Travellers' checks

4-MIN READ4-MIN

Published: 12:00am, 4 Dec 2005

Double deal

The Banyan Tree Ringha (right), in Shangri-La County, Yunnan province, will have a sister property from April in the shape of the Banyan Tree Lijiang. The main draw of the new place looks likely to be its spa, which will feature six heated treatment rooms, a traditional Chinese medicine hall, a gym and a yoga room. Forty, 350-square-metre deluxe villas will each include a private heated outdoor jet pool or plunge pool. There will also be 14 pool villas and one presidential villa. Accommodation will be within 'authentic two-storey Tibetan farmhouses personally handpicked and purchased from the local villagers'. Banyan Tree is already selling a twin package for next year designed to show off the 'stunning wonders of Lijiang and Ringha' and elsewhere in Yunnan, several of which will be seen on the five-hour drive between the two properties. Massages and trekking are also included in the package, which costs from US$510 a day, excluding tax, per couple.

See www.banyantree.com for more information.

Park view

If you plan to be one of the 25 million annual visitors to New York City's Central Park (left), be sure to visit www.centralpark.com first to find out everything you need to know about the place - past, present and future. Events listings, maps, photographs and even a list of the name, age and background of every animal in the Central Park Zoo can be found at this new site. There is also a comprehensive history of the park's development, which notes that its creation required the eviction of 1,600 of

the city's poorest people and the demolition of Seneca Village, 'one of the city's most stable African-American settlements, with three churches and a school'.

Deal of the week