WIN THE ULTIMATE MALAYSIAN HOLIDAY ADVENTURE SEE PAGE 90 FOR DETAILS
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UNUSUAL SKI SPOTS Dare to be different
SAMOA THE HAPPY HEART OF POLYNESIA
CARNIVAL IN THE CLOUDS Let’s party in Peru
4 WEIRD AND WONDERFUL HOTELS Check in now
SURFING IN OMAN An unlikely adventure
STICK FIGHTING IN ETHIOPIA You have to see this
ISSN 1449-3543
DONAVON FRANKENREITER: Fortunate son DAVID DE ROTHSCHILD: Green guru TRAVEL WITHOUT BAGS: Rolf Potts tells us how
INDONESIA | SOUTH AFRICA | SPAIN | TAIWAN | SRI LANKA
FEATURES
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PERU
INDONESIA
Dust off your dancing shoes for a highaltitude hoedown in Puno, Peru.
Dare to be different – unusual places to ski around the world.
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OMAN
Leave your worries at home and enjoy the unknown and idyllic archipelago of Polynesia.
If you thought ‘surfing’ and ‘Oman’ didn’t belong in the same sentence, think again.
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SKI DIFFERENTLY
Head down to South Africa for an adrenaline-filled adventure holiday.
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SAMOA
Take a weekend away at one of Spain’s most well-loved resort towns, San Sebastián.
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SOUTH AFRICA
Surf and stretch at a Balinese surf and yoga school.
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SPAIN
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ETHIOPIA Witness the violent tradition of stick fighting in Ethiopia.
AUSTRALIA Journey to the end of earth on the South-Coast Track, Tasmania.
get in the know The Greek writer and historian Herodotus is said to have been the world’s first travel writer.
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REGULARS
34 AFTER DA D RK
92 HOLIDA DAY DA AY IDEAS
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104 MUSIC
112 CONFESSIONS
Experience Taipei when the sun goes down.
Ten days in California on A$5,000.
David de Rothschild on being an ecowarrior.
Donavon Frankenreiter on music, surf and travel.
Rolf olf Potts on travelling without luggage.
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Your Letters & Photos Your Send in and win News & Views The globe uncovered Places to Stay The weird and wonderful T Five Tr Top T ips Our pick of the best
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Events Dates for your diary Retro Travel T Travel from yesteryear Y Wish You Get green with envy F Food The hungry traveller
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Photography Expert photo tips 102 Our ur Shout The world’s best bars 106 Eco Travel T Do the right thing 108 Reviews Gadgets and other goodies
get in the know The Russian Antonov-225 is the world’s heaviest aircraft, although its wingspan is less than that of the ‘Spruce Goose’ (Howard Hughes’s flying boat).
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places to stay
Nhow Berlin Berlin, Germany
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WHAT: The first hotel in Europe where you can produce your own one-hit wonder. Along with offbeat, neon-lit rooms, it also has its own recording studios. Want room service? Order a Gibson guitar for a late-night jamming session. In summer, catch a gig on the rooftop terrace. With mixing rooms up to international standard and a lounge to kick back and enjoy a beer in, this place has got more than just the X factor. WHY: Wannabe a rock star? Forget trashing hotel rooms. This will give you Keith Richards cred – and save you cash on the clean-up bill too. HOW: Rooms from A$229 to A$3,380 per night. www.nhow-hotels.com/berlin/en #20 get lost ISSUE #29 get in the know James Bond creator Ian Fleming wrote a few of his books at Le Northolme Hotel, Seychelles (renamed as the Hilton Seychelles Northolme Resort & Spa).
places to stay
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image: dana allen
image: jenny hall
image: dana allen
image: jenny hall
North Island
Crazy House
Liberty Hotel
WHAT: It’s hard to believe that this jaw-dropping eco resort was once a rundown, ramshackle island. A massive conservation project has transformed it into a dreamlike destination. Situated on white, powdery beach, each of the 11 deluxe villas is like a mini-estate – and even comes with your own butler. Snorkel, dive, bathe in gin-clear waters or enjoy a lobster picnic in complete isolation.
WHAT: It sounds like a late Hitchcock thriller; it looks like Gaudi’s vacation house. But if you ask after it by the official name – Hang Nga Guesthouse – the locals will appear as confused as the hotel itself. It’s basically a weird and wacky tree trunk/tree house with rooms themed by animal, plant or insect. Expect the unexpected, like twisted hallways and odd-shaped doors and windows. It’s situated a stone’s throw away from the Central Highlands, but a galaxy away from anywhere you’ve slept before.
