Travel Destinations - Exploring China and Asia

Luang Prabang airport's tiny landing strip would fit inside many a mall parking lot. The terminal resembles a small municipal office built to process meaningless administrative documents rather than a rising volume of tourist passports.

Inside, courteous staff wearing pressed green military uniforms sit behind carved-wood customs booths, directing operations [ read more ]

Shanghai: a manic metropolis seemingly on the brink of anarchy yet safer than many provincial western towns. I was smitten for a while, but it was not to last. The very things about the city that once made me feel alive began to test my patience. Friends said Shanghai and [ read more ]

The late afternoon sun shimmers off the blue mosaic facades and filters through the seemingly endless tile trellises of the legendary city of Samarkand, legacy of the last of the great Central Asian conquerors, Tamerlane. Known in times past as the Jewel of Islam, Samarkand has for over 2,000 years [ read more ]

Around three years ago – thanks in no small part to 111 Miss World wannabes – the world woke up to the fact that China had beaches. Proper beaches. Suddenly it was fashionable and fun to be beside the Chinese seaside. Out with visions of litter-strewn tidal froth, in with [ read more ]

There is a sleepiness to Beihai, a sense of a place forgotten, that gives the visitor an all too rare sense of genuine discovery. Perched on a bay off the Gulf of Tonkin, subtropical Beihai sells itself as a beach town. Lovely Silver Beach is a great reason to visit, [ read more ]

The map calls it the 214, but then modern cartographers lack the romantic instincts of their 'Here be dragons' forebears. Locals call it Dian-Zang Lu, the Yunnan-Tibet Highway ('Dian' being an ancient name for Yunnan, and 'Zang' the Chinese word for Tibet).

But Dian-Zang Lu has an alternative meaning in [ read more ]

You've gone without hot water for two weeks in darkest Yunnan, you've slept under the stars in Tibet, you've just stepped off a 36-hour train from Chengdu, and when someone says 'pedicure' you ask which part of a yak they're talking about. Roughing it is as good for the budget [ read more ]

They call this land Zhongyuan, but they don't agree exactly what the'zhong'(middle) means. For some, Zhongyuan is a simple geographical term – the middle plains. Others see it in its historical context as the origin and centre of life. Indeed, modern-day Henan province, in the Yellow River basin of the [ read more ]

27 year-old Tan Longwu favours hip skateboarding t-shirts and rides around his western Jiangxi hometown on a new motorcycle. "We were able to buy that last year," he says. "We have been doing very well lately." Tan, his family and his neighbours have all been cashing in on a major [ read more ]

In 1947, when India gained independence from the British, the maharajas had mostly gone to seed following 100 years of indulgence by their foreign masters. Their land and privileges gone, unable to find a new role in India's burgeoning democracy, the former kings soon ran out of cash to maintain [ read more ]

When you cross the 190-metre wide moat to the majestic monument of Angkor Wat, you see it in all its splendour: a temple whose outer walls run for almost four kilometres, whose enormous central sanctuary climbs skyward to imitate the sacred Mount Meru, and whose pinecone-like middle tower soars 65 [ read more ]

Twenty-seven kilometres east of Vientiane, in a garden of close-clipped lawns and pink blossoms on the quiet banks of the Mekong, you will find the Xieng Khuan Buddha Park. Asia is not short on curiosities, but this one makes my Top Ten. Here, in this idiosyncratic conception of a unified [ read more ]

We may be in the middle of one of the most intensely spiritual festivals of the Tibetan calendar but 11-year-old Xiao Ji has money on his mind. "Hmm, from England?" he muses as he helps me on to his creaky wooden stool. "The English have pounds – and those little [ read more ]

Nanjing. Srebrenica. Halabja. Rwanda. Cambodia. Auschwitz. As the bullet train slices a trail through western Japan, my handwritten list of 20th-century massacres is lengthening. Outside, a milky early morning sun catches the auburn foliage, enlivening the hillsides. Inside, my mood is subdued. Having just left Kobe, a city ripped asunder [ read more ]

"Who am I? Why am I here? Why am I breathing?" What matters, says the Zen master, is constant interrogation. This weekend, the beneficiaries of this ancient wisdom are a group of youngsters from the city that surrounds Korea's Kilsangsa temple. They are the future – the people who will [ read more ]

Brahamin, our guide to the Lombok Straits, weaves coconut frond bracelets for extra money. He has a large, toothy grin and like many Indonesians goes by only one name.

