Best travel experiences of 2023: Asia

Jimbaran Puri, Bali
Thursday, January 12, 6pm

The sun is drifting down towards a tangerine sea on the beach that flanks Jimbaran Puri, a resort at Jimbaran Bay in southern Bali. I’m sitting beyond the thatched Nelayan Restaurant pavilion at a table out on the sand, bare toes wiggling, lulled by the sloshing of waves and a delicate breeze. The resort is lush and lovely, the staff delightful. I’m tucking into Sumatran braised beef in coconut milk, and slow-roasted Balinese duck leg marinated in spices. Aromas rise, the sun fizzles out, and somewhere in the background frogs croak and xylophones bong. See belmond.com
- Brian Johnston

Sumba, Indonesia
Sunday, February 5, 4.30pm

Sumba’s sea horses.Credit: iStock

To the Sumbanese, the horse is an ancestral being that symbolises wealth and status, gifted as dowry in marriage and even sacrificed alongside its owner during a funeral. An intrinsic part of the culture of this lesser-known Indonesian island, the Sandalwood pony – named after the wood that was traded in exchange for the breed’s forebears – is used during the annual Pasola festival, where blood shed during the rough-house warrior games promises a bounteous rice harvest. But now it’s my turn to experience the power and speed of these sturdy horses, cantering along the shoreline of Nihiwatu Beach – a moment of unfettered freedom that never fails to bring a smile to my face. See nihi.com
- Julie Miller

Narlai, Rajasthan, India
Friday, February 10, 6pm

A leopard, almost camouflaged, waits. Credit: iStock

Sitting in the front seat of our Mahindra 4WD, Gordon is the first to spot the leopard. It’s high above us, silhouetted on a ridge in the granite hills. A male, says Bhupendra, our guide. Lying on its paws, handsome and sleepy-eyed, with the supreme confidence of a predator at the top end of the food pyramid. He’s ignoring us, 100 metres away, nor is he looking at the Rabari shepherd with his flock of sheep at the temple we just passed. The leopard will stay there until nightfall, then it will go looking for a meal, according to Bhupendra, perhaps even in the village. And sure enough, that night I’m woken by the dogs of Narlai going crazy. A leopard has come calling. See ajitbhawan.com
- Michael Gebicki

Hoshinoya, Ubud, Bali
Saturday, February 11, 8am

Hoshinoya resort’s sleek, black, steel cage gazebos balance on thick columns above the jungle greenery so that they are eye-level with the tops of the coconut trees. In cushioned comfort – a mattress underneath and throws behind my back – I lounge about in wait for breakfast, the breeze ruffling the leaves around me. It soon arrives delivered by two staff carrying cane baskets cradled in colourful block-print batik fabric. One basket holds a series of miniature plates touting pretty delicacies: slithers of fresh fish, soy-doused edamame, a mini salad. Another has buns and other sweet treats hiding in porcelain boxes. The last has a rainbow of precision-cut fruit – peeled grapes, wedges of melon, lychees garnished in miniature leaves. In the background, the holy waters of Bali’s Pakerisan River create a heavenly soundtrack. See hoshinoya.com
- Penny Watson

Mountbatten Lodge, Ranakpur, Rajasthan, India
Monday, February 13, 12.45pm

We’ve come for lunch at Mountbatten Lodge, Reggie Singh’s hideaway in the forested hills of Ranakpur, between Udaipur and Jodhpur. Reggie is a jazz aficionado and the sounds of a Herbie Hancock number drift through the trees as I walk up the steps to the terrace where the table is laid out under the octopus limbs of a giant fig tree. Waiters are bustling about with cloches when the leaves rattle overhead and a troop of black-faced langurs appears in the fig tree. Two tawny hounds race from nowhere, leaping in the air, barking and pawing the trunk. It’s a diversion. While all eyes are on the dogs, a langur creeps unseen over the stone wall, grabs a handful of chapattis, bounces into the air and hauls itself to safety. See mountbattenlodge.com
- Michael Gebicki

Bali, Indonesia
Saturday, March 4, 2pm

The Banyan Tree Escape in Buahan.