WHAT: This jail-turned-hotel got a new lease on life in 2007. For 120 years it housed the area’s nastiest inmates. But nowadays guests are warmly welcomed and are escorted to contemporary furnished rooms. It features floor-to-ceiling windows that the previous occupants never enjoyed, but has still kept some of its previous character like the granite exterior, exposed brick walls, historic catwalks and striking wrought-iron chandeliers.
Seychelles
WHY: A refuge for wildlife and a haven for humans that is, quite simply, out of this world. HOW: From A$2,900 per person per night – including all meals, alcohol and activities. www.north-island.com
Da Lat, Vietnam
Boston, USA
WHY: A builder’s worst nightmare; an adventure-seeker’s crazy dream.
WHY: The only time you’ll spend a night in the slammer and not be in a hurry to escape the next day.
HOW: Rooms are between A$42 and A$76 per night. www.hotels-in-vietnam.com/ hotels/dalat/crazyhouse_hotel.html
HOW: Rooms start from A$287 per night, with a glass of champagne on arrival. www.libertyhotel.com
get in the know Malcolm X was once an inmate at Boston’s Charles Street Jail – now the Liberty Hotel.
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peru
text: kate hennessy images: james brunker
On a high in Peru, Kate Hennessy discovers the Virgen de la Candelaria – one of the most theatrical festivals in South America. #28 get lost ISSUE #29
Aymara women dance in the streets with devils hot on their tail.
get in the know When some Puno locals die, they donate their hair to the Virgin to be used as her wig.
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E’VE COMPLETELY CHANGED travel plans to come to the Virgen de la Candelaria Festival in Puno, Peru, but on arrival I’m felled by altitude sickness. Puno doesn’t look or feel very high, but at 3,860 metres above sea level it’s higher than both La Paz, Bolivia (3,660 metres), and Machu Picchu (2,430 metres). Barely in town two minutes, I barricade myself in a hotel room and eliminate any ray of light. As the full wrath of the illness descends, I clutch my head, writhe on the bed, pace the room, groan, moan and puke in the shower cubicle – all the while begging my husband to “make it go
get in the know Dancers in the festival begin practising at the age of three.
away”. One altitude pill and three cups of coca-leaf tea later an ancient Andean remedy) and I can see straight again. I even manage a laugh when my husband bursts into the room to announce: “Get up! Horses are about to storm the plaza! Then there’s going to be a bonfire!” I laugh because South American festivals are all about theatrics, so it seems fitting I experience some in advance. It’s 6pm when we set out. Puno slopes down steep Andean hillsides and skids to a halt on the shores of Lake Titicaca. The town is known as the folkloric capital of Peru – a claim that’s hard to dispute when you see the many Aymara ISSUE #29 get lost #29
text: emma francis images: emma francis
Emma Francis heads to Bali to chase her childhood dream of learning to be a surfer chick.
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get in the know Ken Bradshaw once surfed a wave more than 24-metres (78-foot) tall – widely regarded as the biggest wave ever surfed.
indonesia
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HEN I WAS YOUNG, LITTLE girls fell into one of two camps: the pony princesses or the surfer chicks. I started out in the former, but later in my teens, after falling hopelessly in love with a tanned, sandyhaired grommet, I abandoned my horsey predilections for dreams of winning the Roxy Pro. Trouble was, I lived a good two hours from the coast, and hailed from a family in which the ‘seaside’ was for ‘wading’, not ripping it up. Just as I’d pretended my BMX was a horse all those years before, I again had to make do with make believe. Fast-forward 15 years, and I’m wide awake at one in the morning watching Blue Crush on DVD. I’m practising pop-ups on the carpet as a gorgeous Kate Bosworth
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Indeed, this promises to be anything but your typical Bali booze-up – alcohol, coffee, meat and men are all firmly off the menu tackles Pipe in a tiny bikini. I’m too excited to sleep because my adolescent fantasy is finally coming true. I’m off to Bali to learn how to surf. “Good morning, Emma,” sings the sweet, clear voice down the phone. It’s 6.40am in Bali’s tourist hub, Legian, and I’ve slept in. I was meant to be in the hotel lobby 10 minutes ago, rash-vest ready for my first surf lesson. I’m off to a wobbly start and I haven’t even entered the water. The sweet voice belongs to Belinda Wehner, my teacher, tour guide and
Balian Beach, on Bali’s west coast, is a chilled out alternative for surfers seeking solace.
