https://www.scmp.com/rss/278548/feed Former China resident Peter Neville-Hadley is the author of multiple guides and reference works on China, and writes on Chinese culture and on cultural travel in general for assorted periodicals. His work has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Time Magazine, The Sunday Times (UK), and numerous other newspapers and magazines around the world. en https://assets.i-scmp.com/static/img/icons/scmp-meta-1200x630.png https://www.scmp.com Peter Neville-Hadley Peter Neville-Hadley It seems odd that one of the earliest depictions of a kiss in the history of Western painting should be found in a church. But after a half-hour train ride inland from Venice, and a gentle stroll through historic Padua’s winding streets, there it is, inside the heavily painted interior of the early 14th century Scrovegni Chapel. In a fresco called Meeting at the Golden Gate (circa 1305), by Giotto di Bondone, two ageing figures greet each other with a public display of affection that seems to... https://www.scmp.com/postmag/travel/article/3348137/padua-italys-painted-city-best-shows-are-frescoes?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/postmag/travel/article/3348137/padua-italys-painted-city-best-shows-are-frescoes?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 28 Mar 2026 22:00:08 +0000 Peter Neville-Hadley Peter Neville-Hadley Talk of travel to the Persian Gulf usually revolves around the newly opening Saudi Arabia and neighbouring pinprick emirates, the former because there’s nothing like being long closed to tourism to inspire curiosity, the latter for their theme-park atmosphere and architectural bling. But on a recent visit, Oman proves to be something quite different. Big, yet seemingly a backwater, it occupies 310,000 sq km on the eastern tip of the Arabian Peninsula, where a relatively verdant date- and... https://www.scmp.com/postmag/travel/article/3325812/laid-back-oman-land-sunlit-forts-pink-cliffs-and-vibrant-coastal-life?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/postmag/travel/article/3325812/laid-back-oman-land-sunlit-forts-pink-cliffs-and-vibrant-coastal-life?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 17 Sep 2025 10:15:08 +0000 Peter Neville-Hadley Peter Neville-Hadley “You’re going to Chemnitz?” say my German friends in surprise. “Why?” They are even more astonished to hear that this Saxony city is a 2025 European Capital of Culture. If a low profile German town is to be one of the two or three European Union cities chosen each year for this honour, surely it should be somewhere like well-preserved Rothenburg ob der Tauber, in Bavaria. World War II gave that jigsaw-puzzle-pretty city a relatively gentle cuffing, whereas it flattened industrial Chemnitz. But,... https://www.scmp.com/postmag/travel/article/3321816/how-two-contrasting-cities-tell-german-story?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/postmag/travel/article/3321816/how-two-contrasting-cities-tell-german-story?utm_source=rss_feed Thu, 14 Aug 2025 07:00:12 +0000 Peter Neville-Hadley Peter Neville-Hadley The sleek and slightly sci-fi Tobu Spacia X train, with its streamlined nose and large, hexagonal windows, ambles through the Tokyo suburbs and a tangle of other railway lines before eventually picking up a little speed. Heading into Japan’s neat countryside, it slips between tree-covered hills with grids of small, orderly paddies lapping their bases. This is no bullet train, such as those used by visitors on short-term trips to ricochet between Tokyo and Kyoto. But its comfortable carriages, in... https://www.scmp.com/postmag/travel/article/3316898/luxury-train-ride-nikko-resting-place-tokugawa-shogunate?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/postmag/travel/article/3316898/luxury-train-ride-nikko-resting-place-tokugawa-shogunate?utm_source=rss_feed Fri, 04 Jul 2025 04:00:18 +0000 Peter Neville-Hadley Peter Neville-Hadley Turn from bustling Marktgraben into pedestrianised Herzog-Friedrich-Straße, lined with medieval mansions in pastel colours and hung with elaborate signs advertising ancient businesses, and your eye will be caught by a patch of brilliance in the distance, which brightens further as you approach the heart of Innsbruck’s Altstadt, or Old Town. This is the Goldenes Dachl, or Golden Roof, a magnet for photographers in this city in the Austrian Tyrol, with 2,657 gilded copper tiles forming a steeply... https://www.scmp.com/postmag/travel/article/3314116/why-innsbruck-more-just-snow-what-see-year-round?