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“Beware of pick-pockets” we were warned, “and guard your things – especially your passport”. Armed with all kinds of travel lore, we were in for a big surprise when we arrived in Hong Kong on our week-long summer vacation. Well, Hong Kong has surprises galore – especially if you are visiting after more than a decade. But the biggest surprise of them all is – Hong Kong is one of the safest cities in the world and is nothing like what folks back home warned you about!

The Hong Kong International Ai

In essence, travelers will create and share their own travel experience. They, not tourism officials or travel writers, will shape and determine the nature and quality of travel.

Professor Dimitrios Buhalis , Director of the eTourism Lab at Bounemouth University (UK) , tells us what we already intuit: the world "is going to be totally interactive, using personalization, context information and inter-connected devices" that will change the face of travel, already a dynamic, fragmented industry.

Here is an absolutely delicious recipe from Chef Bryan Dame of The Edge Restaurant at the The Inn at Ocean's Edge in Maine. While it is incredibly delicious it is also easy to make and can be served in your own home!

Lobster Fried Rice
Chef Bryan Dame
The Edge

3 eggs, scrambled
12 oz cooked lobster, chopped & tossed to coat with corn starch
6 cups cooked rice (cold)
½ cup thinly sliced celery, bit size pieces
½ cup thinly sliced leek, bit sized pieces
2 tablespoon sesame oil
2 tablespoons

To fully appreciate a wine is to be intimately familiar with its geographical origins and vinicultural heritage. Wines from France's Roussillon region certainly exemplify this truism. Vineyards are surrounded by 3 mountain ranges yielding wide topographical variety and soils with the Corbières to the North, the Pyrenees with Mont Canigou to the West, and the Albères to the South while to the east ocean and mountains meet below on the Pyrénées-Orientales…widely referred to as an amphitheater to t

On one very special eve in July, the 'La Notte Rosa' or 'Pink Night' sees the entire Italian Riviera di Rimini transform into a pink party paradise. The dawn to dusk celebrations are coined as Italy's summer New Years Eve party. It is among Italy's top 5 festivals.

On the first or second weekend in July, the entire 40 km coast line turns pink. The town's shop windows, trees, ancient buildings, fountains and even the river glow pink.The moonlit sky does not escape the ‘tickled pink' treatment. The

Visiting Costa Rica’s Caribbean Coast is almost like going to another country. Very different from the rest of Costa Rica, the Caribbean coastal towns of Limon, Cahuita and Puerto Viejo highlight their Jamaican-African ancestry with reggae music, Creole patois spoken alongside Spanish, a very laid-back attitude, and cultural cuisine like Jamaican spice cake, rice-and-beans, coconut shrimp, and papaya juice.

A main draw to the area is, of course, the Caribbean Sea – known for its crystal clear aqu

Swadee Ka. Relax in the cool azure blue pool as you gaze out at the secluded stretch of warm white sands, only a few feet away with the spectacular green jungle as your back drop.

The pool bar in the centre of the pool will serve you anything from an ice cold Singha beer to a freshly made coconut lassi, sweetened to your taste.

@dreamlandresort.net

If you prefer your fruit picked that morning you can buy a colossal bag of mouth-wateringly juicy pineapple or lychees from the 'wandering beach lady,'

Callejones llenos de polvo. Niños correteando y sorteando a los turistas. El olor a especias que se mete en los pulmones. Una moto por aquí, un burro por allá y los gritos del que quiere vender para ganarse el pan diario. La mezquita como un espejismo. Le parecerá un sueño, una película exótica o un relato de Las mil y una noches, pero Marraquech es real. Y esto es la medina, laberíntica como ella sola y donde no es difícil perderse. Se pueden comprar babuchas típicamente árabes, cuencos de cerá

It all started one day in Malaysia while I was traveling around the world, over a bowl of roti canai at a guesthouse breakfast. A fellow traveler, from Britain, who had just come from a India, and I began talking, until he made a statement that seemed so ridiculous, so far-fetched that I refused to believe it could possibly be true.

As many of you know, I eat spicy. Rare is a dish (besides those from my mother's kitchen) that is too hot for me. That is because, within India, a country famed for i

Will buying an airline ticket soon be as personalized as buying a suit from a sales person? Probably, as trends go.

It's no surprise that airlines want to personalize their relationships to their customers. If they can figure out how, it would be a huge step toward making the ticket-buying process a lot more individualized, and rewarding.

And why shouldn't it be?
After all, buy a book from Amazon or any savvy online retailer, and you're guided to other books you might like based on your readin

Guitar case full of weapons, guns swinging from each hand, whole bars full of villains wiped out by one man and his sharp shooting. It is surely the hallmark of only one man, an actor who can keep both a male and female audience simultaneously breathless (if for very different reasons). Antonio Banderas as “El Mariachi” cuts a lonesome, brooding and very dangerous figure wandering through small town Mexico; dangerous that is if you are on the wrong side of the law in the violent world of the Mex

Watching different kinds of birds and their activities enchants many of us even if we're not be avid bird watchers. The colours of their feathers, the shape of their beaks, their chirping sounds, are all quite interesting to witness. Corbett National Park, being situated in between the Himalayan foothills and the Indo-Gangetic plains, offers an excellent habitat for all kinds of birds, and therefore, this activity can be undertaken while one is staying at Corbett resorts. The forests, the hills

If you enjoy visiting art museums, Paris really is the place to go. In the last 20 years or so, Paris museums 
re-organised their collections and the musée d'Orsay became the  receptacle for art dated between 1848 and 1914.

The Gare d'Orsay

The building that houses the collection used to be a train station and hotel, which due to its proximity to the Louvre needed to be built sympathetically. Its inauguration in 1900 revealed a very fine building where the stone façade hid the metal structure

Dazzling white sandy beaches backed by tropical rainforest, shimmering tropical-warm blue-green water, fresh ocean breezes, and a diverse array of wildlife – Manuel Antonio is one of Costa Rica’s most popular beach destinations. Conveniently located on Costa Rica’s Central Pacific Coast, here you can experience nearly all of the country’s enchanting attractions in one place. There is little that the Quepos/Manuel Antonio area does not offer tourists, from top beaches to lush rainforest, abundant

I have always loved the saying,  “success leaves clues.” Here’s a new saying along that same line: “luggage leaves clues.” What exactly am I talking about?

As I’m settling down to write this, I’ve just gotten into my comfy clothes…sweatpants and a t-shirt. Not just any old t-shirt, but a genuine SkyTeam t-shirt. I donned my slippers with the fancy ‘F’ on them – my comfy Fairmont slippers. I put my book to the side (I’m reading Tim Ferriss’s updated version of The 4-Hour Workweek), marking my pag

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