"My children are nine and five years old," he explains as he steers his wooden boat through calm blue waters. "They [ read more ]

My father still complains about how I made him read the same books about sharks to me over and over again. Both my fascination and my fear have lingered with me. I still sometimes wake up in the night thinking about those godless eyes and rows of razor teeth.

So [ read more ]

"Pssst! Marry wanna?"

Now, she may be a good 60 years my senior, but she's nicely dressed – and I bet she turned a few heads in her day. And anyway, this is the best offer I have had in three months on my bike. The only offer, in fact. [ read more ]

There is something almost suspiciously tranquil about Gulangyu. Admittedly, there are plenty of getaways in China that are free of highrises, noise and traffic jams. But not many are also free of one of the nation's most everyday sights: the bicycle.

Just a short ferry trip from Xiamen in Fujian [ read more ]

Chinese food is the original fast food. Within minutes of ordering, a scattering of dishes will have landed, rapid-fire, on your table – always hot, nearly always fresh. It's a unique eating experience, with sizzling meats and glistening vegetables arriving in no particular order and disappearing quickly down several gullets [ read more ]

People, it seems, are the great paradox of China. In a nation of 1.3 billion people, employers cry that human resource challenges – specifically, finding the right people – is their biggest problem. So it is too, for the collectors of contemporary Chinese art. Currently the darling of the art [ read more ]

If you find yourself in Taipei on a cold winter's day, the first day of spring not even visible on the horizon, you may want to jump on the first available train out to Hsin Peitou for a hot spring spa. The volcanic mountains, lush tropical scenery and health-giving sulphur [ read more ]

We sat on tiny stools in his old wooden house, timbers blackened by years of soot, eating crunchy fried soya beans and a tasty fish and noodle stew.

"Drink some more!" urged old Mr Lu, refilling my bowl of home-brewed mijiu from a plastic fuel canister.

As the evening progressed, [ read more ]

Doing it in Style
Anthony Lark helped open the landmark Amanpuri, still one of the world's top beach destinations, and he has topped that with his first ground-up project, the superlative Trisara. The exclusive resort occupies its own strip of beach, bounded by soaring headlands, rock pools and a tiny [ read more ]

A puzzle: I'm in the Pearl River Delta, yet surrounded not by flats and factories but by lush green hills. The city I write from is known as the 'hometown of overseas Chinese'. In 1997 it was awarded the United Nations Habitat Scroll of Honour. And owing to its most [ read more ]

Chengde, the summer retreat of the 18th century Qing emperors, was designed to be part stately pleasure dome, part manifestation of nation-building propaganda. It's open to everyone now, but the job descriptions still hold.

Chengde the town, a friendly place and small enough to get around on foot, offers no [ read more ]

The Forbidden City provides audio tours. For a small price, you can rent Roger Moore's soothing voice to relate edifying facts and amusing anecdotes about the palace as you reconnoitre its nooks and crannies.

I love it. Because my idea of fun is to rent the audio tour and retreat [ read more ]

My old travel diary tells me that I have been to Jingdezhen before in 1996. February 3 to be precise. I stayed a day, changing buses between Lushan and Huangshan. And yet this time, rolling back into town on my bicycle nearly 10 years later, the place seems wholly unfamiliar. [ read more ]

Glancing at a map, Si Guniang Shan (Four Girls Mountain) looks to be no more than a hop, skip and a jump out of smog-choked Chengdu. Ask the tour operators clustered around the Traffic Hotel, a dilapidated backpacker outpost on the banks of the Nanfu River, and they'll probably tell [ read more ]

When it comes to working with water, China knows a thing or two. Two of the world's six longest rivers are contained entirely within its borders. China has the longest and oldest canal on the planet. Its most celebrated explorer, Zheng He, was building ocean-going fleets while the Portuguese were [ read more ]

On a late July afternoon, the interior of Shanghai Circus World is quiet, the air sluggish and hot. Construction materials lie in scattered, dusty piles. The faded red seats ringing the stage sigh with age. The whole place looks ready to give it all up and go home.