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/postmag/travel/article/3314116/why-innsbruck-more-just-snow-what-see-year-round?utm_source=rss_feed Thu, 12 Jun 2025 10:00:12 +0000 It is difficult not to fall in love with the young Sibylle von Jülich-Kleve-Berg, as painted by Europe’s premier portraitist at the time of her wedding, in 1526. A young, grey-eyed, pale-skinned beauty with tumbling red tresses, she directs her level gaze off to one side, as if there were something far more important to consider than the adoring viewer right in front of her. I am seeing her in digitised form at the castle in Torgau, Saxony, that was her home, raising the question as to whether... https://www.scmp.com/postmag/travel/article/3306465/weimars-cultural-legacy-goethes-residence-birthplace-bauhaus-movement?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/postmag/travel/article/3306465/weimars-cultural-legacy-goethes-residence-birthplace-bauhaus-movement?utm_source=rss_feed Thu, 17 Apr 2025 08:00:09 +0000 As ever more European cities complain that tourist numbers have grown to the point of making ordinary life impossible, it’s long past time to abandon checklist tourism, “must sees”, and the look-at-me locations infinitely repeated on Instagram. Even the most popular cities have corners of interest that see few visitors, and museums and other places of historical relevance in which you may find yourself perusing the displays alone, which, these days, is true luxury. Here are 5 crowd-free museums... https://www.scmp.com/postmag/travel/article/3303634/5-crowd-free-museums-visit-europe-year?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/postmag/travel/article/3303634/5-crowd-free-museums-visit-europe-year?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 25 Mar 2025 05:15:08 +0000 In 1845, theologian John William Burgon wrote one of the most quoted lines in English poetry: “Match me such marvel save in Eastern clime, a rose-red city half as old as time.” Petra, his only poem, was written in homage to the well-hidden labyrinth of rock-cut tombs, temples and monuments that was the capital of the 3rd century BC-1st century AD Nabataean kingdom, and whose remains lie in modern-day Jordan. Few images are more striking than that of the ornate pink two-storey frontage of the... https://www.scmp.com/postmag/travel/article/3297716/forget-petra-indiana-jones-fame-saudi-arabias-hegra-must-see-alternative-jordans-attraction?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/postmag/travel/article/3297716/forget-petra-indiana-jones-fame-saudi-arabias-hegra-must-see-alternative-jordans-attraction?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 10 Feb 2025 05:15:07 +0000 In Austria, the arrival of the New Year is always celebrated to the sounds of Strauss, and in particular the great swirling tune that has become the country’s unofficial national anthem – Johann Strauss II’s An der schönen blauen Donau, or The Blue Danube waltz. Every New Year’s Eve, all six tiers of the haughty Vienna State Opera’s glittering auditorium are packed for a performance of the only operetta the company condescends to perform, the same Strauss’ Die Fledermaus. But at midnight,... https://www.scmp.com/postmag/travel/article/3291536/straussomania-austria-prepares-celebrate-200th-anniversary-johann-strauss-iis-birth?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/postmag/travel/article/3291536/straussomania-austria-prepares-celebrate-200th-anniversary-johann-strauss-iis-birth?utm_source=rss_feed Fri, 27 Dec 2024 10:00:19 +0000 Among the drawn-out conflicts rarely out of the news is one in which entrenched, often nationalist campaigners from assorted countries, demanding the return of antiquities they claim as their own, lob shells of rhetoric at the equally dug-in Western museums that now house them. Those institutions mostly keep their heads down and avoid returning fire, shying from both the big guns of books and newspaper editorials, and the strafing via social media that any retort, however well-reasoned, tends to... https://www.scmp.com/postmag/culture/article/3291497/should-museums-return-antiquities-their-countries-origin-some-say-no?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/postmag/culture/article/3291497/should-museums-return-antiquities-their-countries-origin-some-say-no?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 22 Dec 2024 10:00:12 +0000 The visit to Longzhou begins unpromisingly. Why, the policeman at a checkpoint on the edge of the city wants to know, am I going to a little-known town two hours’ drive southwest of the Guangxi provincial capital of Nanning. “Lüyou,” I say. Tourism. “Mei you shenme hao wan,” he objects. There’s nothing interesting there. He flicks nervously through the pages of my passport. “There’s the old French consulate,” suggests the minibus driver, who has come over to see about the delay. The other... https://www.scmp.com/postmag/travel/article/3284745/why-you-should-skip-guilins-karst-hills-and-visit-longzhou-guangxi-chinas-hidden-gem-instead?