Global Travel Writers: Articles

Echoes of elegance

Sun, 15 Nov 2009 23:03:00 -0500

Opened briefly during August 2009 to for the annual yachting delirium that is Audi Hamilton Race Week, the Hamilton Island Yacht Club opens its stylish, hand crafted doors to members and guests on 25 November. Cleverly designed and inspired by azure Coral Sea colours, this is one seriously well appointed club, creating an element of sophistication rarely seen in the Whitsunday Islands.

Fiona Harper checks out the uber stylish Hamilton Island Yacht Club and Hamilton Island Golf Club

Contact Fiona Harper www.fionaharper.com.au to commission this article. Images are available www.pbase.com/fionaharper/hiyc

Laucala Langour

Sun, 18 Oct 2009 17:39:00 -0400

There is something decidedly exotic about hopping onboard a private jet and being whisked away to a far-flung South Pacific Island. Particularly so when your destination has been declared one of the 100 most beautiful hotels and resorts of the world.

Laucala Island, east of far-flung Taveuni in Fiji, opened in 2008 for just 50 discerning guests who don't mind shelling out upwards of 3800USD per night for a beachfront Plantation Residence. Set amidst a working coconut plantation, at this level of opulence, privacy, exclusivity and exquisite service is de riguer. With astounding attention to detail, assisted by a guest to staff ratio hovering around 7:1, Laucala Island has perfected the art of fine hospitality infused with an element of Fijian warmth.

Fiona Harper is one of few journalists invited to visit Laucala Island. Contact Fiona Harper to commission your exclusively crafted feature or puchase the article for immediate download.

Images are available.

Upstream without a paddle in Bangkok

Sat, 12 Sep 2009 20:01:00 -0400

Stepping gingerly into the long-tail boat, our heavy tread rocking the boat alarmingly, two young children in the stern peer curiously through long- lashed eyes. Offering them my best wide-mouthed, friendly grin, they respond with bashful smiles. Gesticulating to their mother, who has now cranked up the enormous diesel engine and is manoeuvring through other long-tails away from the dock, she cannot hear my words, so I hold up my camera and point to her children, miming permission to take their photo. By now she�s donned a balaclava so I can�t see anything but her dark eyes, making her appear like a villainous baddy from a B grade movie.

Quashing my fears of paranoia, thinking that I�ve stepped onto the wrong boat, I quickly learn that the balaclava is to keep the heavily polluted water from splashing into her face, and I soon wish I had had the foresight to bring my own. Taking her nod of the head as approval, I snap away. Turning the camera around to show the children the screen snapshot, they both roll simultaneously onto their backs, legs in the air, giggling in puerile delight when they see their own faces staring back at them. The crinkling of pleasure in their mothers eyes assures me that I�m on the right boat after all.....

Contact Fiona Harper if you'd like to commission this article. Images are available.

ART OF TEA

Wed, 12 Aug 2009 19:58:00 -0400

Karen Halabi escapes the city for the peace and contemplation of a Korean tea house.

The ancient art of preparing tea is a deeply meditative process that forces one to calm down, relax and lose the worries of the day in the process of making and consuming tea.

In Korea, the art of tea preparation and the meditative ritual of the tea ceremony has been revived in the rash of tea houses that are springing up across the country.

I head to the forest outside Icheon to a Confucian retreat to don a hanbok and find out how it�s done��..

Who pays the Piper?

Thu, 26 Mar 2009 02:27:00 -0400

The streets of Kyneton, less than one hour from Melbourne Airport, are lined with fine old Victorian-era shops and hotels, legacies of the great gold rush of the mid-nineteenth-century. In Kyneton�s Piper Street the vision, the drive and the creativity of a handful of people has created a dining and shopping strip as alluring as any in the metropolis.

Graham Jasper, in an earlier life a successful Melbourne architect, liked the town where he spent his early boyhood so much that he began to buy it up, building by building. His entrepreneurship, together with that of his wife Margaret - who pursues her passion for Persian carpets to the land of the Ayatollahs - has become a driving force on Piper Street.

