Highlights from the year in travel
THE biggest travel trends and the hottest destinations in 2014.
THIS year has seen cruising consolidate as the fastest-growing sector of travel, from ocean voyages to river roving. Aside from traditional cruise regions such as the South Pacific and the Caribbean, Australians have increasingly headed to the wild reaches of Alaska and Antarctic and on coastal voyages around Asia, especially to the northernmost island of Japan. Rivers in Asia and South America, such as the Mekong and the Amazon, are proving popular alternatives to European favourites.
Digital detox retreats, glamour camping (glamping) holidays and volunteer tourism have also been growth sectors in 2014 as we search for alternatives to tried-and-tested holidays. There’s an insatiable appetite for groovy designer-driven hotels and resorts, tech-savvy executive clubs, gadgetry and special-interest touring, from photographic safaris to literary trails.
As ever, Australian travellers are knowledgeable and enquiring, whether seeking a soft adventure experience in a national park or hunting down the hottest new restaurants in London or New York. From long weekends to leisurely summer breaks, we are on the road, happily afloat and in the air, exploring our own backyards and the wide world beyond.
FROM island-hopping in economically beleaguered Greece to river cruising in fast-developing Myanmar, this year’s traveller is spoilt for choice.
But industry pundits agree that our holidays will continue to be determined by purse strings and last-minute deals, which means that planning way ahead seems gloriously old-fashioned, unless you are prepared to opt for earlybird deals for 2015, especially on European river cruising or long-hauls.
THIRTEEN boys are writing earnestly in exercise books while sitting cross-legged on a wooden floor. The room, devoid of desks, chairs and blackboard, is in the central west of Bhutan at a monastery-based school that lacks even the most basic educational equipment.
I am visiting Khuruthang Lhakhang to sample a philanthropic program run by Amanresorts, one of a growing number of accommodation and tour operators that invite travellers to lend a hand in some of the world’s poorest communities.
PICTURE the scene. In darkest, pre-dawn India, a modern-day maharaja’s hunting party departs in a dozen shiny people movers. Forty foreign explorers rumbling along the roads of rural Assam in the country’s remote northeast. Only foxes and rabbits are awake to witness the spectacle.
Our destination is Kaziranga, one of India’s most remarkable national parks, where we are disgorged from the 12 vehicles on to 12 elephants. Three or four people per pachyderm, perched behind a mahout on steel-framed howdahs cushioned with blankets.
THAT most charming of chefs, Luke Nguyen, and I are surrounded by gilded panelling, tremendous chandeliers and all the flaunting grandeur of the high baroque. There is not a red lantern to be seen, we whisper conspiratorially, in one of the tall salons at Vienna’s Liechtenstein Palace but Nguyen’s presence here at a private champagne concert is no accident. The Vietnamese-born Australian television chef, author and owner of Sydney’s two Red Lantern restaurants is a brand ambassador for APT’s growing stable of river cruise products.
Next year, he will open Indochine, a restaurant aboard MS Anastasia, the family-owned Australian operator’s new ship in Russia. Tonight, in Vienna, we are sampling an exclusive excursion offered to passengers on the freshly built MS AmaReina.
AUSTRALIA’S top new hotel openings and refurbishments.
HOTEL HOTEL, CANBERRA: The foyer of this ultra-contemporary Canberra bolthole feels more like a hip university lounge than a five-star hotel. Hotel Hotel is as cosy as it is chic, encouraging guests to mingle easily at shared tables or prop their feet on a sofa by the fire. Going several steps further than your regular “art hotel”, this intensely handcrafted project is a collaboration with about 60 artists and craftspeople who have worked on every element of the property, from designing water decanters fashioned from old beer bottles to devising room-key cards hewn from biodegradable maple.
THE Orchid Club Lounge at Singapore’s 367-room Parkroyal on Pickering hotel, which opened last year, is the most convivial of spaces. Perched on level 16 and with two rooftop terraces and (at least) double-height ceilings, it’s an eyrie with far-reaching views and a members-only atmosphere that feels as exclusive as it does inclusive. There’s a big communal table with a groovy tiled top, fashionable fixtures, window-side perches and plenty of adaptable seating for cosy chats or meals.
This is the hotel’s executive area, reserved for guests booked into accommodation on Orchid Club floors. Is it worth paying for a room upgrade? In the case of this hotel, most definitely. The list of privileges is long and generous. Aside from the obligatory welcome drink and private breakfast area offered by most hotels to their premium guests, there’s champagne with the morning meal, all-day refreshments from a buffet that is thoroughly replenished by chefs, afternoon tea from 2pm to 4pm, fab espressos any time and twilight cocktails with generous supplies of hot snacks from 6pm to 8pm, as well as an invitation to bring a guest.
THE hazy, lilac silhouettes of the Great Dividing Range are familiar to me now, but just a day ago this country felt primitive and alien — a typically vast, daunting Australian landscape on which, I imagined, the hopes and dreams of untold pioneers had been dashed.
For the past seven hours and 10km I have hiked this land, conquered a couple of its peaks, learned to identify and name its major topographical features, and become acquainted with its botanical, bird and marsupial specimens. I could even, if pushed, furnish a slightly exaggerated account of what it’s like to scramble up and down its ancient volcanic ridges.
THEY call them widow’s watches, windows high in wooden clapboard houses where women watched for their men returning from North Atlantic fishing grounds.
A white flag on a schooner’s mast signalled its crew was safe, black meant crew had been lost, but many boats never returned.
WHO knew that the northernmost island of Japan is a place so gorgeous that it can make you gasp? There are fields of lavender to rival Provence and tracts of wilderness filled with wild birds that perform courting dances as stylised as the movements of a Noh play. In verdant pastures that could be transplanted from deepest Devon stand black-and-white cows that produce rich milk to be whipped and folded into what is surely the planet’s best ice cream. The air is as crisp as crackers. Traditional timber houses with pitched temple-like roofs are buttoned up against the winds that rage down from the Shiretoko peninsula. There is the possibility of snow crabs for lunch.
With my fellow passengers (mostly Japanese, American and Australian) aboard the good ship Diamond Princess, we approach Hokkaido at a slow and measured pace. It steals up on us as we cruise north from Yokohama, the port for Tokyo, on the east coast of Honshu, the main island and the one that gets all the attention.
WITH a Stetson and cowboy kerchief on the flying kangaroo tail logo, Qantas launched its Airbus A380 services to Dallas from Sydney a fortnight ago, replacing the less efficient Boeing 747-400 aircraft it had been operating on the route since 2011. At 14 hours and 50 minutes, it is the world’s longest non-stop flight — something that anyone, aside from the most committed of aircraft buffs, would find daunting. In our 21st-century universe of quick fixes and instant access, we are all multi-tasking and on the hop, impatient with delays and looking for the most time-efficient solutions.
I was aboard the inaugural trip, excited at the prospect of visiting Texas but anxious about the immensity of the flight. Could I actually sit for that long? Would I sleep or, as is my usual fate, develop a headache and squirm uncomfortably while all around me fellow passengers dozed like blameless babies?
A champion in and out of the ring
His remarkable personality apart, Muhammad Ali was unquestionably one of the greatest talents to grace the boxing ring.
A champion in and out of the ring
Muhammad Ali beat formidable champions as both a young and old fighter, and was universally loved for his wit and courage.