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/postmag/travel/article/3284745/why-you-should-skip-guilins-karst-hills-and-visit-longzhou-guangxi-chinas-hidden-gem-instead?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 02 Nov 2024 08:15:15 +0000 Looking down from atop Dubai’s Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world, it is difficult to believe that the tiny territory’s first paved road was completed only in the early 1960s. Now this great spire of a tower acts like the gnomon of a sundial, throwing a long shadow far below that slowly swings across a cityscape of multi-lane highways and a forest of eye-catching constructions by every fashionable foreign architect from Tadao Ando to the late Zaha Hadid. Some roads lead southwest... https://www.scmp.com/postmag/travel/article/3281117/dubai-and-abu-dhabi-compared-which-luxurious-city-uae-should-you-visit?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/postmag/travel/article/3281117/dubai-and-abu-dhabi-compared-which-luxurious-city-uae-should-you-visit?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 05 Oct 2024 22:15:07 +0000 Although travel agencies have been vanishing from high streets worldwide, it seems that reports of their complete demise may have been exaggerated. For those concerned above all to obtain the best price, the internet now provides the opportunity to compare the costs of 17 alternative ways of going almost anywhere, and then 17 ways of booking, be it flights, hotels or entire packages. Agencies working with narrow margins on high volumes of straight-from-the-brochure sales have been hit hard in... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/travel/article/3275299/fancy-flying-volcano-or-fishing-mountain-lake-travel-consultants-are-here-execute-your-wildest?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/travel/article/3275299/fancy-flying-volcano-or-fishing-mountain-lake-travel-consultants-are-here-execute-your-wildest?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 27 Aug 2024 08:45:09 +0000 Peter Neville-Hadley Peter Neville-Hadley “Let’s face it”, writes Arik Kershenbaum, “we all want to believe we can talk to animals – even animal communication scientists like me. I’m guessing that not one of my colleagues hasn’t at some time dreamed of holding a sophisticated conversation with some species or other.” And on a video link from his base at Girton College, University of Cambridge, the author of Why Animals Talk – The New Science of Animal Communication, admits that he has had the same wish himself. “Absolutely. You don’t... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/books/article/3274699/do-animals-really-talk-sort-dont-expect-dr-dolittle-says-zoologist-arik-kershenbaums-penguin-book?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/books/article/3274699/do-animals-really-talk-sort-dont-expect-dr-dolittle-says-zoologist-arik-kershenbaums-penguin-book?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 17 Aug 2024 06:45:11 +0000 British author Nicola Twilley, frequent contributor to The New Yorker and co-presenter of the popular Gastropod food history and science podcast, has a beef with refrigeration. “I love a cold beer and ice cream as much as the next person,” she says from her Los Angeles base. “I would never want to live without my refrigerator.” But in her tartly named new book, Frostbite, which is as lucid, entertaining and fact-rich as her podcast, she examines the consequences of the development of a third... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/food-drink/article/3272045/how-fridges-transformed-way-we-get-and-eat-our-food-not-all-it-positive-according-book-frostbite?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/food-drink/article/3272045/how-fridges-transformed-way-we-get-and-eat-our-food-not-all-it-positive-according-book-frostbite?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 28 Jul 2024 10:00:16 +0000 In the town of Kochi on the south coast of Shikoku Island, our small group of walkers gathers beneath a row of eight-metre-high statues that portray significant samurai of the Bakumatsu period – the years leading up to the fall of the Tokugawa shogunate and the return of imperial power in 1868. The three figures in long gowns, their swords in hand or thrust through belts, are dramatically up-lit against the deepening blue of the evening sky. The key figure is Ryoma Sakamoto, shown with a sullen... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/travel/article/3271065/ryoma-sakamotos-historic-escape-route-shikoku-island-follows-footsteps-samurai?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/travel/article/3271065/ryoma-sakamotos-historic-escape-route-shikoku-island-follows-footsteps-samurai?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 21 Jul 2024 02:00:13 +0000 Few visitors to Buenos Aires leave without seeing a choreographed tango show, the male performers in sharp suits, the women in slit skirts, stocking tops and towering heels. Street dancers offer to entwine themselves with passers-by, their considerable décolletage pressed close for a moment’s photo opportunity. Couples spin and tilt on handkerchief-sized stages between restaurant tables to draw in customers. But this is a different world to that of the Argentinian capital’s milongas: social... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/3270742/why-more-asian-women-are-flocking-buenos-aires-milongas-argentine-tango-beyond-tourist-traps?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/3270742/why-more-asian-women-are-flocking-buenos-aires-milongas-argentine-tango-beyond-tourist-traps?utm_source=rss_feed Thu, 18 Jul 2024 11:00:08 +0000 “Yunnan is a forgotten province, a piece of China mislaid by the world,” wrote the British novelist Stella Benson when she was living in Mengzi, not far from the Vietnamese border, in the 1920s. A century later, even though in recent times this once bandit-haunted backwater has grown into a prefectural capital, the description still seems to fit. “Didn’t I see you at the railway station a few days ago,” asks more than one taxi driver. The lone foreigner stands out. But in Benson’s time Mengzi... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/travel/article/3267400/piece-china-mislaid-mengzi-yunnan-charming-traces-its-time-treaty-port?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/travel/article/3267400/piece-china-mislaid-mengzi-yunnan-charming-traces-its-time-treaty-port?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 22 Jun 2024 03:15:10 +0000 Henry Steiner, just turned 90 and with a major exhibition of his work about to open at Hong Kong’s M+ museum of contemporary culture, is regarded as the grand old man of Hong Kong graphic design by those who know him. But when we meet in person at his discreet office in Hong Kong Island’s Mid-Levels he turns out to be anything but grand. He is upright, thoughtful and precise in his answers to questions, but gentle-mannered and softly spoken. His voice carries no trace of his Austrian origins,... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/arts-culture/article/3266413/father-hong-kong-graphic-design-henry-steiner-90-his-exhibition-m-museum?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/arts-culture/article/3266413/father-hong-kong-graphic-design-henry-steiner-90-his-exhibition-m-museum?utm_source=rss_feed Fri, 14 Jun 2024 03:15:09 +0000 With annual inflation running at over 200 per cent, and prices rising weekly, times are tough for Porteños – the residents of Buenos Aires, Argentina. And yet the city’s cocktail bars are bustling with eager drinkers and buzzing with an inventiveness that is perhaps the only positive side effect of the country’s long-term economic distress. Foreign exchange restrictions make it impractical to import classic cocktail ingredients, so the Argentinians have turned to making local versions instead,... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/food-drink/article/3260051/buenos-aires-bars-reinvent-their-cocktails-using-local-ingredients-and-earn-global-recognition?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/food-drink/article/3260051/buenos-aires-bars-reinvent-their-cocktails-using-local-ingredients-and-earn-global-recognition?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 24 Apr 2024 20:15:18 +0000 The Kangxi emperor is unhappy. By 1686 the second Qing monarch to rule from Beijing had largely completed the pacification of Ming territory, and was following earlier rulers in defining his newly established domain on paper. For foreign conquerors, this making of maps is particularly important. To ensure the stability of their minority rule, the Manchu invaders adopted the traditions of the Chinese Confucian bureaucracy, at least in public, and supported the view that everything of importance... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/3254720/how-european-maps-china-helped-paint-picture-middle-kingdom-during-age-exploration?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/3254720/how-european-maps-china-helped-paint-picture-middle-kingdom-during-age-exploration?