From pizzeria with pizzazz to fine dining at Annie Smithers Bistrot and Star Anise, Piper Street has enough to keep gourmands, as well as shoppers, strolling up and down its time-worm flagstones all day. The grand old Royal George Hotel, a legacy of the coaching days, offers a sophistication seldom seen outside city limits. Browse the Persian carpets and Venetian glassware at Emporium, a restored cheese factory. Here too is your opportunity to admire the creations of local silversmiths Flynn Silver, whose Bradshaw series evokes the enigmatic rock art of Western Australia�s Kimberleys. Image gallery

The Buddha is alive and well in Central China

Sun, 11 Jan 2009 17:10:00 -0500

During China's infamous Cultural Revolution, anything smacking of religion was brutally suppressed. But now, things are very different. In Henan and Shanxi provinces, the country's rich Buddhist heritage is once more delighting and astonishing the world.

Discover the spectacular stone Buddha sculptures of the Longmen Grottoes and the Yungang Caves. Practice Kung Fu steps with the Shaolin monks. Climb the rickety steps of Sakyamuni Pagoda, the world's tallest wooden structure.

These are just a few of the delights that await on a cultural journey through central China.

Secrets of Bruny Island

Mon, 15 Dec 2008 22:53:00 -0500

Beyond the picturesque bays and sweeping horseshoe shaped beaches, Tasmania's Bruny Island offers much more than just wildlife, beaches and a laid back lifestyle for a few hundred residents. Beyond the penguin nookeries and sea lion caves is an intriguing story of Tasmania's last surviving Aboriginal, Truganini. A native of Bruny Island, whose father was a respected elder, Truganini was finally laid to rest in her homeland when her ashes were scattered in the waters lapping Bruny Island shores many years after her tragic death.

Contact Fiona Harper if you'd like to commission this article. Images are available at http://www.pbase.com/fionaharper

A Chinese banquet with a sting in the tail

Sun, 23 Nov 2008 06:51:00 -0500

Sitting down to the first banquet of the day on a gastronomical tour of China that incorporated 19 banquets over 10 days, not including the ubiquitous breakfast banquet, I was craving some plain steamed rice. However, I was going to have to wait a little longer as an elegantly arranged platter of scorpions on a bed of rice appeared on the table.

Looking around our table, my companions� reaction ranged from revulsion to anticipation as they considered this local delicacy. Taking hold of a delicately crisp scorpion�s tail I placed it between my lips, closed my eyes and crunched firmly into it mid belly, feeling its tiny little body shatter between my teeth.

The tangy little critter, the size of a large shrimp, tasted a lot like a salted peanut, albeit a peanut with legs. Drawing a line in the sand for future banquets, I declared myself to be a scorpion vegetarian, vowing to eat only vegetables for the rest of our gourmand�s tour through northwest China.

Contact Fiona Harper to commission this article. Images are available.

By boat and beer-glass through Bavaria

Sun, 27 Jul 2008 21:07:00 -0400

Munich�s Oktoberfest is justly celebrated throughout the known universe. But lesser-known is the huge range of distinctive local beers to be found throughout Bavaria, Germany�s largest state. A river trip through Bavaria takes in an enticing slice of this diverse beerscape, from Passau in the south to the Franconian region of northern Bavaria, where the heady wines are on a par with the local lagers. See image preview: http://www.photographersdirect.com/simmons/search.asp?lb=7754

That's Singapore - With an 'S'

Sun, 04 May 2008 22:19:00 -0400

THAT'S SINGAPORE � WITH AN 'S'
Singapore doesn't have a Sesame Street. It�s a tiny country, almost entirely city, with a population around three million, yet it could easily be subtitled 'brought to you by the letter S', because when you think about this safe and slick city you can't help but get alliterative.
Everyone knows where Singapore is, just a fish-ball throw from the southern tip of Malaysia, linked by a causeway and ethnically similar. Here, you can indulge in fabulous satays and roti, eye-wateringly hot curries and laksa � even fragrance-challenged durian if you dare � yet you can relax and enjoy it all. The hawker's stalls are strictly policed. There�s no washing up on the footpath here. Tap water is safe to drink, and malaria is unknown because they swatted the last mosquito years ago. It's like a sanitised Malaysia. Squeaky-clean.

(finishes�)
Regardless of the always 30-something temperatures, and the steamy climate that sends people searching for pools, or forces them to chill-out in air-conditioned bars or restaurants, the visitors just keep coming to Singapore. And what do they do when they get there?
Well, they happily stay with the Ss. They sightsee, stay in one of the country's hundred hotels (a thirty percent increase in the past three years) and shop, adding yet another 's' � spending. Singapore's statistics tell us that over seven million tourists from around the world visit Singapore every year and they can expect to exchange quite a bit of currency during their average 3.3-day stay.
Whichever way you look at it, that's plenty of S$s � and Ss.
�Sally Hammond 2007