I’ve interviewed so many people since becoming a writer over 17 years ago, but rarely have I been interviewed myself. Recently, I had the pleasure of speaking with an old friend, Gary Bowerman, a fellow Old China Hand and travel industry expert currently based in Kuala Lumpur, where he oversees a multitude of travel-related enterprises, including his own newsletter Asia Travel Re:Set (you can subscribe below), and the weekly South East Asia Travel Show podcast, which takes a broad ranging look at trends and personalities in the region. Apparently, the latter list includes yours truly.
Click on the button above to hear our fun trip down memory lane, or just click here. Here’s the preamble to give context to what our wide-ranging 39 minute chat covered:
The international travel media continues to change as blogs, vlogs and social media dominate content consumption. On this week’s show, Gary chats with Phnom Penh-based travel writer and editor Simon Ostheimer.
Having grown up in Hong Kong, Simon has lived and worked across South East Asia and Greater China over the past two decades. Along the way, he has managed city magazines in Shanghai, Beijing, Kuala Lumpur and Bangkok, plus a newspaper in Phuket.
He’s written travel stories from across the region for heavyweight titles like Conde Nast Traveller, CNN Travel and DestinAsian, and now publishes his own weekly newsletter, Tales of the Orient.
In a broad-ranging chat, Simon discusses his childhood in Hong Kong, studying Chinese in Suzhou and watching the 2008 Beijing Olympics. He shares his observations about how travel and lifestyle content changed during the 2010s, a period of dramatic expansion in travel and tourism across South East Asia.
Simon also talks about pandemic life in Cambodia, and how his perspective on travel has shifted over the past 18 months.
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