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occasional whip-cracker for the next seven days. Belinda, who runs the Broulee Surf School on the south coast of New South Wales, is also the brains behind Tidal Dreamings Surf and Yoga Retreats – surfaris for women that combine surf lessons with yoga, meditation and a good dose of clean living. Indeed, this promises to be anything but your typical Bali boozeup – alcohol, coffee, meat and men are all firmly off the menu. And despite her Kewpie-doll looks, 34-year-old Belinda is no pushover; a lifetime spent battling
The girls practice Warrior Pose in preparation for their imminent battle with the waves.
get in the know More than 90% of Bali’s population is Hindu.
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south africa
Kelly Irving lives it up in the action-packed province of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. text: kelly irving images: kelly irving
A leap of faith at Moses Mabhida Stadium.
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get in the know King Shaka ruled the Zulu nation in the early 19th century. He is regarded as one of the greatest leaders of his time.
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HIS IS THE WORST THING THAT’S ever happened to me,” the twentysomething raises her arms like a call for prayer and screams at no one and everyone at King Shaka International Airport. “It’s all gone, everything, I’ve got nothing. Not. One. Thing. I’ve missed my tour. I’ve got no camera, no clothes. I’ve been everywhere in the world but THIS IS THE WORST THING THAT’S EVER HAPPENED TO ME.” I take this as a cue to step in and help out a fellow traveller. I offer to call her tour company, assuring her that she’s a paying customer that they won’t leave stranded, and then attempt to diffuse the situation with a joke. “If this is the worst thing that’s ever happened to you then you’ve been pretty lucky,” I smile. But my sincerity is quickly rebutted. “Don’t patronise me. You don’t understand. YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHAT I’M GOING THROUGH.” I look down at the empty floor, where I am also standing sans bags. A couple of passengers, the last in a long line at the customer service desk, glance over, perplexed, when a brazen woman with a heavy drawl strides over and proclaims: “What’s wrong with you, eh? What are you on about? Don’t worry about it, eh. C’mon, you can rough it – this is South Africa.”
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It’s 550 steps up, then a five-second freefall down from a foot-wide metal platform with nothing to hold onto except a canvas strap and your guts
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Travel is not always what it’s cracked up to be. There are missed buses, delayed planes, lost passports, stolen money, vomiting and diarrhoea. Along with plenty of thrills come plenty of spills; with the many highs come many lows. But if there’s one thing I’ve learned it’s that when you’re down you can always get back up. After all, that’s part of the adventure. So when I find myself luggageless in the province of KwaZulu-Natal, some 9,000 kilometres from home, and all my luxuries and possessions, I come to the conclusion that I’ve got to suck it up. Besides, when I check out the things I’m going to be doing here – whitewater rafting, quad biking, horse riding, scuba diving, deep-sea fishing, safari – it sounds like I might be coming back in a body bag, so who needs clothes? get in the know Eleven official languages are spoken in South Africa, but English, Zulu, Xhosa and Afrikaans are most widely used in KwaZulu-Natal.
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text: luke wright images: luke wright
In search of somewhere to stretch out in the sun and do nothing, Luke Wright discovers that Samoa is a place of plenty.
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IRPORTS AREN’T PLEASANT places. It’s a shame holidays have to begin there. First, there’s the rush, the queues, the check-in, the security scan and the customs counter. Then there are the unread emails, the unreturned calls and all that other stuff on your brain that you bring from work and home and lug along with you like an oversized suitcase. And as hard as you try to leave it all behind at gate 32, along with your half-eaten overpriced airport pastie, some of it sneaks onto the plane and squeezes in right beside you.
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But then you arrive somewhere new. And if you’re lucky enough to land in the right kind of place, you begin to let it all go. Then, before you know it, you’re ambling along a beach somewhere and every single worry you had has been sunk at sea. “Take a look at all this,” says Saul, a bare-chested Samoan who has recently returned home from living in the “big and bloody freezing” city of Auckland, New Zealand. “Look at the water, the land, the villages; we have it all here, man.”
I meet Saul on an idyllic little stretch of sand on Samoa’s biggest island, Savai’i. He’s hunting fish along the shore, with a net slung across his shoulder and a bag with a few fish in it hanging around his waist. We stroll together for a while, with Saul stopping occasionally to launch his trap onto passing fish. Poised like a cat after prey, he flings it into the shallows with what looks like great nimbleness. But he rarely makes a catch. “It’s not easy to get ‘em because the water is so damn clear, hey,” he says. “We can see all the fish and that means they can all see us.”
get in the know Samoans are known throughout Polynesia as the ‘happy people’ because of their enjoyment of life and their good-spirited nature.
samoa
Sunset on Savai’i.
