Tabla de contenidos para December 2023 - February 2024 en DestinAsian

“TRAVEL IS MORE THAN THE SEEING OF SIGHTS; IT IS A CHANGE THAT GOES ON, DEEP AND PERMANENT, IN THE IDEAS OF LIVING.”—Miriam Beard Have you ever returned to a place and found it to be completely different from what you remembered? During a trip to Hong Kong this past October, I hopped aboard a ferry to Macau for a day of meetings and site visits. I hadn’t been in more than 15 years and was amazed at all the changes, particularly the scale of development along the glitzy Cotai Strip. It really felt like Vegas. But more than anything, I was impressed by the surfeit of high-end hotels and fine restaurants contained within such a small area. That was a reminder of how destinations grow and evolve with the…

BANGKOK Decades after his mysterious disappearance in 1967, the legacy of Jim Thompson lives on at the Americanborn Thai silk tycoon’s former residence in central Bangkok. Today known as the Jim Thompson Heritage Quarter, the canal-side enclave of century-old Thai houses has long been a popular tourist spot for its priceless collection of Southeast Asian art and a boutique selling boldly printed silk apparel, homeware, and accessories. Now, an ambitious new restaurant and bar offer reasons to linger after sunset. At the art deco–styled Jim Thompson, A Thai Restaurant, which takes over the ground floor of the compound’s revamped F&B wing, Valenciaborn chef Pepe Dasí Jiménez draws on his experience at some of Bangkok’s most progressive Thai kitchens — Nahm and 80/20 among them — for intricately plated riffs on…

Standing under the vaulted ceiling of the Toqi Telpak Furushon, one of several medieval trading domes in Bukhara, I found it easy to imagine a time when this sleepy Uzbek city was a hub of commerce and culture. Situated along the ancient network of caravan routes known as the Silk Road, this is where traders and merchants once stopped to rest and exchange goods on their long journeys across Central Asia. As I ambled through the 16th-century bazaar, now taken over by souvenir stalls and craft studios, my eyes kept wandering to the displays of delicate scissors outside one of the shops. Elegantly curved with bird-shaped shanks and beak-like blades, they seemed to call out to me. And that was how I ended up not just buying a pair of…

Strolling through the residential backstreets of Tokyo’s Nihonbashi district, I turn a corner to find a narrow road bursting with food stalls and sake-drinking locals. At center stage is a torii gated neighborhood shrine dedicated to Ebisu, the Shinto god of prosperity. Sandwiched between two micro parking lots, today it is festooned, like the adjoining streets, with festive chochin lanterns to mark one of the city’s most cherished and longstanding celebrations: the Nihonbashi Ebisu-ko Bettaraichi, an annual autumn pickle fair that features hundreds of tented booths selling everything from cold beer and kushiage skewers to the headlining bettara-zuke, or Tokyo-style pickled daikon. Amidst the carnivalesque atmosphere, it’s easy to forget that the surrounding city blocks were not so long ago the financial center of Japan. Nihonbashi takes its name…

“In early 2019, when I traveled the breadth of Myanmar, every town between Yangon and Mandalay was pulsing with energy,” recalls artist and design consultant AJ Mallari. “Unlike the tired tourist trails elsewhere in Southeast Asia, there was a genuine warmth and the unabated curiosity of a people glad to share their space. This is what inspired me countless times to just sit down and sketch plein air.” One such occasion was at Mandalay’s 19th-century Kuthodaw Pagoda, whose gilded central stupa is surrounded by hundreds of enshrined marble slabs inscribed with the entire text of the Theravada Buddhist canon. It has been called the largest book in the world. “I was enthralled by this group of nuns circumambulating the monument,” Mallari says. “With the muted colors of their robes juxtaposed…

SRI LANKA You don’t need to be a Tour de France champion to enjoy Sri Lanka’s newest cycling sensation. A collaboration between homegrown hospitality group Resplendent Ceylon and tour specialists Across Ceylon, Tour De Resplendent (resplendentceylon.com) invites guests on a guided bike excursion through some of the country’s most picturesque scenery. The tour comprises four stages that combine the expertise of Across Ceylon with stays at Resplendent Ceylon properties in the southern half of Sri Lanka: Wild Coast Tented Lodge, Ceylon Tea Trails, Cape Weligama, Ahu Bay, and Kayaam House. The first stage follows the coastline from Ahungalla to Weligama, while the second involves a 65-kilometer ride through villages and open countryside to Tangalle. From the wilds of Yala National Park, guests then pedal their way into the emerald tea…

