Everest Base Camp: Trek of a lifetime
I woke with a start in the middle of the night to pitch-blackness. My heart was pounding like an out-of-control jackhammer. I pushed my way out of my sleeping bag, gasping for oxygen, and...
Art of the city: Hong Kong’s creative culture
It’s a hot, humid day and I’m craving caffeine. So I head to Smoko, an industrial-chic coffee bar (standing room only) for a cold-brew coffee sweetened with cucumber syrup, crafted by a woman so...
Travelling book club offers ‘novel’ approach to India
Much of what outsiders know about the world’s second-most populous nation is information of the Slumdog Millionaire variety—of slum dwellers, of poverty, of the lack of sanitation. Or it’s the Eat, Pray, Love portrayal,...
Hong Kong’s artful renaissance
To the first-time visitor, Hong Kong can feel overwhelming: a concrete maze of mile-high skyscrapers, thick as a forest, with dozens of cranes on the horizon. There’s a feeling of motion, of a city...
A secret Hong Kong comes alive at night
It’s late at night in Hong Kong’s Central District. An ex-pat friend guides me through a wet market, where stalls sell fruit and vegetables during the day. At this time of night, however, the...
Eat like a local in Vietnam
I had only meant to spend the night—a stopover on a road trip up the coast of Vietnam along the country’s main highway, from Ho Chi Minh City to Hanoi. But somehow a week...
Searching for urban art in the streets of Hong Kong
I’d been by here earlier, on Pottinger Street in Central—one of the oldest pedestrian streets in Hong Kong, dating back to 1858. Also known as stone slab street, it was built using uneven slabs...
Hello kitties! Taiwan joins Seoul and Tokyo on the global runway
It’s easy to get lost in the labyrinth of corridors at the Songshan Cultural and Creative Park in Taipei, a former Japanese tobacco factory built in the 1930s. But you won’t find factory workers...