In the organic garden and natural jungle surrounding Buahan, a Banyan Tree Escape resort, Wayan Wardika shows me his firefly sanctuary, a structure that looks like a bamboo hobbit house around which cicadas whistle, butterflies dance and birds swoop. A fairytale indeed. Inside, he shows me little black gauze boxes, the honeymoon suites to support the fragile breeding cycle of his fireflies. Known as kunang-kunang, these enchanting lamp-lit winged beetles were once a common sight in Bali, their luminescence blinking in the inky green night-time jungle. Now they are not so common, their demise blamed on a collusion of soil, water, air and light pollution. But Wayan is hopeful his project will return these magical creatures, at least to this quieter pocket of Bali. See escape.banyantree.com
- Penny Watson

Jhunjhunu, Rajasthan, India
Tuesday, March 7, 11am

The first living thing I see when I step outside the haveli where I’m staying in this Rajasthani desert town is a pink dog. Not just pink but splattered with a palette of chrome yellow, acid green and a touch of indigo. It’s Holi, the Festival of Colours, when India unleashes its delinquent instincts and sprays dye over anything that moves. I’ve bought clothes especially for the occasion, white cotton kurta pyjamas, to be worn once only. The first encounter is polite, a couple of kids who smear my face with yellow, a vermillion prayer mark is thumbed onto my forehead, but then I venture into a square where Bollywood music is pounding from truck-mounted speakers and it’s game on. Jets of coloured powder arc through the air until we’re all human rainbows. See alsisarmahal.com
- Michael Gebicki

Miho Beach, Japan
Wednesday, March 8, 3pm

I’ve sailed into the port of Shimizu and have taken a Regent Seven Seas shore excursion focused on Mount Fuji but for several hours the famous volcano has remained hidden among sullen clouds. “She is very beautiful but shy,” says tour guide Yumiko apologetically. I’ve almost lost hope of a sighting as we stroll through a pine grove. But then the magic happens. I step out onto Miho Beach and, at that moment, the clouds miraculously wrench themselves apart. Snow-capped Fuji is pyramid-perfect in the distance, fronted by a gravely volcanic-black beach, pine trees and the groaning ocean in Suruga Bay. This is one of Japan’s most stunning views and has inspired woodblock artists for centuries. See japan.travel
- Brian Johnston

Kaga Onsen, Japan
Thursday, March 9, 6.45pm

Everyone who comes to Japan should splash out on at least one night at a luxury ryokan, a style of traditional Japanese inn that leaves you no option but to indulge in full cultural immersion. That’s what I’m doing right now at Araya Totoan, a ryokan in the town of Kaga Onsen, a settlement conveniently placed over a source of piping-hot, mineral-rich spring water. I’m getting around my plush, spacious room with its tatami-mat floors in a traditional yukata robe; I’m soaking in my own private cedar-wood onsen bath, surrounded by manicured gardens bathed in soft lantern light and now I’m on my way to the hotel’s dining room to enjoy a seven-course meal of local, seasonal cuisine. See araya-totoan.com
- Ben Groundwater

Tokyo, Japan
Monday, March 13, 5.30pm

Tokyo is exhilarating but exhausting and, at the end of each day’s sightseeing, I look forward to a treat: cocktails and canape time at Club InterContinental, one of the largest and most luxurious club lounges in the city. After the cacophony of Tokyo, its oasis of calm envelops me in exhausted, welcomed peace. I snuggle into a sofa and feel my buzzing mind and sore feet relax. From here on the 35th floor I can watch dusk fall and lights start to twinkle on skyscrapers, as if I’m sitting inside a glitter ball. Glass of red wine? Some smoked salmon, a bite-sized quiche, a traditional strawberry daifuku sweet? There’s nothing better than a great hotel at the end of a long day. See anaintercontinental-tokyo.jp
- Brian Johnston

Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
Tuesday, March 14, 10.30pm

I’m being led astray. A local has promised to take me to the city’s best secret bars, telling me Ho Chi Minh is full of them now. We’ve walked through dark alleyways, climbed up rickety staircases, and drunk cocktails in bars that look as boho as Melbourne’s deepest, darkest laneway equivalents. Then I walk into Rabbit Hole just as a man on piano and a woman with a microphone on a tiny stage launch into Bill Withers’ Just The Two Of Us. The walls are purple, the booths are satin-covered, the cocktail menu is of War and Peace thickness while the joint itself is so dimly lit, I’m not quite sure who I’m smiling at. See facebook.com/rabbitholebarhcm
- Craig Tansley

Pererenan, Bali
Tuesday, March 21, 9pm

The streets around my villa in the south coast Balinese neighbourhood of Pererenan have morphed from a frangipani-scented paradise into a hell-hole alive with monsters, ogres and ogah ogah whose five-metre grisly frames are the stuff of nightmares. It is the night before the annual Balinese Nyepi celebration, when an auspicious 24 hours of silence, fasting and meditation falls on the island. Before it does, the streets must be rid of evil spirits. I get carried along in the procession and the festive madness, my way lit only by sticks of fire, the occasional street lamp and the excitement of following a charismatic crowd through the darkness. When all the streets have been walked and stalked, we make our way to the banjar or local town hall, where a ritual burning clears the way for welcoming good spirits into the new year. See indonesia.travel
- Penny Watson