One man’s trash is another man’s treasure, I tell him. I’ve travelled the world over looking for water this damn clear. Samoa, it seems, is the right kind of place. Samoa is also a surprise. While its Polynesian siblings – the likes of Hawaii and Tahiti – attract much of the attention with their big-budget marketing campaigns and well-developed tourism industry, Samoa has remained the unknown archipelago of the region. “This is Hawaii 100 years ago,” a Canadian traveller tells me in the airport
arrivals hall. “It beats me why every time I come here I seem to have it all to myself, but I ain’t complaining.” I’m not complaining either. A couple of weeks of island time with only a handful of other tourists is just fine by me.
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consists of two main islands – Upolu and Savai’i – and eight small islets. It is a deeply Christian nation. Without fail, village bells ring out each night as a call to evening prayer, and the Sabbath is always rigorously observed. To walk
A couple of weeks of island time with only a handful of other tourists is just fine by me Situated just over the international date line in the South Pacific, about halfway between New Zealand and Hawaii, Samoa
get in the know Samoans have practiced the art of tattooing both men and women for over 2,000 years.
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text: mark eveleigh images: mark eveleigh
Mark Eveleigh gets more than he expected on a surfing trip in Oman.
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T’S MIDAFTERNOON ON A sweltering Omani spring day. I return from the hotel pool to find a note pushed under the door of my room: ‘The management of the Grand Hyatt regret to inform their guests that a cyclone is on its way.’ We are instructed to close our heavy drape curtains and stay away from the windows for fear of flying glass. I sidle over to the window for a cautious look. Nothing but the faintest breeze is tousling the shaggy heads of the palms, and there are just a few white peaks on the watery horizon. Meanwhile, down the road in Muscat harbour, the yachties are doubling,
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tripling, quadrupling their mooring ropes in fear of a horrific night. The plans that we have been fine-tuning for the last few weeks have been thrown into complete disarray. Within a few minutes, numerous panicked phone calls, texts and emails fly out from what has become our temporary expedition control centre in the hotel bar. For the last six months, surf journalist Drew Lewis and photographer Sergio Villalba have been researching Oman’s Indian Ocean coastline. They’ve made countless virtual recce missions on Google Earth; they’ve scoured every beach and headland in painstaking detail. They’ve studied the swell charts get in the know Until 1970, Oman still had only two schools and barely eight kilometres of sealed road.
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A surfer waxes up for a dawn raid on Dead Bird Point.
get in the know Oman is a rock climbing hot spot, with almost 200 climbs.
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72 ANTARCTICA 73 CHILE 74 GREENLAND 75 INDIA 76 IRAN What places do you think of when planning a snow holiday abroad? France? Canada? Japan? New Zealand? Granted, these are some of the world’s top spots to ski and snowboard, but if you want to stand out from the crowd then have a go at these lesser-known slopes. text: rachael oakes-ash
get in the know The current speed skiing record is 251.4 km/h.
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different strokes
IRAN
image: espen antonsen dizinsnowboard.com
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WHERE: In the Alborz mountain range of Iran in the Middle East. WHY: If the A$24 a day lift passes don’t get you, the uncrowded offpiste skiing will. Sure, the ski resorts of Shemshak and Dizin are not as vast or extensive as those of Switzerland, the après scene involves shots of chai tea rather than schnapps (alcohol is forbidden) and the chairlifts are circa 1970, but you’ll impress your dinner party guests when next comparing holiday destinations. Expect to see some gender segregation with lift lines divided into male and
female, but overall Iran’s ski resorts attract a more liberal local scene where women wear the latest ski gear and men pull up in fancy cars. Dizin is the larger of the two, and the resort sits at 2,650 metres with a top chairlift altitude of 3,600 metres, but Shemshak is steeper and more suited to advanced skiers. WHEN: The northern winter months of December to March are best. HOW: The Alborz mountains are a two-hour drive from Tehran. Emirates Airline flies from Sydney to Tehran via Dubai with daily connections. www.emirates.com
get in the know Iran is home to one of the world’s oldest continous major civilisations.
king of the WILDERNESS text: luke wright
images: luke wright
Luke Wright takes on the notoriously tough South Coast Track in south-west Tasmania – a place once considered the end of the earth.
Trudging along one of Tasmania’s empty beaches.