But the [ read more ]

"Life is chaos, the world is chaos. The only constant is change. I like chaos and the way you position yourself in it. Where do we come from? What are we doing here and where are we going? We need to answer these questions to be free, to find our [ read more ]

Take a sleepy pearling port on the Arabian Gulf, add sudden wealth from an oil strike, an enlightened and decisive government with ambitious plans to make the place an international financial hub, shopping paradise and magnet for holidaymakers, throw in some of the most extravagant buildings in the world, including [ read more ]

Urban Asian chaos is becoming a consumer art form in Hong Kong's Causeway Bay. Cuddled by the green sweep of Victoria Park, peppered with ramshackle apartments, and lined on its far edge of Hennessy Road with a seedy red light district that melts into Wan Chai, CWB has always been [ read more ]

From this distance, it's enough to make a grown man quake. A strange, shadowed hulk soaring above village rooftops – eyes protruding, nostrils flared and fangs jutting from a grimacing mouth. From her neck hangs a garland of jasmine buds and a sparkling pendant. Clenching a crystalline ball and tassel [ read more ]

A shadow is chasing me across crystal clear water. Like a bird of prey, it hovers on the surface just behind my left shoulder. I look back, first left then right. Nothing. Yet still the shadow chases me. It is getting closer. I lean back and pull in with my [ read more ]

There's an obelisk at the summit of Mount Lofty, the centrepiece of the long, lazy mountain ranges east of Adelaide. It was placed there to mark the first sighting by a white man, the explorer Matthew Flinders, of these noble peaks – better known today as the Adelaide Hills.

While [ read more ]

"Gamelan is comparable to only two things: moonlight and flowing water. It is pure and mysterious like moonlight, it is always the same and always changing like flowing water. It forms for our ears no song, this music, it is a state of being, such as moonlight itself which lies [ read more ]

Some destinations carry the weight of expectation. Take Micronesia. Say the word and immediately the travel brochure of the subconscious conjures images of island oases ringed by virginal sand; oceans of violet and blue; lush tropical vegetation extending to mist shrouded crags – everywhere vigorous with life. One could get [ read more ]

Where can you spend six days relaxing in a warm room with a selection of books and endless cups of tea, while a third of the entire globe rolls by just outside your window? On the Trans-Mongolian railway, of course.

The route stretches from the industrial suburbs of Moscow, through [ read more ]

On the road again at the wheel of his new Fiat Palio, Chengdu artist Luo Fahui can't resist a bit of nostalgia. "When I travelled in west China twenty years ago, I could buy a donkey for 20 yuan," he says with a smile. "A cart only cost twenty more [ read more ]

If camels are the ships of the desert, then I must be on the Titanic. There's rolling, lurching and pitching – not to mention belching and farting. I could do with an iceberg though: it is already far too hot a couple of hours after breakfast, and it's only going [ read more ]

According to the celebrated 19th-century French gastronome Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, "the discovery of a new dish does more for human happiness than the discovery of a new star." Whatever about stargazing, hands-on culinary courses are definitely popular among today's culture-hungry travellers. Four Seasons Resort Chiang Mai runs its own Cooking [ read more ]

Even in a nation where about 80 per cent of the population is illiterate, Shah Muhammad Rais understands the power of the written word. Wedged into the floor-to-ceiling shelves of his Shah M Book Company's curious little shop in downtown Kabul, there are enough volumes on rugged Afghanistan's fabled capital [ read more ]

Life moves a lot faster around Kampong Ayer than it did in the old days.

Just arriving in the world's largest stilted water village is an exhilarating experience. There are water taxis in cities all over Southeast Asia, but even the 'longtails' of Bangkok would have trouble keeping up with [ read more ]

A policeman who looks no older than a schoolboy waves a bunch of nettles. "For respect," he smiles. "If someone comes barefoot, I sting their legs."

Fortunately, we all have shoes. Here in the mountains of central Bhutan, peasants in their festival best are flocking to the gilded roofs of [ read more ]

Have you ever been asked to keep a secret? Moreover, have you been asked and known that you're going to break your word and tell someone else?

