both professionally and personally).

I was in the city for seven days, the week before I flew to Thailand. While much of my time was spent working (of course!) I had a few days to myself. I’ve always thought of myself as a city girl, having lived in Sydney my whole life. I also thought I knew what a city was. And then I emerged from the 34th/Herald Square subway station, and I realised - before then, I had no clue.

I find it so difficult to describe Manhattan without gushing superlatives. Everything was larger than life. And to my total surprise, New Yorkers were friendly! I loved the way the city moves, the way it really doesn’t ever sleep. The vibe, the way there was something happening on every street corner, whether it be music, street theatre, people on soap boxes or people collecting money for Obama’s campaign. I loved the way it was all neon and colour at night, and I loved gazing out at Central Park’s expanse from Top of the Rock on a humid September morning. I couldn’t walk down the street without recognising something from popular culture, without feeling like I was on a living movie set.

The shopping, the bookshops, the green spaces, a street fair in Greenwich Village. The astounding mix of people from all over the world and all over America. Listening to the many accents and grinning at the conversations while in an air-conditioned subway car (because you know what? You only need to be on the subway for two stops to get enough material for a year’s worth of Overheard in New York). Sitting, enchanted in the Gershwin Theatre watching Wicked unfold before me.

I spent the whole seven days grinning like an idiot.

More New York photos on Flickr. There’s still many more to come.

Bangkok batters your senses as soon as you step from the revolving glass doors of the airport. I arrived from Sydney at six in the morning, tired, smelly and on auto-pilot. Immigration seemed to take forever, but it was only forty-five minutes that I had to stand in line, turning to glare now and then at the crazy Swiss man behind me who seemed intent on trying everything imaginable to get in front of me.

When I finally did make it outside the airport, 150B ticket for the bus to Banglamphu growing moist in my hand, I dodged the taxi touts and shopping tourists with their oversized suitcases, stopped at the bus rank and breathed in. A dizzy smile spread across my face. Asia again. Even at seven a.m, the day was already thick and humid. The smell of the air was heavy with spice and sweat, rubbish and perhaps the river. I tried to work out what the protocol was when you were a female, alone, waiting for a bus beside a saffron-robed monk who had taken the only seat.

I opted to remain standing.

Thanks in part to my stupidity and the lack of English-language skills of the bus driver, I missed my stop by about five hundred metres, and ended up opposite Khao San Road. At eight in the morning, there wasn’t much going on and I powered back in the direction of my hotel, my back slippery with sweat under the weight of my pack, my Lonely Planet guide opened to the map page in my hand. I’m sure I looked completely ridiculous and completely lost. Yet not one person approached me.

This was new. On my first trip to Asia, two weeks travelling the length of Vietnam, you couldn’t put one foot in front of the other without being accosted by someone wanting to ‘help’. In Bangkok, no one looked at me twice. It was strangely liberating (though also kind of disappointing), and I practically skipped up to the reception desk of the hotel.

Bangkok, I knew, was going to be a breeze.

There weren’t many tourists when we were there (though I suppose the same could be said for the rest of the country), and I suppose that was the highlight. However, as is unfortunately all-too-common throughout South East Asia, there were lots of dirty old Western men with young Cambodian women hanging off their arms. There were also lots of children begging, more than I saw anywhere else.

I think the children were the saddest aspect of Sihanoukville. You can’t sit on a lounger on the sand without hordes of them descending on you, enticing you into a conversation that will end in you buying bracelets and leg-hair removal with a piece of string (I kid you not). I managed to avoid any kind of transaction by burying my face in my book, but that doesn’t mean I wasn’t paying attention to what was going on beside me. My roommate was drawn into conversation with a little boy who said his name was Danny. He wanted to be a doctor, he said, and he sold bracelets on the beach in the morning and went to school in the afternoon. I seriously doubt that was true.

Danny spoke English better than some ten-year-olds in Australia, and he talked my friend in circles. He had an amusing and logical response for everything she said. She didn’t want to buy him a Coke because it was bad for him? Buy him a juice. No juice? Buy him a water. Eventually, when he realised she wasn’t going to give in, he wandered away.

Children are very difficult not to give in to. Especially when they’re so smart and astute, like Danny was. Thankfully in Sihanoukville, the problem of child labour and street children has been recognised, and there are quite a few NGOs in town, like M’Lop Tapang and the Starfish Project. It’s much better to give to organisations like these than to give to the children on the street or on the beaches, because it only perpetuates the problem. That afternoon, after our encounter with Danny on the beach, both my roommate and I bought up big at both places.

Quite possibly my favourite picture from Phnom Penh, if not Cambodia.