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Posts from the ‘ASIA-PACIFIC’ Category

May 31

26 Comments

Bali’s Lake District and Beyond

It took Bama three trips to get the shot he wanted of the pagoda-like meru at Bali’s most iconic Hindu temple, Pura Ulun Danu Beratan. Persistent rain, not unusual given the fickle weather in the island’s north-central highlands, had dampened his first two visits years ago. Now, he stood transfixed at the postcard-perfect scene before us: bright blue skies with scattered wisps of cloud over Lake Beratan, the temple’s famed meru appearing to float on its calm, mirror-like surface. The dark palm-fiber roofs of both towers had been recently rethatched, and beneath their eaves, lustrous gold-painted wooden carvings shimmered in the early morning light. All was quiet. Read more

Feb 23

18 Comments

Lake Toba, a Second Time

Half an hour after stepping out from Silangit airport’s tiny arrivals hall into a parking lot bathed in morning sunshine, the promised hotel pickup was still nowhere to be seen. It was hardly an auspicious start to a hectic five-day assignment on the Indonesian island of Sumatra. Joining me this time was British photographer Martin Westlake, who’d also shot my Bali food story six months before. Our flight had left Jakarta at 6:45 a.m. on a Monday and we were keen to hit the ground running. Read more

Jan 5

14 Comments

Wandering Hong Kong at Year’s End

The server was getting impatient. Hovering over our table, she made it clear from her thinly veiled annoyance that we’d taken a little too long to order our food. Bama and I were having our Boxing Day breakfast at a no-frills cha chaan teng (local diner) in Cheung Sha Wan, a working-class neighborhood of Hong Kong’s Kowloon Peninsula. We’d crossed the harbor to track down Gold Garden Café and its puff pastry egg tarts made to a traditional recipe. “Did they just come out of the oven?” I inquired politely. “No, you’ll have to wait till 11 for that. The ones we have now are still kind of warm.” Read more

Sep 21

21 Comments

Morning Scenes from the Fire Islands

My favorite fridge magnet doesn’t depict a place, but a polar bear sprawled on the cool blue surface of what must be a zoo enclosure, fast asleep with its snout resting lazily on one paw. Scrawled above the slumbering carnivore is a short message: “I’m NOT a morning person.” That was true once. For I grew up in Hong Kong, a night-loving city that never sleeps, and my family — with the exception of my ever-punctual mom — was often late to bed and late to rise. On weekends or holidays, I relished being able to lie in until 10 or 11 and never felt guilty about letting the morning pass me by. How things change. Read more

Jun 9

21 Comments

Smooth Sailing: An Indonesian Pinisi Cruise

Somewhere in the waters of eastern Indonesia’s Komodo National Park, I tried to steady my camera while bouncing over the waves on a motorized rubber boat making circles around the Ayana Lako di’a, the early morning sunlight reflecting off its gleaming whitewashed hull. It was May 2019 and a last-minute work assignment had brought me an overnight cruise aboard this nine-cabin ship by the local Ayana hotel brand. The name Lako di’a means “safe journey” in the Manggarai language of nearby Flores — a long, thin, and mountainous island slightly larger than Connecticut (or about the size of Montenegro). Read more

May 11

16 Comments

On the Food Trail in Bali

There was a time my knowledge of tropical food-bearing flora was so limited, I recognized nothing other than banana trees. Some of that ignorance can be attributed to my upbringing in Hong Kong’s hyper-dense concrete jungle. While holidaying in my hometown in early 2014, Bama laughed when he realized I had no idea a relatively common plant grown in the soil of the city’s outlying islands—and sometimes on urban rooftops—was in fact the papaya tree. Read more

Apr 25

28 Comments

Saigon, 10 Years Later

As the plane descends over southern Vietnam, I observe braided rivers weaving across a canvas of mangroves and fish ponds, their silty waters glinting in the late afternoon sun. The semi-wild landscape below gives way to paddy fields, then the warehouses and factories of an industrial estate, a squiggly-shaped golf course, and expanding suburbia: empty plots of land bounded by small roads that carve out man-made patterns in asphalt. Read more

Jan 13

33 Comments

A Uniquely Hong Kong Christmas

Days before Bama and I were due to leave for our much-awaited year-end trip, my dad sent me a screenshot of the latest weather forecast for Hong Kong and urged us to pack warm clothes. He was right to worry. It turned out to be the coldest Christmas I had probably experienced back home, with temperatures in the city falling to 8 or 9°C (about 46–48°F) at first — downright chilly compared to equatorial Indonesia. Read more

Nov 30

31 Comments

Memories of the Mandarin

“Doesn’t it feel like you’ve come home?”

My tablemate posed me the question over lunch at Man Wah, a refined Cantonese restaurant on the 25th floor of Mandarin Oriental, Hong Kong. Before polishing off a small platter of the best dim sum I’d eaten all year, I couldn’t help revealing my personal connection to the storied five-star hotel dubbed the MO. More than a decade ago, when this blog was still in its relative infancy, I worked at the bustling Mandarin Cake Shop for two months. Now, I had returned as an invited guest. It felt as though life had come full circle. Read more

Aug 21

18 Comments

On Assignment in Kaohsiung

It must have been in 2017 or 2018 when I first got wind of the dramatic changes happening in Kaohsiung, Taiwan’s biggest port city. While scouring the internet to research potential story ideas one afternoon, I learned about an ambitious project to transform its once walled-off waterfront from a neglected industrial wasteland to a vibrant arts and culture precinct, with ultramodern buildings designed by big-name architects from abroad. Someday, I told myself, I would go and write a full-length feature article for work. Read more

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