Mount Genyen is a case in point. I've said nothing by disclosing the name. The area is virtually uncharted for 100 kilometres in [ read more ]

Beijing is a rock and roll town, and it doesn't take a night in a sweaty, smoke-filled live venue to figure it out. You can feel the yaogun (rock and roll) in the air: sandstorms, after all, are so rock. You can see it in the crumbling hutongs; in the [ read more ]

There are, I'm told, limits to indulgence. But sitting here on the balcony of the Paparazzi Lounge – a warm wind whistling over the rim of my cocktail glass – I can't seem to remember what they are.

Tonight there were plates of foie gras and Beluga caviar at the [ read more ]

He's asleep, and no matter how much we shake him he's not getting up. It's early in the morning and it's a long way home, but like a grumpy teenager he just wants five more minutes. You can't blame him: he's in elephant heaven.

Elephants are one of Thailand's big [ read more ]

Aside from inventing the wheel, domesticating the horse might have been one of humankind's smarter moves. In the sweep of history, the horse changed our lives – altering everything from migration to warfare. And let's be frank – history's horse riding tough guys like Genghis Khan wouldn't have looked nearly [ read more ]

On the shelves of the Xinhua Bookstore in Yinchuan, the title of a Chinese paperback catches my eye: Searching for a Forgotten Kingdom. The cover shows a stupa atop the ruins of a city wall, and a strange dome-shaped tomb in a vast, arid plain. The book is part of [ read more ]

The twin-engine aircraft dipped a wing over the blue waters of Banda Sea, and Atauro Island appeared to the north as we lined up for the runway at Dili, capital city of the world's newest nation.

For some travellers there's a certain excitement about being able to claim they were [ read more ]

My first dreams of China involved immortal kung fu masters in flowing robes. When they weren't meditating on mountains cloaked in perpetual mist, they flew from peak to peak.

Needless to say, my first impressions upon reaching China were rather different. But for some reason I stubbornly held on to [ read more ]

A giant must have made it – a giant modernist sculptor. How else did these enormous piles of finely-formed boulders come to rest in such decorous patterns?

Nothing can quite prepare you for Hampi's surreal landscape. As you start down the road from the nearby railway town of Hospet, the [ read more ]

The stands of Ulaan Baatar's National  Stadium are awash with blue, red and maroon robes. Archers snap bows, brass bands play, and the air is saturated with the pungent odour of mutton, the national dish (the older and tougher, the better). Yet all eyes are focused on the field, where [ read more ]

In the beginning I was an enthusiast, but the nine years since I first came to China have seen my appetite for curly roofs and rebuilt-last-week 'antiquities' gradually wane. It has been a while since I have shelled out for the privilege of dressing up as Genghis Khan and posing [ read more ]

You don't usually hear the words 'Shenzhen' and 'culture' in the same sentence. I was dubious myself when I found a large, glossy book in my room at Shenzhen's Crowne Plaza promising to introduce me to genuine chunks of Ming architecture inside one of China's most prefabricated cities.

I can [ read more ]

Agung Rai is standing out ut in the paddy fields of Peliatan. It's nearing 30 degrees in the Balinese highlands but he's wearing a woolly hat and jacket. He's not here to tend the crops. He's waiting for me to catch up because he has something joyful to [ read more ]

With the world outside the window spinning, my concentration is firmly on keeping breakfast down, making it even more difficult to lip-read the cabin attendant as she calls out to me from across the aisle.

"Other people pay to go on rollercoasters but I get paid to do this every [ read more ]

"Would you like to meet Uncle Malina? He's a headhunter," said my guide. We were on the verandah of the Nanga Kesit longhouse, fresh from longboating up the Lemanak River through Malaysia's Sarawak jungle. Children frolicked in the long communal space, men carved tourist souvenirs, women wove baskets, pigs grunted, [ read more ]

So you've arrived in Shanghai: global headline generator and current darling of the lifestyle glossies. You took the Maglev from the airport. You've done the Bund, Jinmao and Xintiandi. There's the Oriental Pearl Tower, isn't it funny-looking. Now you're dutifully shuffling across Yu Yuan's zigzag bridge. People are pushing you. [ read more ]

The prospect of a week at the Langkawi Regatta was a bind. It may sound churlish sitting in Phuket, but travelling from one country to another frequently descends into a transport circus of buses, trains and planes – a logistical nightmare with a lot of hanging around. Then, like the [ read more ]

