May 2019 by Travel + Leisure Southeast Asia

SOUTHEAST ASIA

MAY 2019

CAMBODIA CLEAR SAILING ON THE COAST

A FAMILY AFFAIR IN SAMUI SANYA LIKE YOUâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;VE NEVER SEEN IT BEFORE

SINGAPORE S$7.90 / HONG KONG HK$43 THAILAND THB175 / INDONESIA IDR50,000 MALAYSIA MYR18 / VIETNAM VND85,000 MACAU MOP44 / PHILIPPINES PHP240 BURMA MMK35 / CAMBODIA KHR22,000 BRUNEI BND7.90 / LAOS LAK52,000

TIME FOR A BEACH BREAK

SMOOTH SAILING

Best Things to Do in Batam for Your Next Weekend Getaway A fast ferry from Singapore or a quick flight from Kuala Lumpur lies an island of discovery and fun. In Batam, the seas are clear, the culture is fascinating and the food is fantastic. Bliss out in a spa, hit the links on a world-class golf course, or hop to its nearby sister islands with ample options for extended adventuring.

There are frequent daily fast ferries connecting Singapore’s Tanah Merah port with Batam, which has six ferry terminals: they are at Sekupang, Waterfront City, Batam Center, Harbour Bay, Nongsapura and Telaga Punggur. Batam’s Nongsa Point Marina also has berthing facilities for yachts, sailing trips on offer, as well as diving facilities for those wishing to explore Riau’s many islands.

PAMPERING SPAS Getaways are all about relaxation. Indonesia is world-renowned for its healing spas, and so what better way to slip into bliss than a spa-centered jaunt to Batam? On the island, there

are rejuvenating and soothing massages to be had at highly reputable places. Treatment packages start from just S$39 including two-way ferry ticket from Singapore and land transport—and some places even pamper you with seafood lunch and dinner. Book yourself on the table with some healing hands and feel all the stresses melt away.

WORLD CLASS GOLF The seven impressive golf courses in Batam have given the island a global reputation for the sport. The links include Palm Springs Golf & Beach Resort, Southlinks Country Club, Tering Bay Golf & Country Club, Batam Hills Golf Resort, Padang Golf Sukajadi, Indah Puri

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ISLAND HOPPING With its convenient marina facilities, Batam has become the stepping stone for sailing into Indonesia’s spellbinding tropical islands. Barelang Bridge is actually a system of six bridges and connecting roads that together stretch across the total 715-squarekilometer area of the Barelang islands. On Rempang Island, Melayu Beach offers panoramic scenes and relaxing ambience, drawing locals and tourists alike. Meanwhile, Galang Island is the site of the former Vietnamese Refugee Camp, for those who fled the second Indochina War in 1975. Another must-visit is Ranoh Island, ringed by cerulean seas teeming with beautiful marine life. Pop over there as part of a two-day trip for an exciting visit that includes snorkeling equipment, marine games, lunch and a

coconut drink, plus your boat ride to Ranoh, your return ferry tickets between Singapore and Batam, ground transportation and a night in a three-star hotel, all from just S$141 per person.

FULL DAYS OF FUN The wealth of transportation options and plethora of wholesome activities for all ages create a recipe for easy access and action-packed daytripping, or overnight adventures! Just imagine all the fun you and your partner, your family or a group of your friends could have exploring together and hopping among diverse activities. Chill out with massages or get your adrenaline pumping by go-karting; see the Barelang Bridge, Maha Vihara Duta Maitreya Temple, Golden Cheng-Ho Cruise replica and statue; indulge in retail therapy with duty-free shopping; visit the 3D Eye-Trick Studio for Instagramperfect photos; have a super delicious seafood lunch; and ride the thrilling Flying Fox zipline. Return ferry tickets, all ground transportation and a local guide are all included for from S$74 per person—and less the bigger your group.

RIDE IN STYLE Batam’s Hang Nadim’s International Airport has domestic flights by Garuda Indonesia, Lion Air, Sriwijaya Air, Citilink and Wings Air, plus international flights from Subang Airport near Kuala Lumpur on Malindo Air.

For more information, please visit : www.indonesia.travel

Once you land (or disembark the ferry), you’ll want the smoothest ride in Batam in terms of class, safety and air-conditioned comfort. Rent a car and tour around the island freely. The fresh sea breezes energizing and rejuvenating you—this is what exploration is all about!

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May

contents

features

Change of Pace Two new island resorts off Sihanoukville renew the promise of a Cambodian Riviera. By Jeninne Lee-St. John. Photographed by Aaron Joel Santos

Family Matters An intrepid motherand-son pair swap rugged hiking rest stops for a luxury resort in Koh Samui. By Duncan Forgan c l o c k w i s e f r o m t o p l e f t: a a r o n j o e l s a n t o s ; c o u r t e s y o f c a p e fa h n h o t e l ; M I S H A GRAV ENOR ; K e n K o c h e y

74 60 68 74 86

Beach Days T+L photographers clock in at some of their favorite coasts over the course of a day.

Best of Both Worlds San Diego fuses Mexican culture with the good vibrations of southern California. By David Amsden. Photographed by Misha Gravenor

A Neapolitan Story There are few places as intoxicatingly Italian as Naples and its idyllic Ischia Island. By Maggie Shipstead. Photographed by Danilo Scarpati

ON THE COVER

A private pool villa at the Six Senses Krabey Island, on the Cambodian coast. Photographed by Aaron Joel Santos.

t r av e l a n d l e i s u r e a s i a .c o m / m ay 2 0 1 9

contents In Every Issue

T+L Digital 8 Contributors 10 The Conversation 11 Editor’s Note 12 Deals 55 Wish You Were Here 106

Kitesurfing in Palawan; the hippest ’hood in Mumbai; a new museum in Qatar; and more.

34 Paradise Awakens Twenty

years after its hard-won independence, Timor-Leste is only just beginning to open up its rich natural landscape.

20 Island of Plenty Just north of

Kuala Lumpur, lesser known Pangkor Island is a cultural hub on the verge of change.

and the Seychelles, two new and improved private-island retreats offer the ultimate modern-day luxury: alone time.

51 Beyond the Beach On the Greek island of Syros, traditional festivals, Neoclassical treasures and fresh seafood dishes trump the white sands of its neighbors.

44 After the Volcano Last year’s

Secas off the southeast of Panama, a new lodge gives one family the chance to reconnect with its wild side.

preservation on China’s Li River means you can now experience the region’s architectural and cultural history as well as its stunning landscapes.

our favorite Filipino beachwear designs to pack for your next coastal getaway.

Bartender Dom Carella explains the legend behind this classic cocktail and lets us in on his favorite versions in Asia.

48 Far and Away On a trip to Islas

40 Rising on the River A wave of

28 In the Swim We gather some of

30 100 Years of the Negroni

A world-class art museum adds to the allure of Porquerolles, just 15 minutes off the Cote d’Azur.

38 Away From It All In Scotland

24 Blessed Beauty A new resort in Sanya doesn’t just offer a stateof-the-art stay, but also a fivestar version of Hainan Island life.

46 The Other Emerald Isle

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eruption of Kilauea scared some travelers away from Hawaii’s Big Island, but for others the mountain is part of the appeal.

f r o m l e f t: M a r c o A r g u e l l o ; c o u r t e s y o f d i v e t i m o r l o r o s a’ e ; c o u r t e s y o f T i a r a M e j o s / S e a P i x e l s ; c o u r t e s y o f th e o th e r r o o m

17 Reasons To Travel Now

“MAGNIF CENCE” El Nido, Palawan

t+ L di g i ta l

Lookout

Cruising in St yle Through Halong Bay This dreamy voyage on the most upscale ship in the bay takes passengers through the heart of one of the most scenic corners of Vietnam.

Hunting for a Rare Bloom in French Polynesia The search for an elusive flower leads to an extraordinary quest on the island of Raiatea.

Getting Off the Beaten Path in Japan Cutting-edge architecture, historic ryokans and food envy–inducing restaurants are just a few reasons to explore this timeless nation.

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f r o m l e f t: L e i g h g r i f f i ths ; c h r i st o p h e r k u c way. i l l u st r at i o n b y r i e t y

this month on tr avel andleisureasia.com

Bintan’s roads less traveled; how to spend a weekend in Vientiane; a luxe resort inspired by its island site’s celestial energy; eating green in Hong Kong; the latest travel deals and more.

c o n t rib u t o r s

Aaron Joel Santos

Sophie Raynor

“Change of Pace” Page 60 — “I’ve been to Cambodia a few times, and I love it. But like most places, as soon as I feel I’m getting a firm grasp on it, I realize I’ve barely scratched the surface. It’s amazing to find peaceful, gorgeous new resorts just off the coast of Sihanoukville, one of the most highly developed places in all of Cambodia. They are small paradises throwing distance from some incredibly obscene and classless mainland casinos.” Getting his sea legs: “My top memory of the trip was trying paddleboarding for the first time in rough seas at sunset at Alila... And failing miserably, with all the grace of a 360-kilogram gorilla.” Instagram: @aaronjoelsantos.

“Paradise Awakens” Page 34 — “I moved to Dili two years ago as a part of the Australian government’s volunteering program. East of the Wallace Line, Timor-Leste straddles the agriculture divide between Javanese rice and Melanesian root-based cultures. Its biodiversity means a lot grows well here. Do visit Agora Food Studio, the social-enterprise eatery and food incubator exploring traditional culinary secrets and boosting creative, young, locavore leaders.” Daily grind: “Black Box café has great single-origin coffee and a view for morning work; and cheap chilled wines, live bands and a dance floor for a sweaty groove at night.” Instagram: @sophieraynor.

Duncan Forgan

Alessandra Gesuelli

“Family Matters” Page 68 — “I used to travel with my mum frequently, til the arrival of my son gave grandmother/ grandson bonding precedence. But we’ve always shared a love of hiking and the outdoors so we are hoping to take my little one to the Scottish mountains soon.” Koh Samui highlights: “When my mum arrived at the resort after a long day traveling, her face when she saw the pool villa was like a kid’s at Christmas. She loves her walking, so the hike up to Hin Lad waterfall was pretty special. But she appreciated the time to unwind in luxury as much as the activities. Even long-term socialists love a treat sometimes.” Instagram: @dunc1978.

“100 Years of the Negroni” Page 30 — “We Italians love the Negroni. For aperitivo it’s always a must—especially in summer when you sit out with friends and relax. You can pair it with food also. Try it with pizza! I’ll be celebrating the centenary in Florence of course, a Negroni in my hand and Ponte Vecchio in front of me. For a nontraditional version, go to Coa by Jay Khan. Hidden in a small alley in Central Hong Kong, it’s so local, you can barely find the sign. I like the vibe, the way he uses Mexican spirits and ingredients in balanced and sexy drinks.” Also sample: “Dom Carella’s martinis, because he loves the ritual of making it.” Instagram: @alegesuelli.

W r i t er

f r o m t o p : c o u r t e s y o f A a r o n J o e l S a n t o s ; c o u r t e s y o f S o p h i e R ay n o r ; c o u r t e s y o f D u n c a n F o r g a n ; c o u r t e s y o f A l e ss a n d r a G e s u e l l i

P h o to gr a p h er

t h e c o n v e r s at i o n

The beauty of our favorite beaches and islands relies on our responsible actions. The tide turned in the last year, as a wave of brands jumped on the plasticstraw-ban bandwagon. Some hotels, like Six Senses with their free-range chicken farms and chemicalfree detergents, are way ahead of the curve—but plenty of seaside properties are taking sustainability pledges to the next level. Here are some examples.

Solar Power

Top marks: Rosewood Phuket, Thailand Why: The biggest solar panel network on Phuket makes 113,000 kWh a year and heats all the resort water (which is solely rainwater).

No Plastic Amenities

Top marks: Awei Pila, Burma Why: Glass containers, bamboo toothbrushes, starch showercaps, and more.

Coral Conservation

Top marks: Anantara Resorts, Maldives Why: A coral adoption program lets guests replant their own patch of coral and then receive photo updates.

Glass-bottled water

Top marks: Soneva Resorts, Thailand and Maldives Why: The savings generated by their in-house filtration plants and refill systems, launched way back in 2008, help provide potable water and fuel-efficient stoves to needy families around the world.

#TLASIA

Green Building

Top marks: Mango Bay, Vietnam Why: Amid villas made of rammedearth walls and a prolific tree-planting program, you hardly notice the resortwide lack of airconditioning. Other chits: no electric lights during the day and low-flow toilets.

We’ve loved seeing your social snaps inspired by the water.

A frolic on Railay Beach, Thailand. By @gitraveler.

In Palawan, every day is a lazy Sunday. By @mimundo_avectoi.

Singapore’s ArtScience Museum, two ways. By @wewhodream.

Spritzes by the Sulu Sea, in the Philippines. By @roamaroo.

Share an Instagram photo by using the #TLAsia hashtag, and it may be featured in an upcoming issue. Follow @travelandleisureasia

e di t o r ’ s n o t e

At Shishi-Iwa House in Karuizawa.

From My Travels

@CKucway chrisk@mediatransasia.com

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f r o m l e f t: I r fa n S a m a r t d e e ; c h r i st o p h e r k u c way

et’s face it: any travel magazine worth its sea salt is best when it’s a tease. And few things pleasantly taunt us more around Asia—or the world, for that matter—than great beaches and unforgettable islands. That’s why our annual issue focusing on the two is always a joy to put together. Among the impressions to surface this month is inspiration from finding how immersive a new resort in Sanya can be (“Blessed Beauty,” page 24); delight at the untouched scenery of Timor-Leste (“Paradise Awakens,” page 34); and surprise about an island I, for one, had never even heard of, Porquerolles on the Cote d’Azur (“The Other Emerald Isle,” page 46). All three sentiments arise in “Family Matters” (page 68), where Bangkok-based, Scottish writer Duncan Forgan takes his visiting mum to Koh Samui, where they each adapt to the joys of staying at a trendy tropical hotspot, and are energized to kick off the beach sand to start planning another trip together. Well off the Asia trail, yet a brilliant tale to set you dreaming of journeys further afield is “A Neapolitan Story” (page 96). On little-known Ischia—“The island is only a short boat journey away, but might as well be on another planet”—this intense, intoxicating and truly Italian account will have you searching for flights moments after you finish reading it.

After 80 minutes from Tokyo Station on the Shinkansen, I arrived at Shishi-Iwa House, a new 10-room inn imagined by a Singapore-based financial whiz and designed down to the smallest of details by a Pritzker Prize– winning Japanese architect. As a light snowfall gave way to the first colorful blossoms of spring, I didn’t know where to turn first and even found myself running my fingers along Shishi-Iwa’s intricate wooden walls. Yes, this is meant as a tease, with more about what is inside this amazing address in next month’s issue.

I am currently out of the office with limited access to email. To escape your next meeting, visit P R E F E R R E D H O T E L S . C O M

MONTAGE L AGUNA BEACH LAGUNA BEACH, CALIFORNIA, USA

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K ATAMAMA

DISCOVERY PRIMEA , MANILA

ANDARA RESORT & VILL AS

KOTA KINABALU, MALAYSIA

BALI, INDONESIA

MAKATI, PHILIPPINES

PHUKET, THAILAND

editor-in-chief art director Deput y editor Features editor senior DEsigner Digital media editor

Christopher Kucway Wannapha Nawayon Jeninne Lee-St. John Eloise Basuki Chotika Sopitarchasak Veronica Inveen

Regul ar contributors / photogr aphers Cedric Arnold, Kit Yeng Chan, Marco Ferrarese, Duncan Forgan, Jenny Hewett, Lauryn Ishak, Grace Ma, Morgan Ommer, Aaron Joel Santos, Scott A. Woodward, Stephanie Zubiri chairman president publishing director publishER digital media manager TRAFFIC MANAGER / deputy DIGITAL media manager Sales Director Singapore, Mal aysia Sales Director Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, Philippines Regional Manager Thail and, Vietnam, Cambodia, Burma, Maldives chief financial officer production manager circul ation as sistant

J.S. Uberoi Egasith Chotpakditrakul Rasina Uberoi-Bajaj Robert Fernhout Pichayanee Kitsanayothin Varin Kongmeng Kin Kamarulzaman Leigha Proctor Paul Adams Gaurav Kumar Nuttha Tangpetch Yupadee Saebea

TRAVEL+LEISURE (USA) Editor-in-Chief Senior Vice President, News, Luxury, st yle

Jacqueline Gifford Meredith Long

meredith partnerships, LICENSING & syndication (syndication@meredith.com) Busines s affairs director director, licensing oper ations editorial director e xecutive director, content management

Tom Rowland Richard Schexnider Jack Livings Paul Ordonez

meredith Chairman and ceo president and coo chief content officer e xecutive vice presidents

Steve Lacy Tom Harty Alan Murray Brad Elders, Lauren Ezrol Klein

tr avel+leisure southeast asia Vol. 13, Issue 5 Travel+Leisure Southeast Asia is published monthly by Media Transasia Limited, 1603, 16/F, Island Place Tower, 510 Kingâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Road, North Point, Hong Kong. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording or any information storage or retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the Publisher. Produced and distributed by Media Transasia Thailand Ltd., 14th Floor, Ocean Tower II, 75/8 Soi Sukhumvit 19, Sukhumvit Road, Klongtoeynue, Wattana, Bangkok 10110, Thailand. Tel: 66-2/204-2370. Printed by Comform Co., Ltd. (66-2/368-2942â&#x20AC;&#x201C;7). Color separation by Classic Scan Co., Ltd. (66-2/291-7575). While the editors do their utmost to verify information published, they do not accept responsibility for its absolute accuracy. This edition is published by permission of Meredith 225 Liberty Street, 8S-212 B, New York, New York, 10286, U.S.A. Tel. 1-212/522-1212 Online: www.meredith.com Reproduction in whole or in part without consent of the copyright owner is prohibited. subscriptions Enquiries: www.travelandleisuresea.com/subscribe ADVERTISING offices General enquiries: advertising@mediatransasia.com Singapore/Malaysia: 60-19/270-3399; kin@mediatransasia.com Japan: Shinano Co., Ltd. 81-3/3584-6420; kazujt@bunkoh.com Korea: YJP & Valued Media Co., Lt. 82-2/3789-6888; hi@yjpvm.kr

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REASONS TRAVEL NOW m ay 2 0 1 9

T+L’s monthly selection of trip-worthy places, experiences and events.

no.

courtesy of amanpulo

A breezy private island in the Philippines just became a kitesurfing magnet

Spread across Pamalican Island, a seven-kilometer strip of white sand and emerald-green hinterland in Palawan, the Amanpulo isn’t just an idyllic spot for a far-flung vacation—it’s also a prime sea-sport locale. Celebrating its 25th anniversary, the beloved boutique hideaway this year launched its own Kite & Surf Centre on the island’s eastern side, which fronts the seasonal northeasterly winds known locally as Amihan. Blowing winds of 15 to 35 knots from mid-October through March, Amihan makes for ideal kitesurfing conditions for both beginners and pros alike. Guests can launch right from the beach with guidance by Amanpulo’s professional instructors, including Paula Rosales, ranked as one of the best female kitesurfers in Asia. Of course, in the record-every-moment age of Instagram, lessons can include video footage from the center’s waterproof stabilized cameras for the ultimate beachside brag. aman.com; contact amanpulores@aman.com for pricing and scheduling details. — Eloise Basuki

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r e a s o n s t o t rav e l n o w

FROM top: Fingal,

no.

a new ship-hotel in Leith, Edinburgh’s seaport; Fingal’s Hyskeir Luxury Cabin.

After 18 years in the making, a New Qatari Museum Combines Past and Present The desert rose, an intricate crystal formation found in Arabia, was the model for the petal-like design of Jean Nouvel’s National Museum of Qatar (qm.org.qa), which opened in late March in Doha, the capital. Nearly two decades in the making, the museum is made up of 11 galleries that trace the history of this small Persian Gulf country. The collection includes artifacts from ancient nomadic and fishing communities, an 1865 carpet embroidered with 1.5 million pearls, and work from contemporary Qatari artists. The centerpiece of the kilometer-long exhibition space is the restored century-old palace of Sheikh Abdullah bin Jassim al-Thani, an influential Qatari leader. — PETER TER ZIAN

The newly opened National Museum of Qatar, in Doha. no.

The grit of Leith’s historic docks melted away as I ascended the red-carpeted gangplank into the floating haven of Fingal, a permanently moored ship-hotel that opened in January in Edinburgh’s port district. A meticulous makeover—courtesy of the team behind the nearby Royal Yacht Britannia, a former ship of the Queen that has been converted into an attraction—has done away with the relics of Fingal’s past as a lighthouse supply boat. It is now decked out in Art Deco style, with sycamore paneling and doors clad in soft sea-green leather. The 23 cabins, all named after Scottish lighthouses, are spacious and superbly crafted, with brass light fixtures, tartan throws, and headboards stitched with nautical contour maps of the country’s marine topography. The upperdeck bar serves breakfast, a lavish afternoon tea and a light dinner. And with some of the city’s best restaurants just steps away, you’ll hardly mind disembarking for fine dining elsewhere. fingal. co.uk; doubles from £300. — HARRIET O’BRIEN

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f r o m l e f t : IWAN BAAN / COURT ESY OF NAT IONAL M U S EU M OF Q ATAR ; COURT ESY OF FINGAL ( 2 )

The Best New Hotel in Scotland…Is a Boat

All the Cool Kids Are Heading to North Mumbai

n da r oa KCRoasters d

NORTH MUMBAI’S BANDRA NEIGHBORHOOD

2 v it t hal bh a

L R OA D

Bhaane

ad GURU NANAK MARG

1. KCROASTERS, in the bylanes of Bandra, is a cozy café with an earthy vibe and some of the best Indian-grown craft coffee in town. koinoniacoffee roasters.com. 2. BHAANE sells colorful streetwear-

24t h r o

oa d

Pali Bhavan

el r

i pat

Izumi

s.v. road

r oa

c o u rt esy o f s o h o h o u s e

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A dining room at the new Soho House Mumbai.

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ca r

The 38-room Soho House Mumbai (sohohousemumbai.com; doubles from Rs12,700), the first foray into Asia by the members’ club and hotel brand, was a hit from the day it opened last fall. Guest rooms feature Rajasthani textiles (like recycled-sari lampshades so eye-catching I was tempted to take one home) and a cocktail set for mixing martinis. The brand signatures—cinema, rooftop pool, Italian restaurant—are all here, along with works by South Asian artists (look for the crystal NO IS OK sign by Raqs Media Collective). But the best part is the location. Soho House brings an opulence and exclusivity that had been lacking in North Mumbai, making it an ideal new base for exploring the area. And explore you should: the location is in Juhu Beach, an upscale residential neighborhood that is home to Bollywood, while neighboring Bandra is India’s answer to Brooklyn. Hit these spots in Bandra, then cab home and end your night at the hotel bar, where you can sip a tequila-based Picante de la Casa and rub shoulders with the city’s movers and shakers. — pri shewakr amani

14t h

PA L I H IL

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↑ TO JUHU BEACH AND SOHO HOUSE MUMBAI

6 Bastian

Nicobar 5

inspired apparel and houses the sneaker store-within-astore VegNonVeg. bhaane.com. 3. IZUMI Stop by this 15-seat izakaya for pork tonkotsu ramen, seared salmon teriyaki rolls, and harusame

salad. fb.com/ izumibandra; mains from Rs621. 4. Go for lunch at PALI BHAVAN, a modern Indian restaurant where must-tries include a decadent pink-peppercorn prawn curry and paan kulfi, a frozen dessert. fb.com/ palibhavan; mains Rs345–Rs1,380. 5. NICOBAR, the prolific home-décor and fashion boutique, has an outpost here, selling everything from forest-motif pillows and polka-dot dresses to gold statement pendants and bold travel totes. nicobar.com. 6. At BASTIAN, a notable culinary newcomer, you can sample local ingredients in playfully remixed dishes from around the globe, such as bacon-and-cheese naan or spicy crab thermidor. fb.com/ bastianmumbai; mains from Rs621.

Long Weekend

Island of Plenty

Just three hours north of Kuala Lumpur, Pangkor Island is still unknown to many international travelers. Marco Ferrarese explores the diverse culture and natural charms of this former Dutch hamlet that appears to be sitting on the verge of change. Photogr aphed By Kit Yeng Chan

of Malaysia’s more popular coastal havens like Langkawi and Penang, laid-back Pangkor Island has been slower to earn international fame. Located off the southwestern coast of Perak state, Pangkor swells mostly on weekends as a getaway for nearby city-dwellers, who come for its plentiful snorkeling, diving and fishing. But this sleeping beauty and its three smaller sisters—Pangkor Laut, Pulau Mentagor and Pulau Giam—played an important role in Malaysia’s history. It was on Pangkor that the British Empire and the Sultan of Perak signed the Pangkor Treaty in 1874, officially starting their rule over Malaya. Besides early colonial politics, Pangkor’s waters, rich with Indian mackerel, attracted Cantonese and Hainanese fishermen, establishing the island as a seafood hub. A Marine

Floating in the shadows

from top: Candy colored

skies above Pangkor’s floating Al-badr Seribu Selawat mosque; hornbills are common.

