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Hong Kong: Big vistas and even bigger ambitions

Sat, 18 May 2013 18:00:00 GMT

When Batman flew by helicopter over Hong Kong harbour five years ago, he made minor movie history. Film aficionados will know that the scene from The Dark Knight was the first in a major feature film to be shot with an IMAX camera. The director, Christopher Nolan, chose it for one reason – the pictures it captures are simply enormous.

Vietnam: Visions of a coast that's changing fast

Fri, 10 May 2013 23:00:00 GMT

Nowhere is the current pace of Vietnam more palpable than on Route 1A, the transnational highway that races from the Chinese border in the north to the lowlands of the Mekong Delta. Traffic rattles past on all sides. Horns blare. Motorcycles hurtle by, carrying three generations of one family on the back seat. This is a country that's going places. Fast.

48 Hours In: Kathmandu

Fri, 10 May 2013 23:00:00 GMT

Travel Essentials

Why go now?

This month sees the 60th anniversary of the historic first ascent of Everest by Sir Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay, on 29 May 1953.

Feeling the heat in Kolkata

Fri, 26 Apr 2013 23:00:00 GMT

It's no ordinary heat that consumes me as I alight from the air-conditioned carriage of the overnight train from Puri. Sweat puddles are forming in my shoes. Kolkata's humidity is as intense and unmistakable as her people are proud and cerebral. Even my death-wish cabbie plays mind games. As he races invisible enemies, his eyes are on me in the rear-view mirror: it's more a battle of wits than a mere taxi ride.

48 Hours In: Tokyo

Fri, 19 Apr 2013 23:00:00 GMT

Travel Essentials

Why go now?

Tokyo's weather is perfect for sightseeing in April and May, but avoid the city during “Golden Week” (first week of May) when the main tourist draws become very crowded. Better to wait for one of the matsuri (festivals) that are part of city life here. The three-day Sanja Matsuri, which takes place in the Asakusa neighbourhood from 17-19 May, is one of the largest. Around 100 mikoshi (portable shrines) are carried through the streets, leaving the Asakusa Shrine (1) (adjacent to the Senso-ji temple) at 6am and returning at 8pm daily. There is also a parade at lunchtime on 17 May with floats carrying musicians, and performances of traditional dances.

B&B and Beyond: Quintet, Shanghai

Sat, 23 Mar 2013 19:00:00 GMT

In a city characterised by skyscrapers and bright lights, a small and unassuming B&B immediately sets itself apart. Hidden behind high walls and a heavy wooden door, Quintet is so understated that had the owner not sent me detailed instructions on how to get there, I might not have found it. The original 1930s house, in Shanghai's French Concession, has been converted to provide six en-suite bedrooms, a small courtyard strung with fairy lights and a roof terrace with views of the street below. Although the uninspiring façade doesn't look like much, there is plenty to charm you behind the walls.

Colonial echoes in old Calcutta

Sat, 16 Mar 2013 18:00:00 GMT

Walking through Kolkata with its dust-filled air, open sewers and cacophony of car horns, it's hard to believe that just over a century ago this was still the "second city" of the British Empire and the capital of India until 1911.

Barefoot luxury lives on in Phuket

Sat, 16 Mar 2013 00:00:00 GMT

At the southern end of Pansea Beach, on Phuket's west coast, stands a line of perfectly spaced lemon-yellow Japanese parasols. With their elegantly tapered spines and frills they create a sweet, painterly scene between two sets of huge, theatrical boulders, as if recently abandoned by a group of holidaying geisha. A uniformed figure weaves his way between the parasols, spraying an even and ordered path of cold water on the midday sand: at the Amanpuri resort, where San Pellegrino is served in crystal Riedel shiraz wine glasses and staff outnumber guests three to one, no one has to suffer the indignation of walking across inconveniently hot ground.

Postcard from... Tunisia

Thu, 07 Mar 2013 00:01:40 GMT

The Harlem Shake video produced by students at a language school in Tunis looks familiar enough. There is a boy with a cardboard box over his head dancing wildly, a girl in a dressing gown jumping up and down, a mass of hair bouncing with her.

Postcard from... Malaga

Tue, 05 Mar 2013 21:47:54 GMT

Postcard from... Jerusalem

Tue, 05 Mar 2013 01:15:04 GMT

I thought I was doing so well. Since arriving in Jerusalem as this paper’s correspondent I have made a concerted effort to get fit. After a few years on the foreign desk in London, and consequently getting little exercise, sleep, vegetables, etc, I thought I’d shed a few pounds by running round my new home.

Trail of the unexpected: Where to dally in Delhi

Sat, 02 Mar 2013 00:00:00 GMT

All life was crammed into the micro-lanes. Barely the breadth of the average person, the implausibly narrow alleys of Delhi's Paharganj district were lined with tailors, saucepan traders, one-man goldsmith workshops and mini cyber cafés overhung with washing. There was even a tiny garage mending motorbikes. As we snaked along, our guide, Tabrez, stopped beside an egg merchant who was precariously cooking in the path on a portable gas ring – a triumph of balance and spatial ingenuity.