With its gold-lacquered facade and dragon-tail roof tips, Wat Bang Phra looks like just another Thai Buddhist temple. It's not, though. This wat is famous throughout the Kingdom for its magical tattoos and the resident monks who etch them. Locals consider it the holy headquarters of protective body art - [ read more ]

In the heart of Phnom Penh, at the confluence of the Mekong and the Tonle Sap, there is a small sand island. A woman is walking along its edge, where tall reeds sway in the river breeze. She carries a basket and strides purposefully into the wind, her long black [ read more ]

In the Northern Territory, hats have attitude. I had bought a fine Akuba in the best bush outfitters in Darwin, but no one was fooled. In these parts hats are not mere hats: they are biographies. Paul's hat had been chewed by a crocodile. Tom's hat had never been the [ read more ]

The Siberian wind whistles as the snow starts to fall. Ravens wheel overhead or perch in the white birches, craning their necks for prey. In the distance the peaks of Longmen and Tianhuo are shrouded in cloud. Tadpoles teem in the warm streams, darting through the thriving algae and the [ read more ]

Playing golf in Asia offers as many unique, high quality experiences as you would expect in a continent of such geographic and cultural diversity. From the mountains of China to the cliff-tops of Bali, from luxurious Thailand to regal Brunei, there truly is something for everyone.

THAILAND

Any review of [ read more ]

Breathe in. Breathe out. Each step up the faint track brings us closer to the stone cairns. The colourful prayer flags hang limp on their lines. Breathe in. Breathe out. The air is cold and crisp. Apart from the lack of oxygen, it is pleasantly invigorating. Breathe in. Breathe out. [ read more ]

Fai Fo was a bustling port in which Chinese and Japanese merchants traded silk, lacquer and porcelain with Indians and Europeans, worshipped at ornate temples and met at splendid clan houses. The streets were filled with traders from East and West, and Vietnamese in conical hats going about their daily [ read more ]

A man wrestles a mountain boar to the ground. A housewife collects wild vegetables for dinner. A pair of hunters armed with rifles wade upriver, searching for squirrels and deer.

It's not how the world imagines Taiwanese life – but like nine-tenths of Sanmin's inhabitants, all these people are Taiwanese [ read more ]

Two hours northwest of picturesque Guilin, a gentle climb up from the river valley and into the mountains, waits the dragon. His arched spine, hewn centuries ago from a mountain ridge by the Zhuang and Yao peoples, still forms the backbone of their society. His skin changes chameleon-like with the [ read more ]

China's tourism industry likes 'top five' lists: top five famous mountains, top five famous shopping streets, top five places for eating barbecued chicken, that sort of thing. The town of Li Ling in Hunan Province features in none of these lists. That is its charm. It is a place that [ read more ]

Last year four men were arrested and fined for stealing the testicles from a giant fibreglass bull in Rockhampton, the so-called Beef Capital of Australia. Still more remarkably, that wasn't the first time it had happened. In fact it's a local rite of passage. "Every year some kids nick his [ read more ]

Languid Luang Prabang has seen more dramatic changes than its comfy sleepiness might suggest. First the ancient royal seat of Laos, then the French provincial capital, this river port on the wide, muddy Mekong fell under Lao People's Revolutionary Party rule in 1975.

Surviving all these changes, it has taken [ read more ]

Karst, shmarst. The best landscapes in and around Guilin and Yangshuo are made of rock, but they aren't the camel hump, mini mountains that make the area famous. No, these ones are manmade: the sculptures that cover the grounds of Yuzi Paradise. The first one appears at the main gate, [ read more ]

Japanese fugu, also known as the puffer or blow fish, is the very definition of icky – an ugly, scaleless fish with sneering lips, gooey skin and a talent for puffing-up to grotesque proportions when annoyed. However, despite its rather charmless appearance, fugu has intrigued foodies for millennia. The tomb [ read more ]

We are blessed with the world's best diving virtually at our doorstep. The bluest waters, the whitest sands, fish of every colour and species, WWII wrecks, sunken cities and the opportunity to visit island paradises yet to be experienced. Leave the Peter Benchley novel at home. It's time to take [ read more ]

Sunlight streaming through coloured glass into a dim, hushed church is an almost holy experience regardless of one's faith. The muffled light tends to reveal those specks of dust that float suspended in the air, refracting light in an eerie way.