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Industry Association was founded in 1930, sanctioning fishing and wooden boat–making as Pangkor’s main trades. This reflects in today’s cuisine, which abounds with fresh seafood like the local anchovies, ikan bilis. Pangkor’s seafaring history also makes charming sight-seeing. The coast is peppered with modest villages where residents still peddle these century-old trades, while Chinese shrines, mosques and an important Hindu temple all rub elbows in the island’s two main towns, Sungai Pinang Besar and Sungai Pinang Kecil. Beyond the shore, Pangkor’s seas offer good snorkeling near Coral and Mentagor islands, fishing trips at Pulau Dua, and colorful diving around the nine uninhabited and heavily protected Sembilan Islands, which also host a rare blue plankton that glows in the

clockwise from left: Walking the jetty at Sungai Pinang Besar; one of Tiger Rock’s two jungle pools; the resort’s chicken curry.

dark. Inland, the densely forested interior offers a safe haven to an army of squawky endemic hornbills, who often fly out of the thicket, gliding above the coastal road towards the sea. But 2019 may be the year this peaceful isle could awaken for a different reason: Pangkor is set to become Malaysia’s new duty-free port later this year, with a mall complex expected to open at the main port in Pangkor Town. Though the tax-free status will only apply to food, clothing and souvenirs—not alcohol, to avoid affecting the local community and creating too much of a party atmosphere—this new development means change is coming fast. Curious to check out the quickening pulse of this lesserknown island before commercialism transforms it for good (or bad), I left my home in Penang for a weekend at this other cultural haven, driving three hours down the coast to the fishing town of Lumut, the mainland port to Pangkor.

FRIDAY EVENING Lumut marina’s multistory car park is right next to the pier where a halfhourly ferry departs to Pangkor Town (40 minutes; RM14 round-trip). Mr. Mohan, the manager of Tiger Rock (tigerrock.info; doubles from RM1,380, including meals and guided round-island tour), was already waiting at the port, ready to

chauffeur us to Pangkor’s only boutique accommodation. The former secluded home of Penangbased visual artist Rebecca DuckettWilkinson and her family, Tiger Rock packs a cluster of charming eco-chalets on an old rubber estate now enveloped by lush rainforest. The family moved to Penang in 1999, but still own and manage the place, with Mr. Mohan taking the lead. “There is a good chance you’ll see our local wild boars come to graze around [the property],” Mr. Mohan said as he escorted me to my room, while the creaky laughter of Pangkor’s hornbills resonated high in the jungle above. Dinner is served on an intimate veranda by Tiger Rock’s alluring saltwater infinity pool, which overlooks a viridian wall of tropical plants. My meal was fresh local snapper marinated in handpicked local spices and lemongrass, and served with juicy fried chicken and a side of fried brown rice. I spent the rest of the night relaxing here, bright stars blazing in the sky, and cicadas and crickets serenading all around.

SATURDAY After an early breakfast, I took advantage of Tiger Rock’s guided round-island car tour with Mr. Mohan. Beginning just below the resort, we stopped at the ruins of the Dutch Fort (Kota Belanda). Built by the colonialists in 1670 to store

supplies and control the tin trade in Perak, it was destroyed by locals in 1690, rebuilt by the Dutch in 1748 as a military garrison, and finally abandoned in 1748. Across the road is the island’s legendary boulder that the resort takes its name from. The 10-meter-long Tiger Rock carries an enigmatic carving: to some, it’s a tiger mauling a child—a memorial of the death of a Dutch dignitary’s son; to others, it’s an obscure lion from the Dutch coat of arms, holding a quiver of arrows and a sword. What is unmistakable is the “VoC” engraving, a symbol of the Dutch East India Company.

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Long Weekend

from left: Exploring the jungle on four wheels; Fu Lin Kong temple features a miniature Great Wall of China.

The next stop was Pangkor Town, a grid of lanes where mom-and-pop shops sell dried fish and daily essentials, and locals play a game of haggling for the best price. Loaded with packs of dried shrimps and anchovies, we drove along the western flank of the island to Pasir Bogak, a long stretch of fine sand backed by tall and thin coconut trees. Along the road leading to the beach is Restoran Ye Lin (60-5/685-1881; mains from RM45), the no-frills, pioneer Chinese seafood joint that’s famous island-wide for butter prawns, soft-shell crab and steamed catch of the day. Less than 200 meters away in the midst of the bay is the tiny islet of Pangkor Laut, the secluded home to upscale Pangkor Laut Resort (pangkorlautresort.com; doubles from RM1090). With a private beach and a series of thatched villas, it’s Pangkor’s most luxe accommodation, but it casts guests away from the main island— boat transfers are not included. Up next to the north are Teluk Nipah and Coral Bay, Pangkor’s most alluring beaches. I went for a quick stroll along the shore, and promised myself I’d return in the evening to

enjoy the island’s best sunset views. We looped around Teluk Dalam, Pangkor’s empty northernmost bay, and down the east side of the island to Sungai Pinang Besar. This Chinese fishing village has most of Pangkor’s famous shipyards, an industry that thrived in the 1980s. I walked along a picturesque series of rickety wooden jetties where local boat-makers mold the bows and flanks of newborn vessels, some of which will be sold to Thailand and beyond. Other moored boats floated next to the jetties, waiting to fire up their engines for one last anchovy hunt for the evening. On the way back to the resort, we peeked inside the newly renovated Kali Amman temple, one of Malaysia’s most sacred shrines to the fierce ten-armed Hindu goddess, rebuilt in January this year. We skirted past Pangkor’s old abandoned cinema and the orange pagodas of Chinese temple Fu Lin Kong, which are scattered on a nearby hill. After a much-needed poolside siesta at Tiger Rock, I caught one of Pangkor’s iconic pink taxi vans back to Coral Bay to watch the daily hornbill feeding organized by budget hotel Sunset View Chalet at 6:30 p.m. A group of 20-odd hungry birds patiently wait on the powerlines, descending upon any brave tourist

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who dares lift a slice of fruit up in the air. It was fun—though slightly scary—to see the birds glide down to snatch the coveted, sweet pineapple from my fingertips. Nipah Deli ( fb.com/nipahdeli; mains from RM25), right on the beach, is a simple choice for a tasty Chinese steamboat dinner where you can tuck your toes into the sand and watch the sun paint the horizon copper orange. Next door, Daddy’s Café (60-5/685-1744, mains from RM25) is another beachside favorite for fresh seafood, Western-style comfort dishes and cocktails with a view.

SUNDAY Before catching the ferry back to Lumut, I embraced Pangkor’s wild side on the back of the four-wheelers at ATV Pangkor ( fb.com/atvadventure pangkor; from RM80 per person). The two-hour ride leaves from Coral Bay and snakes through the interior’s rugged paths, climbing all the way to Pangkor’s old, defunct airstrip— though it is expected to resume flights to Kuala Lumpur in September this year. As I ended the ride at the shoreline of the deserted northern beach Teluk Dalam, I felt like I finally understood the charms of Pangkor—all-natural, rugged and still untouched. For now, that is.

debut

Blessed Beauty

A new addition on an empty swathe of Chinaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s otherwise crowded coastal hub offers a chance to see Hainan Island as more than just a developing skyline with ocean views. Eloise Basuki checks into the Capella Sanya and experiences a five-star version of local life.

24â&#x20AC;&#x201E;

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fishing boat, Wang—or Big Wang, as I’m told he’s nicknamed—casts his net into the turquoise waters of Tufu Bay. Wang is from a small fishing village just down the beach, and has been dropping his nets here for more than 20 years; his family has been doing the same for centuries. As young couples stage amateur photo-shoots on the pier and on a docked yacht in the marina beside us, we simply watch our net sink into the blue, and wait for the fish to meet their fate. After cruising around the sunlit peninsula for a bit, Wang and I begin to haul in the 200-meter-long nets by hand, which takes a kind of patience I’ve long lost in my 7-Eleven-filled, food-delivery-app-reliant life. As we pull in a misguided jellyfish, I’m impressed that my captain’s well-worn hands don’t seem to feel the sting as he sets it free, smiling as he regales us with tales of life at sea. It’s easy to see why he loves it: as the sun sets behind distant mountains, casting golden-hour light on the entire bay, we speed back to my hotel, Capella Sanya, with our catch—a Hainan grouper, a pink-finned Lu and a spotty Luoman fish—all destined for my dinner. This scenic manual labor is part of Capella Curates, a collection of select experiences that introduce guests to local life here on Hainan Island. In Sanya, where oceanviews are the norm, it sets the resort apart. “We are end

f r o m l e f t: c o u r t e s y o f c a p e l l a s a n ya ; e l o i s e b a s u k i ; c o u r t e s y o f c a p e l l a s a n ya . o p p o s i t e : c o u r t e s y o f c a p e l l a s a n ya ( 3 )

The captain of my little

consumer–driven nowadays, but we tend to forget our actual roots,” says the new resort’s food and beverage director Dennis Laubenstein. “This is what we want to bring back and remind our guests about.” As more travelers seek “unique” experiences, the smarter hotels are figuring out ways to become their destination. Capella Sanya promised me not only a luxury stay, but house-crafted activities to foster a cultural connection to the island. It’s a concept that suits me, especially in a place as layered and potentially misunderstood as Sanya. As the southernmost cit y of “China’s Hawaii,” the somewhat debatable nickname for Hainan, Sanya is a popular haven for Mainland visitors—predominantly from the north—who thaw out here in the year-round warmth on its sandy shorelines. The sheer number of tourists (76 million arrived on Hainan last year, more than seven times Hawaii’s 2018 intake) had always scared me away. But with an area that’s bigger than you might think—it’s only a sliver smaller than Taiwan— I figured there must be more to this island than just its mass-tourism rep. Capella’s general manager, Yngvar Stray, sells the diversity to me this way: “We are not limiting ourselves on what we can do with this property based on what Sanya is. We’re constantly exploring to see

from left: Chinese touches in one of the Manor rooms; roasted Wenchang chicken with Hainanese mango at The Dempsey; the Dream Pool of Essays becomes the stage for daily tai chi. opposite: Capella Sanya’s main outdoor pool fronts the turquoise waters of Tufu Bay.

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debut

how we can integrate our surrounding, our culture, our environment into the experience in a different way.” The resort’s location on Tufu Bay, further from the city’s main resort hub on easterly Yalong Bay, helps drive this. Tufu’s history as a refuge is an ancient one. Its name translates to Blessed Bay, bequeathed by 14th-century Persian traders traveling on the maritime silk route, who used this beach as a shelter during a destructive typhoon. Trawling these historic waters was a level of engagement I rarely encounter, and ending my day at Capella’s Silk Road restaurant with a freshly steamed trio of fish that I caught with my own hands was a memory that will last well beyond my flight home. of life is part and parcel of paradise, and Capella also delivers on this. One of the luxuries all 190 rooms, suites and villas have is space. Most keys are for the “Manor,” a looming structure where garden- and ocean-view rooms start at 88 square meters and end in a lofty 440-square-meter, two-bedroom Chairman’s Penthouse. I’m on the ground, in a villa in the Autumn Mansion, one of four seasonally named complexes that links private one- to four-bedroom villas so that families can engage in togetherness, separately. At 290 square meters, my one-bedroom dwarfs me and its details are also generous: soft Italian linens; Diptyque amenities; and a minibar stocked with Californian St. George gin, craft sodas and copper cocktail kits. Nearby, the sprawling Auriga Spa offers China’s only source of Margy’s skincare, and features Hainan’s first hammam and snow cabin, though I only last two frozen minutes. Interpretations of Chinese design by architect JeanMichel Gathy add to the resort’s plushness and singularity, best seen at the lobby. Flowing in from the circular open roof, a fountain cascades a curtain of water into a central feature coined the Dream Pool of Essays, designed to reflect the Tang-Dynasty poetry of Zhang Ruoxu. It’s best appreciated in the morning. On the way to breakfast at Silk Road, I catch a tai chi master wade into the pool to begin his daily ritual. The meditative motions, the hypnotizing stream and the peaceful soundtrack present a mindful wake-up call even for me, lazily watching from a surrounding lounger. Water trickles in all over the resort. From the Dream Pool of Essays, wells spring beneath glass tiles and in 38 scattered lagoons. Aesthetic infinity pools front eateries like casual lunch spot Dempsey, modern Cantonese finediner Lan Ting, a yet-to-be-named branded restaurant, and Library Bar, where I stop for their nightly drinks ritual—a cocktail-making journey that boozily engages guests in Sanya’s maritime silk route history. Lush landscaping by designer Bill Bensley complements the aquatic elements—frangipani trees are mirrored in glassy waters, and palms shade the property all the way to Tufu Bay. Though guests aren’t allowed to swim in the beach—the government restricts it in many of Sanya’s

from top: Cocktails at Library Bar; the heated lap pool in the Auriga Spa; the hotel’s contemporary design can be credited to prestigous architect Jean-Michel Gathy.

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th i s s p r e a d : c o u r t e s y o f c a p e l l a s a n ya ( 3 )

Of course, a premium qualit y

from left: The snow cabin in Capella’s spa is the first of its kind in Sanya; spa treatments are based on the phases of the moon; the main

pool features shaded Jacuzzis, in-water loungers and eight surrounding air-conditioned cabanas.

beaches, for reasons I don’t quite understand—Capella’s outdoor pool makes an almost better alternative. Shaded Jacuzzi jets and in-pool loungers lure guests in the water, while eight air-conditioned cabanas—free for villa guests—offer VIP hangouts away from the sun’s rays. As br ag-worthy as Capell a is on the surface, what charms the most is just how tailored the entire experience is to me. Capella’s personal assistants aren’t just available 24 hours for their guest’s every whim, but also to offer personalized activities separate from Curates, most included in the room rate. Say you’re part of a multigenerational family; your personal assistant might offer a kite-making and -flying activity between grandparent and grandchild. Adorable. For me, someone who likes to sniff out local food wherever she goes, the suggestion of a cycling trip to Hainan’s famed mango plantations in Sanya’s interior is a perfect match. The ride is a good chance to leave the sanitized edges of the resort and enter Sanya’s real countryside. I cycle past both big developments and cute little villages, while mini pickup trucks stacked with freshly picked mangoes zoom past us heading for the mainland. We stop by a roadside stall to taste the local Jing Huang variety. Its flesh is juicy and candy-sweet; its size is bigger than my head, enough for an entire family’s breakfast.

Lan Ting’s chef, Peter Ma, also offers a Curate to see a more well-known foodie side to the island than its mangoes—Hainanese chicken. Though it’s too far for me to travel on this trip, chef Peter takes guests to the dish’s origins, in the western district of Wenchang. Stopping by a local farm in Tan Niu, guests will catch one of Wenchang’s famously fat and free-range chickens—they strut around wild gardens eating whatever’s around— and take it back to Lan Ting to cook the traditional way: stuffed with salt, ginger, wu zhi mao tao root and spring onion; and poached for the better part of a day. Many resorts in Sanya offer Hainanese chicken rice on their menus, but Dennis explains to me why Capella goes beyond this: “The point is the nature of the product, the origin… forming a relationship with the local farmer and gaining some insights about how it was in the past.” I have to leave before dinner, but chef Peter brings over a plate of the famous dish during cocktail hour at The Library. Sitting at the bar with a plate of the succulent, fragrant chicken, I am reminded that forging these kinds of connections, being encouraged to juxtapose the highbrow with the traditional in a manner that makes me feel at home... these add up to the best iteration of luxury travel today. Like the Persian traders before me, I’ve found my refuge. capellahotels.com; Manor rooms from RMB2,088; One-bedroom villas from RMB6,088.

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style

NO WET BLANKET These beach-friendly towels by Lagu aren’t just quick-drying; the unique fabric actually repels sand, keeping the grains where they belong—on the shore. Their new range includes sealife designs like the Pintados Beach Blanket in Manta Ray – Naranja (P1,299, lifeonthesands.com), as well as tropical fruit patterns and tributes to Filipino islands.

SUN SPARKLES Taking inspiration from the designer’s dives, Heyjow’s Gold Coast collection studs gilt corals and shells with jewels, like the moonstoneadorned Gold Coast – Hanalei (P3,650, heyjow.com).

In the Swim

UNDER THE SEA Run by a motherdaughters trio, Aranaz makes luxury bags and clutches for every woman. The new Tiki Seashell collection pairs raffia frills with seaside symbols, like the woven starfish appliqué on the Stella Fringe Bucket (US$365, aranaz.ph).

STRAP HAPPY Flattering cuts and elegant prints make the Brazilian-made suits from Agua Brazilian Swimwear stand out on the sand. We love the Indigo Maillot Capri (P4,890, aguabrazilian swimwear.ph) for its sexy neckline, flowy upper and the sunset shades print.

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c l o c k w i s e f r o m t o p l e f t: c o u r t e s y o f L a g u ; c o u r t e s y o f H e yJ o w ; c o u r t e s y o f ARANA Z ; courtesy of Agua Br a zilian Swimwear

Made up of more than 7,000 islands, the Philippines has its beachwear sorted. Here are some of our favorite Filipino designs to pack for your next stylish seaside escape.

THE RIGHT FIT Slow-swimwear brand Lourdes makes custom bikinis to fit any shape, with mix-andmatch prints like the new Bodhi 2.0 in Yellow Palm Print With Reversible Aquamarine (P3,000 for top; P3,500 for bottom, swimlourdes.com). Chlorine- and saltresistant fabric are made to last.

c l o c k w i s e f r o m t o p l e f t: c o u r t e s y o f G u p p y; c o u r t e s y o f T i a r a M e j o s / S e a P i x e l s ; c o u r t e s y o f B a l u d M ay n i l a ; c o u r t e s y o f v i a j e c i t o

HAWAII VIBE Men’s beachwear label Guppy has just added a series of summer kimonos to its range of swim trunks and tailored shirts. We love the tropical prints on The Oahu Beach Kimono (P1,299, guppy.ph) with matching The Oahu Shorts (P599), perfect for serving up seaside looks all season long.

MIRROR, MIRROR The signature frills from Balud Maynila’s swimwear collections ooze sweet femininity, especially when mom and daughter have a matching set like this scooped-back, rufflestrapped Blanca Full-Piece in White (P2,490, baludmaynila.com) and Blanca Mini in Ballet (P1,690).

SLIDE AWAY Known for durable rubber totes and bucket bags, Viajecito also offers a range of Mexican-made leather sandals that look just as sharp at dinner as they do on the beach. As well as the Huarache Slides in Red (P2,699, viajecito.ph), the versatility extends to tan, green, black and white options.

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dri n k s

100 Years of the Negroni

To celebrate a century of this classic Italian cocktail, award-winning bartender Dom Carella explains the legend behind this bittersweet mix and lets us in on his favorite contemporary versions in the region. By Alessandr a Gesuelli When Italian count

For Low A BV

The Other Room, Singapore

Dario Knox, at The Other Room.

For Top Vermouth

Indulge Experimental Bistro, Taipei

Here, bartender Aki Wang serves his signature Negroni using Mancino Vermouth Chinato. This artisanal product created by Italian mixologist Giancarlo Mancino combines all three of his vermouths— secco, bianco and rosso—and blends the mix with red Barbera D’Asti wine and Calissaja bark, ending up with a bottle packed with rich and deep notes. “It’s all about the ingredients I choose,” Wang says. “This vermouth gives it citrus, floral and spice flavors, a long aftertaste, and a beautiful bitter finish.” indulgebistrotaipei.blogspot. com; Negronis from NT$400.

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Creating a more drinkable, low ABV Negroni, Dario Knox has made a version that boosts the freshness of bergamot with intensely citrusy chinotto, Knox’s favorite drink as a boy. “For Christmas I remember all my relatives gathering at our house for their aperitifs. We kids were not allowed to drink, of course, and in order to let us have something similarly bitter, the adults gave us chinottos. To make sure we would go to sleep early, my relatives would drop some of their Negronis in our chinottos—to this day I still remember that beautiful flavor combination.” theotherroom.com.sg; Negronis S$23.

Aki Wang’s Negroni is topped with lavender leaf and edible violet.

f r o m to p : c o u rt esy o f th e oth e r r o o m ; c o u rt esy o f i n d u lg e ex p e r i m e n ta l b i st r o

Camillo Negroni returned to Florence from his trip to London in 1919, he made a beeline for his favorite bar, then called Caffè Casoni. To bartender Fosco Scarselli’s surprise, the count asked the barman to add some London dry gin to his usual Americano, consequently creating his eponymous cocktail. One hundred years later, the Negroni is as popular as ever, simply balanced with just three ingredients: gin, vermouth and Campari. “It’s a relatively easy drink to make,” says Italian bartender Dom Carella, who earned his stripes as bar manager in Shanghai and Hong Kong at Michelin-starred 8½ Otto e Mezzo Bombana, Tokyolima and more. “It’s the bartender that makes the difference, choosing the ingredients, balancing and refining the bitterness and sweetness,” says Carella, now based in Milan. “When I travel to Asia I look for a Negroni that interprets its story but with local ingredients and a creative touch,” he says. The drink’s hometown is celebrating a century with events like Florence Cocktail Week, May 6–12, but there are many places closer to home to toast the drink. Here are Carella’s seven favorite bars in Asia where the classic Negroni gets an updated twist. >>

dri n k s

For a Grow n-Up Classic

Charles H., Seoul & Blue Bar, Hong Kong

Hidetsugu Ueno at High Five.

Charles H., at Four Seasons Seoul.

For a Taste of Mexico

Coa, Hong Kong

Awarded Hong Kong Bartender of the Year in the 2018 Bar Awards, Jay Khan puts a Mexican twist on his Decaf Negroni at Coa, adding clay pot–distilled Don Amado Rustico mezcal and decaf coffee to the base recipe, and garnishing with chocolate to harmonize the ingredients. “Everyone can be a Negroni critic since it’s such an ubiquitous, well-known and well-made drink; it’s the favorite cocktail of most bartenders and chefs. We didn’t want to change its core too much,” Khan says. coa.com.hk; Negroni HK$160.

For Una pologetic Bitterness

High Five, Tokyo

Legendary Japanese bartender Hidetsugu Ueno’s Negroni is so popular, he can make it without measuring tools: 40 milliliters of Sipsmith Gin, 30 milliliters of Carpano vermouth, 30 milliliters of Antica Formula Carpano vermouth and 20 milliliters of Martini Bitters. “The products are important but it depends how you use them,” Ueno says. “When I do a Campari Negroni, for example, I use Carpano Classico, not Antica Formula, to enhance the original notes of the product and make a well-balanced cocktail with strength, sweetness and bitterness.” barhighfive.com; Negroni ¥1,870.

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Jay Khan, at Coa Hong Kong.

The Back Room’s Negroniinspired Big Fella.

For Nati ve Flavors

The Back Room, Manila

At this new bar at Shangri-La at the Fort, ask bartender Ulysse Jouanneaud for his off-menu, locally inspired Negroni using the Arc botanical gin by Full Circle Craft Distillers Co., the Philippines’ first-ever artisanal distillery. “What I like about the Negroni is the honesty of the ingredients,” Jouanneaud says. “It is so simple yet complex. Why the gin, sweet vermouth and Campari match perfectly together is still a pleasant mystery in my book.” shangrila.com; Negroni P600.

c lo c k w i s e f r o m to p : c o u rt esy o f c h a r l es H . ; c o u rt esy o f C oa ; c o u rt esy o f th e bac k r o o m ; c o u rt esy o f h i g h f i v e

Italian bartender Lorenzo Antinori hasn’t always been the Negroni’s biggest fan: “It wasn’t love at first sight—I was too young and couldn’t appreciate the bitterness.” Formerly at Charles H. at Four Seasons Seoul, Antinori is now the bars director at Four Seasons Hong Kong and beverage ambassador for the group’s Asia-Pacific region. At Blue Bar, his signature mix uses Porter’s Gin, Mancino Rosso Vermouth and Campari, giving citrus and spicy notes. fourseasons.com; Negroni W24,000.

