The Story: July 25 in Singapore

While waiting for a visa at the Indian Embassy in Singapore, I researched my next destination, and the inspiration for the trip: James Bond Island.

In the 1974 movie “The Man with the Golden Gun”, James Bond duels with Francisco Scaramanga, the famed assassin who uses a golden gun.

As a child in England, this beach was the most exotic and faraway place I’d ever seen, and I had always wanted to go there.

But none of the guidebooks I had showed the beach, or even mentioned it. Even my trusty Lonely Planet Southeast Asia on a Shoestring.

I thought, “what you really need is a Lonely Planet book but with pictures instead of text, so you can flick through, find the view, and get a map to the location. It could be called “PhotoSecrets”.