Shangri-La Istanbul is a great example of how an old, decrepit building is repurposed and turned into a luxury space […]
Archive for ‘ASIA/MIDDLE EAST’
The weird, the beautiful & the Zen of underwater photography
A rock star to underwater photographers, David Doubilet reveals a life shaped early in a lake, when he was an asthmatic boy of eight […]
Singapore Airlines redesigns luxury in its A380 fleet
Ten years after Singapore Airlines became the first to fly the Airbus A380 in 2007, it recently unveiled a major redesign with the hotel-like First Class Suites as the star […]
Marcel Wanders’ luminous space for Fairmont Quasar Istanbul
At Istanbul’s newest luxury hotel, Marcel Wanders designs a unique swimming pool deck while Wilson Associates imagines two sisters coming to the city— classic Paris and modern New York […]
Waking up to the Ottoman Empire at Çiragan Palace Kempinski
The legendary hotel on the Bosphorous Strait that harks back to the sultans’ opulence blended with legendary Kempinski luxury […]
Diving with the turtles of Apo Island
Let me begin by saying that the turtles of Apo Island are as awesome as you’ve seen in pictures and the experience of swimming with them a thousand times more […]
Conrad Manila’s presidential suite is inspired by super yachts
How do you design the presidential suite of a hotel that’s shaped like a ship? Like the interiors of a luxury super yacht of course! The best part of this 1,000-square-meter suite? Stunning views of Manila Bay […]
The Manila Hotel: Built for kings, queens, heads of state & history
It occupies one of the most historic addresses in the country: One Rizal Park, Manila, a stone’s throw away from beloved Luneta and Manila Bay. It’s one of very few places from where you can see the water on one side and the beautiful parts of a reckless city on the other […]
El Nido’s ‘Island of the Sun’
From the top of a hill in Pangulasian Resort, you can see the sunrise and sunset, its 750-meter stretch of white-sand beach and the clear waters of El Nido. All those “best in the world” lists got it right. El Nido is paradise […]
Raffles Istanbul: Asian hospitality & European timelessness
He brought the pink balloons out on the balcony in the cold November air. “Make a wish and then let them go,” he told me. And so I did. We watched them float, carried by the autumn wind into Istanbul’s skies, until we couldn’t see them anymore […]
Coron: The best of Palawan’s thousand treasures
The gods of our islands and legends are very cruel. But what they take away with a curse and punishment they give back with an embarrassment of riches. In the case of Palawan, they gave it 1,870 islands and a 2,000-kilometer coastline […]
Postcards from Petra
It’s a spectacular sight of rose-colored cliffs rising to meet the skies, and on the sandstone is carved The Treasury, imposing itself onto your senses. I almost cry seeing this.[…]
Big love from Bohol’s Amorita Resort
From sea to table, that’s how Amorita (“small love in Spanish) opened its new tapas bar Tomar. The tapas and pintxos were heavenly! […]
Cappadocia & other Turkish delights
Gliding over Cappadocia is everything that is and more than the pictures you’ve seen on someone else’s vacation […]
Stopover Asia: 5 cities, 5 hours each
What to do when you’re on a long layover in these five Asian cities? Locals guide us through Hong Kong, Singapore, Jakarta, Kuala Lumpur and Bangkok […]
Falling in love with Japan, one prefecture at a time
Perhaps this the reason why sakura season is so revered in Japan: it lasts only a week, and when the week is over, they begin to fall — never to be seen again until the following year […]
Istanbul: A story told in two continents
I didn’t fall in love with Istanbul until I was about to leave it. And by then, I was so completely enamored of the place that I would come back two months later […]
Untangling Bohol
Of all places to plan a trip, we did it in a funeral chapel. It was toward the end of […]
A short post about Hobbits
One Sunday afternoon in September 1998, a New Line Cinema film executive knocked on the door of a farmhouse in […]
Because this is Boracay
In the morning, I open one eye and see my cousin on the bed next to mine reading a book. I don’t know where I am. That is never a good sign for the night before […}
The 38th Parallel
To this day, when I hear Blind Melon’s No Rain, I think of the 38th parallel — the demilitarized zone […]
The light of Angkor Wat
There is an old folk tale that goes if you whisper your deepest secrets into a hole on an old […]