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 10 Mar 2024 09:15:12 +0000 The Old City of the Azerbaijani capital, Baku, is a seaside warren of car-free alleys with a mixture of mansions left in tumbledown elegance or freshly restored – all stone friezes, fretwork and cantilevered balconies – and the occasional minaret. Yet the modern city surrounding it sports some of the most adventurous modern architecture for thousands of miles around, including flame-shaped towers that flicker with projected light at night and the Zaha Hadid-designed Heydar Aliyev Centre, whose... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/travel-leisure/article/3251721/driving-hazards-azerbaijan-greedy-policemen-interesting-roads-and-wandering-cows-challenge-motorists?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/travel-leisure/article/3251721/driving-hazards-azerbaijan-greedy-policemen-interesting-roads-and-wandering-cows-challenge-motorists?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 12 Feb 2024 08:15:09 +0000 Now I know what it feels like to be a goldfish. I’m sitting in one of the twin bulbous eyes of a submersible, the great globe of centimetres-thick Perspex so transparent it needs a gentle touch with the tips of the fingers to be sure it’s there at all. Each eye contains three swivel chairs with panoramic views of the sea floor, and because this submersible is one of two belonging to the 264-passenger Seabourn Pursuit, one of the newest vessels in Antarctic waters, the chairs are leather-covered... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/travel/article/3247278/ice-and-slice-luxury-antarctic-cruise-includes-deep-dive-champagne-submersible?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/travel/article/3247278/ice-and-slice-luxury-antarctic-cruise-includes-deep-dive-champagne-submersible?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 06 Jan 2024 10:15:09 +0000 It will be unwelcome news to those who already dread the weary trudge from queue to queue that defines the experience at many airports, but the International Air Transport Association (IATA), the trade association for the world’s airlines, has forecast that air passenger numbers around the world will double by 2040. So it seems likely that our current plod through check-in, security, boarding gate and eventually immigration will come to appear speedy in hindsight, as queues lengthen and progress... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/travel-leisure/article/3244397/how-ai-biometrics-and-facial-recognition-airports-could-make-long-queues-especially-check-and?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/travel-leisure/article/3244397/how-ai-biometrics-and-facial-recognition-airports-could-make-long-queues-especially-check-and?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 10 Dec 2023 20:15:10 +0000 Those who have experienced England’s stately homes or France’s chateaux may sniff at the idea of visiting a historic country house in relatively young California, a destination more associated with surfing, showbiz and Silicon Valley than the sober contemplation of antiquities. The name of San Jose’s Winchester Mystery House also has a suspiciously theme-park flavour, as if engineered for entertainment, and so it’s no surprise to learn that its current executive director, Walter Magnuson, came... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/travel-leisure/article/3239667/fabulous-luxury-tiny-staircases-and-doors-nowhere-san-jose-californias-historic-160-room-winchester?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/travel-leisure/article/3239667/fabulous-luxury-tiny-staircases-and-doors-nowhere-san-jose-californias-historic-160-room-winchester?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 30 Oct 2023 20:15:25 +0000 Georgia’s relationship with its most famous son is complicated, and nowhere more so than in his hometown of Gori, an hour’s drive northwest of the capital, Tbilisi. For few outside the Caucasus can name any other Georgian, except perhaps for a handful of post-Soviet politicians who have caught the attention of the international press. But even then Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili, who ran the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death in 1953, is unrecognisable except under his Russian nom de... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/travel/article/3239280/stalins-footsteps-georgia-museums-tbilisi-and-his-birthplace-glorify-dictator-his-personal-bath?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/travel/article/3239280/stalins-footsteps-georgia-museums-tbilisi-and-his-birthplace-glorify-dictator-his-personal-bath?