TROPICAL BLISS WHERE MYTH MEETS LUXURY Nestled on the verdant hillsides of Monkey Mountain with sublime views of a tranquil bay, the InterContinental Danang Sun Peninsula Resort ÂŽ

is a treasure trove of unforgettable moments and experiences. Our Family Getaway provides plenty of versatility for parents travelling with children over the summer holidays, including breakfast and a range of recreational activities inspired by Vietnamese cultural traditions. For those in search of a personal retreat, our Rejuvenating Escape will help restore balance with daily yoga and tai chi classes, as well as a 60-minute signature treatment in HARNN Heritage Spa, a sanctuary of its own tucked away on a private lagoon. Whichever journey you choose, our dedicated team will be with you every step of the way. Visit danang.intercontinental.com

Live the InterContinentalÂŽ life. To make your reservation, please call +84 236 393 8888 or email: reservations.icdanang@ihg.com

MARSEILLE DAVOS DUBAI KOH SAMUI SINGAPORE

DANANG HONG KONG BALI BEIJING NANJING SHANGHAI

Ca s taway

Twenty years after its hard-won independence, Timor-Leste is only just beginning to open up its natural landscape to the region. Exploring every corner of Southeast Asia’s youngest country, Sophie Raynor discovers the pristine wonders we’ve been missing out on.

above: Dive Timor

Lorosa’e takes guests to some of Timor-Leste’s most hidden underwater sites.

East Timor, is a country few foreigners could place on a map, but whose name and tragic story they’ve doubtlessly heard: the newest independent nation in Southeast Asia, its brutal and decades-long occupation at the hands of neighboring Indonesia captured global attention and saw a United Nations–brokered independence referendum secured in 1999. Now, 20 years on from that blood-soaked independence, the peace-builders, development workers and INGOs are shunting out and

Timor-Leste, also known as

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A budding coffee culture “Single-origin coffee” in Timor-Leste means more than just packaged beans with a shared country of origin: here, it’s whether the beans have been grown in the same tiny hamlet, an area smaller in size than a village. Timor-Leste is home to a disease-resistant hybrid coffee bean, the Hibrido de Timor, which produces world-class brews from impossibly small

c o u r t e s y o f d i v e t i m o r l o r o s a' e

Paradise Awakens

scaling back and Timor-Leste is emerging as a stable, peaceful and prosperous young country—with unparalleled natural beauty and untapped tourism potential. Developing that potential is a key priority—the United States has just injected US$9 million worth of aid into the nascent sector—but with its whitesand beaches, teeming coral reefs and worldclass organic coffee, Mother Nature has already done most of the hard work herself. Timor-Leste has the pristine tropical beauty of an unexplored island. Here are three reasons to visit now.

batches, hand-picked from local family farms. An estimated 80 percent of Timorese families are subsistence farmers whose livelihoods are tied to the land, and many of them grow coffee. The farmers live hand-to-table on tiny, twohectare plots, coaxing award-winning coffee from gnarled colonial-era trees, and selling several sacks of green beans to the grassroots collectives that export the country’s highstandard coffee to places like Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan and Australia. Just an hour inland of Dili, the country’s capital, you’ll start to see the glossy dark-green leaves of the coffee trees fringing the road. In the city, try the quality organic local coffee at Letefoho Specialty Coffee (cafeletefoho. com; coffee from US$1.50); some of the baristas at Agora Food Studio (timorlestefoodlab.com; coffee from US$2) were even sent to Australia for training. Wending inland to the hilltop town of Railaco, just 30 kilometers from Dili, state-of-the-art coffee center Timor Global (timorglobal.com; coffee from US$1.50) offers locally roasted beans with, on a clear day, views to the coast.

from top: Letefoho Specialty Coffee brews organic Timor-Leste beans; freshly picked beans from a farm near Ermera; lunch at Agora Food Studio; TimorLeste’s untouched reefs mean its marine life remains pristine.

f r o m t o p : c o u r t e s y o f l e t e f o h o s p e c i a l i t y c o f f e e ; © UN Ph o t o / M a r t i n e P e r r e t; c o u r t e s y o fa g o r a f o o d st u d i o ; c o u r t e s y o f d i v e t i m o r l o r o s a' e

Diving on your doorstep Home to some of the world’s most biodiverse coral reefs, Timor-Leste’s pristine coastline is virtually untouched even right in front of Dili. Here, iridescent waters teeming with tropical reef fish and vibrant critters make an ideal snorkeling setting; sip a fresh local coconut split open for you at the water’s edge; or take the easy, hour-long speedboat trip to lush Atauro Island to dive the steep walls and craggy alcoves where turtles, sharks, dugongs and rare mandarin fish and frogfish hide. Beloi Beach Hotel (beloibeachhotel.com; doubles from US$85) offers accommodation on the island and boat transfers between Dili and Atauro, and both places are home to PADIlicensed dive schools where friendly instructors who know the reefs from top to bottom can help you get certified and explore hidden depths. At Atauro, contact Atauro Dive Resort (ataurodiveresort.com; dives from US$45) for certification and fun dives around the island, and in Dili, visit Compass Diving (compassdiving.com; courses from US$500) or Dive Timor Lorosa’e (divetimor.com; courses from US$450) for courses from open-water to instructor, or to organize a day trip to the secret dive sites scattered behind palm groves and deserted beaches along the winding coastal road.

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Ca s taway

Scaling new heights

of Hatubulico, and ask your hosts to book you a local guide to take you from the town to the 2,968-meter summit. The trail is clearly marked and the climb is not too difficult— making it ideal for a pre-dawn start; you’ll catch the day’s first golden rays and clear panoramas of the valley from the top. While Mount Ramelau is the region’s best-known hike, Hatubulico is home to hundreds of rocky trails that wind through lush tropical forests, alongside trickling waterfall streams, and past the traditional houses used by rural communities for cultural ceremonies. Closer to town, the historic hillside town of Dare is an easy 11-kilometer-long hike from Dili itself, where you can visit the small museum honoring the contribution Timorese people made during World War II, and see clear across the city’s bay. While the country’s history may still be short, Timor-Leste’s treasures have been here all along.

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Sacred houses in the coffee-growing municipality of Ainaro are used for cultural ceremonies.

Sandy-beach stretches and lazy coastal days show just one side of Timor-Leste. The tiny island’s dramatic geography sees ascents of nearly 3,000 meters just a few hours’ drive from the water. Up above the clouds, the mountain-air chill makes a welcome change from muggy, tropical Dili. Rent a four-wheel drive and venture two hours inland to the tranquil hillside town of Maubisse—a quiet, serene hideaway, whose restored Portuguese colonial-era guesthouse Pousada Maubisse (facebook.com/pousada-maubisse; doubles from US$45) offers sweeping valley views, meals made with organic local produce picked from family gardens, and an ideal rest spot before a sunrise mountain summit. Mount Ramelau, the country’s highest peak, lies a bumpy 90 minutes further up-country on some fairly treacherous roads—stay in one of the modest guesthouses in the nearby village

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checking in A beachside villa at Four Seasons Resort Seychelles at Desroches Island.

Away From It All

Four Seasons Resort Seychelles at Desroches Island There’s only one resort on Desroches, a sliver of coral in the Indian Ocean, but technically the island isn’t private. It’s shared by the hotel and two villages, and the interactions between them are a large part of what makes it such a distinctive escape. Desroches, part of the Seychelles’ little-visited Amirantes Group, is a 35-minute flight from the main island of Mahé. The Four Seasons resort, which opened last March after a complete overhaul of a preexisting property, is a cushy base for checking out the island’s 377 hectares. Each guest gets a bicycle, and I pedaled mine along forest pathways, personalized picnic basket in tow, en route to my own private stretch of coastline. Having the run of the place also means an array of unique activities, including yoga sessions on the very runway where your flight from Mahé lands and family movie nights under

the stars. The staff may also surprise you with a treasure hunt. Mine began with a riddle at breakfast directing me to “look up for something that doesn’t belong” at Madame Zabre beach (it was a pineapple), with further clues leading to the discovery of a coconut outside the spa and a bottle of rum tucked into my suite’s hammock. Later, I got to put these treasures to use in a private mixology class atop a lighthouse. Ranging from one-room bungalows and larger suites to groupfriendly villas with up to seven bedrooms, the accommodations have an upscale beach-house vibe: rattan furniture, vintage explorer-inspired curios, outdoor showers. All have plunge pools and direct beach access, while the suites also feature hammocks and thatched-roof cabanas. When you do feel like leaving your room, the public areas—a swimming pool, lounges and restaurants, and an open-air seaside spa—rarely feel crowded.

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Balancing all this privacy is the world just outside the resort. The two communities—one Indian, one Creole—have a combined population of about 100. Some residents work for the hotel, while others farm or make furniture. Guests can visit the villages to meet locals, learn about their crafts and even cheer on the teams at cricket matches. Guests can also feed Aldabra giant tortoises at a sanctuary and breeding center operated by the Island Conservation Society, which focuses on land restoration and wildlife protection. Back at the resort, the marine educators of the Discovery Centre guide visitors on snorkeling trips that reveal the aquatic wonders in the region, which is too remote to be affected by commercial fishing. This access to unspoiled nature is perhaps the most luxurious part of staying on Desroches—and the biggest benefit of this island’s version of going private. fourseasons.com; doubles from US$1,435. — Sandr a R amani

C o u r t e s y o f F o u r S e a s o n s R e s o r t S e y c h e l l e s at D e s r o c h e s Is l a n d

From the lochs of Scotland to the middle of the Indian Ocean, these two new and improved private-island retreats offer the ultimate modern-day luxury: alone time.

Courtesy of Eilean Shona

Eilean Shona, Scotland Clouds cocooned Loch Moidart as our small boat chugged to Eilean Shona, a private island off the western coast of Scotland. Owned by Vanessa Branson, Sir Richard’s sister, this forest-fringed and brackenblanketed 509-hectare complex of cottage rentals—including the newly revamped Shepherd’s Cottage, where I stayed—is the stuff of childhood fantasies. In fact, Peter Pan author J. M. Barrie spent a holiday here in the 1920s and was captivated by what he described in a letter as the “wild rocky romantic island.” There are no roads, just a spiderweb of paths, mossy mounds, and heather-covered hills. It’s a place to scrabble over boulders and picnic on the sand. Sea eagles wheel overhead, while otters and seals bask on the rocks. There’s a rambling main house that sleeps 20 and can be rented with or without a chef. For smaller groups or solo travelers, there are eight cottages, hidden in the woods or on sheltered bays. Shepherd’s Cottage is a 45-minute walk along the coast from the disembarkation point. “You can’t get lost,” Paul Waddington, the estate manager, said with a smile as

we clambered out of the boat. “Just follow the path.” Along the track, I passed a shed that had been transformed into a cozy game room, with old sofas, books, and table tennis. It’s also the only place to get Wi-Fi on the island; there are pockets of cell phone reception, but this is a

A guest bathroom at Eilean Shona, an island retreat off Scotland’s coast. ABOVE: One of the retreat’s cottages.

place to log off. Guests bring their own provisions, although there is a shop open for a couple of hours each week where you can stock up on venison casserole and fish pie. As I rounded a bend, Shepherd’s Cottage came into sight, a tiny stone bolt-hole with views to the islands of Rum and Eigg. Since there was no electricity in my cottage, lighting was by gas lamp. A coal stove provided heat and hot water, while the range and fridge were gaspowered. Bright rugs were scattered over the dark wood floors, and modern art hung on the walls. The huge, marshmallow-soft bed was warmed by hot water bottles and covered with a furry throw. There was a romantic Victorian-style rolltop tub for long, hot soaks in water tinted an earthy brown by the peat. I spent my days exploring: hiking along the coast, poking around ruined cottages, sailing to Shoe Bay, watching red deer graze at my door in the morning. Each night I curled up in front of the fire. The world felt far away, so this island became a farflung kingdom, its secrets mine to discover. eileanshona.com; cottages from £725 per week. — Lucy Gillmore

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E X P LO R E

Rising on The River

As I stepped off a tour boat in Yangshuo, China, an elderly man stood on the pier, balancing a pair of beady-eyed cormorants on a long bamboo pole. My guide, Jay Zhao, explained that for centuries, people here have used cormorants to dive for fish in the river. The birds do the hunting; the fishermen slip collars around their necks to keep them from swallowing their prey. Jay turned to me and subtly lowered his voice. “Cormorant fishing is disappearing,” he told me. “Same with the buffalo farming we saw upriver. Ten years from now, you won’t see it anymore.” I’d come to southern China’s Guangxi province to explore the Li River’s unique mistcloaked karst promontories—steep, jagged peaks that have inspired generations of Chinese landscape painters. Just a few decades ago, the area’s main town, Yangshuo—which lies about 570 kilometers west of Hong Kong and the same

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The pool at Alila Yangshuo, a hotel housed in a former sugar factory on the banks of China’s Li River.

distance east of the Vietnamese border—was a sleepy place popular with backpackers. Now it’s a busy tourism hub, and the rice fields and cormorant fishermen feel like relics of a vanishing past. I wanted to take a firsthand look at how this region is fighting to preserve its cultural and historical treasures—and the Alila Yangshou, a hotel housed in a refurbished sugar mill on a bend in the Li River, seemed like an ideal base. Since it opened in 2017, the property has drawn accolades for a design that tastefully balances old and new while blending seamlessly with the surrounding landscape. “This is about how to take an old factory and give it a new lease on life,” said Simon Kong, then the hotel’s general manager, as he poured me a cup of coffee in the Sugar House Restaurant. “We wanted to make it a place future generations can appreciate,” Kong said. As we talked, sunlight poured in through >>

C o u r t e s y o f A l i l a Ya n g sh u o

Visitors have long been drawn to China’s Li River valley for its spectacular landscapes, but a fresh wave of preservation means they can now experience the region’s compelling architectural and cultural history, too. By scott wall ace

Farewell Bangkok

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floor-to-ceiling windows set into one of the factory’s original brick walls. The roof, supported by exposed wooden beams, peaked nearly 16 meters overhead. Waitstaff hurried around in tunics and pants inspired by Maoist uniforms. “It’s harder to convert an old building and give it fresh purpose than to just build something new,” Kong said. As we strolled the grounds, I began to appreciate how challenging the project must have been. The original mill, parts of which date back to the 1950s, was arranged around a coal-fired boiler room. That ground-floor space, which has retained its original blackened smokestack, now houses a chic boutique, presided over by a sculpture of a learned monk looking down from the library, which is in an overhead loft. Most of the resort’s 117 guest rooms occupy a newly built low-rise wing constructed of concrete and sandstone covered with a latticework of custom-made bricks. “The challenge was to design new buildings that do not overpower the old,” Kong said. My spacious, airy room, with its private balcony, minimalist furniture and recessed lighting, was proof of that project’s success. Over the two days I spent at the hotel, I kept returning to the old loading dock for its mesmerizing view of the karst mountains, reflected in an expansive swimming pool flanked by a pair of 10-meter industrial trusses. I watched a photographer coax a young woman into seductive poses, framing his subject in the pool’s reflection. “It’s a one-of-a-kind, very Instagram hotel,” Kong told me. “Guests bring all kinds of props and costumes to take photos for their posts.” He added with a smile, “It’s free promotion for us.”

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From top: Bamboo rafts cruising on the Li River, with the distinctive karst mountains in the background; a guest room at Alila Yangshuo.

In a way, the entire Li River valley, which extends 80 kilometers upriver to the provincial capital of Guilin, is benefiting from the preservationist impulse that’s currently finding a foothold in China after decades of determined modernization. The area has been designated a unesco World Heritage site, both for its stunning topography and its rich cultural history (primitive societies dwelled in the caves and among the crags here as far back as the sixth millennium B.C.). Time-pressed travelers can now drive to Yangshuo from Guilin in less than two hours via a brand-new highway. But the alternative route— a half-day cruise down the Li River—is time well spent, according to my guide Jay, who had booked us seats on a plush passenger boat. As we departed from Guilin amid swirls of an early morning mist, Jay led me to the boat’s upper deck, where the banner of the People’s Republic of China flapped in the breeze. Traditional villages and vivid green orchards dotted the passing landscape. Fishermen balanced on rickety wooden rafts, casting nets into our wake. “Look,” Jay exclaimed, pointing beyond the bow as we rounded a bend in the river. Laid out before us was a Chinese scroll painting come to life: a succession of jagged, jade-green peaks rising up through diaphanous clouds. “It’s like an 80-kilometer-long art gallery,” Jay said. I obliged a few fellow passengers who asked me to take their photos; by the time we arrived in Yangshuo, all of us were smiling and waving like old friends.

f r o m t o p : a n d r e w r o wat; c o u r t e s y o f a l i l a ya n g sh u o

E X P LO R E

li river valley

GUILIN

CHINA SHANGHAI

v er

On the journey’s last leg, we drove north to Longsheng, a picturesque county renowned for its diverse traditional cultures and mountain tribes. After an hour or so, we parked and set off on foot. For 45 minutes we followed a narrow path steadily uphill, crossing rushing brooks via footbridges and passing small hamlets carved into the mountainsides. At the top, we came to a magnificent, four-story wooden structure with a peaked tile roof, looking out on a spectacular view of terraced rice paddies that stretched in all directions. This was Li-An Lodge. A young innkeeper named Tony Zhao offered to show me around. Each of the guesthouse’s 16 rooms is furnished according to a theme, he explained, and showcases objets d’art and antiques collected by his boss—a U.S.-based photographer named Keren Su, who originally hails from Hangzhou. In the Double Happiness room, he pointed to a wood relief depicting a traditional village wedding ceremony. “This survived the Cultural Revolution,” Tony said. That night, I was startled awake by a loud crack of thunder. Wind and rain were blowing through the window, whipping the white chiffon curtains into an eerie, spectral dance. Each flash of lightning illuminated the rice terraces, their contours fading away into darkness. I reflected on all the change I’d witnessed down in the valley. Longsheng’s swirling paddy fields felt like a counterpoint, somehow: a way of life etched into the landscape over centuries. The thought was reassuring, and with it in my mind, I closed the windows and went back to sleep.

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M e l i n d a Ch a n / g e tt y i m a g e s

LONGSHENG

li river valley

HONG KONG YANGSHUO

Exploring the Li River Valley

If you’re in Hong Kong or Shanghai it’s an easy detour to this picturesque part of southeastern China. Take time to relax with a three- or four-day trip.

The sculpted, rice paddy landscape near Longsheng.

Getting There There are daily direct flights from Hong Kong and all major cities in eastern China to Guangxi’s provincial hub, Guilin. From there, many companies offer scenic half-day boat trips down the Li River to Yangshuo. A new highway means you can reach Yangshuo by road in two hours (recommended for the return trip to Guilin). The rice terraces of Longsheng are also about two hours from Guilin by bus or private car, in the opposite direction from Yangshuo. Hotels Shangri-La Hotel, Guilin This riverside hotel has 439 spacious guest rooms, tastefully accented with traditional watercolors. Book on an upper floor on the riverfacing side to see the sun set over the mountains. shangri-la.com; doubles from ¥1,095 Alila Yangshuo A masterpiece of architecture and design, the newly opened Alila features a magnificent

swimming pool and spa as well as a library, art gallery and boutique. On the grounds is a climbing wall that runs along the face of a limestone cliff. alilahotels.com; doubles from ¥1,650. Li-An Lodge A 16-room boutique hotel perched on a ridgeline overlooking a spectacular maze of terraced slopes in Longsheng. Guests need to walk 45 minutes uphill to reach the lodge, though they can hire porters and a sedan chair to help them make the climb. The team can provide trail maps for self-guided hikes around the Longsheng rice terraces. lianlodge.com; doubles from ¥1,290. TOUR OPERATOR China specialists Remote Lands can arrange a tour of the Li River valley, including expert guides and excursions such as a river cruise and bike tours. remotelands.com; from ¥35,000 per person for a four-night trip. — S.W.

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After the Volcano

Last year’s eruption of Kilauea scared some travelers away from Hawaii’s Big Island, but for Jesse Ashlock and his family, the mountain was part of the appeal—that, and a very nice hotel.

Paradise Helicopters’ Big Island tour visits the Kohala Waterfalls, tucked inside the Pololu Valley, on the northern tip of the island.

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My daughter, Agnes, is four, which means she asks questions like “Where does hot lava come from?” So after Hawaii’s Kilauea began erupting last May, we watched some lava videos together on YouTube. When I told her that we were going to visit the Big Island and she could see the volcano, she was excited, but said sternly, “We just can’t get too close.” Our destination was the Four Seasons Resort Hualalai (four seasons.com; doubles from US$949), known for being the platonic ideal of family vacation destinations. But for a moment, another natural disaster—Hurricane Lane, briefly a Category 5 storm—loomed. The news media acted like Lane could spell the end of Hawaii as we know it, but the folks at the resort were blasé about it. And, sure enough, our family—Agnes; my son, Rex; my wife, Chi; and I—arrived to the moderately humid perpetual 29 degrees for which Hawaii is so famous. After a POG (pineappleorange-guava juice) in the lobby, we were ferried by electric cart along serpentine paths, past volcanic-rock walls and dense native plantings, to our tranquil Deluxe suite above King’s Pond, a man-made lagoon. Inside are more than 4,000 fish species, including a spotted eagle ray named Kainalu, which the kids would get to feed the next morning. Walking the grounds, I came to see the resort as an ingenious piece of social engineering. It’s laid out as a series of interlocking crescents, each speaking to a different life stage. At one end is King’s Pond; at the other, the golf course, with areas in between better suited for couples’ retreaters and families with older kids. Its seven pools range from the shallow, sandybottomed Keiki Pool, for really little kids, to the adults-only Palm Grove Pool, which has a swim-up bar that serves a refreshing Hendrick’scilantro-cucumber-jalapeño number called a Cool and Spicy. Chi and I took turns at the Palm Grove Pool while the kids napped. One afternoon, I was in the pool with

B r u c e Om o r i / C o u r t e s y o f Pa r a d i s e H e l i c o p t e r s . o p p o s i t e : C o u r t e s y o f F o u r S e a s o n s R e s o r t H u a l a l a i

o u t ward b o u n d

a novel and a Cool and Spicy, happy as a clam until I realized the basalt deck I was leaning on was really quite hot. As if by magic, an attendant appeared with a towel. I left the tab open for Chi, who told me later that she’d been greeted by name and shown to a chaise made up just for her. This kind of service— anticipatory, empathetic, always nearby but never intrusive—is like a glass of ice water on a hot day. At first it blows you away, and then it’s just quietly satisfying. We experienced it at Ulu Ocean Grill, when we had a dinner prepared by Thomas Bellec, the executive chef. Everything was marvelous: the craft cocktails, the Kona Kampachi crudo, the special grilled oyster Bellec brought Agnes when he found out she was a mollusk lover, and, most of all, the double rainbow that appeared over the beach. And then, as can happen with jet-lagged kids, everything went to pieces. Just as Bellec began carving the fresh whole snapper tableside, both children had meltdowns. “Go,” he told us. “I’ll have it sent to your room.” Minutes after Agnes and Rex fell asleep, a waiter arrived to set up a feast on the balcony. Chi and I sat in the dark, devouring that beautiful fish, drinking a lemony Sancerre, and listening to the waves. Early one morning, I left my family to go on a group sunrise tour of Mauna Kea, the million-year-old dormant volcano that ancient Polynesians considered the belly button of the Hawaiian islands. “Thank you for not being afraid of

The adults-only Palm Grove Pool at the Four Seasons Resort Hualalai.

the volcano, the hurricane, and the two a.m. wake-up,” Justin Larkin, a guide from Hawaii Forest & Trail (hawaii-forest.com), said as he drove us up the mountain in the early dawn. At first, the sunrise was like filigree lace edging the clouds, then it flooded us with celestial light. Just as cool was the shadow Mauna Kea projected onto the atmosphere, just west of Maui’s southern tip, which we could see in the distance. Maui, Larkin said, had begun life where Mauna Kea is now, before wandering over the eons to its current location. Set free for a moment from the realities of parental time, I marveled at the slowness of geological time. Since I’d told Agnes she’d get to see a volcano too, the hotel had arranged a tour for us with Paradise Helicopters (paradisecopters.com). Our pilot, Keith Darby, kept up an affable patter about the sights below, from the white-sand beach where Captain Cook met his end to the green, mist-enshrouded coast near Hilo, where an ill-fated railroad once ran. Rex was airsick, and Agnes was more excited about asking me questions over her headset than the

view. Eventually, they both fell asleep. We circled the black-andumber crater of Kilauea, but it was obscured by steam. “Not to rub it in,” Darby said later, after we’d landed on a secluded mountaintop for a quick picnic, “but the lava flow was amazing until August.” The ebbing of the lava has been good for the Big Island, which has been able to reopen Volcanoes National Park. Agnes said that it was okay that she hadn’t seen the volcano, because “the helicopter was fun.” It was also okay, I decided, that I hadn’t seen any lava, because Hawaii was fun. During one breakfast at Ulu, I chatted with our server, Tiffany, about the hurricane’s near miss. “For those of us who grew up on the island, each day is its own day,” she said. You get into that mind-set quickly here. The next morning, Tiffany pointed out a pod of dolphins surfacing just offshore. As Agnes and Rex and I raced to the beach, one corkscrewed out of the water and landed with a splash. Agnes turned to me, her face alight. “We saw a dolphin do a trick!” I was as excited as she was.

hotel news from the big island Fairmont Orchid, Hawaii The Kohala Coast resort’s culinary revamp under new executive chef David Viviano begins with the new Binchotan Bar & Grill, the first restaurant on the Big Island to specialize in robatayaki, the Japanese style of cooking over hot charcoal. fairmont.com; doubles from US$749.