St Ignatius cathedral, like those specks of dust, is [ read more ]

Loved and lost, fought over, isolated, divided, united, abandoned, rediscovered. Few beaches in Asia, or anywhere else for that matter, can claim even a fraction of the history of Goa. Once undeniably grand, this old resort seems to have slipped from memory in recent times. But Goa is back on [ read more ]

Sixteen-year-old Zhu Tong loves skateboarding and belting out punk rock riffs on his bass guitar. But while most of his peers are grappling with English grammar, Zhu is mastering the art of Arabic. While they dream of studying in Harvard or Cambridge, Zhu has set his heart on being accepted [ read more ]

It seems an unfortunate coincidence that one of the world's slowest chairlifts should find a home at Yabuli, one of the world's coldest ski resorts. Passing through nearby Harbin, Heilongjiang's provincial capital, the numbing weather had a certain novelty value. But out here on the exposed slopes, with the thermometer [ read more ]

The islands of Thailand have gone through a metamorphosis that could be a model for any tourist destination, and one that gives hope to beautiful hideaways going through the pangs of discovery. A few decades ago, before the term 'backpacker' had even been invented, hippies and castaways from modern life [ read more ]

I'm lying stark naked, covered only by a strategically-placed towel. A bowl of warm oil slowly drips over my forehead. I'm prone on a slanted stone bed on the front porch of a simple single-storey house – for all to see. I'm perspiring and feeling very greasy. I want to [ read more ]

Travelling through the exotic Shangri-La territory of southwest China is an exhilarating experience. And one that's beginning to be enjoyed by more and more travellers, both from China and abroad, since Zhongdian was named the official Shangri-La in 2001 by the Chinese authorities. The combination of clean, crisp mountain air, [ read more ]

Shanghai's bar culture has deep roots. The present crop of chic city bars may at first seem to be nothing more than make-up on a city's new face but, look again, and you'll find glamorous drinking haunts have long been a part of the Shanghai scene.

Skip back to the [ read more ]

A world apart from the madness of Saigon lies Mui Ne. Travelling the 200-kilometre journey down Highway 706, the inhabitants of Vietnam's capital head here to unwind, seeking out its quiet beaches and cool sea breezes. Here the pace of life slows. While there's no complete escape for travellers setting [ read more ]

Every cosmopolitan society in a hot climate has its heat retreat. The Imperial British in India had Simla, in Kenya they had Mount Kenya itself. New Yorkers have the Hamptons. Canadians have Whistler (though whether they are escaping the heat or the rain is a moot point). And we all [ read more ]

Beijing is manic: ancient and modern, lazy and hurried, ringed with jammed arteries, yet a flying pigeon's paradise in its quiet heart. But for ten weeks every summer and fall, after the new cricket hatch, none of these contradictions seem to matter. Gathering around square porcelain trays to bet [ read more ]

It is eighty years since the owners of Dutch KPM Packet Line had the bright idea of replacing the cargo of pigs they shipped to Singapore with a new wave of culture-seeking tourists who had heard tantalising reports of the wonders of Bali. The old steamers docked on the north [ read more ]

When night fell, I found the tattered blanket and bamboo floor more comfortable than expected. Sleep came quickly, and sunrise came just a fraction later. Early morning in that particular mountain village was quiet and calm. A gentle breeze carried cool mountain air through the modest house. The smell of [ read more ]

Xiamen is one of modern China's best-kept secrets. Foreigners began trading through the tantalising island-port in the 1600s and have remained enchanted by its beauty ever since. With kilometres of clean white beaches, perfect weather and some of the best seafood in the country, its no wonder so many of [ read more ]

"I walk for money. What do you walk for?" asked Yaqoob, my guide, one day when we stopped at a stream to wash.

