Blog of the Month: Time Travel Turtle
Ex-broadcast journalist Michael Turtle turns his hand to travel writing with his brilliant blog bringing you professionally-penned stories from around the world, Time Travel Turtle.
‘Writing worth reading’, is how The Scotsman newspaper describes itself. And here’s a travel blog that embodies this slogan. After a decade working in broadcast journalism in Australia, Michael Turtle ‘left Sydney to travel the world and write about the places, people and experiences he discovers.’
Michael’s introduction will sound familiar to the surfer of the travel blogosphere. The standard line is something like ‘I chucked in my career at the corporate coal face when I hit 30 and realised I wanted to see the world, so off I went to Thailand and now I’m a footloose adventurer and here’s my diary’. Frankly, who cares? But the difference with Time Travel Turtle is that it is actually really rather good.
The emphasis of Michael’s blog/website is on its content, rather than the design, but both its layout, recalling that of a newspaper travel page, and its straightforward structure are just what’s required – it is neatly packaged and keeps the emphasis on the writing. Michael’s photography bears the hallmarks of someone who knows the trade, always well composed and eye-catching.
Michael sends back engaging, exciting dispatches from South America to North Korea, about places and people that would easily grace a travel magazine or the travel supplement of a national newspaper Sunday edition. Topics vary from topical and newsy: meeting Octomum or reporting from the Jubilee celebrations, to the personal musing about life on the backpacker road, more often favoured by bloggers, for example, about his snoring problem. His nod to Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas in his post ‘Bad Vibrations’, is appropriate. There is a little gonzo in many travel bloggers, but Michael has the ability to translate the spirit of adventure into writing well worth reading.