Volcano House The view from the only hotel inside Volcanoes National Park has changed since the eruption: the lava lake is gone, but Kilauea’s crater has gotten much bigger—and because there’s less volcanic gas in the air, stargazing opportunities abound. hawaiivolcanohouse. com; doubles from US$196.

Mauna Lani, Auberge Resorts Collection First opened in 1983, Mauna Lani will rebrand this fall as Auberge’s first Hawaii property after a yearlong, US$100 million face-lift that will add three new pools and reimagine virtually every aspect of the hotel. aubergeresorts.com; rates unavailable at press time.

Westin Hapuna Beach Resort Last summer, following a US$46 million renovation, the former Hapuna Beach Prince Hotel became a Westin, with four new restaurants and a seductive lobby experience that beckons you down to the famous Hapuna Beach below. marriott.com; doubles from US$425.

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D i s c o v e ry

The Other Emerald Isle

For most visitors to the Côte

from top: Yachts at Le Langoustier beach on the west of Porquerolles; Ugo Rondinone’s Four Seasons, in the garden at Fondation Carmignac. oPPOSITE: Admiring Miquel Barceló’s Not Titled Yet at the new Porquerolles museum.

d’Azur, the iconic towns of Cannes, Juan-les-Pins and St.-Tropez, with their Beaux-Arts villas and yachtfilled marinas, are a must-see. But connoisseurs of the Riviera will tell you two things. First, avoid visiting in July or August. Second, spots like St.-Tropez should be viewed as mere stopping-off points en route to less busy parts of the coast. Foremost among these, I’d heard tell, are the jewel-like islands that lie just a 15-minute ferry ride off the coast: Le Levant, Port-Cros, and the most sparkling of all, Porquerolles. For years, I’d listened to my French husband’s family rave about these islands, which are collectively known as Les Îles d’Or and receive more than 300 days of clear weather a year—making them some of the sunniest spots in Europe. In the 1960s, their waters were named the continent’s first national marine park, so their beaches are as unspoiled as any far-flung Greek isle—without the need for an overnight ferry. Le Levant is mostly

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military-owned, while Port-Cros and most of Porquerolles comprise a national park, car-free and protected by the state. Porquerolles is the largest of the three, though it’s still only seven kilometers long and three kilometers wide. In summer a passenger shuttle, or navette, tears back and forth between Porquerolles and the pleasant, palmfilled town of Hyères, disgorging visitors onto the island for a day’s walking, swimming and picnicking. When the evening ferry takes the last sunburned day-trippers back to the mainland, the island exhales and quiet descends on the little town center, home to just a sprinkling of small hotels and restaurants. On Porquerolles, as on most islands, the evenings and early mornings are enchanting—all the more reason to stay for a night or two. Now, there is added incentive to book a longer trip. Last June, the Paris-based Fondation Carmignac opened a museum on the island to showcase its world-class collection of contemporary art. Aboveground

f r o m t o p : U l l a L o hm a n n / g e tt y i m a g e s ; a n th o n y l a n n e r e t o n n e

Just 15 minutes off the Côte d’Azur, Porquerolles has always had lush forests, crystal waters and some of the Med’s best beaches. The missing ingredient? A world-class art museum. BY REBECCA ROSE

construction is prohibited on the site the foundation chose, so the gallery— which will host a new show from April through November each year— was built underneath a historic villa. With talk of the opening reverberating through the art world, my husband, Nicholas, and I decided that Porquerolles was an essential detour on our next Riviera trip. We were booked in at Le Mas du Langoustier, a beloved old-fashioned hotel on the western side of the island. A Porquerolles institution, this terra-cotta-colored property has reigned supreme since 1935. The interiors, with their heavy wooden furniture, oil paintings and white tablecloths, have a retro-chic insouciance, but the grounds are the real draw. There’s a tennis court and a pool hidden in a patch of pine forest, plus a small, secluded beach. The hotel now has a shuttle that deposits guests at the Fondation Carmignac. We were there during the inaugural exhibition, alluringly entitled “Sea of Desire,” a showcase for works by postwar giants such as Ed Ruscha, Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Cindy Sherman and many others. Visitors to the 2,000-square-meter space must remove their shoes, which makes for an unusually quiet, contemplative gallery experience. The 15-hectare sculpture garden—shoes on for

that—is perhaps the most dazzling aspect of the museum. Highlights include a mirrored maze by Danish artist Jeppe Hein, and Olaf Breuning’s cartoon-like Mother Nature—an arresting red figure amid the trees. After a half-day at the Fondation, we headed back to Le Mas du Langoustier, where it seems most guests do very little other than bag a deck chair under the trees and putter down to the beach and back. The more adventurous should make a point of exploring, either by mountain bike or on foot. With sandy, eucalyptus-scented paths running along the entire coast, you can tour the island at your leisure, taking in the glorious Caribbeanstyle beaches on the north side— La Courtade, Notre Dame and La Plage d’Argent. But the island’s quiet interior is where the true magic lies. My husband and I cycled along paths between vineyards originally planted to prevent forest fires; now, they produce excellent Provençal rosé. Stopping for a break, we left our bikes and walked a little way into the vines: with a dizzying soundtrack of cicadas and birdsong, the sun beating down, we felt a sense of serene perspective set in. Even the greatest works of art can’t compete with that.

How To Plan A Trip To Porquerolles Add a two-night stay on the island to a Riviera visit—or make it a weekend detour from elsewhere in France. G et ting There

Fly into Nice and drive about an hour and 45 minutes to the town of Hyères, where a ferry makes the 15-minute trip to Porquerolles. Ferries only run in daylight hours; if your schedule calls for a night on the mainland, St.-Tropez makes for a good way station en route from Nice to Hyères. Hotel s

Le Mas du Langoustier This grand 49-room hotel is open from April through November. Known for its Michelin-starred restaurant, L’Olivier, the property also has extensive grounds with a swimming pool, tennis courts, and a small beach. Transfers are via the hotel’s private boat, or by ferry from the mainland. langoustier.com; doubles from €356. Muse Saint Tropez Each of the 15 suites at this luxurious hideaway in St.Tropez’s hillside district of Ramatuelle is named after a famous singer or movie muse— Audrey, Jeanne, etc.—and comes equipped with its own mini kitchen, plus a small library of glossy coffee-table books. The new spa, La Tente, offers massages in fabulous canvas suites. muse-hotels. com; doubles from €382.

a n th o n y l a n n e r e t o n n e

Ac ti v itie s

Fondation Carmignac Hidden away in the island’s wild interior, this new, worldclass contemporary art museum is open April through November, and will host a different exhibition each year. Visitors must book in advance, as only 50 tickets are issued per half-hour. fondation carmignac.com. — R.R.

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F I R ST LOOK

The pool deck of a casita at Islas Secas, a new marine safari lodge off Panama’s Pacific coast.

Far and Away

A trip to Islas Secas, an exclusive new lodge on a jungle-covered archipelago off the coast of Panama, offers one family the chance to reconnect with its wild side. By Flor a Stubbs. Photogr aphs by Ian Allen

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T h e G u l f o f C h i r i q u í , a wild, volcanic stretch of Panama’s Pacific shoreline, was once known as the Lost Coast. Pirate ships ran aground here; ruthless buccaneers stole charts of the area from one another, eager to plunder its natural riches. As my family and I boarded a little barge bound for the gulf, it seemed as if we, too, were entering unknown territory. Chugging down the delta of the Chiriquí River, evidence of human habitation became increasingly scarce—a few cows here, a wooden kayak there. Barú, Panama’s largest volcano, loomed out of the haze and was promptly swallowed up again. Then we hit the ocean and stared at a blank horizon as high winds buffeted our boat, limiting conversation to the occasional shout. Over the roar of the engine, our guide, a towering Liverpudlian named Rob Jameson, explained that sailors lost in these seas used to scan the skies for flocks of magnificent frigate birds as a sign that they were nearing the safety of shore. An hour or so after we set off, there they were: hundreds of the birds, wingspans meters wide, swirling high above a dot of jungle-clad land—the outermost in an archipelago of 14 untrodden islands named Islas Secas. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t feel a profound sense of relief.

Guests at Islas Secas can explore the reserve’s 14 private islands on a variety of boats and barges.

The ocean view at the lodge’s Terraza restaurant.

My husband, David, and I were on our way to Panama’s newest high-end resort, Islas Secas Reserve & Lodge, with our 18-month-old son, Leo, and our four-year-old daughter, Stella. David and I are both seasoned travelers, but since Leo’s birth, our ambitions had shrunk considerably. When Stella was little, we dragged her off to Cuba, India, Mexico and Morocco; with two in tow, we’d been spending a lot more time in Florida. So Panama was to be a test case. Were we ready to trade in the kitchenette and the kids’ club for a taste of real adventure? The captain cut the engine and we coasted, ears ringing in the sudden silence, toward a jetty sticking out from a palm-fringed cove. Though technically a private island resort, Islas Secas has more in common with a safari lodge: the luxury is in having exclusive, up-close access to nature rather than lavish amenities or flashy design. As we stepped onto the kilometer-wide main island of Isla Cavada, there was no showstopping architecture or blingy beach cabanas in sight. Instead, we could just make out the resort’s nine casitas poking above a tangle of frangipani trees. “We’re out there, man, we’re off the grid,” resort developer Jim Matlock said. “Take a look on Google Maps and you’ll see how remote this place is.” Matlock and his wife, Christy, raised two children— along with a mutt named Daisy—on Isla Cavada after moving from California 15 years ago and working at the eco-resort that preceded Islas Secas. Bringing up a family here wasn’t without its challenges, the couple admitted. But as our kids chased Daisy up and down the

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F I R ST LOOK

bamboo jetty, delighted squeals ringing out across the glassy, jade-green bay, we started to get a sense of what had made it all worthwhile. Over the next few days, we sampled the Matlocks’ Swiss Family Robinson–style existence in all its sunbaked, barefoot glory. We took boat rides to uninhabited islands, dolphins cresting the waves alongside us. We picnicked on crescents of creamy sand so quiet we could hear the creaking of hermit crabs emerging from their shells. We took walks through the jungle, stumbling upon freakishly shaped fungi and a giant termites’ nest. Most exciting of all, we hiked to a cliff-top lookout where we watched the ocean booming through a blowhole some 15 meters below, just as an apricot sun slipped under the horizon. Like many properties of its kind, the current version of Islas Secas owes its existence to one man. A few years ago, an American hedge fund manager and philanthropist named Louis Bacon fell for the archipelago while on a sailing trip around the Gulf of Chiriquí. Learning that the islands were up for sale, Bacon added them to a portfolio of conservation projects that runs from Alaska to the Bahamas. His dream was to create a place where guests could enjoy exclusive access to the extraordinary natural riches of the region. And they are pretty extraordinary. The Pacific waters teem with giant manta and eagle rays, sea turtles, sharks and schools of kaleidoscopic tropical fish. Pods of humpback whales pass on their annual migration north in late summer and return in winter. Conservation is a crucial part of the project. Under an agreement with the Panamanian

Plan an Island Adventure in Panama COSTA RICA

Caribbean Sea Panama City

David

Islas Secas

PANAMA

Pacific Ocean

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Each guest suite at Islas Secas has a terrace overlooking the Pacific.

government, only a quarter of the archipelago has been developed— the rest will remain untouched. Every element of the lodge is lowimpact, from the soaring bamboo structures that house the lobby and restaurant to the reclaimed wood used to build the elegant guest rooms. All water is recycled after being run through the island’s filtration system, while energy is generated by a 300-meter phalanx of solar panels linedup along the airstrip. Though Bacon’s principles were no doubt lost on Leo and Stella, the untamed world he has created at Islas Secas was not. David and I had worried about how they would manage with no playground visits and no iPads, forgetting that these things are stand-ins for real adventure—for chasing a hummingbird around a tree, collecting tiny shells along a beach, or stalking fluorescent-green iguanas through the undergrowth. After three nights on the island, our kids were the happiest we’d seen them‚ and so, as a consequence, were we. On our last day at the lodge, we noticed black clouds gathering as we returned by boat from an excursion around the islands. Fat drops of rain pelted the jetty as I grabbed Leo and we all ran, shrieking in our swimsuits, back up the steep forest path to our villa. From our private deck with its 180-degree views of the other islands, we watched the storm roll through. Around us were no lights, no man-made structures; it felt like we were the last four people left in the world. And sometimes, in certain places, that’s the very best feeling you can have.

Get ting There Copa Airlines (copaair.com) flies nonstop to Panama City from major U.S. hubs. Spend the night in the capital’s Casco Viejo neighborhood at the stylish American Trade Hotel (american tradehotel.com; doubles from US$329). Early the next day, take the hour-long Copa flight to the city of David in western

Panama. The hour-long boat transfer to Islas Secas leaves from a river mooring an hour outside David. Isl a s Seca s The lodge has nine chic, understated casitas arranged around four sites, each with a deck area with ocean views and a private plunge pool. Amenities include an on-site masseuse and

yoga instructor, access to sportfishing vessels and barges, and an education center where guests can learn about local wildlife. Recreation manager Rob Jameson can schedule activities as scuba diving and marlin-fishing trips. islassecas.com; doubles from US$2,000, allinclusive, three-night minimum.

www.indonesia.travel indonesia.travel @indtravel @indtravel

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MagniďŹ cent and historic. Imagine being in a 3-story building built in the 8th century AD located in Magelang, Central Java. An exotic architecture that has been acknowledged as one of UNESCOâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s World Cultural Heritage Sites.

S P OTL I GHT

Beyond the Beach The Greek island of Syros lacks the white-sand wonders of its more popular neighbor, Mykonos. But for a certain kind of in-the-know traveler, that’s precisely why they go. By Eleni N. Gage. Photogr aphs by Marco Arguello

Grilled fish and ceviche at Peri Tinos, a harborside restaurant in Ermoúpolis, the capital of the Cyclades Islands.

Emilio, and I lay on the deck of our Airbnb, I realized I’d run out of time to shower before the symphony. Eyeing the ladder that descended into the Aegean, I told Emilio that I would just jump into the ocean instead. “Any time you can say that, it’s a good day,” he replied. Every summer, after visiting my relatives in northern Greece, my husband and our two young children—Amalia, 6, and Nico, 3— set out to discover someplace in the country new to us. We’d been on the

As my husband,

Cycladic island of Syros for only half an hour, but we could already tell we’d made a good choice. On other islands, such as Syros’s neighbor, Mykonos, we’d debated whether to stay in town or on the beach. Here, we were in the heart of Ermoúpolis, the Cyclades’ capital—an Italianate dream of palazzos, theaters and cafés that is home to half the population of Syros—but the sea was steps from our front door. While Syros is on the same ferry line as Mykonos, it sees a fraction of that island’s foreign pilgrims,

perhaps because it was long viewed as a commercial and industrial hub with massive shipbuilding operations. With fewer spectacular beaches than some of the Cyclades, Syros doesn’t fit the lazywhitewashed-village-atop-a-sandyshore vision most tourists have of the islands. The visitors who do come— the majority are from France and Scandinavia—are drawn by the festivals and thriving art scene, the more than 1,300 Neoclassical buildings, and the incredible seafood-skewed cuisine.

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S P OTL I GHT

On most Greek islands, people drive from beach to beach. On Syros, it’s from restaurant to restaurant If Ermoúpolis keeps Syros from being thought of as a desert-isle dream, the fact that the island has a thriving city by the sea makes it alluring to those interested in life beyond the beach. Bobbing in the waves opposite our room, I gazed up at the row of palazzos. Nearby, teenagers cannonballed off the large dock that is the town swimming spot. Atop the hill that rose behind them was the blue and gold dome of the church of Agios Nikolaos, patron saint of sailors. The view of Ermoúpolis from the sea, I realized, is even more stunning than the view of the sea from the land. That evening, I found myself staring up again—this time at the ceiling of the Apollon Theater, which opened in 1864 and was modeled after La Scala and other Italian theaters. We were at the opening night of the

Festival of the Aegean (festivalofthe

aegean.com), a two-week celebration of opera, music and dance held every July. Before picking up his baton, the Greek-American conductor Peter Tiboris, the festival’s founder, urged the audience to notice the frescoes. The outer ring shows Verdi, Bellini, Dante and Mozart; the inner ring Homer, Aeschylus and Euripides. The ceiling is a diplomatic representation of the blending of cultures that continues to thrive on Syros. Modern Syros was settled by the descendants of Venetian merchants who put down roots in Ano Syros, a village high above the harbor, in the 13th century. After the Greek War of Independence in the 1820s, refugees from the battlescarred islands poured into Ano Syros—only to be forced down to the harbor by the residents. The

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newcomers, mostly sailors and merchants, prospered and brought in the Neoclassical architects who transformed Ermoúpolis from a rocky port into an elegant city. Today, the descendants of the Italians and Greeks are intermixed, and local couples often have two weddings, one right after the other—the first in a Catholic church, the second in a Greek Orthodox one. Ermoúpolis is still full of the aristocratic buildings the refugees commissioned, most notably the ornate 1876 town hall. It overlooks Miaouli Square, a supersize version of the classic Greek plateia. Since this is Syros—where the population is twice that of Mykonos, although the islands are roughly the same size— the square has more locals than tourists. Often there are also opera singers or a temporary screen for a film festival. “We host 15 festivals per year,” Thomai Mendrinou, the vice-mayor of culture, told me. There are festivals devoted to the accordion, the organ and the guitar; to tango, jazz and video art. Aside from two events run by the municipality, Mendrinou noted, “all of them were started by nonresidents who fell in love with the island.” It was a story I heard again and again—the visitor enchanted by Syros who found a way to stay by indulging his or her passion. Over coffee on the deck of the Hotel Ploes (hotelploes.com; doubles from €182), a waterfront palazzo filled with antiques and modern art, Lia Mastoraki described the moment she and her husband, who dreamed of opening a boutique property, visited Syros and saw the building. “It was a completely emotional decision,” she admitted. I’d felt something similar during my pretheater bath in the Aegean. I realized that this must be why so many travelers I had met were repeat visitors. They’ve found a place where they feel at home. At Peri Tinos (perit inosrestaurant. gr; mains €8–€50), right on the harbor, I acted like a tourist when

I Instagrammed my ceviche, which was spread atop a breadstick dyed fuchsia with beetroot juice. But I felt like I was eating with family when the waiter taught our kids how to fillet a fish. At night, in Ano Syros, an old man sitting outside his door directed us to the main street (“just follow the music”), where we ate at Lili’s (30-2281-088-087; mains €8–€28). The taverna is virtually unchanged since it opened in 1953, with portraits of the owner’s grandparents on the walls. The next day, back in Ermoúpolis, I made a pilgrimage to the Assumption of the Virgin Church

(syrosisland.gr) to see an El Greco icon “discovered” in 1982. It had hung there, unnoticed, since it was brought to the island more than a century earlier, likely by a Cretan refugee. The icon getting the most attention that day, however, was one of the Virgin Mary laden with votives and jewelry left by grateful supplicants. It turned out that a fellow visitor, a man in shorts, had left his Rolex before the icon the previous summer. “Elias, you’re back!” the bearded priest shouted, embracing him. I could have happily stayed in Ermoúpolis. But I wanted to explore the rest of the island. So we moved to Villa Evelina, part of White Key Villas (whitekeyvillas.com; from €11,293 per week), which overlooks Ampela Beach. White Key manages more than 300 privately owned villas in Greece. With an infinity pool, a Jacuzzi, tennis courts and access to a chapel, this one made me envy the owners who get to call it home, but

it was also sunny and cozy. Amalia learned to snorkel in the shallow water off Ampela, and Emilio ventured to the nearby submerged cliffs he described as “an underwater Grand Canyon.” On most Greek islands, people drive from beach to beach. On Syros, it’s from restaurant to restaurant. Our favorite was Allou Yialou (allou yialousyros.gr; mains €9–€40), in the beach town of Kini. The marinated

red mullet came served on seasoning “sand” dotted with shells. When the waiter spotted Nico napping on two chairs pushed together, he found a beach towel to serve as a pillow. In our last hour, I deposited my family opposite the ferry landing and went in search of loukoumi ice cream, which was inspired by the island’s famous pink Turkish delight. Not finding any, I settled for pistachio. Then, turning back toward the dock, I noticed a hole-in-the-wall sweetshop with a small ice cream counter. There it was. I threw my half-eaten pistachio in the trash and bought a cone of the rose-flavored loukoumi. A minor sin as far as waste and gluttony go, but out of character for a mom who counts calories and limits showers to four minutes. Like so many others, I had fallen in love with Syros and lost all common sense.

Agios Nikolaos Church, in Ermoúpolis. ABOVE: The ceiling of the Apollon Theater, in Ermoúpolis. OPPOSITE: The waterside terrace at the Hotel Ploes.

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CULTURE CAMBODIA

From the cultural hubs of Siem Reap and Indonesia to sandy shores in the Maldives, Phu Quoc and Thailand, plus indulgent city stays, this month’s offers make ideal escapes.

The Aviary Explore Siem Reap beyond its iconic Angkor temples with this off-the-beaten-track package from boutique hotel The Aviary. The three-night offer includes a full-day tour to Chansor village to witness a traditional monk blessing; a visit to a floating community on Ton Le Sap Lake; a four-course set dinner at the hotel’s Glide Bar; a cocktail each; daily breakfast; roundtrip airport transfers; plus taxes. The Deal The Aviary Escape Package: three nights in a Tailorbird Standard room, from US$695, through October 31. theaviaryhotel.com.

f r o m t o p : c o u r t e s y o f T h e Av i a r y; c o u r t e s y o f K E S a H o u s e

INDONESIA

Four Seasons Bali at Sayan Learn the history and traditions of the unesco World Heritage–listed Jatiluwih Rice Terraces with this exclusive offer from the award-winning Four Seasons Bali at Sayan. Stay a minimum of three nights and enjoy daily breakfast, plus a full-day excursion to Jatiluwih Rice Terraces to spend a day in the life of a local farmer. The excursion includes a private car, a guided trek and a picnic lunch for two. The Deal Culturally Curious offer: a night in a One-bedroom suite, from Rp11,745,000, through March 31, 2020, three-night minimum. fourseasons.com. The dining room at The Aviary.

SUPERSAVER Kesa House, Singapore

This dynamic new hotel offers a stylish base for both short- and long-stay guests, and opening rates save 15 to 20 percent. The 60-room property includes a furnished communal workspace, a fully equipped kitchen with complimentary coffee, and a terrace overlooking Duxton Plain Park. The Deal Soft Opening Rates: a night in a Cozy room from S$150, five nights from S$725; and 28 nights from S$2,820, through July 15. kesahouse.sg.

BEACH MALDIVES

Banyan Tree Vabbinfaru To celebrate the 25th anniversary of Banyan Tree Hotels and Resorts, the brand’s Maldives outpost has revealed a special to remember. Located on the North Male atoll, the resort is offering 25 percent off the Best Available Rate, spa purchases and food and beverage for minimum twonight stays. Guests will also be able to choose one of three

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deals

bespoke experiences: a private yoga class at sunrise or sunset; breakfast on a traditional Maldivian dhoni; or a guided snorkeling tour to learn about how the resort’s Marine Lab team cares for the coral. The Deal 25th Anniversary Offer: a night in an Oceanview Pool villa, from US$600, through December 19, two-night minimum. banyantree.com. THAILAND

Akyra Beach Club Phuket Treat your family to a beach escape to southern Thailand— this Phuket resort has a package for both young and old. Just pay an additional Bt3,000 on top of the room price to receive: one sparkling wine bottle for the parents and fruit juices for the kids; a pizza cooking class for the family; a private family yoga class; kids unders six eat for free, and kids aged between six and 12 get a 50 percent discount from the Kids’ menu when dining with a parent (excluding room service); and children can enjoy three hours free at the “Explorer’s Club.” The Deal Family Fun Beach Lifestyle package: a night in a TwoBedroom Beach villa, from Bt9,285; package price Bt3,000 for two adults and one or two children. theakyra.com.

mocktails at The Zuk Bar; two degustation Gin & Tonic menus or herbal teas at Urban Lounge; two glasses of wine and a sandwich or salad at Beans & Grapes; complimentary in-room bar with soft drinks and beer; turndown tea in the evening; late checkout at 3 p.m.; and more. The Deal Gourmet Delights package: two nights in an Executive King room, from RMB4,838, through June 30. sukhothai.com. INDONESIA

Mandarin Oriental, Jakarta Add on a romantic escape to your next business trip—this package from Mandarin Oriental is set to spoil. The two-night experience begins with private transfers to the hotel from Jakarta SoekarnoHatta airport or a Jakarta address to the hotel by Rolls Royce; one night in a luxurious Mandarin suite; one Tiffany & Co. 18-karat gold and diamond pendant; champagne and cocktails for two on the hotel’s rooftop; a candlelit in-suite dinner for two; room service breakfast for two; a private jet flight from Jakarta to Yogyakarta; one night in a

Borobudur suite at the Amanjiwo resort, including breakfast for two; sunrise tour of Borobudur temple, including private transportation and a tour guide; and a private photographer in Borobudur with 20 digital images supplied. The Deal Love is in the Air package: two nights in a Mandarin suite and Borobudur suite, from Rp440,000,000, through July 31. mandarinoriental.com.

