From The Vault: Visiting tsunami-hit Japan one year later

It will seem strange, shocking even, when I tell you that visiting a disaster-hit area was one of the best assignments I’ve had as a journalist.

There have been some eventful experiences in my career. I remember being manhandled by a burly bodyguard when I got too close to the Myanmar foreign minister, eavesdropping on conversations among Malaysian parents that provided information for a scoop that helped change national education policy, staying in a room at the famous Holiday Inn in Sarajevo with bullet holes in the wall, and travelling to Jaffna during a ceasefire in the Sri Lankan civil war.