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 29 Oct 2023 08:15:21 +0000 Hello, and welcome to the ultimate guide to ultimate guides, and particularly those of the travel sort. These days almost every destination has several internet-based ultimate guides, which suggests that there is a lot of false advertising about, or there are a lot of influencers in need of a dictionary. On any topic there can, by definition, be only one ultimate guide. However, we’re using the word “ultimate” here in a special sense largely unknown outside the world of digital drivel. Not “the... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/travel-leisure/article/3238854/ultimate-travel-guides-debunked-brief-unoriginal-and-often-not-based-personal-research-they-are?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/travel-leisure/article/3238854/ultimate-travel-guides-debunked-brief-unoriginal-and-often-not-based-personal-research-they-are?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 24 Oct 2023 20:15:11 +0000 Mount Ararat is the national symbol of Armenia, but of particular importance to the country’s winemakers. Legend has it that as the biblical flood receded, Noah’s ark made landfall atop the cone of this extinct volcano, and Noah eventually descended to plant the first grapevines. But over the centuries, the neighbouring Ottoman, Persian, Russian and subsequently Soviet empires nibbled at Armenian territory or sometimes swallowed it up altogether, and the once again independent country’s beloved... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/travel/article/3236299/armenia-worlds-oldest-centre-winemaking-learns-how-produce-wine-ways-ancient-and-modern-after-soviet?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/travel/article/3236299/armenia-worlds-oldest-centre-winemaking-learns-how-produce-wine-ways-ancient-and-modern-after-soviet?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 01 Oct 2023 05:15:12 +0000 It’s not often that a public transport system is a draw in its own right, but the remnants of two in San Francisco are high up on that city’s list of attractions, both of them celebrating anniversaries this year. The Union Depot and Ferry House – more commonly known simply as the Ferry Building – has been in operation for 125 years as the hub of a network of ferry routes across San Francisco Bay, and has re-emerged from near-obsolescence to become a hub of activity again. It’s no longer a place... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/travel-leisure/article/3234905/why-san-franciscos-iconic-cable-cars-and-ferries-are-spotlight-2023?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/travel-leisure/article/3234905/why-san-franciscos-iconic-cable-cars-and-ferries-are-spotlight-2023?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 18 Sep 2023 20:15:22 +0000 Anatolia, the Asian portion of Turkey, has far more to offer than hot-air ballooning over the cave dwellings of Cappadocia, images of which are all over Instagram. For thousands of years this region between Europe and the Middle East, most of it plateau over 500 metres (1,640ft) above sea level, was invaded from both east and west by wave after wave of Hittites, Phrygians, Cimmerians, Thracians, Greeks, Persians, Seleucids, Romans and others. Many of them left their mark on both the landscape... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/travel-leisure/article/3233307/anatolia-turkey-theres-history-every-turn-3rd-century-roman-bridge-castle-made-milk-and-some?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/travel-leisure/article/3233307/anatolia-turkey-theres-history-every-turn-3rd-century-roman-bridge-castle-made-milk-and-some?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 04 Sep 2023 09:15:08 +0000 If you have seen one Chinatown, you have seen them all: the same downmarket dim sum, the same strings of fading red lanterns across the streets and the same self-consciously Chinese kitsch on sale. Nevertheless, at 24 densely populated square blocks, San Francisco’s Chinatown is the first and the greatest, at least in North America. The arrival point for generations of immigrants, it remains one of the seaside city’s key attractions, even to visitors from China. That’s because, while it has a... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/travel-leisure/article/3227963/original-chinatown-san-francisco-reinvents-itself-through-contemporary-art-and-cuisine-while?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/travel-leisure/article/3227963/original-chinatown-san-francisco-reinvents-itself-through-contemporary-art-and-cuisine-while?