WELLNESS VIETNAM

La Veranda Resort MGallery Fine-tune mind, body and soul with this invigorating deal at Le Veranda on Phu Quoc Island. Book a minimum of two nights and you’ll get to experience daily yoga by the sea; a 60-minute spa treatment for two; a one-on-one neuromuscular balancing analysis consultation; a Touch Therapy Couples Workshop to learn deep relaxation with Vietnamese massage; and free use of bicycles and sport utilities. Guests will also receive a complimentary Sao Beach excursion with sun chairs at Paradiso Beach Club;

daily free drinks for two at Le Bar, Le Jardin or The Peppertree; daily buffet breakfast; round-trip airport transfers; and more. The Deal Spa on Us: a night in a Garden room, from VND3,600,000, for stays from May 6 through October 31, two-night minimum. laverandaresorts.com. SINGAPORE

Carlton City Hotel, Singapore Embark on an urban wellness journey at Carlton City Hotel, Singapore with their relaxing weekend package. Guests will receive one night’s accommodation for two; breakfast for two; one yoga class for two worth S$60 at the nearby Yoga+ Tanjong Pagar; late checkout until 2 p.m. (subject to availability); complimentary parking during stay; and a Handy mobile phone with unlimited IDD calls and 3G mobile data. The Deal Wellness Weekend Staycation package: a night in a Deluxe room from S$288, through March 29, 2020 (check-in on Fridays or Saturdays). carltoncity.sg. Cocktail hour at The Zuk Bar, Sukhothai Shanghai.

CITY

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c o u r t e s y o f S u kh o th a i S h a n g h a i

CHINA

Sukhothai Shanghai China’s bustling eastern port is famous for its culinary offerings and one of the city’s newest arrivals, The Sukhothai Shanghai, has a Gourmet Delights package to keep the feast going at the property’s five dining outlets. The two-night offer includes accommodation for two; daily breakfast for two at Urban Café; a four-course set lunch or dinner at La Scala restaurant for two; a fivecourse sharing lunch or dinner at Urban Café; two cocktails or

The Most Luxurious Hideaway with a Breathtaking View

Silavadee embraces the highest level of luxury that comes with a stunning scenery. Located on Laem Nan beach, the most beauteous exclusive beach on Samui island tucked away from the busy world yet only a short drive from it all. Silavadee is the perfect combination of the magnificent land-sea and skyscape with our renowned, high level of luxurious services.

www.silavadeeresort.com

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n o t fa r f r o m a b u s y p o r t, i n t h e c r y s ta l wat e r s o f t h e g u l f o f t h a i l a n d s i t n e w i s l a n d r e s o r t s t h at w i l l h av e y o u r e t h i n k i n g l u x u r y i n

cambodia p. 60

w h at ’ s a du t i fu l s o n t o d o w h e n h e and his mum seem to be outgrowing t h e i r r o u g h i n g - i t va c at i o n s ? i t ’ s ta k e y o u r m o t h e r t o w o r k w e e k i n

koh samui p. 68

s e a s i d e s a r e n ’ t j u s t f o r s u n b at h i n g and surfing. Lots can happen bet ween s u n r i s e a n d s u n s e t du r i n g t h e a s i a pa c i f i c r e g i o n ’ s m o s t p h o t o g e n i c

beach days p. 74

i f y o u t h i n k y o u k n o w t h i s g r e at american be ach town, get re ady to e at, d r i n k , h i k e a n d s u r f t h e b e s t o f southern california and mexico in

san diego p. 86

t h e i ta l i a n i s l e o f i s c h i a i s t h e s t uff of romantic reveries, and a visit f e e l s a l l t h e m o r e i n t ox i c at i n g a f t e r a p i z z a - fu e l e d s t o p i n b u z z i n g

naples

l a u r y n i sh a k

p. 96

Wategos Beach, Northern Rivers, New South Wales, Australia, page 74.

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Change of Pace

The day’s last light seen from the Beach Retreat at Six Senses Krabey Island. opposite: Feng shui for days at Alila Villas Koh Russey.

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With two new holistic, boutique resorts, the islands off Sihanoukville are finally living up to the promise of the Cambodian Riviera. By Jeninne Lee-St. John PHOTOGRAPHed BY a aron joel santos

All Six Senses Krabey villas have private pools. clockwise, from right: Num pang pâté, Cambodia’s version of the banh mi, with coconut-poached chicken and pea eggplant curry at Tree, the Six Senses signature restaurant; a sunset cruise on Alila’s refurbished fishingboat cruiser; a map of Koh Ta Kiev at a hostel tucked in its woods.

y latest trip to southern Cambodia was exactly 10 years on from my first visit there. I’d just moved to Asia and, after a month living in Saigon, the Tet holiday rolled around. The choice was partly because I was interested in Cambodian history, and mostly because we had planned late and it was the easiest play. We hired a driver for a road trip through the sparsely populated Wild West that included a random afternoon in a far-flung fishing village in an unbelievably blue estuary where I cooed over a baby cooling off in a cooking pot, and a few days in Sihanoukville, a faded seaside city that was supposed to be well on the rise. Born of the country’s need for a deep-water port after the breakup of French Indochina, the city was cut out of raw jungle in 1955 and spirals down a hill that a decade ago had cute bistros and less cute brothels alike. Spreading out in either direction along the coast, the backpacker town in 2009 held one real resort, Sohka Beach, where we stayed, whose arrival the year before was meant to signify that foreign investment in tourism was imminent.

The place seemed on the precipice, the Franco and Russian influences—the one cool bar was in an Antonov-24 turboprop— vying for dominance over Sihanoukville’s next incarnation. “In five years,” I wrote in a travel story back then, “a handful of new resorts and several middle-class housing developments probably will have sprung up.” But I vastly underestimated the development, because I didn’t account for the Chinese. They now dominate this no-longer sleepy city, bringing hoards of cash with their One Belt One Road initiative, and transforming the skyline with towers and casinos and resort complexes that hold negative appeal. So, write off Sihanoukville, but thank the holiday gods for its airport, which offers easy access to the still stunningly clear and surprisingly empty waters on the eastern edge of the Gulf of Thailand, where the fishing villages have been joined by places to stay that are delivering on the area’s long-ago tourism promise. Two five-stars have debuted on isles south of the city, doubling the region’s high-end radius beyond eco-chic Song Saa, a seven-yearold pioneer, and The Royal Sands, which opened in 2017, both in the more northerly Koh Rong archipelago. To reach the new Six Senses Krabey Island and Alila Villas Koh Russey, just hop off your international flight from Kuala Lumpur or Saigon (there are rumors of Bangkok later this year) and be on the beach in under an hour including speedboat ride: it’s just a 15-minute drive between the airport and their respective private piers. Ten if you’re running late and your amenable driver just guns it down the median strip— in many ways, Cambodia is still the Wild West, which happily means plenty of potential for creative luxury playgrounds.

Flying yoga on a hilltop overlooking the horizon seems the most apropos way to wake up on a jungle-clad private isle where the pre-dawn audio reel is birdsong over the light waves lapping the shore of the private beach just beyond my private pool. At Six Senses Krabey Island, the spa is the crowning glory, and every time I tool up here, which is once or twice per day, there’s a warm welcome to this divine kingdom of wellness. The women’s lounge has a water circuit with Scandinavian, Middle Eastern and East Asian aqua therapies. A neat innovation, Alchemy Bar is a room built for crafting handmade beauty and wellness products that therapists use for treatments or you can souvenir home after taking a handson class. (Note: properly pestling Kampot peppercorns requires inordinate upper body strength.) And at the summit of the complex is an outdoor treatment room, and a breezy yoga pavilion where the green parachute hammocks dangling from the ceiling echo the rooftop garden planted to blend with the environment. This island Six Senses has claimed is a layer cake of prehistoric rocks and millenniumold trees. They’ve wrapped a ridiculously picturesque boardwalk part-way around it for sea-level strolling. One of the 40 flat-roofed, open-plan pool villas that look like they belong in the Malibu hills and are smart-wired with intuitive touch-screen room controls to match, the Beach Retreat has a big outdoor tub in a gazebo over the ocean that, with chilled champagne and pink skies, would make for a super sexy sunset (provided you weren’t traveling with your photographer friend). Like every Six Senses, Krabey Island is ecoobsessed—they’ve got a water filtration and bottling plant; room keys are recycled wood— and has playful features like an adorable icecream parlor slash deli and mini playgrounds where you can hop on wooden pegs or walk narrow planks to improve balance… if the hills and natural stairs everywhere or water sports at the main beach aren’t enough of a workout. Starlit movie nights avoid noise pollution by providing guests what general manager Alistair Anderson calls “silent-disco headphones.” On nearby Koh Ta Kiev, there’s an elephant-shaped rock for cliff-jumping into the ocean, if that’s your thing. There’s also an idyllic backpacker hostel, with tents and cabins flanking a shady grove where a dozen twenty-somethings are playing cards, lazing in a tiered kaleidoscope of hammocks and kicking a soccer ball around with the owner’s toddler daughter. It’s cozy, like summer camp, and I love that our hotel has brought us through during a nature walk, t r av e l a n d l e i s u r e a s i a .c o m / m ay 2 01 9

Elephant Rock on Koh Ta Kiev. clockwise from right: Ali Fayaz, the activities manager at Alila; traditional Khmer carvings at Alila give the resort a sense of place and provided work for local craftsmen of a dying art; a woman at Ream Pagoda, which takes in orphans of all ages; a villa at Six Senses.

the Six Senses Experience Assistant Manager Minea exchanging warm greetings with the proprietor he’s known for ages, who capitalized on the natural offerings long before the wealthy big boys moved in. The beach beyond is mind-bogglingly long. Our affable boat crew has pulled around and set up a picnic. While we’re chatting in the baby-blue water, Aaron, the aforementioned photographer, picks up a stick, it turns out to be a stick-shaped fish, and my usually cool and collected friend shrieks like a little girl. Even in an ocean so clear that you can see your toes on the ground through chest-high water, Mother Nature proves cleverer than we could ever be. I could’ve stayed sunning on this squishy beach all day, but I have an appointment for a massage, acupuncture and moxibustion with Dr. Anand Peethambar. Moxibustion is a method of drawing toxins out of the body with heated herbal compounds, and you’re unlikely to find the treatment at a mainstream hotel, or indeed from someone who isn’t a Chinese medicine practitioner. “That’s why we had to have Dr. Anand,” says spa director Rachael Birchenough. “He’s an Ayurvedic yogi who does moxibustion.” Only here could I have ever transcribed that sentence. His blended mastery of various forms of traditional wellness is a human incarnation of what the best spas in world are doing now, and two sessions on his table renders my chronic

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shoulder pain more amorphous and my mind feeling clearer and more open to the little details in the world. One morning we visit a fishing village of 127 inhabitants presided over by grandpa Lihung and grandma Sovpow. Originally farmers, they fled the Khmer Rouge 25 years ago, and moved from land to sea; they cannot legally live on an island, but they have been allowed to construct a community on stilts. It seems an unnecessary inconvenience considering the water is only about a meter deep, but everyone is dexterous on the perilous boardwalks connecting the houses. I notice the kids—who take a ferry to school on the mainland, and who hand-make fishing nets in their free time—are watching a YouTube cartoon that is teaching English from a base language of not Khmer but Vietnamese. Right, Lihung tells us in Khmer through our translator, he actually fled the Khmer Rouge twice: in 1975 he moved to Vietnam near Kampot, where he met his wife; they returned to this region in 1981. The whole family speaks Vietnamese, has Vietnamese altars and celebrates Tet. We shouldn’t be surprised; these cultures overlap in a variety of ways, from the pork-and-herb-stuffed turmeric crepe banh chao (banh xeo in Vietnamese) I scoff down every day at Six Senses to the non-linear water borders that places Vietnam’s largest island, Phu Quoc, closer to here than its country’s mainland. Still, Aaron, who used to live in Hanoi, and I both get excited and dig deep for our Vietnamese vocabulary. “No, we aren’t married,” Aaron answers a predictable villageelder question, trying to simplify things with: “She’s my boss.” “In the past women asked men to marry them,” Lihung replies. “But now the men ask the women.” Amused by this non sequitur, we say effusive thank-yous and goodbyes and tightrope-walk back to the boat, glad of a sweet connection that, however brief, was I’m pretty sure the intended purpose of our being here in the first place.

Because this is such a little cluster of little islands, it feels less like an archipelago than a neighborhood. You can see Koh Russey from Krabey and the boat transfer to Alila is faster than the time it would take to put on a life jacket. On a snorkel with activities manager Ali Fayaz, I discover that the calm waters lapping up to the resort’s rock-lined shore make for prime fish-spotting. The area by the pier is such a good feeding ground that when I come around a barnacled pole, I swim into a dense wall of speedy fish, which makes me jump sharply. Ali laughs at me in his snorkel. With 50 balconied rooms and 13 villas, Alila has more of a traditional hotel design. You enter via an open-air atrium that overwhelms with its calm. The flow from the water features and ocean views here, through the glass lobby with couch swings and hanging-basket chairs, down a portico to the inside-outside main restaurant and vast beachfront resort pool beyond, is ample evidence that someone was paying attention to the feng shui. In this Modernist property where whites and neutrals dominate the palette, breakfast is healthy-ish and a la carte. Yoga is under an ancient banyan tree in a small grove that is being prepped to also hold the hotel’s organic garden and host cooking classes. And one of the activities is sailing to the mainland to make merit and receive a blessing from a monk at Ream Pagoda, which takes in orphans and solitary souls of all ages. I still have the string around my wrist— and with it a visceral sense of the whole trip’s feel-good luxe. Hugging an amphitheater of sea, Alila leaves plenty of shoreline untouched so that a walk along the tree-lined water’s edge leads you to what could be a deserted isle. On this leeward corner of the bay are tide pools and sandbars, and you feel like a little kid splashing in the shallows. Well, maybe a little kid with a taste for unoaked Chardonnay. Between the picnic lunch and ice buckets of vino set up here under silken umbrellas by butlers discreetly waiting behind the boulders, and the sunset sail on the hotel’s custom cruiser—a refurbished old fishing boat lined with pillows and stocked with champagne—Alila has a smart selection of ways to make on-property activities feel like off-site adventures. On our last day we want to paddleboard, but by late afternoon the glassy lake of an ocean crescent has gone choppy. I spot some whitecaps and question my resolve. But Ali isn’t going to let a change in surf deter him. He shoves a board in through the waves. We are wondering how he’s managing to kneel on it when he goes to stand up—causing Aaron to dramatically rip off his t-shirt and charge into the water with his camera just as Ali thrusts his hands

A picnic lunch at Alila.

clockwise from right:

Dr. Anand Peethambar conducts acupuncture and moxibustion at Six Senses; on a Six Senses seaside boardwalk.

aloft, the paddle over his head triumphant—Aquaman emerging from the tumultuous depths, long hair flowing in the wind. This triumph calls for a toast. We head to the beach bar, where we alternate between Samai rum drinks and Seekers gin drinks. The former is a multi-award-winning rum made of Cambodian sugar cane with a specialty blend seasoned with Kampot peppers, the latter is distilled of Kampot mountain spring water and flavored with plants native to the Mekong River Delta, and both are small-batch artisanal products made in Phnom Penh. Naturally, Alila has forged alliances with these companies to showcase the sustainable strides that can be made in local industry with the right mindset. Like Six Senses, Alila embraces its location under the theory that boutique brands, especially in developing areas, should support one another. You might not be able to take on the Chinese tsunami, but you can skirt it and scoot just a little ways out to sea, where you’ll find someone’s hit the slo-mo button and evolved an alternate reality in which the waves are gentler and the pace of change feels as organic as the botanicals in your locavore gin. Little wonder I was in no rush to leave for the airport.

The Details Getting There Sihanoukville airport has international flights on AirAsia from Kuala Lumpur and on Vietnam Airlines from Saigon. Or, connect in Phnom Penh or Siem Reap. Nationals of asean countries do not need visas, nationals of most others can obtain a visa on arrival, but visit evisa.gov.kh for information specific to your nationality. Hotels Alila Villas Koh Russey alila.com; doubles from US$310.

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Six Senses Krabey Island sixsenses.com; doubles from US$530 including airport transfers and dinner for two at Tree restaurant, through September 30. Song Saa Private Island The Maldives meets Cambodia on this pioneering eco-luxe private island, with overwater bungalows and a strong sense of place. songsaa.com; doubles from US$890. The Royal Sands The first upscale resort on Koh Rong is villas only and on a vast white beach. theroyalsands. com; doubles from US$300.

Jalan Raya Nusa Dua Selatan, Sawangan Nusa Dua, 80361 Bali, Indonesia info.bali@kempinski.com

fa mily m atters

When a mother-and-son pair who bond on the trail seem to outgrow roughing it, where to plot their next adventure? Duncan Forgan picks Koh Samui and finds that a little luxury goes a long way in bridging the generation gap.

from left: Cape Fahn resort commands a private island off the northern tip of Koh Samui; the writer and his mum try out the luxe life.

c o u r t e s y o f c a p e fa h n h o t e l . t o p r i g ht: c o u r t e s y o f d u n c a n f o r g a n

“Well, as long as it’s not Montseny Part 2,” says my mum with a look that is two parts amusement and one part dread. She’s joking, but the tone of her reply when I tell her that I’ve booked us into the new Cape Fahn resort on Koh Samui for some active luxury bonding during her vacation in Thailand carries at least a hint of trepidation. From epic multi-day walks in the Scottish Highlands to motorbike journeys on remote islands in Vietnam, we’ve had some memorable expeditions together over the last 40 or so years. Most have been relatively bare bones due in part to our (shared through blood and accident of birth) inherent Caledonian thriftiness. But all have yielded at least a few pithy, tender tales to reminisce over. Our last mother-son sojourn was grim. What was meant to be a quaint, relaxing hiking trip to the coastal ranges of Catalonia, based in the wooded foothills village of Montseny, proved ill-fated in every way. Our offseason timing left us constantly chasing sustenance (the rustic tabernas in the town kept irregular hours—if they were open at all). Our “cozy” digs were all too bijou (the paper-thin walls amplified the slightest snore or bathroom sound). And I got bit by one of the village’s toomany stray dogs (probably as karmic punishment for ditching my mum for a solo beer break). These factors combined to engender strained inter-family relations that no amount of fresh mountain air could salvage. So, this go-round, I want redemption. She is coming back to visit me in Bangkok, but with the record-setting pollution making escape and clean skies an imperative, I t r av e l a n d l e i s u r e a s i a .c o m / m ay 2 01 9

from top: Subtle sea-inspired accents in a Cape Fahn pool villa; the resort pool. opposite from top left: The Crest fine-dining restaurant; floating breakfast is an indulgent room-service option; Hin Lad waterfall.

Off we head for a lavish sequel in the Gulf of Thailand, to a private haven marooned in aquamarine waters. Separated from Choeng Mon beach on the main island by a narrow shallow strait, Cape Fahn is insanely photogenic. A total of 22 pool villas are draped around a hillside, tucked into green gardens and beside the beaches. Two on-site restaurants—fine-dining showpiece The Crest and the more casual Hue—provide serious culinary chops. The location off the northern tip of Samui, meanwhile, offers box-seat views of both sunrise and sundown as well as killer panoramas over the ocean towards the mountains of neighboring Koh Phangan. Such a profusion of visual manna helped the resort achieve instant social-media fame following its opening last year thanks to the heavily Instagrammed wedding of Thai soap opera starlet Janie Tienphosuwan. Traditional Thai architecture inspired the sloping tile roofs and airy interiors of the villas and the common areas. The mindful use of natural wood, hand-crafted furniture and subtle sea-inspired color schemes throughout the resort evoke an atmosphere that is understated rather than overblown. Still, my mum, a proud socialist, is accustomed to living modestly. On her regular visits to Southeast Asia—where I have now lived for a decade—she eschews expensive spas and upscale restaurants in favor of streetfood joints and downhome massages. “I just like to live within my means,” is a refrain I’ve heard frequently as she demurs invitations to join my partner and me at Bangkok’s latest on-trend hotspots. So, when I check in to Cape Fahn a couple of hours before her, I begin to secondguess my luxe-makeover master plan: I am slightly concerned she will find it too fancy. Awaiting her arrival, I get a horrible feeling she might chide me for my bourgeoise tendencies. Mum is overwhelmed. “This is really ours? We don’t have to share it with anyone else?” she asks disbelievingly as the butler and I show her around our palatial two-bedroom digs. Is she shell-shocked by this shift in our normal circumstances? I hold my breath and watch her adapt. Usually quick to take a shower and immediately head off exploring, mum instead stakes out a sunbed (one of six ringing our private pool), and flits between reading her book there and in the Jacuzzi. This is good. With sizzling Asian sunshine less of a novelty to me, I stay indoors to snack on tropical fruit and work out the fundamentals of the Bluetooth stereo system. In a vast upgrade from Montseny, mum can’t hear my eyebrow-

f r o m t o p : c o u r t e s y o f c a p e fa h n h o t e l ( 2 ) . o p p o s i t e f r o m t o p l e f t: c o u r t e s y o f c a p e fa h n h o t e l ( 2 ) ; Pa n th e r M e d i a Gmb H /A l a m y S t o c k Ph o t o

make the executive decision to whisk us off to Samui for a getaway that will combine our joint love of active adventure with plenty of opulence. Just for a change. The plan is to tick off a list of activities including muay Thai, waterfall swimming, and, yes, hiking—all the while enjoying the perks of a pool villa on a private island. It seems like a perfect way to evolve our vacation pattern beyond the utilitarian and earn myself some elusive “good son” brownie points in the process.

raising esoteric music choices with the doors shut. Here we coexist happily together, kind of apart. I begin to wonder if we could have spent the entirety of our stay “bonding” like this in our villa. Unfortunately, someone (me) decided it would be a good idea to at least make a stab at some active pursuits. I didn’t want to entirely upend traditions. We reluctantly leave our respective perches and head down to the beach where instructor Bo is waiting, stand-up paddleboard under his arm. Thankfully, Cape Fahn knows its strengths lie more in pampering than in priming. Laid-back, smiley Bo is hardly an exacting taskmaster. A degree of klutziness and dissymmetry are family traits, but mum soon gets the knack of staying upright. Bo offers a gentle piece of guidance on paddle-stroke. “So,” mum replies cryptically, “handle it like an Amazonian fisherman handles his pole?” Neither Bo nor I know what she means, but the result is positive, and she glides across the azure water towards the setting sun. The next morning following break fast, things stray from languorous to mildly strenuous as we skip back over to the mainland for a hike through the jungle to Hin Lad waterfall. Long ago having shed its backpacker status—you still can find cute beach-hut hotels, but tucked among the fivestars and the rental mansions—Samui is now one of Thailand’s most visited destinations. But the nation’s second-largest island after Phuket retains numerous pockets of back-to-nature bliss. And it is these lesserfrequented reaches of the island that Dutch guide Femke Bartelse acquaints adventure-seekers with through her company, Hiking on Samui. t r av e l a n d l e i s u r e a s i a .c o m / m ay 2 01 9

THE DETAILS GETTING THERE Direct flights to Samui International Airport are available from Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur, Hong Kong and Singapore. HOTEL Cape Fahn The very image of an idyllic tropical island escape, Cape Fahn offers 22 gorgeous pool villas, two excellent restaurants and a spa. Other highlights include a saltwater main swimming pool and a host of on-site activities including stand-up

paddleboarding, Thai cooking classes and muay Thai lessons. capefahnhotel.com; pool villas from US$700 per night. TOUR Hiking on Samui There’s plenty of scope for explorers in Samui’s wild interior, with an abundance of trails leading into the mountains where beautiful waterfalls and stunning views await. With more than a decade on the island, Dutch guide Femke Bartelse knows the routes better than many. hikingonsamui.com; hikes or tours from Bt2,000 for two people.

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f r o m t o p : c o u r t e s y o f d u n c a n f o r g a n ; c o u r t e s y o f c a p e fa h n h o t e l

from above: Mum works out any filial aggravation during a private muay Thai lesson; Cape Fahn is primed for sunrise and sunset.

