Travel
Washington Post: Thai Noodle Stalls
When I arrived in Chiang Mai, Thailand’s second-largest city in the far north, the temperature hovered just above 100 degrees and the humidity was just as intense. I was stiff from my train ride and my back ached from the load I’d been carrying. So it was with relief that I dropped my backpack on the floor of Thai Massage Center, one of dozens I passed on the way to my hotel.
I chose a two-hour session, paid the woman at the desk (about $5) and was led up a staircase to what I believed would be a private, American-style massage room complete with dim lights and soft music.
Lonely Planet: World Food Thailand
Contributed a chapter.
Global Energy Magazine: The Oriental Hotel
They’ve placed me in a corner room overlooking brightly colored, long tail river taxis churning along the Chao Praya River. Fresh orchids embellish and aerate the room. There are slippers perfectly placed by my bed. Ornately cut papaya, watermelon, and pineapple sit on a tiny table next to the window. Outside, a milky orange sunset becomes a symphony of light and shadow–on courtyard palm trees, on the leaden river waters–creating silhouettes of golden Buddhist temples along the opposite river bank.
A few steps down the hall, attendants are eager to serve. A flip of a switch brings a polite knock at the door. My presence creates a stir of activity and contagious, beaming smiles. In keeping with tradition, they place their hands together as if to pray and bow. It’s their customary way of greeting, called “wai”, and I will experience much of this kingly treatment in the days to come.
Wine X Magazine: Germany’s Rheingau Region
It takes just one journey into the heart of Germany’s wine country, beyond the bustling cities of Frankfurt and Cologne, to experience one of the most magical, unspoiled, un-modernized places on earth. This is a land of medieval towns, tiny wine villages and castles that stand like timeless sentinels over the winding Rhine River. This is the fabled land of the Rheingau — a wine region frozen in time and almost too beautiful to bear.
But German wine? You mean that stuff that’s too sweet and the ultimate in unfashionable?
ASTA Network Magazine: The Future of Travel? – To Promote Sustainable Travel, Agents Need To Do Their Homework
Phang-Nga Bay, the idyllic, 400-kilometer body of water off the Andaman sea in southern Thailand is one of the great natural wonders of Southeast Asia. It offers warm, emerald green waters, plenty of equatorial sun, and an occasional fisherman casting a net from a longtail boat. Declared a national park in 1981, the area became famous after the James Bond adventure, “The Man with the Golden Gun”, was partly filmed there and has since become a favorite destination for outdoor enthusiasts.
Visitors are attracted to the natural beauty and the slow, authentic pace of life around Phang-Nga Bay. Visitors are equally fascinated by the area’s bizarre landscape of more than 120 surreal limestone islands resembling jagged, Neolithic skyscrapers that rise haphazardly like nails pounded into the ocean floor millions of years ago.
American Way Magazine: Oriental Cooking School
A cooking school in Bangkok teaches the secrets of Thai cuisine.
We sit classroom style in a room with teak walls and mahogany desks. Sansern Gajaseni, our instructor, stands at the front of the room explaining the secrets of Thai cuisine. “Only in Thai cooking do you find the coexistence of all flavor characteristics,” he says, writing ‘sweet, sour, spicy, salty, and bitter’ on the blackboard. “But the most important principle is balance—we strive for a variety of flavors, textures, and colors in Thai cooking, but all must be in balance.”
Wines & Vines Magazine: Wine Maker Interview – Sybille Kuntz
In Germany’s Mosel/Saar/Ruwer wine region, a land of tradition where vintners can look back across several centuries of family estate lineage, Sybille Kuntz is an anomaly. As one of a very few female winemakers in the Mosel, Kuntz has combined high traditional standards and an avant-garde image that is catching on with consumers and restaurants that have not previously sold much German wine.
The estate of Sybille Kuntz is located at Lieser/Mosel near Bernkastel in the middle Mosel region of Germany. Although just over a decade taking over her family estate (a very short time by the German clock) Kuntz has made a splash on the international wine scene and is part of a growing movement to restore the quality and reputation of German wine by raising winemaking standards, simplifying German wine labels and names, and offering Riesling in a more friendly and elegant package. I caught up with Sybille Kuntz in June while touring German wine country.