So after five great years working on Central Asia I have changed posts here at the European External Action Service, I’m now the EU’s ASEAN guy. That gives me the excuse to post some photos from my last trip to South-East Asia, 28 years ago.

Wonderful - and love the (now hip retro) Karrimor packs! I went travelling through China and SE Asia after uni in the early/mid 90s - just after China had opened for travel IIRC. Need to scan some slides!

Kodachrome?

Are congratulations in order? If so, congratulations! How exciting!

Congratulations - and with by a permanent European Parliament presence in Jakarta, there is additional scope for the Team Europe approach to make a difference. Antoine and Niall are fantastic

you look so young and so Oxbridge in that photo Chris.

Congratulations.

Congratulations! But the rest of us are currently pivoting to Mercosur.

A couple of weeks into this new post and one thing that strikes me is the number of meetings, summits, and formats where the EU is at the table with Asian and Pacific countries (US, Canada, China, Japan, Korea, Australia, NZ, Indonesia, India etc) but the UK isn't. CPTPP feels v oversold to me.

It’s changed hugely in that time!

Sounds interesting - I guess it is an area that is mostly better known to people in Europe from holidays than central Asia. Countryside probably hasn't changed much since your last visit - many of the cities are massively different now to even 10 years ago though.