Latest posts by Martin Moodie (see all)
- Get yourself down to El Gordo, ‘Asia Pacific Travel Retail HQ’, for a Sinead Especial, the best Taco in town - November 5, 2025
- Discovering Nomad’s land and bumping into an old friend in Alicante - October 24, 2025
- Flying Kiwi meets Travelling Omelette with a drop of Penderyn in between - October 15, 2025
It’s the blues that really get you here in Los Arenas del Sol, 12 kilometres from central Alicante, Spain.
No, not the depressive sort – though I have battled a few of those in recent weeks for the reasons regular readers know – but the magnificent illuminative hues of the Mediterranean Sea and the often cloudless skies above.
I am still working from my Interim Costa Blanca Bureau before my impending return to the rather more chilly climes of Ystradgynlais, south Wales in coming days.
And it’s in Ystradgynlais that I plan the full roll-out of our #KickCancerThon with my daughter (and our COO) Sinead, both the inspiration and the driving force behind our forthcoming campaign to raise funds and visibility for cancer research worldwide.
Since we announced the project, we have had an extraordinarily supportive reaction from the travel retail and aviation communities worldwide.
You can see some of that reaction below via the LinkedIn response to Sinead’s revelatory Blog and we will bring you more details in coming days.
But first I want to pay tribute to Harry Kartasis, my great, fellow Hong Kong-based, Australian friend. And no stranger to the devastating personal impact of cancer, as my landmark interview with him in 2021 revealed.
Harry is, as many readers will know, also Founder and CEO of Hong Kong distribution business Global Drinks Ltd. If you want the best, most knowledgeable, most ethical distribution partner in the region, look no further.
Moreover, he had the courage to invest in and launch (in 2024) his own Japanese whisky, Misaka (see video below), which is simply great juice and going absolutely gangbusters in travel retail.
But wait, there’s more. Harry, who is surely the next challenger to the legendary Roger Buckey Legried (the man who holds the Guinness world record for the largest collection of hats – by 2010, 100,336 no less and by 2025 likely many more), is also the creator and owner of El Gordo Tacos & Grill Factory, a superb Mexican restaurant in the heart of Wan Chai, Hong Kong.
El Gordo has become affectionately known as the unofficial ‘Travel Retail APAC HQ’, such is its popularity among our industry’s community and the warm welcome any member of it is guaranteed.
So to the link between #KickCancerThon and El Gordo. Take a look at the image below. Harry and the culinarily brilliant El Gordo team approached Sinead and me and asked how they could contribute to her cancer awareness campaign.
Because Sinead has been diagnosed with NUT Carcinoma, a rare and ultra-aggressive form of lung cancer and November is lung cancer awareness month, Harry responded by launching ‘The Sinead Especial’, a sublimely tastebud-tempting Taco based on some of Sinead’s favourite ingredients.
How about that?
Harry even has a ‘Taco-meter’ running to measure every order of ‘The Sinead Especial’, from which HK$5 goes to The Royal Marsden Charity in the UK.
The Royal Marsden is the London hospital that is treating Sinead with immense care, professionalism and dignity and is among the world’s pre-eminent leaders in cancer research.
But Sinead wants to make this point clear. #KickCancerThon is not about raising money for her treatment.
It is about generating global visibility of – and funds for – local cancer causes worldwide. This damned disease touches all our companies and all of us in some way. Research saved me back in 2010 and I hope and believe it will save Sinead and many others.
More, much more, to follow in coming days. But please, if you happen to be in Hong Kong in November, get yourself down to ‘Travel Retail APAC HQ’, aka as El Gordo Tacos & Grill Factory or simply, to me and other, Harry’s Place. ✈