Where to dally in Delhi

Sat, 02 Mar 2013 00:00:00 GMT

World's first panda hotel opens

Wed, 27 Feb 2013 11:10:05 GMT

These images show the soft opening of a new hotel in China, in which pandas parade through the halls and wait on the guests.

48 hours in: Shanghai

Fri, 22 Feb 2013 07:00:00 GMT

Click here for 48 Hours In... Shanghai map

Terence Carter in Hanoi, Vietnam

Fri, 22 Feb 2013 07:00:00 GMT

"You won't hear anything – they're soundproofed," the Hanoi real estate agent lies to us about the karaoke bars adjacent to the fifth-floor apartment my wife and I are about to rent for three months.

Bowled over in India? A second innings in the subcontinent

Sun, 17 Feb 2013 00:00:00 GMT

Nipple-deep in sewage, my view of India soured. I was not going to be returning. This was 2008 and my honeymoon. We were in Madurai, in the south of the country, where you can lay your hands on any kind of textile or fabric you can imagine, where the Meenakshi Amman temple overshadows everything with its thrusting towers of Pop Art-esque friezes, where elephants are trained to take your rupees in return for "blessings" and where, in August, it is still monsoon season.

48 hours in: Ho Chi Minh City

Fri, 15 Feb 2013 12:00:00 GMT

Travel Essentials

Why go now?

The dry season in the southern portion of Vietnam runs from December to April, making now the ideal time to visit the country's biggest metropolis. The city will also be in party mode on 30 April. Liberation Day celebrates the anniversary of the end of the American War and the reunification of the two halves of Vietnam in 1975.

Underground Thailand: Subterranean spirits

Sat, 09 Feb 2013 00:00:00 GMT

Our guide Ong advised casually: "Watch out for the crocodile." I stopped dead in my tracks and peeled my eyes from the slippery cave floor to look at his retreating back, a few steps ahead. When he turned, the smile in his eyes told me there was nothing to be afraid of: the reptile he was referring to was a limestone statue with unmistakable jagged jaws. I wouldn't have been surprised had it been a real one. So far I'd encountered bats, beetles, a centipede, a snake – coiled and hissing – and a spider with sharp, slender legs as broad as a dinner plate. This dark, humid cavern, it seemed, is a popular hangout for local wildlife.

A taste of India: Learning to cook in Kerala

Sun, 03 Feb 2013 00:00:00 GMT

Hanging upside-down off the back of a wildly bobbing boat is not the best time to do the grocery shopping. Eye-to-eye contact is, I'm told, a key to successful bartering but, like keeping my breakfast down, I'm finding it hard to maintain.

Macau: A city layered with cultural quirks

Sun, 27 Jan 2013 00:00:00 GMT

Order a generous slice of Macau and you'd be brave to swallow it whole. This is a historical layer cake of clashing flavours. Long, unremarkable centuries of sleepy ancient Chinese fishing villages infused with a whiff of incense from Taoist temples. A slab of Portuguese colonialism – rich, centuries-thick and packed with spices. And on top, a great slathered-on crust of neon candy – luminescent pink, saccharine sweet, saliva-inducing.

Borneo: You don't have to be an explorer to enjoy this exotic land

Sun, 27 Jan 2013 00:00:00 GMT

The day before I leave for Borneo, an island so wild it seems absurd to say you're going there on holiday – expedition sounds better – someone recommends me a book. It is, of course, Redmond O'Hanlon's Into the Heart of Borneo, a witty account of the trip he and the poet James Fenton made in 1983. Theirs really was an expedition: they set off up the Rajang river on canoes, looking for rhinoceros in what was then relatively uncharted territory.

A bold family trip to Thailand: Culture shock, death rafts, plague… is this really good for kids?

Fri, 25 Jan 2013 19:00:00 GMT

My mother was sneaky. It was 1994, and for a whole year she had been saving money, squirrelling it away, in order to pay for flights to Thailand. It was a surprise for me (aged eight), my brother Lyall (10), and my dad (unobservant, apparently).

Losing it in Laos: An adventure in Vang Vieng that almost went down the tubes

Fri, 25 Jan 2013 19:00:00 GMT

It's tough to recall after almost 10 years what posed the greatest risk in the flooded cave in which I'd become hopelessly lost: the darkness or the snake that patrolled black pools of frigid water. I was in Laos and a place I would later regret visiting. Vang Vieng used to be a sleepy river village in country known for its calm and natural beauty. Then came tubing. Every day, scores of feckless backpackers in bikinis and boardshorts float down the Nam Song on tractor inner tubes, turning pink as they guzzle cheap beer and leap off rocks. As the activity boomed, so did the number of 'happy' pizzas and vomiting teenagers, helping to turn the town into an ugly scar on the southeast Asia traveller trail.

Pondicherry: A corner of India that is forever France

Sun, 13 Jan 2013 00:00:00 GMT

I'd been driving for three days in Tamil Nadu: from Madurai in the south to Thanjavur (formerly Tanjore), before heading north to Chennai. Every Indian village and rural town along the way was its own mini-Manhattan: people everywhere, horns blaring, permanent rush hour. Everything was colour, activity, pollution and decay. My senses needed a rest. I was looking forward to Pondicherry.