Canada gets delivery of Chinese-built modular hotel, from Shanghai to the Great White North

Chinese visitors should feel at home in a new hotel being built in the small city of Iqaluit, in Canada’s largest and northernmost territory, Nunavut. That’s because its guest rooms have been prefabricated in China and are being delivered from Shanghai this month, complete with furniture, television sets and other fixtures and fittings. The hotel, which broke ground last year and has yet to be named, is due to open next spring.

Prefabricated hotels seem to be catching on with larger hotel companies, too, although “modular” seems to be the preferred industry term. Last month, Hilton opened its first modular hotel, the 155-suite Home2 Suites by Hilton San Francisco Airport North, while Marriott is currently raising the “world’s tallest modular hotel”, the 26-storey AC Hotel New York NoMad, which will open late next year in midtown Manhattan. As well as painted walls, the prefabricated rooms will arrive on site containing beds and bedlinens, finished flooring and even bathroom toiletries.

Take a tour of London’s blue plaques

Played in an Oscar-nominated performance by Benedict Cumberbatch in The Imitation Game (2014), and this month announced as the new face on Britain’s redesigned £50 note, Alan Turing was born at the Warrington Lodge Medical and Surgery Home for Ladies, in Maida Vale, London, in 1912. In 1935, the building became The Esplanade Hotel, and in 1944, was renamed The Colonnade Hotel.

English Heritage added a blue plaque to its exterior in 1998 to commemorate the birthplace of Turing, often called the father of computer science and artificial intelligence.

Another scientist with similarly paternal credentials can be found around the corner, almost within earshot, at 9 Clifton Gardens, where a blue plaque is dedicated to Ambrose Fleming, the father of modern electronics. This Edwardian terrace house was once part of the infamous Worsley Hotel, which occupied a row of several houses, and was destroyed in one of London’s worst hotel fires.

Once popular with American tourists, the Worsley was recommended in Frommer’s Europe on 5 Dollars A Day for, among other things, its 45-seat “television theatre”, complete with chairs rescued from a demolished West End theatre. It also housed overseas staff from other London hotels. An arsonist kitchen porter set a fire on December 13, 1974, killing seven, including a Filipino porter, a trainee manager from Mauritius, and French and Italian waiters. Sadly, no plaque commemorates their loss, but a highly regarded book about the fire, Red Watch (1976) by former television news anchor Gordon Honeycombe, is still in print.

London’s blue plaques recall many interesting characters, with more added monthly, and their 150th anniversary was marked in 2016 by the publication of The English Heritage Guide to London’s Blue Plaques: The Lives and Homes of London’s Most Interesting Inhabitants. An updated edition is due out in November. To locate London’s blue plaques, go to the English Heritage website.

Explore Tokyo through the eyes of a Japanese manga lover

Published in Asia in May, but coming to Amazon and Barnes & Noble next month, is A Manga Lover’s Tokyo Travel Guide: My Favorite Things to See and Do in Japan by Evangeline Neo. Presented in manga form, the guide provides information on manga and anime museums, shopping for Manga memorabilia, traditional tourist spots such as Tokyo Tower and Meiji Shrine, maid and butler cafes, cosplay studios and drawing classes.

Incidentally, the first shop and cafe dedicated to Astro Boy creator and “god of manga” Osamu Tezuka opened this month in Tokyo’s Asakusa district. Visit atom-do-honpo.jp to find the location and other limited information in English.

Big hotel brands break into Kathmandu, Nepal

Big international hotel brands have been slow to break into Nepal, and its mystical capital, Kathmandu. The Hotel Everest Sheraton operated for a few years in the 1980s, but since the Hyatt Regency opened, in late 2000, development has been limited.

The pace seems to be picking up this year, though, with the recent opening of the 214-room Kathmandu Marriott Hotel and the return of Sheraton at a nearby location expected soon. The grey and austere-look­ing Marriott claims to be designed “to expand the mind for modern travellers”, though presumably not in the way tradition­ally associated with this end of the hippie trail.

Cathay Dragon and Nepal Airlines both fly several times a week between Hong Kong and Kathmandu.

Deal of the week – two nights at the Okura Garden Hotel Shanghai

Connexus Travel’s Okura Garden Hotel Shanghai Weekend Package includes two nights’ accommodation at the hotel, plus a set lunch at its teppanyaki restaurant Sazanka, which received Michelin’s recently introduced, low-level Plate designation. Prices start from HK$2,990 per person twin-share, for Saturday check-in, and include flights with Cathay Dragon or Cathay Pacific, and daily breakfast.

The older, low-rise part of this Japanese-run hotel used to be the Cercle Sportif, or sporting club, of the former French Concession in the city’s colonial days. It has a well-kept, spacious garden in front, and gets excellent online reviews.

Visit www.gardenhotelshanghai.com for a look around. For package details and reservations, visit the Connexus Travel website and select “mainland China” in the Packages drop-down menu.