Burger review: Five Guys

On the hunt for London’s best burger

Burgers are in vogue. Everywhere you look these days there’s one for sale; from pop-up stalls to pubs to restaurants, the choice is endless. This is a food that has morphed from being predominantly a quick way to bag a bite to eat to high dining and a specialist cuisine. The cynic might say, “A […]

23 photos to show why you should never visit Laos

23 photos to show why you should never, ever, visit Laos. 1. The night markets are ghastly 2. The waterfalls are ugly 3. There are no places to enjoy a beer with a view 4. Terrible sunsets 5. Mundane architecture 6. Disappointing views 7. Horrible food 8. No history 9. Little religious heritage 10. Boring […]

Luang Prabang: the star of the show

Admittedly my first interactions with Luang Prabang were far from perfect. My arrival at 10:30pm after a seven hour bus journey was followed by heading straight to A&E to treat a broken hand. These aren’t the picture-postcard moments associated with this UNESCO World Heritage Site, but after a few painkillers, a long sleep and a […]

Grounded

I should be writing this from a cafe in Cambodia but I’m actually sitting in my parents living room watching Pointless. Now, as pleasant as this is it certainly wasn’t part of the plan when I was drawing up the itinerary for my sabbatical from LSE. One broken hand, a flight home and an operation […]

The two sides of Ed Sheeran’s development work

“White saviour”, “poverty porn”, “reinforcing negative stereotypes” have been some of the phrases thrown at Ed Sheeran in recent weeks after he ‘won’ the 2017 Rusty Radiator award handed out by Radi-Aid. This annual award, along with the Golden Radiator, highlights the very worst and best fundraising videos in international development. The judges criticise videos […]

4 reasons why volunteering will help you settle in to London

Volunteering during your time at LSE has many benefits but one of the biggest is that can help you settle in to London. It’s not unusual to feel a little overwhelmed when arriving in such a big city, starting on your course and trying to do all those others things that life throws at you. […]

I’m off

That’s right, I’m out of here. I’m taking 8 months off work and I’m going to see parts of the world I’ve never been to before, armed with my camera, pen and pad (ok, iPad). This decision has been a long time coming and to be honest I’m pretty nervous. I don’t know many 33 […]

Five things I learnt from being the London Chair for SVN

With my last meeting as the London Chair for the Student Volunteering Network coming up it seems like a good time to reflect on how I’ve found the role and, hopefully, share some insight with new chairs or potential ones. Here are my top five learnings from just over two years in the role. 1. […]

Guest post: Living and working in rwanda; what’s it really like?

Rosie Coleman explains what she’s learnt from her travels and living in different part of Africa over the past year. Check out her previous blog on how travelling helped her with her career. I’ve now lived in Rwanda’s capital Kigali for 5 weeks and I’ve been working and travelling in Africa for nearly a year. […]

Boston in the cold

“The good news is that it’ll be 7 degrees on our first day; the bad news is it’ll drop to minus 12 in the following 48 hours.” I knew this isn’t what my sister had envisioned when I convinced her to take a spring break in Boston but it hadn’t even occurred to me that […]

Guest post: How travelling helped me reflect on my career and decide what to do next

Rosie Coleman explains why she took time off to travel and how it helped her career. Make sure you check out the video about her first three weeks in southern Africa too. I’d never taken a gap year. My travels had been holidays rather than extended periods spent overseas. After graduating from LSE in 2013, […]