Sandra Howard: Travelling well 'sets life in context'

As part of the Cathay Pacific Life Well Travelled series, novelist and Sixties modelSandra Howard explains how her travels had tropical beginnings

The bustling city of Hanoi captured Sandra Howard's imagination

By Sandra Howard

11:36AM GMT 27 Feb 2015

I’ve been lucky enough to have more than my fair share of travel. I was born in Malta at thebeginning of the war, my mother only just made it out of an air­raid shelter in time.

We only just made it back to Britain as well. My father, an Air Force doctor, had been stationedin Malta, but with all the men away fighting, the women and children had to travel homethrough torpedo­infested waters.

My father specialised in tropical medicine and after the war much of my childhood was spent ininteresting tropical countries. Some of my favourite memories are from a year I had as ateenager in Singapore. I’d gone to an army grammar school, 20 miles from RAF Changi wherewe lived, and with Independence riots raging we’d had an armed guard on the truck taking us toschool.

We had a holiday in Malaya, crossing the Causeway, travelling to Malacca with its famous

canes and guesthouses like the images I have from Somerset Maugham, and on to KualaLumpur. We went to Hong Kong, too, when there was no underwater tunnel and we sailed toKowloon in picturesque sampans.

Every trip in those formative years was enriching and rewarding, but travel always is; I neverstop feeling the thrill. The adrenaline kicks in with the planning and keeps me pepped up all theway.

As a writer of fiction, I love really long flights; I settle down, airline socks on, and never look upfrom scribbling. The snug seat, meals on trays, no media distractions unless I choose, it’scocooning somehow and the ideas flow.

I travelled as a photographic model in the Sixties, doing fashion shoots in Europe, Kenya, anuntroubled Sierra Leone, California, New York…

Married to a politician, I went on parliamentary and ministerial trips too, that were humbling andbroadening; Japan, India, Pakistan, Colombia, Bolivia. And now, post­politics and with a littlemore time, we’re having the holidays we’ve longed for and I write travel articles too.

Writing about Vietnam was to discover a truly fascinating country. From hair­raising Hanoi,which is a humming, moped­dodging city with noodle cooking on pavements, squatting flowersellers, tight­packed local stores, glimpses of dilapidated old French colonial architecture (acheap, fun, local place to eat is Quan An Ngon in Phan Boi Chau Street) to slow, staid Hue,Vietnam’s ancient capital. It was interesting to see the vast walled Citadel and stay at the famousLa Residence Hotel on the banks of the Perfume River.

I fell in love with the little town of Hoi An; with­it and original, it’s Vietnam’s answer to StTropez, but without the topless bathers. Ho Chi Minh City was steamy hot, but hugelyatmospheric; we dodged chickens on city streets, and we spent a morning on a riverboat in theMekong Delta.

Being inveterate travellers we tagged on two days in Siem Reap, Cambodia, which was all thetime we had. It was worth any detour; the majesty of the ancient monuments of Angkor Wat –some 12 centuries old, of incomprehensible scale, swallowed up by jungle and finallyrediscovered – seemed to set life in context and shine a light on the extraordinary privileges oftravel.

Sandra Howard was one of the leading fashion models of the Sixties, appearing on the cover ofAmerican Vogue. She is now a writer, novelist and charity worker. She is married to former

Conservative leader Michael Howard. Her latest novel, published last year, is Tell the Girl,which draws from her own experiences.

A Life Well Travelled

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