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John Oates: Freelance travel writer and photographer

Latest news

The brand-new Rough Guide to Myanmar (Burma), which I researched and wrote, will be available as an ebook from July 2013. I’ll add a download link here once one is available.

Writing

Since winning the Young Travel Writer of the Year award in the UK’s Guardian newspaper in 2002, I have written for numerous publications including Real Travel, ABTA Magazine, Metro, Islands, Sublime and various in-flight magazines. My areas of interest include budget travel and anything offbeat or adventurous; I have also been the travel correspondent for Disability (formerly Disability Product News) magazine since 2006 and am available to write on accessible travel.

As well as articles, I also research and write guidebooks and online guides. Most recently I updated two chapters of the Rough Guide to the Philippines and three chapters of the Rough Guide to Malaysia, Singapore and Brunei. Previously I contributed to both editions of the Footprint guide to European City Breaks and the Latvia section, plus cross-Baltic material, for the Eyewitness Guide to Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania (Dorling Kindersley).

Photography

I consider photography to be an essential part of my work, and always bring back images to illustrate articles. I was shortlisted for the New Talent category of the Travel Photographer of the Year competition in 2009, for a portfolio of images taken during Easter Week in the Philippines.

I also sell stock images both directly and through Alamy and Photographers Direct.