Malacca, Malaysia in Photos Traveling to some of the touristy towns of China (like Lijiang) and in Vietnam (Hoi An) now one year later, I think back to what a special place Malacca, Malaysia is. Don’t get me wrong, Melacca is a super-touristy town, but why it’s special is that the old district has yet [...]

  I had wanted to visit Halong Bay for years now. It’s one of those destinations that you see a picture of and you promise yourself that you have to go some day. But I recently read some bad press about someone’s experience there: the Bay is polluted; there are too many boats in the [...]

Dali is one of those places that I really hoped I wouldn’t dislike. Its description in the guidebooks made it sound so pleasant a town—except for one thing—the growing number Chinese tourists. Well, there were tons of tourists, but Chinese tourists seem to stick together in group tours and don’t drift very far from the [...]

  It’s not easy to navigate the streets of Lijiang’s old town. Timeworn cobbled streets follow steams, bending over ancient stone bridges forming a centuries-old maze. Lijiang is the capital of the Naxi Kingdom, set beneath the spiky Jade Dragon Snow Mountain. The Naxi are an ethnic group descended from the Tibetans, settling this region [...]

  Muang Ngoi is a small village on the banks of the Nam Ou River in Northern Laos. It’s a one-street village with no motorized vehicles—the only way to get there is by a one-hour boat ride from Nong Khiaw. It’s a peaceful place to spend a couple days. There’s only electricity from 6pm to [...]

A stroll around the Confucian Academy of Jianshui is a serene experience. I visited the day before the Chinese New Year, and the streets of the city were erupting in a constant state of exploding fire crackers. But at the Confucian academy, inside the giant walls that surround this 7.5 hectare complex, a state of [...]

La Rochelle, on the western coast of France, is a lively seaside town. The picturesque and well-preserved Vieux Port (Old Port) give the city a distinctly Mediterranean atmosphere. Most of the buildings are hundreds of years old and very well maintained. The narrow streets and pale stone buildings add to the ambiance. La Rochelle attracts [...]

Commercialization has come to the rice terraces in Yunnan, China. There are now entrance charges to the platforms to view the terraces in places where they are most spectacular. One can imagine this will ultimately lead to the Chinese government paying farmers to simply manicure these rice paddies instead of farming them as they have [...]

Greenwich, although today seemingly part of London, was once separate from the city, even a popular resort in the 17th century. It’s famous for its notable contributions to maritime history and for giving its name to the Greenwich Meridian (0° longitude) and Greenwich Mean Time. Greenwich became the site of a royal palace, the Palace [...]

  The Sinai Peninsula is the easternmost part of Egypt between the Mediterranean and the Gulfs of Suez and Aqaba, both forks of the Red Sea. Much of the Sinai is desert and uninhabited, but several Bedouin settlements and tourist attractions mark the eastern coast. The desert landscape of the Sinai is brutally hot. Most [...]

One of the most popular ways to soak up the scenery of Guangxi Province is to take a bamboo raft down the Li River.  Yangdi is the preferred starting place and the new fee structure starting January 1st, 2012 requires a 118 RMB (US $19) fee which includes a spot on a four-seat bamboo raft. [...]

A few years back I had a week’s layover in the UK and bee lined it directly to Wales. It was the only country of the United Kingdom that I hadn’t already visited. After a couple days in Swansea I boarded the famous Heart of Wales Rail Line. After about three hours I had arrived [...]

To many people, Macau means one thing: casinos. This little special administrative region of China that was both the first and last European colony in Asia, makes more money from gambling than Las Vegas. It’s a hot destination for rich mainland Chinese. To me it was about visiting an anomaly: a territory with a curious [...]

Chi Lin Nunnery is an elegant wooden temple built without nails in the Tang style. Adjacent to the temple is the tranquil Nam Lian Gardens, a reconstruction of a Tang-era garden. Stroll on a curving walkway past pavilions, ponds, hills, and sculpted pines. It is a fine example displaying the rich culture of the classical [...]

One of the iconic images of all of Asia, the Hong Kong skyline is certainly one of the city’s highlights. There are a few ways to go about getting the best view. I’ll give you my top four picks: 4) From the ICC Tower in West Kowloon. This is the tallest building in Hong Kong [...]

Walking in Your Footsteps On the forest floor, little light gets through, even in the middle of the afternoon. There isn’t much underbrush.  The air temperature is cool and a little bit damp. What I notice most is the quietness. Prehistoric quietness. I am walking through a redwood grove. It is the biggest contiguous old [...]

  Quebec City has long been a destination I‘ve wanted to visit. Old Quebec, or Vieux-Québec, has a well-known reputation of rich history being the only city north of Mexico that has retained its fortified city walls. I would further say that along with Guanajuato, Mexico, Quebec City is the most European of cities in [...]

I didn’t quite grasp the magnitude of the temples of Angkor until I witnessed them for myself. Guidebooks cannot prepare you enough for the massive scale of which this site encompasses. Before I visited I imagined I would only glance at the most well-known, Angkor Wat, and then be on my way. But Angkor Wat [...]