On a promontory between two rivers in the jungles of northern Laos nestles a small, gentle town of mouldering villas and shuttered shopfronts. By day the dawdling streets of Luang Prabang are dotted with parasols. By night, the black skies are clotted with stars and thick with the scent of frangipani,” wrote Christopher Kremmer in Bamboo Palace. Things have changed. In 1995, Luang Prabang was designated a World Heritage site; many of the ‘mouldering villas’ have been renovated and building work on the others is in full swing. Shops are open and the night market, a traditional event banned in 1975, is again a daily occurrence.
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In Mark Twain’s Following the Equator, he describes Hobart as “an attractive town” and adds: “It sits on low hills that slope to the harbor - a harbor that looks like a river, and is as smooth as one. Its still surface is pictured with dainty reflections of boats and grassy banks and luxuriant foliage. Back of the town rise highlands that are clothed in woodland loveliness, and over the way is that noble mountain, Wellington, a stately bulk, a most majestic pile”.
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Driving through the Outback is really the only way to get an idea of the vastness of Australia and, having driven five hours north of Melbourne, we stayed the night at the Grand Hotel in Mildura, opened in 1891 and now owned and run by Don and Anna Carrazza.
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In her latest exclusive dispatch for Times Online, Sarah writes an e-mail from Lord Howe Island, off Australia.
Lieut. Ball R.N. first sighted the island in 1788 from his ship HMS Supply which was en route to Norfolk Island – two months later they landed, but no one settled there until the 1830s possibly because the charts said “pigs and onions but no maidens”.
Pinetrees has been run as a guest house for 150 years by generations of the same family who arrived in 1842. It is comfortable and the friendliness of the staff seems to rub off on the guests; it is the only hotel on the island offering full board and goodness, the food is good – daily fresh fish kingfish, tuna and trevally.
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I was quite relieved to leave America - there was a tendency towards post-election despair among the people I knew, and although I had a good time their despondency had somewhat rubbed off on me.
I arrived in Sydney in the early morning on what turned out to be a scorching day, and made my way to the funky and eccentric Hughenden Hotel (14 Queen Street, Woollahra 93634863). Although my room was small and a little shabby, the general atmosphere with its occasional pianist, friendliness of the staff and outside sitting areas were more than enough compensation.
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“Don’t you find that your emotions are heightened in the air?” I was at a dinner party and the conversation went back and forth with one guy saying that although he never cried in movies on terra firma, in the air he sobbed uncontrollably. A woman interjected that she found reading on a plane so engrossing that she always remembered everything that she’d read. I was intrigued - although I wasn’t sure I agreed. I cry easily at movies on the ground but I’m not sure that I’ve cried watching a film in the air. And as for retaining what I read - do I ever? As one friend put it: “No need to retain what I read. I am not studying for an exam”.
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There are so many books set in and around San Francisco; contemporary ones range from Vikram Seth’s The Golden Gate (Vintage 1986) (inspired by Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin), which Gore Vidal called “the great Californian novel”, to The Serial by Cyra McFadden (Knopf 1977), an account of liberated life in 1970s Marin County in 52 zingy episodes. The Golden Gate’s breathtaking sophistication couldn’t be further removed from The Serial, which booksellers refer to as “that book”.
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America takes Hallowe’en very seriously and even though I travel up the Hudson Valley prior to October 31 the shops, markets and houses are heaving with pumpkins of all sizes and shades. They echo the spectacular colours of the trees - one week short of their prime - but nevertheless of an intensity unseen in Britain.
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The Peabody Museum (11 Divinity Avenue) had a Lewis and Clark exhibit showing some of the artefacts that the Indians traded with them, including a necklace of bear’s teeth which was discovered in the museum’s basement two years ago.
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Despite election fever, there is time for other things and two remarkable new enterprises have just opened in New York. The Rubin Museum of Art has six floors of Himalayan art in what was the old Barney’s department store - it is one of the most beautiful and certainly the most peaceful museum I have ever seen - the walls on each floor are painted different colours complimenting the paintings, textiles and sculptures and the whole feeling is one of deep tranquility and meditation. A must.
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