The trail to Hin Lad—which is easily accessible from Nathon Town, the island’s administrative center—is not exactly off the radar: As we make our way up from the trailhead, we are hailed by voluble backpackers in sodden Beer Chang singlets going in the opposite direction. OK, it may not be Survival 101, but it’s a good introduction to the wilder side of Samui. We plot our way up the rocky path, stopping periodically to snap shots of chameleonic lizards and primeval-looking plants and trees. Mum and I agree that the two-hour schlep through verdant jungle—a scramble involving some steep ascents and equally hairy downhills—is a worthy addition to the family hiking scrapbook. At the end of the trail, waterfalls tumble into a series of deep emerald pools. There’s no Jacuzzi here. But the naturally foaming tub where the stream hits the pool is an adequate surrogate. “Much preferable to Scotland, I’d say,” mum says, referring to the bone-chilling wild swimming spots that she introduced my sister and me to when we were kids. “Next time you are here you guys should go for something a bit longer,” Femke tells us as we dry off in the sun. “There are some amazing trails in the central mountain ranges where you can camp out under the stars and not see another person for a couple of days.” It sounds enticing—and very much in our normal wheelhouse—but it’s one for future reference. With sundown approaching, it’s time to motor it back to Cape Fahn. Little over an hour later, we have taken up positions at The Crest reinforced with choice nibbles and glasses of Riesling. As the last of the light drains from the day, bathing the sky in kaleidoscopic washes of pink, red and orange, mum gives our experience the stamp of endorsement: “This was a really good idea, wasn’t it?” A family vacation would be incomplete without a hiccup or two. And there are a couple of, shall we say, Montseny moments—notably when I miss a step when turning out the gazebo lights and nearly snap my leg in the void next to the infinity pool. I also tire slightly of the need to repeatedly explain the resort’s Wi-Fi. “I know it says it is connected,” I tell mum for the hundredth time. “But you need to wait for the pop-up window to appear.” Some (everyone) might call these first-world problems, of course, and mostly this trip has been a tonic. I can see that mum has relished stepping into an unfamiliar luxury zone—albeit for just a few days. It has been gratifying for me to spend some quality time with her while savoring the sound-proofed villa and the absence of vicious Catalan strays. There’s time for one last activity before we go and it’s one we’ve both been anticipating: muay Thai. I’ve been taking lessons in Bangkok and find it a fine stress reliever. Mum has always wanted to give it a go. The session starts brightly as she circles the trainer on the balls of her feet. After a while, though, her movements mislay their bounce and her jabs lose their fizz. “It’s not that I don’t like it,” she says apologetically, removing her gloves and sidling towards the exit. “But it’s my final morning here and, no offense, I really want to go back to the pool.”

OPENING SUMMER 2019 Nestled on Lombokâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s most pristine beach, a mere 40-minute flight from Bali, The Legian Sire, Lombok is a boutique suite and villa resort with stunning views of the famous Gili Islands. Exuding barefoot luxury, all 46 suites boast 1,200-squarefeet overlooking the ocean, and the resort features 55- and 75-foot infinity pools. The Club by The Legian Sire offers highly personalized butler service and a strong sense of exclusivity, with 15 carefully appointed pool villas, eight beachfront villas, and a beach house with direct access to the white sandy beach.

A TIME TO TREASURE

info@lhm-hotels.com www.lhm-hotels.com

An intrepid first venture to the open sea. Place:

Meru Betiri National Park, Java, Indonesia Photographer:

Dave Stamboulis

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we love sunbathing and splashing in the waves as much as anyone. but beaches are much more than that: ecosystems and communities, offering in the best cases a sense of adventure and a feeling of home. on the following pages, t+L photographers clock in at some of their favorite seashores over the course of a day. spanning 6 a.m. to 9:30 p.m., this album is awash in new life, discoveries and profound calm.

beach days

Misty morning magic. Place:

Baler, Philippines Photographer:

Lester Ledesma

Different strokes. Place:

Lampi National Park, Mergui Archipelago, Burma Photographer:

David Van Driessche

Along for the ride. Place:

Punaluâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;u Black Sand Beach, Big Island, Hawaii Photographer:

Shinsuke Matsukawa

t r av e l a n d l e i s u r e a s i a .c o mâ&#x20AC;&#x2020;/ m ay 2 01 9

A steep ascent. Place:

Raja Ampat, Indonesia Photographer:

Ken Kochey

Not all heroes wear capes. Place:

Bai Sao, Phu Quoc Island, Vietnam

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Photographer: m ay 2 01 9 / t r av e l a n d l e i s u r e a s i a .c o m

Dave Stamboulis

Follow the leader. Place:

Surin Moken, Thailand Photographer:

Scott A. Woodward

Girl time in a shady grove. Place:

Nai Yang Beach, Phuket, Thailand Photographer:

Lester Ledesma

f r o m t o p : c o u r t e s y o f c a p e fa h n h o t e l ; c o u r t e s y o f d u n c a n f o r g a n . o p p o s i t e f r o m t o p l e f t: c o u r t e s y o f c a p e fa h n h o t e l ( 2 ) ; Pa n th e r M e d i a Gmb H /A l a m y S t o c k Ph o t o

Night of the fire dragon. Place:

Sansiantai Dragon Bridge, Taitung, Taiwan Photographer:

Alberto Buzzola

t r av e l a n d l e i s u r e a s i a .c o mâ&#x20AC;&#x2020;/ m ay 2 01 9

Here comes the groom. Place:

Boracay, Philippines Photographer:

Lester Ledesma

Everythingâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s coming up roses. Place:

Wategos Beach, New South Wales, Australia Photographer:

Lauryn Ishak

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A taste of tropical luxury on the magical island of Bali

Boasting magnificent views of the shimmering sea, Sofitel Bali Nusa Dua Beach Resortâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s spacious rooms and suites offer sophisticated style and exquisite comfort. Revel in a world of rejuvenation with a savant mix of world-class facilities, French cosmetology and tranquil surrounds. Discover all our magnifique addresses in over 40 countries on

ITDC Complex lot N5, Bali 80363 | +62 361 849 2888 | H9078@sofitel.com | www.sofitel.com

Small shelter on Big Wave Bay. Place:

Tai Long Wan, Sai Kung, Hong Kong Photographer:

Dave Stamboulis

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Noku Maldives

Noku Kyoto

Noku Maldives

Noku Osaka

At home in Noku Attentive service. Friendly faces. Comfortable experiences. Quiet spaces.

www.nokuhotels.com | Enquiries@nokuhotels.com

San Diego is the biggest border town in the United States—which might seem an uncomfortable role to fill in these turbulent times. But the city’s next generation of lifestyle visionaries is treating the proximity to Mexico as an opportunity, importing their neighbors’ culture and cuisine and fusing them with the good vibrations of southern California.

by David Amsden Photogr aphed by MISHA GR AVENOR

clockwise from top left: Por Vida, a café in San Diego’s Barrio Logan neighborhood; La Jolla, a beachside community north of downtown San Diego; Provisional, the restaurant at the Pendry San Diego hotel; a mural off Logan Avenue. Opposite: The Pacific Ocean.

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Walking to Chicano Park in San Diego’s Barrio Logan neighborhood,

I got the distinct impression that I was lost. According to my phone’s GPS, I was less than a block away from the three hectares that locals had described to me as a stronghold of the city’s Mexican-American community. All I could see, however, was a colossal highway overpass—a sea of highway overpasses, actually. It was hard to imagine that the thing I’d come to San Diego hoping to understand—how the city is continually shaped and reshaped by its standing on the border with Mexico—would be revealed in what looked like an urban no-man’s-land. But as I entered this imposing tangle of concrete, the atmosphere brightened. I saw majestic bands of color crawling up the gigantic pillars—dozens of intricate murals painted with the aggression of graffiti and the precision of fine art. This near-mystical constellation framed sculptures, plantings of cacti and wildflowers, a skate park and swaths of grass where children played and people lounged at picnic tables painted in the colors of the Mexican flag. Chicano Park evolved from an act of protest. In 1970, residents of the predominantly Mexican-American neighborhood learned that the area, which had been promised to them for parkland, was set to be turned into a highway patrol station. Frustration had been mounting for decades among locals, who lost access to the waterfront when naval installations were built during World War II and, later, saw the neighborhood’s integrity suffer when it was rezoned for industry. Tired of feeling marginalized, hundreds of people occupied the land for 12 days, demanding to be heard. They were; the city backed off of its plan. In 2017, the park, which contains one of the largest collections of outdoor murals in the country, was designated a National Historic Landmark. I didn’t know this history as I walked around. But I could feel it. A cross-cultural vibrancy percolates through San Diego in ways that are thrilling and unexpected, if a little hard to uncover. This aspect of the city is

particularly potent throughout Barrio Logan, still a Mexican-American stronghold but hardly a stagnant one, as younger immigrants and transplants are changing the neighborhood in compelling ways. Earlier that day, I’d eaten a tasty lunch at ¡Salud!, a boisterous, newfangled taco shop on the main stretch of Logan Avenue, where piñata shops and galleries showing Chicano art have been joined by places like the vintage-vinyl shop Beat Box Records and the white-cube gallery BasileIE. After hanging around Chicano Park, I made my way to Border X Brewing, a Mexican craft-beer tasting room with a punkish vibe, where the Horchata Golden Stout offered yet another taste—subtle, delicious—of the ways San Diego is rediscovering and reinterpreting its heritage.

Prior to arriving, I hadn’t given much

From far left: Diners at El Jardín, a new Mexican restaurant in the Point Loma neighborhood; a mural by Mario Torero in Chicano Park; rare vinyl at Beat Box Records, in Barrio Logan.

thought to the idea of San Diego as a border town. I wasn’t familiar with its longtime slogan—“America’s Finest City”—but that’s more or less the impression I had of the place. I knew it had a fine zoo, fine beaches, fine surf breaks, a thirst for fine craft beer, a fine military presence and some of the finest weather on the planet, which goes a long way toward explaining why it’s often talked about as a fine place to retire. There are other American cities I’ve never set foot

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A cross-cultural vibrancy percolates through san diego in ways that are thrilling and unexpectied

in—Nashville, say, or Boston—that conjure up something more dynamic in my mind than San Diego, a sprawling metropolis of 1.4 million that I’d actually been to twice before but somehow retained no memory of. It was so fine, in my limited previous understanding, as to verge on forgettable. Yet beneath that very fine façade is a singular culture built through crisscrossing. Lying between San Ysidro, the southernmost district of San Diego, and Tijuana, Mexico, is the busiest land border on the planet. Some 200,000 people cross there each day, for a multitude of reasons: Mexicans entering San Diego for work and school; Americans skipping into Tijuana for medical care, cheap groceries, and rollicking food and art scenes. The completion in 2015 of the Cross Border Xpress, a bridge linking San Diego to the Tijuana airport, has been a boon to tourism to the city and for San Diegans looking to travel throughout Latin America. While San Diego and Tijuana are two distinct cities in two distinct nations, they function more like a single megalopolis that happens to have an international border running through it. Of course, that border has become an incendiary topic over the past two years, thanks to the national debate over immigration and polarizing discussions about “the wall.” During my time in San Diego, where I stayed at the Pendry, a chic hotel in the Gaslamp Quarter, I got the impression that locals have responded by embracing an aspect of their city that in the

past they might have taken for granted. “The most interesting thing about San Diego is Mexico” is a common refrain—the implication being not just that you could head to another country for a raucous evening or affordable dentistry but that the border is what makes San Diego more than just a sleepy seaside town. “I came here to live the California dream— beaches and sun—without really thinking about Mexico,” Toni Cass, a young musician from Florida, told me on my first night in town. Cass was my server at the newly opened El Jardín, an inventive Mexican restaurant in the upscale Point Loma district. “Now I think of here and Mexico as the same place,” she went on, describing another country as if it were a neighborhood she was stoked to have discovered. Her girlfriend lives in Tijuana, and she spends time each week on both sides of the border. We were joined by the restaurant’s chef and co-owner, Claudette Zepeda-Wilkins, a former Top Chef contestant with tattooed arms and dark violet hair. She was born in San Diego, raised in Mexico, and grew up going back and forth. “This restaurant is an extension of that,” she told me, explaining that she regularly goes to Mexico to scour for ingredients unavailable in the U.S. Her food was outstanding—crispy tuna carnitas, charred octopus sprinkled with pumpkin seeds and habanero pepper—and representative of a new development in the city’s culinary landscape. “High-end Mexican is harder to do here than other places,” ZepedaWilkins said. “There’s still a perception that Mexican food in San Diego is supposed to be cheap. I’d like to change that attitude, though it’s a challenge.” That challenge speaks to San Diego’s complicated relationship with its neighbor and the city’s role as a microcosm of America’s ongoing reckoning with Mexico. If you are affluent and white, as many residents and visitors are, the border is easy to overlook. Whereas the density of Tijuana butts up against the gigantic wall that marks the border, the busiest parts of San Diego are 25 kilometers away, a geographic reinforcement that Mexico is “the other.” That San Diego is a big military town, with politics that have historically tilted conservative, further underpins this paradox. For years this meant that many San Diegans thought of Tijuana as a kind of lawless playground, and a visit as a rite of passage for spring breakers. In the wake of the drug-cartel violence that erupted between 2008 and 2011, residents came to view Tijuana in a darker

From far left:

Tacos at Border X Brewing, a craftbeer tasting room in Barrio Logan; Stephen Kurpinsky, beverage director at Hundred Proof bar, in University Heights.

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light: as one of the world’s deadliest cities, with the border serving as a means of protection rather than a portal. But as the violence ebbed, creative young Tijuanans reclaimed their city, experimenting with food and culture in ways their counterparts in San Diego began to notice. The irony is that by the time America elected a leader who made the border synonymous with strife, San Diegans had begun to appreciate Mexico as never before. If a restaurant like El Jardín aims to bridge the divide on a micro level, the city’s cultural institutions are doing the same on a macro scale. When I was in town, the excellent Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, which has had a binational mandate since the mid 1980s, was showing an exhibition of works by 42 artists, half from San Diego, half from Tijuana. Since 2013, the museum, located in the heart of downtown, has operated a “field trip” program, taking locals and visitors into Mexico to visit artists’ studios and cultural institutions. “The idea was to inspire San Diegans to go across the border, enjoy a day out, learn about people living the border life and, in turn, learn more about themselves and their city,” Cris Scorza, the museum’s director of education and engagement, who cocreated the program, told me. Originally from Mexico City, she moved to San Diego from New York seven years ago “for the U.S.-Mexico hybrid life that you can only live here.” The field trips, she explained, have empowered people who were once scared of Mexico to explore on their own. “That’s my favorite part,” she said. “First they came with us, then they started going over in the evenings for dinner.”

The more time

I spent in town, the more I came to understand the border’s subtle influences. One of my most memorable meals was at the recently opened Born & Raised, a lavish steak house in Little Italy that could double as the set of a Baz Luhrmann film: gaudy leather booths, green marble tables, glittery brass. Nothing about the experience seemed to exude a distinctly Mexican spirit. But this turned out to reflect my ignorance. I didn’t realize that one of their signature items—a Caesar salad made tableside—could be traced back to Caesar’s, the Tijuana restaurant where the salad is said to have been invented. Similarly, had I not known better I would have thought the scene on Friday night at Bar Pink, in the trendy North Park neighborhood, could have been airlifted out of any American

hipster enclave: loud music, dim lighting, twenty- and thirtysomethings shaking their bodies and sipping cheap beer. But the DJ was from Tijuana, and the night was part of a series called Grrrl Independent Ladies, which hosts female and nonbinary musicians from Tijuana, Los Angeles and San Diego in venues in all three cities. It was created by Mónica Mendoza, a laid-back and fiercely intelligent 34-year-old architect and musician who grew up in Tijuana and conceived of the series as a means of tapping into, and broadening, the cultural singularity of the surrounding region. “I’m a frontera kid,” Mendoza told me at the bar, using the Spanish for border, and explained that she started coming into San Diego as a child and then every day for school at 13. She got

From Below: El

Jardín co-owner Claudette ZepedaWilkins, a former Top Chef contestant, in the garden of her restaurant; a suite at the Pendry San Diego.

the idea for Grrrl Independent Ladies after hosting a festival in Tijuana. “I’m searching for a way to bridge Tijuana with San Diego and Los Angeles through music,” Mendoza said. “Obviously we’re not going to tear down the wall physically, but we can begin to tear it down through art. I have people come to a San Diego show and then I’ll see them in Tijuana at the next.” She paused for a moment, surveying the room, where an indie rock band from Los Angeles was preparing to take the stage. For all the activism behind the evening, it was also simply a whole lot of fun. “Nights like this are when you almost forget the wall is there,” Mendoza said. “It’s been amazing, especially in this political moment.” That same night I visited Hundred Proof, a bar on the edge of the University Heights neighborhood, where I met Stephen Kurpinsky, who was two weeks into his position as the beverage director. A bearded and sardonic dude from San Francisco, he recently helped open Nórtico, an upscale speakeasy in Tijuana. Though he has lived in San Diego for 12 years, the experience changed his understanding of the region. “You’ve got southern Californian culture, which is basically L.A., right?” he said, pouring me a “split base” Old-Fashioned of mezcal and bacanora, an agave-derived liquor. “We’re still a bit player compared to L.A., and we probably always will be. But when you start thinking of this place as Cali-Baha, that’s when you realize how genuinely cool it is.” Kurpinsky attributed his passion to his love of classic cocktails and his distaste for the political climate. “I can’t tell you how awesome it is to be involved in opening a bar in Mexico while we have a president trying to build a wall,” he said. “The craft cocktail scene is still so new there—it has that addictive kind of excitement. And it’s a two-way street. In Mexico, there’s a showmanship to bartending, with old-school twirling of glasses and dramatic pours, which I’ve started incorporating myself. I taught them about making classics. They taught me how to make a performance for the customer.” He paused for a moment, before fixing me with a curious stare. “Dude,” he asked, “have you gone over to Mexico yet?”

This had become something of a

running theme during my visit: all this talk of the cross-cultural fluidity that makes San Diego unique, followed by the casual suggestion

that I make a trip across the border. I’d explain that, great as that sounded, I didn’t think I had the time. “What do you mean?” I’d invariably hear. “You just take an Uber to the border and Uber around Mexico!” On my last day in town, I spent the morning hiking at Torrey Pines State Natural Reserve, reveling in the pink-tinged cliffs and pristine coastline, then decided to drive south and venture across. Just before the border, a sign reminded travelers that marijuana, now legal in California, cannot be brought into Mexico, a nation long associated with the drug trade. While car traffic can bottleneck at certain hours, crossing by foot was no more of a hassle than picking up my rental car earlier in the week. I parked, walked to the border, flashed my passport, and was in Mexico less than half an hour after being on the beaches of San Diego. In Tijuana, I was met by Ruffo Ibarra, the gregarious chef and owner of Oryx Capital, a local gastropub. The restaurant houses Nórtico, the bar that Kurpinsky had helped open. We

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After dinner at his restaurant, and a few superb cocktails at Nórtico, I caught an Uber back to the border, crossed, hopped in my car, and was soon back in the heart of downtown San Diego, where I entered the polished lobby of the Pendry. Sun-burnished guests jostled for drinks at the bar. The delicate thump of music could be heard from a pool party. It was a surreal moment. Here was the San Diego I’d imagined before the trip—a very fine place, indeed, though one made all the more fascinating because of what I now knew existed outside these walls.

spent the day doing what a lot of people go to Mexico to do: eating and drinking. We started off at Telefónica Gastro Park, a kind of bohemian collective of food trucks where the food ranges from Greek to Korean, before making our way to Plaza Fiesta, which has nearly a dozen craft-beer tasting rooms. In a sense, it reminded me of Chicano Park, an unexpected place where cultures braid to create something astonishing. “The influence goes both ways,” Ibarra told me as we sampled beers at Insurgente, a minimalist taproom. “We gave San Diego the fish taco. They gave us craft beer!”

Torrey Pines State National Reserve University Heights

California Little Italy

San Diego

Point Loma

the new san diego

Downtown San Diego

Allot three or four days to soak up the cross-cultural exchange enlivening the city—and make sure to include a trip across the border.

Getting There and Around

Multiple carriers fly direct to San Diego International Airport. Ride-share apps are great for moving around town, but renting a car is ideal, given the city’s sprawl.

Lodging

The Pendry San Diego (pendryhotels.com; doubles from US$315), located in the historic Gaslamp Quarter, is one of the newest hotels in town and hands down the most stylish. There’s plenty to do within walking distance, and the pool scene is perfect for a dose of pure SoCal glitz. For a bit of eccentricity, try the Lafayette Hotel (lafayette hotelsd.com; doubles from US$129) in trendy North Park; its pool was designed in 1946 by Tarzan actor Johnny Weissmuller.

Eat and Drink

Barrio Logan

Gaslamp Quarter

San Ysidro

at es UN it ed St Me xi co

Pacific Ocean

Logan Avenue, in Barrio Logan, is home to an emerging food scene. I had a great lunch at ¡Salud! (saludsd.com; mains US$3–$12), a fun taco shop. Border X Brewing (borderxbrewing.com) specializes in Mexican craft beer, like a saison with traces of hibiscus. Por Vida (porvida collective.com), a café, makes a mean horchata latte. At El Jardín (eljardinrestaurantbar. com; mains US$23–$38), in the Point Loma neighborhood, Claudette Zepeda-Wilkins channels her borderstraddling upbringing with inventive dishes. If you’re in search of a more decadent experience, plan an evening at Born & Raised (bornand raisedsteak.com; mains US$42–$88), a steak house in Little Italy with lavish décor. Hundred Proof (hundred

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North Park

Tijuana

proofsd.com), in University Heights, offers exquisite cocktails and small plates, while Bar Pink (barpink.com), in North Park, features DJs and live music.

Shopping

Logan Avenue is great for strolling and browsing. I enjoyed Beat Box Records (fb.com/beatboxrecordstore), a no-frills vinyl outpost specializing in rare soul and funk, and Simón Limón (shopsimonlimon.com), a shop that showcases housewares, jewelry and crafts made by local artists.

Art and Culture

Chicano Park (chicano-park. com), in Barrio Logan, is a living monument to the city’s Mexican-American heritage. Under a highway overpass, it’s one of the largest collections

of outdoor murals in the country. Around the corner, BasileIE (basile-ie.com), a gallery in a former grocery, focuses on emerging artists. Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego (mcasd.org), in the city’s downtown, emphasizes exhibitions that bridge the U.S.-Mexico divide.

Outdoor Life

There’s no shortage of natural beauty in San Diego, from the white sands of Coronado Beach to Mission Bay’s pristine cove. My top choice is Torrey Pines State Natural Reserve (torreypines.org), where a hike along the sandstone cliffs above La Jolla offers superb views of the Pacific.

Crossing the Border

No trip to San Diego is complete without a visit to Tijuana, but check gov.mx first for possible visa requirements for your nationality. The easiest way to enter is by foot. Bring your passport and take an Uber to the crossing—or drive and park. My day trip was idyllic: lunch at Telefónica Gastro Park (fb.com/ telefonicagastropark), a food truck collective; craft beers at the tasting rooms at Plaza Fiesta (plazafiestatijuana. com); and dinner at Oryx Capital (oryxcapital.mx; mains US$13–$30), an upscale gastropub with a speakeasy-style bar. — D.A.

A N e a p o l i t an S t o ry

P h o t o g r a p h e d b y D an i l o S c a r p a t i

A sweep of Naples, with Mount Vesuvius in the distance, from the Grand Hotel Parkerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s.

There are few places as intensely, intoxicatingly Italian as the city of Naples and its idyllic satellite island of Ischia. On a trip inspired by the novels of Elena Ferrante, M ag gi e Sh i p st e ad finds herself falling in love. t r av e l a n d l e i s u r e a s i a .c o mâ&#x20AC;&#x2020;/ m ay 2 01 9

A spectacular thin-crust pizza at 50 Kalò, a restaurant in Naples. Opposite: Naples’s Via San Gregorio Armeno is known for stores selling only presepi, or nativities.

within hours of arriving on the island of Ischia, I’d been propositioned by a man on a Vespa, survived a minor vehicular accident, and eaten a meal so delicious I wanted to kiss my fingertips and say, “Perfetto!” Here in the Campania region of southern Italy, life is all about contrasts. There’s the famously hectic metropolis of Naples, where I’d begun my trip; there are the ruined ancient cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum, which sit under Mount Vesuvius, the volcano that destroyed them; there are the upscale destinations of Sorrento, Capri, and the Amalfi Coast. And then there’s Ischia. I’d first learned about Ischia from the work of Elena Ferrante, the mysterious, pseudonymous Italian author whose books about the friendship between two girls from a rough Neapolitan neighborhood became a surprise international sensation. In the first novel, My Brilliant Friend (which was recently made into a television series), the narrator, Elena Greco, leaves her home in 1950s Naples for the first time to spend a summer on Ischia. The island is only a short boat journey away, but might as well be on another planet. Freed from the oppressive family politics of her neighborhood, Elena, who’s known as Lenù, discovers the pleasures of sun and sea, of days spent doing nothing on the beach. Ischia is riotously vegetated and alive with volcanic activity, full of hidden geological perforations that vent sulfurous vapors and ooze hot, mineral-rich waters. In such a lush, steamy setting, Elena can’t help falling in love for the first time.