Continuing its long-standing celebration of African culture and heritage, luxury safari lodge operator Singita (singita.com) has collaborated with Thebe Magugu to stock the latest installment of the Johannesburg-based fashion designer’s Heritage Series at its recently expanded boutiques at Singita Sabi Sand and Singita Kruger National Park. The collection comprises nine summery, moss-crepe dresses in an “updated bohemian” style, each emblazoned with a pop art motif (by illustrator Phathu Nembilwi) depicting a mother and child from a different South African ethnic group: Basotho, Zulu, Swazi, Vhavenda, Vatsonga, Bapedi, Tswana, Xhosa, and Ndebele. For post-safari shopping, it doesn’t get more stylish than this.…

Every day, thousands of tourists arrive at Gili Trawangan, one of three small resort isles (gili means “small island” in the indigenous Sasak language) parked off Lombok’s northwest coast. But only a fraction of that number venture to the Southern Gilis, a necklace of 13 mostly uninhabited specks of land peppering the quiet waters off the Sekatong Peninsula. Accessible from Bali by speedboat, they also offer an ideal starting point for my quest to circumnavigate Lombok’s 250-kilometer-long coastline in a kayak. The journey is not without risk. I’ve already been warned that towering sea cliffs and razor-sharp coral reefs make Lombok’s south coast unnavigable for a craft like mine: a hard-edged, high-tech inflatable kayak inside of which I have stowed camping equipment, water bottles, and a fortnight’s supply of canned…

Twenty years before Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay made their historic ascent of Mount Everest, a team of British aviators became the first men to glimpse the world’s tallest mountain from above. They had the best equipment Britain could offer: a pair of two-seat biplanes with turbocharged Bristol Pegasus engines, oxygen kits, and heated flight suits. But the expedition ran into trouble when heavy mists obscured the river junction they had planned to use as a landmark. Disoriented and flying low in search of familiar terrain, the pilots were shocked to discover themselves heading straight toward Everest’s craggy peak. “We were in a serious position,” Lord Clydesdale, the lead pilot, later wrote. “The great bulk of Everest was towering above us to the left, [Mount] Makalu downwind to the…

MAWSIM This craft gin brand is proof that good ideas can spring from unlikely places. Mawsim was born when the local subsidiary of a Japanese recycling company figured out how to derive ethanol from water hyacinth, a pretty but invasive weed choking Cambodia’s Tonle Sap lake. Supplementing this with ethanol distilled from cashew fruits, which are traditionally discarded after the nut is harvested, Mawsim currently offers two gins: Spices and Herbs, which showcases Cambodian peppercorns and wild local cardamom; and Tropical Citrus, infused with makrut limes and oranges from the northern provice of Battambang. Each comes in a beautiful blue bottle inspired by traditional Dutch kelderflessen (case bottles) that can be reused at home as a carafe or vase. Located in a dilapidated commercial building just a few minutes’ walk…

“Chalo,” said our soft-spoken trail guide, Sushil, after a quick water break some 3,000 meters above sea level. “Let’s go.” My sister and I followed him, digging our hiking poles into the dirt path in front of us as he picked up pace. We were two days into our four-day trek with a Dharamsala-based outfitter called Hill Hikers, making our way to a mountain pass in the Dhauladhar range of the Indian Himalayas. It had been ages since I last went backpacking, but a lateblooming (and somewhat embarrassing) obsession with K-pop had nudged me back into a fitness routine. In the lead-up to the trip, I committed myself to two short runs and two short HIIT workouts every week, energized by a soundtrack of experimental K-hip-hop by the likes of…

Huffing my way up a yak trail through a sparse forest of juniper and pine, I hear the throbbing tum-tum-tum of a drum. Or so I think. Stopping to catch my breath, it dawns on me that the sound is coming from inside my head: the reverberating beat of my heart working overtime in the thin Himalayan air. “Sorry Sangrit,” I say to my wispily goateed Nepalese guide, who’s barely broken a sweat. “It’s been a while since I hiked up a mountain.” Sangrit gives me a look. “This is not a mountain, Ong Chris. It is a hill.” Gesturing behind us to the distant cloud-scarfed snowcap of Dhaulagiri, the world’s seventh-highest peak, he adds with winking solemnity, “That is a mountain.” Point taken. An hour later, we finally arrive…