Travel Archives -

Kamalaya Koh Samui – a holistic wellness retreat beyond compare

Often, I find myself needing some time off. Time off from the world, from long work days followed by longer dinners, from my computer(s), from my cell phone, from happy hour cocktails, and just from the world… I was seeking a break where I could nourish my body and empty my mind. So I did a lot of research and asked around, considering various options from yoga ashram in India to a Chinese medicine retreat in Northern Thailand. In the end I discovered the best of both worlds in Kamalaya in Koh Samui, Thailand. Continue Reading →

Called to the bar at Gramercy Tavern, New York City

One of the great things about New York City is that you can eat at the bar counter at many great restaurants. As I travel a lot for business, I often end up in some cities during the weekends with no business meals. And that, my friends, is a real luxury indeed.

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Fresh catch off the coast of Lima, Peru

Cebiche is Peru’s national dish.

Also spelled ceviche, seviche, or sebiche, the former being the English-speaking community’s preference, probably because of the pronunciation: SAY-VEE-CHAY. Continue Reading →

Travelling with the toddler to Kyoto, Japan, Part 1

My wife S and I have been to Kyoto many times. But until this past April, we’d never gone there with a young child in tow (of course, since we only had our first child two years ago, that would kind of make sense). This most recent trip, because we had brought along our son T, was remarkably different from all of our previous trips. Our schedule, because we had to plan everything around his schedule, was different. Where we went and what we did each day, because we wanted to do and see things that would be fun for him, was different. And where we ate, because we wanted to go to places that served food he liked, was different.
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Sublime sushi at Kanesaka in Ginza, Tokyo, Japan

I was very fortunate to be in Tokyo recently, at the height of the sakura season. But the highlight of my visit was not the blossoming sakura but the simply sublime sushi at Kanesaka in Ginza. You may know that the well-known Shinji at Raffles Hotel in Singapore is actually a branch of Kanesaka in Ginza. I thought I should go straight to the mother restaurant in Ginza to check out the Kanesaka experience. Continue Reading →

The perfect guesthouse in Gion (Kyoto, Japan)

As mentioned in an earlier post, my wife and I decided to take our two year old son to Kyoto for a weeklong holiday. Because we wanted to visit during sakura (cherry blossom) season, we actually booked our tickets almost a year ago and started looking for places to stay, at the recommendation of friends in Kyoto, in early September. Because sakura season (which is the end of March and early April) is so popular, most places get snapped up months in advance. I actually advice booking your own accommodations no later than August the previous year if you can plan that far in advance. Continue Reading →

Understated flair, untamed fare – The Ledbury in London

Experiencing The Ledbury in London is like taking a hike in the wild. For one, traveling there takes you out of Zone 1 and into raw Westbourne Park (or Notting Hill, depending on which line you’re taking), where the streets are mercifully quiet and the grass in the gardens of the low-rise housing developments is untrimmed. For another, the typically cheery London weather (read: rainy with biting winds) made my girlfriend K and I look like a pair of inept hipster hunter-gatherers after the brisk walk from the tube station to Ledbury Road. Then there was the food itself; each of the eight courses on our lunch tasting menu took us on a sojourn, past bubbling rivers, through pungent loam, into the very heart of some unnamed countryside. Continue Reading →

Two quick pix to launch my sakura family holiday in Kyoto

Hi y’all. Aun here. This is a super short post which will be followed up with many more. My wife S, my 2 year old son T, and I arrived in Kyoto late last night and will be here, sakura spotting and cafe hunting, for the next week. Continue Reading →

Vietnamese dude food at Ms G’s in Sydney

Ms G’s is a fun space. From the name, you know this isn’t somewhere to take yourself too seriously. A play on the acronym for the common food additive monosodium glutamate (MSG), this modern Vietnamese restaurant has kept strong and steady since it opened in Sydney two years ago. Continue Reading →

Postcard from Italy (okay, not really) – Bocca di Lupo in London

I’ve just come back from a two-week holiday in London and Paris, during which I ate until I started hallucinating, and drank more wine than I had in the last twelve months combined. It was, as you can imagine, a completely indulgent vacation of hedonistic proportions, and a blow to my wallet from which it may never recover (hence justifying my purchase of a pretty new wallet from a luxury men’s store near Portobello market). Over this and my next couple of posts, I’ll share some of the more memorable, and hopefully less well-known, restaurants I visited, starting with Bocca di Lupo, a casual pan-Italian joint in London’s theater district.
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A fun workshop in decorating Aizu lacquer

As you can see from the posts that have come before this on, there are many things to see and do when vacationing in Tohoku. There are wonderful onsens to bathe in, great drink to be tasted and purchased, and incredible food to eat. There’s also a rich cultural heritage to explore. One city worth stopping in is Aizu Wakamatsu, which is the main city in Aizu, in the western part of Fukushima. Continue Reading →