So it seemed appropriate that I’d barely set foot on Ischia before a suitor found me. My guide, Silvana Coppa, a native Ischian, had dropped me at the causeway that connects the town of Ischia Ponte to Castello Aragonese, a fortified castle built just offshore on a small, solidified bubble of volcanic magma. In the Middle Ages, Silvana told me, townspeople went there to hide from pirates, or volcanic eruptions, or whichever Mediterranean power wanted to colonize the island next. Nowadays, the castle serves as a museum and occasional screen star, having made appearances in The Talented Mr. Ripley and the adaptation of My Brilliant Friend. As I strolled along the causeway, a middle-aged man rode past on a Vespa, giving me a good old-fashioned ogle as he went. Then he pulled over. “Deutsche?” he asked. The news that I was American prompted an elaborate show of astonishment—American visitors are still rare on Ischia, though maybe not as rare as he made out. The man asked how many days I was staying. “We spend them together,” he said. He pointed emphatically at his chest. “Your boyfriend.” I laughed semi-politely. I said no thank you and, with increasingly insistent Ciaos, made my way back to Silvana and the red and white Piaggio three-wheeler waiting to take us around the island. She relayed my story to the driver, Giuseppe. “He says we’ll have to be careful not to lose you,” she told me with a laugh. Getting lost on Ischia didn’t seem like a bad option, I thought, as we puttered inland and wove our way up a mountainside, away from the busy beach towns and

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ITALY

Naples Mount Vesuvius

y Ba of Na

Pompeii

pl es

Ischia

Amalfi Sorrento Am

i lf

Capri

from left: The ancient Castello Aragonese, Ischia’s most prominent landmark; Vintage Piaggio threewheelers, or micro-taxis, are one way to explore the island.

thermal spas that have lured Europeans for generations. We passed vineyards, lemon trees, palms and pines, bougainvillea pouring over walls built centuries ago from blocks of porous volcanic rock, or tufa, fitted together so perfectly they didn’t even require mortar. In My Brilliant Friend, Lenù describes how Ischia gave her “a sense of well-being that I had never known before. I felt a sensation that later in my life was often repeated: the joy of the new.” I’d only spent a few days in Lenù’s home city, but I could already relate to the sense of restoration she took from Ischia. The best way to really appreciate such an island idyll, it turns out, is to arrive there from somewhere noisy and unruly and crowded and undeniably real— somewhere like Naples.

o be honest, my expectations for Naples were not high. I tend to gravitate toward cold, sparsely inhabited, orderly places where people don’t talk with their hands—or really talk much at all—as opposed to hot, labyrinthine Mediterranean cities that are universally described as gritty, where everyone shouts at one another and no one knows how to wait their turn. In Ferrante’s novels, characters are always blowing their tops and hurling insults in Neapolitan dialect, an expressive patois

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101

unintelligible even to other Italians, cobbled together from the linguistic leftovers of everyone who’s ever come and gone from the port: the Greeks, who founded the city around 600 B.C.; the Romans, who came next; the Byzantines, French, Spanish, Arabs, Germans, and, post– World War II, the Americans, who tossed out slang like candy. Ferrante doesn’t always try to relay exactly what gets said in dialect—perhaps the insults are too horrible for non-Neapolitans to endure. That fiery temperament is mirrored by the landscape: because of the density of population at its base, scientists consider Mount Vesuvius one of the most dangerous volcanoes in the world. But right away, I began to be won over. The colors got me first. From my balcony at the Grand Hotel Parker’s, in the hills of the tony Chiaia neighborhood, I watched the setting sun warm the faces of the city’s stacked and jumbled buildings, bringing out hues that all seemed to be food-related: butter, saffron, pumpkin, salmon, mint, lemon. The double-humped silhouette of Vesuvius turned purple in the distance, and across the water, I could just make out the jagged outline of Capri rising above a layer of haze. All right, fine. Naples is pretty.

The next morning, I set out for a long walk with Rosaria Perrella, an archaeologist in her early thirties who’d returned to Naples after 11 years in Rome and Berlin. I was hoping she could help me make sense of this place. “In Naples, we love to live all attached,” Rosaria told me. We were in the oldest part of the city, the Centro Storico, and she was pointing out how even buildings that didn’t need to be connected were, with funky bridges and makeshift additions sealing up the gaps between them. “This is how we like it,” she said. “You want to know whether your neighbor is in the bathroom.” She was describing my nightmare—though even I couldn’t deny the charm of the narrow, tufa-paved streets, where laundry flapped from balconies and mopeds wove among groups of people chatting on the sidewalk. Waiters with trays of espresso shots hurried by, making house calls. Something bumped me on the head. It was a basket being lowered from a window above. A guy on the street took money out of it and put in cigarettes. “It’s a city of layers, and they all blend together,” Rosaria said. “Problematic people? We welcome them!” She wanted me to know that although a hard-line anti-immigration government had recently come to power in Italy, down here, Naples remained friendly to migrants and refugees—an attitude that, like the local dialect, is the legacy of centuries of cultural blending. Some people are more problematic than others, however, and organized crime has long contributed to both Naples’s unsavory reputation and its slow development compared with Italy’s other major cities. The Camorra, as the Neapolitan version of the Mafia is known, is more decentralized than its Sicilian counterpart, with many small, clannish gangs competing for power and territory. As Ferrante’s novels make clear, this power structure dominated the city in the fifties, when families in Lenù’s neighborhood (thought to be the Rione Luzzati, east of the Garibaldi train station—still not a garden spot) ostensibly kept shops or ran bars but were really getting rich from the black market, loan sharking and extortion. “They are still here,” Rosaria acknowledged of the Camorra, but she said they aren’t interested in bothering tourists. Yet, like most of the city’s business owners, they stand to benefit from the new budget-carrier flights bringing foreign visitors in search of sunshine and lively, authentic Italian experiences.

Rosaria led me down narrow, shaded alleys and through sun-baked squares ringed with churches, palazzi and canopied restaurants. She showed me tranquil private courtyards just off the busiest thoroughfares and took me to streets known for their specialty stores, like Via San Sebastiano, where musical instruments are sold, and Port’Alba, where the booksellers are. On Via San Gregorio Armeno, perhaps Naples’s most famous shopping street, vendors peddle charms and magnets and key chains in the shape of little red horns, or cornicelli, for good luck. “But you can’t buy one for yourself,” Rosaria said. “Someone has to give it to you.” The street’s real attractions, however, are the shops filled with nativities, or presepi, which Catholics traditionally display at Christmas. These are not diminutive, anodyne mangers but sprawling, intricately crafted models of 18th-century towns, some meters tall, populated by butchers and bakers and people of all sorts having a rollicking good time. To spice your presepe up even more, you can add whichever random figurines you fancy. If you think Elvis or Mikhail Gorbachev or Justin Bieber ought to attend the birth of Jesus, their effigies can easily be obtained on Via San Gregorio Armeno. It was the colors of Naples that first cracked my armor, but it was the food of Naples that shattered it completely (possibly from the inside, due to my waist’s expansion). For coffee, Rosaria took me to Caffè Mexico, an orangecanopied institution near Garibaldi where the baristas gave us our espressos stacked on about seven saucers each—a gentle prank about us being high-class people, Rosaria explained. As a lunch warm-up, she took me to Scaturchio, the city’s oldest pastry shop, for sfogliatelle: crisp, fat scallop-shaped shells stuffed with sweet, eggy ricotta custard and candied citrus peel. For lunch we went to Spiedo d’Oro Trattoria, a mom-and-pop hole-in-thewall on the edge of the Spanish Quarter. The pop, Enzo, had a salt-and-pepper mustache and doled out generous servings of pasta, salad and fish to the crowd jostling for counter service. Five euros bought me a heaping plate of pasta with eggplant and tomato and, afterward, a strong desire for a siesta. But, in Naples, I discovered, it’s best just to keep eating. This is a carb marathon, not a carb sprint, after all, and I hadn’t even gotten to the pizza. In the afternoon, Rosaria took me to the cloister garden of the Santa Chiara Monastery, an oasis of calm amid all the urban chaos. Orange and lemon trees grow among the pillars

A dish on the seafood tasting menu at Indaco, the Michelinstarred restaurant at L’Albergo della Regina Isabella. Opposite: The card room at Ischia’s L’Albergo della Regina Isabella hotel.

and benches covered in majolica tiles—each of which is painted with vines, fruits, and scenes of 18th-century life: ships and carriages, hunters and herders, a wedding. “Sometimes this city drives me crazy, but then there’s this,” Rosaria said. She indicated the rustling leaves, the walled-in hush. “This is what I came back to Naples for.” I was starting to get it: the way the contrasts and contradictions of Naples make life there feel engaging and serendipitous, full of plot twists. One minute I was much too hot and cramped and close to being run over by a phalanx of careening Fiats; the next I was enchanted by the density of life, the warmth with which friends greeted each other on the street, the golden light of evening on the bay. And let’s not forget the pizza. Its siren song is inescapable in Naples, the city believed to be the place it was invented. Many of the classic spots, like L’Antica Pizzeria da Michele and Sorbillo Pizzeria, are in the Centro Storico, but I went to 50 Kalò, a five-year-old upstart in Mergellina, which emphasizes quality ingredients. There, I was presented with a margherita pizza the size of a hubcap and left alone to get the job done. There’s no way I can eat this whole thing, I thought, and then I ate the whole thing. The crust was thin and chewy and just salty enough. The sauce was bright and tangy and in perfect proportion to the cheese. Sometimes I feel awkward eating alone, but no one even glanced at me. They were all busy with their own pizzas, their own lives. The waiter didn’t even stop by to ask if the food was good because, I suspect, he knew it was good, and if I had a different opinion, then I was an idiot. This suggested a larger truth about Naples. The tourist trail in cities like Florence and Venice can have a sanitized, Epcot-style Italy™️ feel, but there’s nothing prettified or artificial about Naples. Its drama—its life— is for itself. You’re welcome to the party, but no one’s going to babysit you or hold your hand or even make an effort to avoid running you over with a moped. In return you get

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privacy, your own little pocket of peace within the madness.

till, after a few days in the city, Ischia seemed like blessed relief, a bubble of serenity—at least until our Piaggio collided with a house. Right beforehand, Silvana had taken me to an overlook from which I could see Maronti beach, site of long, lazy days for Lenù. “Endless and deserted” is how Ferrante described the stretch of sand that was now, decades later, pebbled with rows of colorful beach umbrellas and edged with restaurants and hotels. As we chugged down a snaking road, the three-wheeler suddenly swerved. There was a scrape and a crash, and it came to an abrupt stop nose-first against a white stucco house. Everyone was okay, just startled. This was the sort of thing that was supposed to happen in Naples, not Ischia. Giuseppe bumped his head; Silvana scraped her hand; I acquired a lump the size of half a tennis ball on my shin. The residents of the house we’d crashed into (which was undamaged) kindly invited us inside and gave me an ice pack. When a replacement Piaggio arrived, I told Silvana I would be needing a glass of wine with lunch, and she said she knew just the place. Sant’Angelo, one of Ischia’s resort towns, gets called—or maybe calls itself—“Little Positano.” I haven’t been to Positano and so can’t say how well the comparison holds, but I can say that Sant’Angelo is dreamy. Cars aren’t allowed, so you walk (or limp, in my case) down toward the water, along a steep lane lined with blindingly white shops and houses, and onto a narrow isthmus with a small marina on one side and a beach on the other. For lunch, on the breezy, canopied patio at the almost painfully pleasant Casa Celestino Restaurant, I had a plate of oily, tender seafood salad, followed by prawns on a nest of scialatielli and long ribbons of lemon zest. “How many glasses of wine did you have?” Silvana wanted to know afterward. Two, of a dry Ischian white, I told her. Back at my hotel, L’Albergo della Regina Isabella, I followed them up with the better part of a bottle of champagne while I iced my shin—not only to celebrate escaping death by Piaggio but also because it was my birthday. So, by the time I made my way down to the sea an hour later, just as the late afternoon sun was starting to get serious about turning golden, I was feeling pretty good.

The Regina Isabella, which was established in 1956 by the Italian publisher and film producer Angelo Rizzoli, still has the Old Hollywood elegance that, in its 1960s heyday, drew notable guests like Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor, Clark Gable, and Maria Callas. These days it’s the hotel equivalent of a perfectly coiffed Italian woman of a certain age, proudly and resplendently oldschool. That vibe is typical of Ischian accommodations— although this spring, the island’s venerable Mezzatore Hotel & Spa is being relaunched by the group behind the Pellicano resort in Tuscany, perhaps auguring the arrival of a more modern, cosmopolitan take on Italian luxury. The Regina Isabella’s décor is on the formal side, but the staff is warm, and the Michelin-starred restaurant, Indaco, is exceptional. There’s a medical spa specializing in “bioactive” thermal mud treatments, a heated saltwater pool, and a small beach. But I was drawn to two jetties with metal staircases leading into the water. On the bottom step of one of the staircases, I paused, up to my knees in the cool Mediterranean, the sun still hot on my shoulders. The water was clear and deep. A cluster of

small silver fish darted over to inspect my feet. I thought of a scene in the TV version of My Brilliant Friend in which Lenù walks into the sea for the first time, at first wading nervously and then swimming, weightless and euphoric, as the camera rises to show her from above, alone in the blue. I plunged, then frogged away from the shore, away from the buzzing beach cafés, the boutiques selling white linen outfits that only Europeans can wear, the yachts at anchor, the green mountains that concealed ungovernable heat and unrest. I recognized in myself Lenù’s exhilaration at being small and alone in something very big. I gave in to the thrill—the vulnerability—of being in a place so full of complexity and contrast that it can’t be controlled, and so might as well be embraced.

The Perfect Pair Divide a week between Naples and Ischia for a gratifying balance of city and beach.

Scaturchio is the city's oldest pastry shop. Opposite: The beach in Posillipo, an affluent Naples neighborhood full of seafood eateries, views of Mount Vesuvius and visit-worthy ancient sites.

Getting There You can fly to Naples International Airport via most major European and Middle Eastern hubs. From the city’s Molo Beverello ferry dock there are multiple sailings to Ischia each day. The journey takes an hour. Naples I stayed at Grand Hotel Parker’s (grandhotelparkers.it; doubles from €305), a formal but friendly 79-room hotel located on a hill in the swish Naples neighborhood of Chiaia. Book a suite or Deluxe room for splendid views of the city, the Bay of Naples, and the island of Capri. For lunch, try Spiedo d’Oro Trattoria (52 Via Pasquale Scura; 39-081/552-6111; mains €4–€8), a hole-in-the-wall in the historic center of Naples, where the owner creates hearty and ever-changing daily menus with staggeringly low prices. I loved the ricotta-stuffed sfogliatelle, rum babas, and dark-chocolate ministeriali at Scaturchio (scaturchio.it), a confectioner of local specialties since 1905. In the evening, head to 50 Kalò (50kalo.it; pizzas €5–€12), a pizzeria in Naples’s Mergellina district that serves superlative thin-crust pies, made using the highest-quality ingredients, with just the right amount of Neapolitan attitude. Ischia I loved the combination of Old Hollywood glamour and Mediterranean ease at L’Albergo della Regina Isabella (reginaisabella.com; doubles from €190), a genteel waterfront hotel on Ischia’s busy northern coast. Its Michelin-starred restaurant, Indaco, serves superb seafood tasting menus and has pleasing ocean views. Don’t miss a meal at Casa Celestino Restaurant (en.casacelestino.it; mains €13–€25), on a terrace overlooking the Ischian town of Sant’Angelo, where seafood, rabbit and pasta are paired with white wines from the region. Tour Operator My trip was set up by Matteo Della Grazia, a member of the A-List, Travel + Leisure’s collection of the world’s top travel advisors. Della Grazia and his wife, Daniela, design private itineraries all over the country at Discover Your Italy (discoveryouritaly.com; seven-day southern Italy trips from €1,670). — M.S.

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wish you were here

If you believe that islands, by their very nature, are the ultimate getaway, then southern Thailand’s Koh Mai Pai is likely a spot you’ll yearn to lounge on for an afternoon or two. Away from the crowds, about an hour by longtail boat north of Koh Phi Phi, the unspoilt island is known for its blinding whitesand beaches that sink into turquoise waters. Sunset is always a scenic option, while a night’s camping also means you’re around for one of Asia’s more spectacular starts to the day. — cedric arnold

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A Taste of New France

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OUTSIDE OF MONTREAL , ST HYANCINTHE OFFERS A TRADITIONAL LOOK AT FRENCH CANADA, WITH ITS FOOD, WINE AND THE GREAT OUTDOORS.

Jardin Daniel A. Séguin Terrasse.

W H I L E M O N T R E A L T H RU M S with all the energy you would expect from a city famed as a cultural juggernaut, life in its near neighbor tends to move as sedately as the flow of the lazy Yamaska River, which it overlooks. But that’s not to say that St Hyacinthe isn’t dynamic in its own unassuming way. Known around Canada as one of the country’s leading agri-food centers, it possesses a treasure trove of draws that includes a wealth of outdoor activities, historic buildings and intriguing boutiques.

GOURMAND MORNINGS As the fulcrum of a vast agricultural region, meanwhile, the city is deservedly winning kudos for its culinary scene with the abundance of fresh produce from the area showcased at some of Canada’s most enticing markets as well as a clutch of excellent dining venues. In fact,

gastronomy in all its many delicious permutations is the theme of arguably the biggest highlight in St Hyacinthe: the historic Le 1555 Marche Public, the city’s mouthwatering public market. In operation since 1830, the attraction is one of Canada’s finest markets. A cornucopia of edibles is available to sample or purchase from merchant food shops that include a fromagerie, fruit expert, butcher shop, fishmonger, artisanal bakery and pastry shop. Be sure to try the freshly made ice cream featuring seasonal fruits and flavors. While it’s possible to spend hours browsing and grazing at the various outlets, many in-the-know locals use the market as a staging post for picking up the makings of an extravagant picnic to take to another of the top stops in St Hyacinthe, Parc Les Salines. A haven for outdoor enthusiasts, the park shines in all

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Outside Le 1555 Marche Public.

seasons. In spring and summer, an expansive picnic area abounds with families taking advantage of the various spots for play. In winter, possibilities include skating, crosscountry skiing and snowshoeing. It’s not just local gastronomic goodies that can be stowed away in any picnic hamper. Quebec is also known for the quality of its viticulture and there are several excellent wineries in the immediate vicinity of St Hyacinthe. Most of these are open to the public, making them a fine option for a half-day or full-day look at Canadian wine culture. Among the most renowned of these wineries is Vignoble Chateau Fontaine (vignoblechateaufontaine.ca). Founded in 2001, the vineyard produces a variety of award-winning bottles.

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A BREAK FOR LUNCH Indeed, in this land of plenty, there are multiple options for indulgence of the culinary variety. And this adage is also applicable to the compact but creative dining scene in St Hyacinthe. While

Enjoying the performing arts in St Hyancinthe.

Parc Les Salines in winter.

high-end dining gets short shrift in this redoubtably unpretentious place, St Hyacinthe excels at laid-back casual dining with everything from old-school French bistros to authentic Vietnamese food available. For those who like to push the boat out just a little bit, one of the most elevated culinary gems in town is L’Escabeche (lescabeche.com) where a small but daily-changing menu of tapas is accompanied by a formidable selection of wines. ENJOY ARTS AND CULTURE While you could be forgiven for whiling away much of your time in St Hyacinthe in a food coma, there are plenty of other highlights. For the culturally inclined, the Centre des Arts Juliette-Lassonde (centredesarts.ca), a must-visit on any itinerary in the city. Each year, the center presents nearly 150 artists or productions from across the spectrum of performing arts disciplines. Everything from theater, dance and music, to popular song, circus arts,

comedy and variety feature on the annual program. Another need-to-see sight is the city’s spectacular main catholic church, St Hyacinthe Cathedral, built in 1880. Its ornate interior underlines the lasting prominence of the church in the daily life of Quebec. EXPERIENCE THE GREAT OUTDOORS Nature lovers and active types too will find a lot to love about St Hyacinthe. The beauty of the outdoors is showcased to full effect at the Daniel A Seguin Garden (jardindas.ca), a 4.5-hectare floral oasis by the Yamaska River that is both a teaching garden and as a tourist attraction with a number of themed gardens providing ample scope for a stroll. More adrenalized diversion is on offer at the city’s Centre Nautique where visitors can rent kayaks, rowboats and canoes. In fact, there’s

Kayaking at Centre Nautique.

no end to the possibilities in the place, which combines all the unassuming charm of a rural idyll with the comforts and convenience of a major city. Montreal may have the global fame, but its near neighbor revels in its status as one of Canada’s most appealing under-the-radar revelations.

Sheraton Saint-Hyacinthe Hotel Known for its spacious common areas, the hotel caters to families with its large rooms, pet-friendly nature, and access to a shopping mall and movie theater. Do not miss the innovative California fusion menu at ZIBO! Restaurant. 1315 Daniel Johnston Street West.

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The ornate St Hyacinthe Cathedral.

Seattle’s towering Space Needle.

Fish and Microchips

N IC L E H O U X

THE L AST MAJOR CIT Y ON THE US WEST COAST BEFORE CANADA TAKES UP THE SL ACK, SEATTLE IS ONE HELL OF A NOTE FOR A COUNTRY TO GO OUT ON. N IC K N A M E D T H E Emerald City due to the eternal greenery of its surroundings, it is sandwiched between ocean, lakes and two major mountain ranges—the Cascades to the east and the Olympics to the west. Yet while its spectacular setting couldn’t help but work in its favor, Seattle is the kind of city that most amply rewards those who like to delve a little beneath the surface. Indeed, with a plethora of eclectic neighborhoods and a multitude of personas that range from thrusting

tech hub to grungy beatnik, Seattle can be as tricky to pinpoint as its famous Space Needle (spaceneedle. com) on one of the city’s famously murky winter days. In fact, it is partly this longstanding diversity—a source of immense civic pride to Seattleites— that make the city such a thrill. EXPLORE BY NEIGHBORHOOD And there are few better bases in the city than the Sheraton Grand Seattle. Handily situated in the thick of the action, a short walk in any

historic arcades and winding alleys of the market. From the market, it’s just a short walk north to another of Seattle’s most recognizable icons, the unmistakable Space Needle. Built for the 1962 World’s Fair, the structure is that rarest of things: something that was built to look futuristic more than 50 years ago that is still otherworldly today. Indeed, the attraction is even more “space-age” following a two-year $100-million renovation. The new design offers plenty of bells and whistles. One highlight is a rotating glass floor that offers views of the turning mechanism and, beyond that, the ground below. DROP SOME BRAND NAMES While the Space Needle certainly helped put Seattle on the map back in the 1960s, these days the city is known as the birthplace of some of the world’s biggest brands. One of these, Starbucks, was founded here by two teachers and a writer in 1971. Starbucks Reserve Roastery.

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direction from the hotel takes you to some of the city’s most compelling areas. You can strike out northeast to Capitol Hill, a hip, edgy hood that is laden with bars, clubs and restaurants, northwest to affluent Queen Anne, or head directly west to Pike Place Market (pikeplacemarket. org), one of the best and oldest farmer’s markets in the country. While many classic markets have lost at least part of their soul due to gentrification, Pike Place has largely retained its bawdy charisma. Vendors clamor for attention amidst a riot of noise and smells that spans nine acres. With everything from fine dining and specialty foods to markets offering fresh seafood from Pacific Northwest and Alaskan waters, many come just for the cuisine. Just as compelling though are the handcrafted items, small shops where visitors can peruse comics, collectables, vinyl records, books and rare treasures. Special mention to the talented buskers who provide an ever-changing soundtrack along the

Rock Creek.

As of 2018, the company operates nearly 30,000 locations worldwide. The jewel in its crown though is the Starbucks Reserve Roastery, which is a magnet for lovers of the brand. As you might imagine, the attraction is far more than just an oversized Starbucks. There’s a coffee-centric cocktail bar, multiple food counters and, naturally, a roasting area with tours available. FEEL THE CREATIVE BUZZ Starbucks may have long since traded in its roots in the counterculture for globe-straddling success, but Seattle is still known as a place that thrums with creative energy. This vitality can be easily tapped at a number of spots around the city, one of which is the Seattle Art Museum (seattleartmuseum.org). Worth a visit for its exhibitions alone, the museum also offers film screenings and periodic parties called SAM Remix that turn the museum into a nightclub.