Hong Kong, China
Tuesday, April 4, 10pm

I draw back the luxurious velvet curtains and step inside the DarkSide, a dimly lit jazz club inside the Rosewood hotel. It’s packed with members of Hong Kong’s high society, enjoying fine wines, whisky and hushed conversation. A DarkSide host guides me to a prime table near the stage, shining the light of a mini-torch on a cocktail menu inspired by the game of mah jong. Roll the dice, she says. It lands on number one. I choose the “1″ cocktail inspired by spring, my favourite season. It’s a zesty take on a gin highball, refreshing with tangerine, peach and longan notes. On stage, a gorgeous diva is belting out an Adele song with all the passion and yearning of the unrequited. See rosewoodhotels.com
- Kristie Kellahan

Amami Oshima, Japan
Thursday, April 6, 2pm

I don’t know what I was expecting but it wasn’t this. When we dock at the largest island in the Amami archipelago between Kyushu and Okinawa, our decision to visit the Tanaka Isson Memorial Museum is made almost at random. We’ve never heard of the artist but here we are, wandering through a striking series of pavilions inspired by traditional rice storehouses. The art is breathtaking. Tanaka was a master at capturing lush flowers and verdant leaves on canvas but laboured in obscurity for much of his life, working menial jobs to buy supplies. His work deserves to be much more widely known. See exploreamami.com
- Ute Junker

Osaka Castle Park, Japan
Thursday, March 30, 4pm

My global petal pilgrimage has brought me to Japan, cherry blossom central. It’s the final day of my trip, a sunny blue-sky stunner in Osaka. After chasing the delicate pink and white spring flowers from New York to Tokyo and Kyoto, the best has been saved for last. Throughout the grounds of Osaka Castle, hundreds of cherry trees are in peak bloom, their branches weighed down in the most spectacular way. I’m completely dazzled, laughing out loud as I make my way by office workers and families picnicking under the softly falling petals. See japan.travel
- Kristie Kellahan

Tiger Hill, Darjeeling, India
Thursday, May 11, 4.50am

First light on Mount Kanchenjunga.Credit: iStock

It’s 3.15am when a waiter enters my room with a tray of tea and biscuits. Dawa, my Sherpa guide, has organised a pre-dawn trip to Tiger Hill to see the rising sun burnishing the peak of Kanchenjunga, the world’s third highest peak “with breakfast”, he promises. After a one-hour dash from Darjeeling, here I am at Tiger Hill, white plumes steaming from my mouth. It’s an anxious time, pre-monsoonal cloud piled over the tea plantations, but then the clouds heave and part and Kanchenjunga appears, the Five Treasures of Snows, a cresting wave of rock and ice bathed in gold. See windamerehotel.com
- Michael Gebicki

Werapitiya, Sri Lanka
Wednesday, August 30, 3pm

When monsoon season arrives in Sri Lanka, it does so with a vengeance. We’re caught unawares during a walk from Santani Wellness Resort to the nearby village of Werapitiya, where a rickety suspension bridge provides a perilous passage across the Hulu River. But as we recover from our shattered nerves on smooth river boulders, the heavens open; the rain gushes in blinding sheets, and puddles soon become rivulets. After seeking shelter under a makeshift thatch, we finally give in to the soaking and brave the climb back home. Tomorrow, our guide says, guests will have to wear leech boots on their excursions, the emergence of the slippery suckers a ramification of the tempest. See santani.com
- Julie Miller

Bangkok to Kanchanaburi, Thailand
Thursday, September 7, 2pm

Catching the local, third-class train from Bangkok to Kanchanaburi is a captivating 2½-hour journey that rattles through an emerald green landscape of farms, villages and flooded rice fields punctuated by glittering Buddhist temples. Filled with a mix of locals and travellers, it’s an infinitely more engaging alternative to the cramped minivans that ply the same route. Sprawled across a bench seat by an open window, I sit back and enjoy the rush of warm, sticky air and savour the clamorous procession of local food vendors that clamber aboard at each station. See thailandtrains.com
- Rob McFarland

Chiang Mai, Thailand
Wednesday, September 13, 6pm

Several of Chiang Mai’s Buddhist temples offer a “Monk Chat” program, a chance for visitors to sit with a group of resident monks and learn more about their lives. For tourists, it’s an opportunity to actually interact with the monks, rather than just photograph them as they shuffle around the city in their trademark saffron-coloured robes. For the monks, it’s a chance to practise their English. I attend sessions at several temples, but by far the most insightful is at Wat Chedi Luang with an eloquent and engaging 20-year-old called Mop. He grew up in a remote Karen hill tribe community in the north of Thailand and, like many youngsters from impoverished backgrounds, becoming a monk was the only way for him to obtain an education and, as he puts it, “find a new path”.
- Rob McFarland