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get in the know Only about 50 orange-bellied parrots survive in the wild. They breed in Tasmania’s Southwest National Park.
australia
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OME BLOKES LOOK FOR A CURE for cancer, others go for Nobel Peace Prizes,” says Andy, a tubby Tasmanian who has hiked the South Coast Track more than a dozen times. “Me, I’ve just spent my life beavering away at bushwalking.” Andy is a typical example of the personalities you meet in these parts. The 6,000 square kilometre Southwest National Park is, after all, a wild and distant piece of the planet – a place that, in times when the earth was thought to be flat, would have been marked as the last stop before the sea plunged into the void. The edge of the world isn’t geared towards conventional characters. These days, although we know very well that the ocean continues from Tasmania’s southern tip down to Antarctica and around the other side of the globe, the end-of-the-line feeling is still difficult to shake. That’s why you’ll come across more of Andy’s type in the Southwest than day walkers and armchair travellers. Those who tackle the South Coast Track seem to have a different spirit to most. They see reward in hardship. They’re willing to face the weather and the mud and the many ups and the downs, all in hope of a lovely vista or an empty beach somewhere along the way. As Andy says, “It wouldn’t be a picnic without the ants.” The late Deny King is arguably the man who pioneered this ‘spirit’ in Tasmania’s south-west. Born in the early 1900s, Charles Denison (Deny) King was a legendary bushman, tin miner, naturalist, artist and environmentalist. He makes most men look as soft as the froth on a skinny decaf cappuccino. Look up ‘tough bastard’ in an old encyclopedia and it’d be no surprise if there was a picture of King shouldering a 70-kilogram bag of tin in the bitter Tasmanian rain – wearing shorts. He is renowned worldwide for being a true Australian frontiersman. For 50-odd years, he lived, worked and raised a family at Melaleuca, the start point of the South Coast Track, right in the heart of the Southwest. The ingenuity and strength of mind and body this must have required is remarkable. This is a place with no roads, no phones, no shops,
get in the know Eucalyptus regnans, found in much of Tasmania, is the tallest flowering plant on the planet.
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EST.
2004
Discover the best bars the world has to offer.
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Igloo Bar
Nikki Beach
SkyBar
Fancy a brew in an igloo? Wrap up in your winter woolies and ski on over to the Igloo Village. The whole location, including the Gstaad Igloo Hotel and Igloo Bar, is built entirely from snow every year. Pull up a chair (a block of ice covered in lamb’s wool), down a schnapps or mulled wine and OD on cheese fondue. If you can’t bear the thought of the trip back home then spend the night in the hotel – yep, an actual igloo – and shake off your hangover on the slopes the next morning. www.iglu-dorf.com
First up, this is not the kind of place you’d bring your mum. A glamorous beachside bar-club-lounge, this is where you should really bring more cash than clothes. It’s all white linen and bronzed bodies, champagne cocktails and cabanas round the pool. With the sun and Ministry of Sound type tunes, you could be forgiven for thinking you’re in an up-market part of Ibiza. The live-life vibe is infectious; the late-afternoon booze-up is a must. www.nikkibeach.com/marrakech
This sophisticated watering hole is pretty high up on the list of scenes you can sink a drink in. Dubbed as the ‘ultimate in cool drinks and intoxicating views’, it’s positioned on the 33rd floor looking out to the iconic Petronas Twin Towers. Windows extend from floor to ceiling and beyond, so you can sit on a sofa around the sapphire-blue swimming pool, sip on a cocktail and soak up the sun as its sets over the busy city below. www.skybar.com.my
Iglu-Dorf, Gstaad, Saanerslochgrat, Switzerland
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Circuit de la Palmeraie, Marrakech, Morocco
Level 33, Traders Hotel, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
get in the know The Inuit word ‘igloo’, meaning house, refers not only to snow-houses. Tents, sod-houses and modern buildings are also igloos.
o sho our hou ho out ut
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Juliet Supperclub
539 West 21st Street, New York, USA It may not look like much from the outside – a black door on a desolate stretch of road – but on the inside you’ll find a glittering show bag of personalities and party starters. Come here if you’re in the Big Apple to experience life as a New York mover and shaker. Start your night chowing down on food from big-name Boston chef Todd English, then go wild with the glamazons as the tempo picks up and the revelry kicks off at 11pm. www.julietsupperclub.com
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H.R. Giger Museum Bar Château St. Germain, Gruyères, Switzerland
image: anne bertram www.darkview.de
Looking for a bar with backbone? This surreal skeletal structure is the work of Hans Ruedi Giger: the man responsible for the design of Alien and Species. The museum and bar is the result of a four-year renovation of a medieval chateau. Think skeletal chairs and vertebrae ceiling arches. It’ll make you feel like you’ve been swallowed by some kind of prehistoric creature – it’s likened to being in the belly of the whale in the biblical story about Jonah. www.hrgiger.com/barmuseum
get in the know The Statue of Liberty was a gift from France to the United States to mark the centennial of the American Declaration of Independence.
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