We had been walking for four days, up and down dusty mountains, through isolated valleys, over 5,000-metre-plus passes. The Ladakhi Mountains, brownish and purplish among muddy or [ read more ]

My profoundly fantastic bath is just outside my back door. The massive marble tub is almost like a miniature pool, with a gentle slope on both sides enabling me to lean back and take in the green treetops and blue sky above. The water comes tumbling in from the side, [ read more ]

In 1964 an anthropologist called Michael Piessel made his way to a sleepy town high in the mountains of western Sichuan Province. Here he met the Khampa, a fiercely independent and proud nomadic race who made their living herding livestock across the vast, barren grasslands.

The Khampas stood a good [ read more ]

Four years and counting. As the Olympic flame passes from Greece to China, Qingdao – the host city for the sailing events at the 2008 Beijing Games – can barely hide its excitement. The whole city is gripped by Olympic fever.

In preparation, China's favourite seaside city is undergoing a [ read more ]

"No Westerner's seen this before." Would that nagging, heinously-flawed conceit that had bugged me throughout my travels in Asia be rendered true, here, in North Korea? My excitement simmered as our aged Volvo saloon hammered down North Korea's empty east-coast road towards Korea's spiritual heart, the sprawling complex of granite [ read more ]

"I am here to save my husband," the old woman said. Clouds blew through the doorway and eddied about her tiny bound feet.

"Where is he?" I asked.

"Hell," she said. "He is in hell." She drew a photograph from her bag and tipped it into the light: a bony [ read more ]

Rajhastan was once the land of the maharajas, the famous princes who ruled over the land and people in northern India. They were fabulously rich, often with their own private armies, and even when Britain colonised much of the country they remained semi-independent. Only when India escaped British rule for [ read more ]

The wet grasslands and reed beds stretch into the distance, an undulating expanse of flatness broken only by the occasional ridge of trees, or a spiral of smoke rising from a cluster of fishermen's homes. The only movements are those of the wildlife: cranes gliding across the lake, searching out [ read more ]

Would you be interested in joining a survey trek to Gongga?

"My first reaction when I heard the offer was, "Where?! It sounds like a place named by club wielding Cro-Magnon."

Wary of being packed off to a prehistoric theme park, I put the word out to my friends who [ read more ]

"Autumn gales drive the moon, its reflection falls on the clear river, cold as a great length of glassy silk", wrote the 12th-century Zen poet, Sesson Yubai.

He might have been perched on the banks of Kyoto's Kamogawa (Kamo River) as he scribbled his ode to Japan's most 'desirable' season. [ read more ]

Securely harnessed and staring 233 metres down from the Macau Tower, one thing becomes obvious. Macau's landscape isn't just changing; it's growing. Land reclamation projects have almost doubled the territory, from 14 to 27 square kilometres, in just over 20 years.

With that thought logged, I pick my way along [ read more ]

The people of Chengdu have long been labelled lazy. To this accusation they lean back in their bamboo chairs, take a take a leisurely sip of tea and smile. As their entrepreneurial countrymen along the Eastern coast toil ambitiously, the Sichuanese enjoy a much slower pace of life. After all, [ read more ]

Heavy drops of rain puncture the surface of the steaming pool as the distant mountains dissolve into mist. A sparse flute tootles over a PA system hidden in the dripping greenery, and the sound of cascading water drifts on the winter's breeze. The weather outside may be frightful but, in [ read more ]

There was a time when mentioning 'Bangkok' in the same sentence as 'nocturnal activities' conjured up X-rated scenes where the lighting was dim and the action was not something to be watched with your mother. Thankfully, times have changed. Thailand's capital is now on the up, cultivating the region's hottest [ read more ]

I had to blink several times to be sure my eyes weren't deceiving me: yes, there was a flotilla of multicoloured lanterns – 2,003 to be exact – bobbing on the surface of the Irrawaddy (now known as Ayeyarwady) River under an inky night sky in Burma.

All day long, [ read more ]

It is a few hours after sunrise. I am walking over soft white sand. Splashing through turquoise shallows. And finally joining the tropical fish dancing between watery sunbeams in a deep cobalt blue sea. Ahead of me are lush, green tropical mountains, still shrouded in a morning mist, and behind [ read more ]

Candace Bushnell, author of Sex and the City, is in the lobby of Sheraton Sanya Resort, wearing her best Manolo Blahniks and waiting for her limo. She is here, along with Jackie Chan, Brian Ferry and a host of other tuxedoed celebrities, to choose the 53rd Miss World beauty queen. [ read more ]