Pak Beng, Laos
Monday, September 18, 6pm

Riverside at Pak Beng, Laos.Credit: iStock

I’m sitting with a cold Beerlao on the balcony of my guesthouse in the hills above Pak Beng, a small village on the banks of the Mekong River that’s the half-way point of a two-day boat trip with Shompoo Cruise from Chiang Khong, Thailand to Luang Prabang, Laos. From this elevated vantage point, I watch a mesmerising montage of vessels glide by, from longtail speedboats and plush two-storey river cruisers to hulking cargo barges and simple fishing canoes. Sure, a road transfer would have been quicker and cheaper, but this moment is priceless. See shompoo-cruise.com
- Rob McFarland

Namaiitakaigan, Japan
Tuesday, September 26, 2.58pm

I close the door of the phone box behind me and lift the receiver to my ear. “Hello?” I say. No-one answers, but that is besides the point. In the years since Japan’s 2011 earthquake-triggered tsunami flattened this part of the Iwate coastline, thousands of bereaved people have come to the “Phone of the Wind” to connect with those lost on that fateful day. More still have found an outlet here for other griefs. Their messages of pain and hope are penned in the notebooks stacked on a shelf beside a pot of flowers and a box of tissues. I conclude my own sorrowful conversation, replace the receiver, and return to a garden shaded with slowly turning maples and crepe myrtles flushed with summer’s dying blooms. See bell-gardia.jp/en
- Catherine Marshall

Phnom Penh, Cambodia
Sunday, October 1, 11am

Standing next to the ribbon-adorned “killing tree” in Choeung Ek, the place where thousands of infants and children were murdered by the Khmer Rouge during Pol Pot’s brutal reign of Cambodia from 1975 to 1979. Located 17 kilometres out of Phnom Penh, the former orchard is now a moving memorial to the estimated 20,000 people who were executed here, with an elegant stupa containing fragments of clothing and thousands of exhumed skulls. A place of unimaginable suffering, it’s a salient reminder that travel’s most affecting and memorable moments aren’t always pleasant, but often essential. See tourismcambodia.org
- Rob McFarland

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Saturday, October 7, 10.30am

In a quiet breezeway tucked behind the chaos and stench of Chow Kit Market – Kuala Lumpur’s largest wet market – is the Nam Kee teahouse, a third-generation family-run business that wears its long history with humble pride, its peeling paint, filth-coated brass ceiling fan and vintage Tiger Beer posters a time capsule of a beloved local institution. With a smile, the shop’s matriarch delivers a steaming cup of kopi cham to the table – a curious and intense mix of coffee and tea – before introducing me to a Malaysian breakfast staple, kaya toast, coated with a sticky blend of coconut, egg and palm sugar – an authentic taste of old Malaysia. See thechowkit.com
- Julie Miller

Angkor Wat, Cambodia
Monday, October 9, 5.30am

Sunrise at Angkor Wat.Credit: iStock

I’m watching the outline of Angkor Wat, the world’s largest religious temple, emerge from the early morning glow, a moment made particularly special by a haunting chorus of pre-dawn drumming and chanting from a festival at a nearby Buddhist temple. Thanks to a 4am start and the efforts of our industrious guide, Sak, our group has front-row seats to this moving experience, sitting cross-legged on the edge of the temple’s northern pool and watching in silent awe as its intricate profile appears like a mystical vision from an ancient dream. See journeycambodia.com
- Rob McFarland

Mekong River, Phnom Penh, Cambodia
Thursday, October 12, 6am

In the early hours, the sun just surfacing, our ship, the new APT Mekong Serenity motors quietly up the Mekong River, in Cambodia. The river’s wide green flooded shores know no boundaries, the muddy waters turning crops of papaya trees and banana palms into sunken forests. Lonely tin houses and lines of palms attempt to shore up the bank only for water to surround them, mocking the effort. Accompanying the hum and murmur of the Mekong Serenity is the far off prayer from the tinny loudspeakers of a temple. Then, looming in the distance, under Renaissance clouds in a pinky-silver-washed morning sheen, is the city of Phnom Penh, its stupendous metal skyscrapers, golden stupas and Silver Pagoda palace coming into sharper focus the closer we get. See aptouring.com.au
- Penny Watson

Bishangarh, Rajasthan, India
Thursday, October 19, 7pm

I’m sitting at the outdoor restaurant on the roof of Alila Fort Bishangarh when there’s a crackle high overhead and a crimson jellyfish blossoms in the night sky. Far below, a luminous snake is winding through the main street of Bishangarh. It’s a wedding procession. There’s the groom dressed in gold and wearing a turban, seated on a white horse. Behind him comes a band, hammering out a furious drum staccato, and then a long string of family, friends and well-wishers. It’s the season for weddings. Crops have been harvested, there’s money in the bank, astrologers, priests, flower-sellers, sari tailors, musicians, caterers and firework makers are busy and there’s no good reason not to party long into the night. See alilahotels.com
- Michael Gebicki