Another area in which Seattle shines is the culinary arts. For those with limited time, there are few better ways to experience one of the best food scenes in the US than on a tour run by acclaimed operator Savor Seattle (savorseattletours.com). Foodie expeditions run the gamut from an insider’s guide to Pike Place Market to a gourmet itinerary that takes in tastings six of the city’s hotspots paired with Washington State wines and craft beers. For a more prolonged culinary experience, secure a table at one of the city’s plethora of fine dining spots. With Puget Sound lapping on one side of the city and Lake Washington on the other, it’s almost impossible to go wrong with fish and seafood. Nevertheless, few venues nail things quite as impeccably as Rock Creek (rockcreekseattle.com) where chef Eric Donnelly’s expertly seasoned and prepared dishes sing with the siren song of the sea and killer cocktails deliver a knock-out blow.

Sheraton Grand Seattle Located in the heart of the city, the hotel is a gateway to the diverse Pacific Northwest. A private art collection adorns its lobby, while celebrity chef Thierry Rautureau is busy at the Loulay Kitchen & Bar. 1400 6th Avenue

Captured by Cairo’s Charms HOME TO A WEALTH OF HISTORIC RICHES, THE EQYPTIAN CAPITAL IS ALSO WHERE YOU’LL UNCOVER A MODERN METROPOLIS.

The Great Sphinx of Giza with the Pyramid of Khafre.

Tutankhamen’s death mask at the Egyptian Museum, Cairo.

A F RICA IS N OT S H O R T on places that evoke the romance of travel. From Marrakesh to Mombasa, the continent abounds with destinations that major in assaulting the senses while delivering transformative journeys for the soul. Yet, few cities cast quite as potent a spell as Cairo. Known to Egyptians as Umm Ad Dunya—the

Mother of the World—the sprawling capital on the River Nile has a multi-level persona that has evolved layer upon layer for millennia. A walk around the old walled city and citadel will reveal ancient bazaars such as Khan el Khalili as well as one of the greatest concentrations of historical monuments of Islamic architecture in the world. It’s even possible to catch a glimpse even further back in time to Roman times when present-day Cairo was occupied by the legendary fortress of Babylon. PYRAMID POWER Just outside the city, meanwhile, the visceral impact of the Great Pyramid of Giza remains undimmed by its global fame. Cairo, though, is not a destination that constantly dines out on former glories. Sleek contemporary dining and drinking spots embody the modern face of Cairo. Take the Sheraton Cairo Hotel & Casino for instance, which stands proud on the mighty river within easy striking distance of attractions such as the Cairo Opera House, the Egyptian

Along the street in the Islamic Quarter.

For those with time to spare, the desert plateau is littered with tombs, temple ruins and smaller satellite pyramids. There’s no doubt, however, that the main draw for most visitors are the four most famous sights: the Great Pyramid of Khufu, the Pyramid of Khafre, the Pyramid of Menkaure and the Sphinx.

At the center, Khan el Khalili.

Museum and the city’s best shopping options. STREET-LEVEL EXPLORING Sample the city at rush hour when a battalion of honking cars chokes the business districts, drowning out the muezzins’ call to prayer, and you’ll get an idea of why it is regarded as one of the most important economic engines in North Africa. In this place of often-stark contrasts, it pays to start with the familiar. Whether you are a return visitor or someone who has never set foot in Egypt, nowhere is more recognizable than the pyramids. The last remaining wonder of the ancient world—and a seemingly eternal tribute to the might and organisation of the Egyptian Empire—the pyramids are a short hop (around 18 kilometers) across the Nile from downtown Cairo.

STROLL THROUGH HISTORY While nowhere in Cairo itself is quite as venerable as the pyramids, which are reckoned to be at least 4,500 years old, if not much older, the modern traveler can take an evocative step back through the centuries at a variety of sites. One of these is the Khan el Khalili, the historic center of Islamic Cairo and still one of the most atmospheric bazaars in the Arab world. While the mercantile bustle has been slightly sanitized due to tourist footfall, there is still plenty of quality in the stalls and shops that line the narrow passageways of the souk, with glassware, old antiques, handcrafts and other Egyptian souvenirs among the bounty. The bazaar is also notable for fantastic old cafés such as El-Fishawi and array of street snacks such as fresh-cooked falafel or hummus with hot flatbreads. A LUNCHTIME FEAST Indeed, food is as central to life in Cairo as it has been since ancient times. The dining scene in the city has evolved as rapidly as any in Africa, with hip hideaways and blowout venues on the banks of the Nile catering to a discerning audience. Sometimes though it pays to go back to basics. And in Cairo,

Al Azhar Mosque.

few places do the simple things better than Abou Tarek, which has been serving up an exemplary version of the local classic koshary—al-dente macaroni, rice and lentils topped with tomato sauce and crispy fried onions—since the 1950s. Replenished with ballast to re-enter the fray, lunch should be a precursor to visits to more of the city’s compelling historic sights. In a place where incredible Islamic architecture is almost as abundant as cars, the Al Azhar Mosque stands out from a crowded field. The complex houses a university, one of the oldest institutions in the world with roots dating back to 970AD. But the main lure is the graceful mosque—Cairo’s oldest— whose architecture has been shaped over time Egyptian history including rule by the Turkish Ottoman Empire and the slave-warrior Mamluks. A fitting place to round off a tour of Cairo’s often byzantine history is at

its Museum of Islamic Art (miaegypt.org). The institution is one of the best-curated museums in the Middle East, its collection numbering more than 80,000 objects from across the Islamic world. It’s another unmissable experience in a city that is replete with them.

Sheraton Cairo Hotel & Casino Perched on the west bank of the River Nile, one of Cairo’s greatest landmarks, and with the pyramids at Giza only 20 minutes away, the hotel is one of the best locations to stay in this teeming metropolis. Galae Square.

Tranquil Hyde Park.

Down by the Water ONE OF THE WORLD’S MOST SCENIC CITIES, SYDNEY DEMANDS YOU TAKE ADVANTAGE OF ITS AMENITIES, BOTH NATURAL AND MAN-MADE, ON ANY VISIT. SO M E D EST I N AT IO N S are growers. Others barely even break sweat in stating their case to visitors. And despite sizzling summer temperatures that keep the buffed bodies on Bondi Beach bronzed, Sydney is very much in the latter category. Draped around one of the world’s finest natural harbors and a string of gilded stretches of golden sand, Australia’s largest city is nothing if not a looker. Indeed, a compelling case could be made for it as one of the world’s most aesthetically appealing places.

WAKE TO A VISUAL FEAST The Harbour City is full of eye candy. It’s there when you stroll along the coastline on a trail that links its eastern beaches. It’s there when you explore leafy enclaves such as Glebe, Balmain, Vaucluse and Rose Bay. And when you walk north from Hyde Park through the Royal Botanical Gardens to be greeted by the sight of Sydney Opera House (sydneyoperahouse. com) and Sydney Harbour Bridge vying for attention. There’s plenty of substance to this thoroughbred show-pony though.

Historic neighborhoods thrum with energy, while a generous selection of lush green spaces offer scope for a stroll, a casual kick-about or even an interlude of blissful reflection. A CITY OF LANDMARKS Sydney’s modern history though began on the harbor with the arrival of a first fleet of British ships in 1788: the precursor to the establishment of Australia as a far-flung penal colony. And it is down by the same body of water—just a short walk from the Sheraton Grand Sydney Hyde Park—that many visitors choose to start an exploration of Sydney. There are few better places to begin than at the city’s iconic opera house. Now rightly considered a cornerstone of 20th century architecture, the structure—designed by Dane Jorn Utzon to visually represent the sails of a yacht—was beset by delays during its construction. There’s no ambiguity though about the finished structure, which is a soaring

A taste of Darling Harbour.

presence. It hosts theater, dance, concerts and opera. But if you can’t catch a show, guided tours uncover the stories, history and magic of Australia’s most famous landmark. TAKE TO THE WATER The opera house is as much a hit when viewed from the water as it is

Inside the Sydney Opera House.

from land. In fact, many of Sydney’s chief attributes can be witnessed in a different light observed from the deck of a luxury sailing vessel. Of the companies that offer sailing tours around these waters, Harbour Days (harbourdays.com.au) is one of the most respected. It offers a range of water-bound options from one-day tours to personalised sailing and luxury itineraries. The boats begin and end their odyssey at Darling Harbour with highlights including the chance to observe the city’s exclusive harborside suburbs and their beaches, passing the harbor heads and sailing out onto the open sea, enjoying lunch accompanied by Aussie wines and craft beers. THE CITY ON FOOT A brisk stroll away from Darling Harbour, is The Rocks (therocks. com). The strip of land where the first European settlers stepped ashore,

this concentration of cobbled laneways and sandstone buildings swiftly established a bawdy reputation that remained in place from the establishment of the colony until as recently as the 1970s. Gentrification and redevelopment as a tourism and commercial area has cleaned up the area. And today the area is one of Sydney’s most tourist friendly enclaves. Markets, museums, galleries, restaurants and heritage buildings all reward exploration by foot. Many visitors come especially for the area’s historic pubs, which include the Glenmore Hotel where patrons can enjoy 180-degree views of the harbor while supping an ice-cold beer. Another of Sydney’s legendary suburbs is, of course, Bondi. The jewel of Sydney’s laid-back beach culture, the sweeping crescent of sand that fronts the ocean is a great place to bake in the sun or indulge in High tea at the Sheraton Grand Sydney Hyde Park.

The one and only Bondi Icebergs.

some people-watching. For serious swimmers though, the place to make for is Bondi Icebergs (icebergs.com. au). The ocean pool at the southern end of Bondi beach is always crowded with swimmers cramming in the lengths. At A$7 per dip, it’s one of the city’s best bargains. More genteel pursuits can be enjoyed in the city as well. Afternoon tea, for instance, at the Sheraton Grand Sydney Hyde Park, is famous for its combination of refinement and sophistication. Here, guests can enjoy delicious pastries and savoury items served up on luxurious three-tiered Anna Vasily high tea stands. Accompanying the edibles are selections of Vittoria coffee, Dilmah teas and Lindt drinking chocolate. After an indulgent afternoon tea, there is no better place to work off some calories than across the road from the hotel in Hyde Park. Australia’s oldest park has provided green refuge for more than two

centuries. An avenue of majestic Hill’s Figs that line a pedestrian avenue provides the park’s centerpiece, but just as alluring are the various shady nooks found tucked away beneath over 580 mature, exotic and native trees.

Sheraton Grand Sydney Hyde Park The hotel is in a great location for exploring Sydney, with views of Hyde Park, St. Mary’s Cathedral and the middle harbor. Be sure to take advantage of a Club Floor stay that comes with access to Sydney’s premier lounge, the Sheraton Club Lounge. 161 Elizabeth Street.

Brazil in Free Flow

Santos Cathedral.

A SUN-SOAKED PARADISE, THE CIT Y OF SANTOS IS KNOWN FOR ITS FOOTBALL PEDIGREE, AS WELL AS THE SEA, SAND AND SAMBA. IT’S SOMEHOW fitting that the young Edson Arantes do Nascimento got his big break in Santos. Pele, for it was he, signed his first professional contract with the city’s biggest football club at the age of 15 and spent an incredible 19 seasons at the Estadio Vila Belmiro. Throughout this period, the forward built his reputation as one of the world’s greatest players, starring for both club and country. Pele did more than build his own legend in the beachside city. He also helped promote the concept of o jogo bonito (the beautiful game) during an era when Brazil’s free-flowing performances in international competition seemed to effortlessly

channel the carefree spirit of sun, sea, sand and samba. It’s no surprise that this dynamic style of football was nurtured in Santos. A sun-soaked paradise with passion and soul, the city exudes charisma. Although it is only an hour or so from Sao Paolo, Brazil’s vibrant commercial center, Santos has more in common with Rio de Janeiro, 500 kilometers to the northeast. HEAD TO THE SEASIDE As in Rio, life in Santos is very much built around the ocean. One of the oldest settlements in Brazil, Santos was founded in 1546. Its fame grew, and by the turn of the 20th century it was established as one of the

nation’s most important and wealthiest ports, cargo ships laden with export goods, notably coffee, spearing out of its canals and harbor to markets all over the world. Even today, this port is the largest in Latin America. Visitors though come more for the city’s rich heritage and architecture, its picture postcard setting and—most of all—the incredible beach culture. In Santos, the golden, surf-pounded sand serves as a multi-purpose social hub. It’s a catwalk for beautiful people, a gathering spot for families and friends and a testing ground for volleyball players and football stars, eager to follow in the footsteps of the city’s favorite adopted son. With around 17 kilometers of sand to play with, it’s easy to find a choice spot. Even better, the Sheraton Santos Hotel is about two blocks from Embare Beach, a popular stretch of coastline. This cozy relationship with the sea is further consummated in a

Tourist Streetcars santos.

dining scene that goes big on delicious fresh seafood. For stunning marine fare in a deceptively simple setting, head for Porta do Sol in the historic center. Wash down a mocequa (Brazilian seafood stew) with lashings of fruity sangria. The tang of the Atlantic hangs tantalizingly in the air at an enviable selection of outdoor bars and venues where live bands and DJs major in everything from rollicking baile funk to sensuous samba. Some of the best entertainment options can be found just in front of Santos Shore and Gardens, which at around seven kilometers long, ranks as one of the largest of its kind in the world. While nearby venues come alive at night, the garden—with its 815 flower beds and extensive cycle paths—is best enjoyed when the sun is golden in the sky. Offshore, things are equally spellbinding at the Laje de Santos State Marine Park (lajedesantos. com/site/). Located some 45

Laje de Santos State Marine Park.

Kicking about at the Pele Museum.

kilometers from the mainland, the marine park, which is centered around the barren islet of Laje de Santos, offers some of the best underwater action in the state of Sao Paolo. Turtles, manta rays and dolphins are plentiful with visibility of up to 35 meters on good days. BACK ON DRY LAND Equally stunning and more accessible for landlubbers is the funicular ride to the church of Montserrat. While the church itself is not particularly special, the views over the city and its shimmering bay are worth making the journey for. Another unmissable ride is the one offered on the city’s famous Tourist Streetcars. Departing from Valongo station—built in 1867 for the first railroad in Sao Paolo state—the streetcars travel for five kilometers through the historic center. The route passes by top heritage sites such as the Carmo Covent Complex, two conjoined churches considered two of the

oldest examples of Brazilian baroque, the Andrada Pantheon, the resting place of the ashes of Brazil’s “father of independence” Jose Bonifacio de Andrada e Silva, and Santos Cathedral. If you don’t manage to hitch a ride on the special Pele streetcar—a 1920s tram adorned with imagery of the star painted by local artists Leandro Shesko—the best place to pay homage to the player (and Brazilian soccer in general) is at the Pele Museum. In addtion to audio-visual footage of some of his greatest moments, the impressive museum has a collection of more than 2,400 items amassed during the player’s lifetime. These range from a shoe-shine box he used to collect money during his impoverished childhood to his player of the tournament award from the 1970 World Cup in Mexico, regarded by many as a high-water mark in the sport that is yet to be surpassed.

Sheraton Santos Hotel Close to the city’s famous beachfront and its aquarium, the hotel also has quick access to the Pele Museum, the city’s convention center and its port. For extreme ease of access, there’s a rooftop helipad and a skyway to an adjacent shopping mall. 70 Rua Guaiao

Bangalore Palace.

A Still Green Getaway BENGALARU REMAINS A BREATHE OF FRESH AIR WITH ITS ABUNDANT GREEN SPACES AND NODS TO HISTORY. REMEMBER TO BRING YOUR APPETITE ALONG AS WELL. I N M A N Y WAYS Bengaluru defies preconceptions of major Indian cities. While few would deny the innate charisma of centers such as Mumbai, New Delhi and Kolkata, even their most ardent defenders admit they often veer towards the chaotic. Bengaluru, or Bangalore as it is often still referred to, is different. It may be India’s third-largest city, but an enviable infrastructure and array of creature comforts that encompass a burgeoning drinking, dining and shopping scene make it visitor-friendly. Once called the “Garden City of India” thanks to its lakes and green spaces, Bengaluru has become

increasingly urbanized, becoming a center for innovative entrepreneurs and start-ups. Nevertheless, the city is blessed with charming parks and striking Victorian-era architecture. Its modern metro makes it simple to buzz between hipster enclaves studded with craft-beer bars, music venues and coffee roasters to atmospheric Hindu shrines. PALACES AND PARKS A perfect and easily identifiable landmark to start your wanderings in the city is the sprawling Tudorinspired estate of Bangalore Palace. The private residence of theBangalore Palace. Wodeyars, erstwhile maharajas of

Chime Bar.

Karnataka, the palace was built in 1887 by King Chamaraj Wadiyar. The late monarch apparently took inspiration for the palace from Windsor Castle in England and other grandiose structures in Scotland and the north of France. While the exterior is inspired by the stolid architecture of northern Europe, Indian traditions really move to the fore inside the palace. Highlights include ornate cornices and patterned walls as well as elephant hunting trophies and an art collection featuring works by Raja Ravi Varma, one of India’s most famous painters. More venerable still than the palace is Lal Bagh, which is arguably Bengaluru’s most beloved idyll. Laid out in 1760 by famous ruler Hyder Ali, the expansive botanical gardens are at least partly responsible for the city’s reputation as India’s greenest metropolis. Spread across 98 hectares of landscaped terrain, Lal Bagh was inspired by the great gardens that were being cultivated by the Mughal rulers in the north of India. For their own slice of Eden though, Hyder Ali and his son Tipu Sultan—who oversaw the building of the garden—looked further afield,

Bannerghatta Biological Park.

importing different species of trees and plants from around the world. While Lal Bagh is as genteel a green haven as you will find in India, a much rawer visitor experience is just outside the city at Bannerghatta Biological Park. Although it’s little more than a stone’s throw away, the 104-square-kilometer dense forest and scrub is as wild as it gets in the vicinity of a major population center. Tigers, bison, leopards and wild boar all roam here while the park is a main corridor for wild elephants migrating between the Eastern and Western Ghats—the mountain ranges that frame the Deccan Plateau in the interior of South India. There’s a host of wildlife-themed activities for visitors at the park ranging from big cat safaris to a snake park where it is possible to get up close and personal with an impressive if daunting collection of slithery creatures. TEMPTED BY THE TEMPLES Given Bengaluru’s plethora of green spaces, well-preserved colonial-era architecture and its many manifestations of contemporary consumer culture, it can sometimes be easy to forget that the city is the

Food galore at VV Puram.

capital of staunchly Hindu Karnataka, where an estimated 84 percent of the state’s population practice the religion. Closer inspection though reveals a place that is studded with numerous colorful temples and shrines. Few are more atmospheric than the Dodda Basavana Gudi, better known as the Nandi (Bull) Temple. Set in a small park, the temple is accessed via a shady path. While the 16th-century temple, built in a Dravidian style prevalent in South India, is striking in its own right, many come here to view the huge stone monolith of Nandi, the gate-guardian deity of Kailasa, the abode of Lord Shiva. The giant bull is embellished with lavish flower garlands. For locals, the unifier is food. Bengaluru abounds with options ranging from the fine Italian cuisine at Le Cirque Signature to a multicourse extravaganza at Grasshopper. At the Sheraton Bengaluru Whitefield Hotel & Convention Center, be sure to order a gin tonic which features the house-infused gin, botanical blends of nut meg, awadi spices, star anise and more. Don’t miss dining along VV Puram, the city’s famous food street.

Nandi (Bull) Temple.

Located in the center of town at Sajjan Rao Circle, close to Lal Bagh, this thindi beedi (eat street) runs the gamut of vegetarian delicacies from across India. Must-tries here include crispy masala dosas (lentil crepes stuffed with spiced potato) served with groundnut chutney and sambhar (a thin tamarind-based curry) and gulkand, a sweet preserve of rose petals that makes an ideal sinful coup de grace to any day in South India.

Sheraton Grand Bengaluru Whitefield Hotel & Convention Center Located in the heart of India’s Silicon Valley, the hotel is the city’s largest premium meeting and conference destination. As an added bonus, its highly rated food and beverage outlets include Chime Bar, Feast and InAzia. Prestige Shantiniketan.

Beijing Beckons RICH WITH HISTORY, THE CHINESE CAPITAL ALSO BRIMS WITH MODERN OFFERINGS FROM CUISINE THROUGH TO ARTS AND DESIGN. B E IJ I N G IS A C IT Y that is rich in gravitas. And the blend of charismatic history and contemporary trappings on offer in the metropolis supplies plentiful grist for willing investigators. There are few better bases to strike out from than the soon-toopen Sheraton Beijing Lize Hotel. Located within walking distance of the city’s Lize financial district, the sleek bolthole is also handily situated for some of the main tourist attractions in the city, making it ideal for business and leisure travelers alike.

IMPERIAL ATTRACTIONS Although the skyscraper-lined streets close to the hotel are indicative of China’s status as a global financial powerhouse, it’s the older, imperial, sights that hold most fascination for the majority of visitors. Near the very top of this list is the massive Forbidden City. Former premier Zhou Enlai stepped in to ensure that the site remained unscathed during the iconoclastic Cultural Revolution and his intervention means the city’s most important palace is also its best preserved piece of the past. The Forbidden City.

The complex—once home to two dynasties of imperial rule—rewards diligent investigation. The three great halls at the heart of the city—the Hall of Supreme Harmony, Hall of Middle Harmony and Hall of Preserving Harmony—are the headline attractions but of equal interest are somewhat more dilapidated, some say more authentic, structures. Another imperial highlight that is an absolute essential must stop on any Beijing itinerary is the Temple of Heaven. The Imperial Chinese emperors were known as the “sons of heaven” and it was here they came to perform solemn rites such as praying for good harvests. The building retains an aura of spirituality providing an oasis in the urban sprawl that is south Beijing. The temple halls are unusual in that their tops are round but their bases square. This reflects a notion—prevalent in Chinese mythology—that heaven is round and Earth is square. LIVE LIKE A LOCAL While the big-hitting heritage sites are rarely anything less than jaw-dropping, a less extravagant

Wangfujing Shopping Street

Temple of Heaven.

form of local history is found along the narrow hutongs that snake their way through some of the capital’s older quarters. These laneways emerged during the Yuan Dynasty in the 13th century and have been a focal point for local life in the city ever since. Some of China’s greatest thinkers and literary figures have emerged from these warren-like lanes, which have fostered a wealth of folklore and colorful traditions of their own. There are many ways to explore these fascinating alleys. Take a pedicab ride through the narrow streets, sign up for lessons in Chinese calligraphy and visits to selected local houses where guests can learn more about the rich history of this offbeat aspect of Beijing life. Modern Beijing though is a place that is defined as much by its present and future as it is by its epic past. No one would deny the grand scale of the Forbidden City or Tiananmen Square. But the modern city is impressive in a different way with world-class shopping, sleek restaurants and hotels, and shimmering skyscrapers.

Colorful Peking Opera.

A must for visitors is Wangfujing Shopping Street, one the city’s more famous retail hubs and is home to long-stayers like Beijing Department Store as well as global luxury brands such as Apple, Prada, Cartier and many more. Hungry shoppers should check out Wangfujing Snack Street, a side alley off the main drag, where it is possible to fill up on everything from dumplings to roast duck. CHINESE ARTS Beijing’s art scene is forever in flux, so it’s a small comfort to realize that Plastered 8 T-shirts (plasteredtshirts.com) is still around. Founded in 2005 by Dominic Johnson-Hill, the offbeat design shop takes full advantage of Beijing icons, reproducing them in wonderful graphic form on T-shirts, toques, hoodies and tote bags. The colorful riffs take on neon signs, selfie culture and the city’s rich past. More traditional entertainment can be sampled via Peking Opera. While not everyone can appreciate the niceties (not to mention the shrill tones) of a performance, nobody can deny the dramatic qualities of the

medium. A breathless rush of colorful costumes and intricate choreography, it’s a visual spectacular that ranks as one of Beijing’s cultural peaks. Authentic performances tend to drag on a bit, three hours-plus is the norm, but the uninitiated can enjoy truncated shows at tourist-friendly venues such as the 800-year-old Imperial Granary (on Fridays and Saturdays), which cuts the original from nine hours to one. At night, thoughts generally turn towards matters gastronomic, no surprise in one of the world’s major food capitals. Beijing’s most iconic dish is, of course, roast duck and there are myriad places to get a fix in the city. One of the most innovative is Sheng Yong Xing. The exemplary duck is a stand out. Caviar topped slivers of crispy duck served on canapé-sized bites of toast makes for an outstanding start to any meal). But recommended too are other Chinese dishes that deploy fresh local produce and creative cooking.

Sheraton Beijing Lize Hotel Located in the financial district of Lize, this opening soon hotel is easily accessible from the international airport and Beijing West Railway Station. Also close by are Tiananmen Square, Temple of Heaven and The Forbidden City. Corner of Fenghuangzui North and Jinzhongdu West roads.

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May 2019

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Rising on The River

A Neapolitan Story

Best of Both Worlds

Change of Pace