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 18 Jul 2023 03:15:11 +0000 “When I first arrived in Orkney, I’d never experienced darkness quite like it,” says Cheryl Chapman, development manager at tourist board VisitScotland, from her home in the Scottish archipelago. “It’s disorientating. I’d never felt blackness like that.” A tone of wonder enters her voice. “And then you look up and there’s the magnificent Milky Way.” The islands’ small population means lower light pollution, so everyone there is aware of the vastness of the heavens in a way that fewer and fewer... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/travel-leisure/article/3227136/how-dark-sky-tourism-rise-light-pollution-increases-and-more-stars-disappear-most-us-every-year?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/travel-leisure/article/3227136/how-dark-sky-tourism-rise-light-pollution-increases-and-more-stars-disappear-most-us-every-year?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 10 Jul 2023 11:15:11 +0000 “No other city in the world,” wrote architect Liang Sicheng for the People’s Daily in 1951, “has so imposing a pattern, with so neat an arrangement of the built spaces. Neither is there another city so splendid with those golden glazed tiles, those beautifully painted timber structures and those palaces and temples organised into a harmonious whole.” Sitting atop Beijing’s Jingshan (Prospect Hill) and looking south over the yellow roofs of the former Imperial Palace, the doyen of Chinese... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/3225200/will-beijing-earn-unesco-world-heritage-listing-its-much-changed-old-city-theres-precedent-it?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/3225200/will-beijing-earn-unesco-world-heritage-listing-its-much-changed-old-city-theres-precedent-it?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 24 Jun 2023 23:45:10 +0000 Still several blocks away on the walk down to Vancouver’s harbour, you can hear the distant hum of highly tuned turboprops as seaplanes taxi out, then accelerate to unstick themselves from the water and take to the air. Lines of the ungainly aircraft, which look like overgrown insects in clogs, are moored outside the smart modern terminal at the water’s edge, where check-in is brief and free of hassle, and there’s time to sit in a comfy chair with a free coffee and admire the panorama before a... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/travel-leisure/article/3224545/vancouver-air-seaplane-tours-offering-birds-eye-view-wildlife-and-island-living-are-highlight-trip?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/travel-leisure/article/3224545/vancouver-air-seaplane-tours-offering-birds-eye-view-wildlife-and-island-living-are-highlight-trip?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 20 Jun 2023 04:45:22 +0000 The recent announcement of a new in-room amenity from worldwide budget hotel brand Days Inn may have confirmed to many frequent travellers that despite the guest-experience surveys left on bedside tables and the further requests for comment at checkout, hotels don’t listen much. Being asked their opinions just makes guests feel valued, but in fact hotels largely speak a language of their own, and speak it to each other. Frequent hotel guests gradually learn to speak that language – what will be... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/travel-leisure/article/3222730/days-inns-new-talking-mirrors-another-sign-hotels-dont-listen-guests-wouldnt-you-rather-say-faster?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/travel-leisure/article/3222730/days-inns-new-talking-mirrors-another-sign-hotels-dont-listen-guests-wouldnt-you-rather-say-faster?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 03 Jun 2023 22:45:10 +0000 Chur, capital of the eastern Swiss canton of Graubünden, is the oldest city in Switzerland, its well-preserved medieval centre a warren of pastel-painted mansions sitting on the right bank of a still-infant Rhine. Conservative, and nearly 50 per cent Catholic, this charming city was reluctant to recognise its most famous son – the painter, sculptor and designer H R Giger, whose fantastical and often morbidly sexualised work was considered to be charmless and likely to give religious authorities... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/travel-leisure/article/3221353/switzerlands-two-medieval-towns-offer-unlikely-mix-idyllic-backdrops-and-morbid-art-designer-alien?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/travel-leisure/article/3221353/switzerlands-two-medieval-towns-offer-unlikely-mix-idyllic-backdrops-and-morbid-art-designer-alien?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 22 May 2023 08:15:10 +0000 On the western outskirts of the regional capital of Nukus, an unlovely Soviet-era creation in the far west of Central Asia’s Uzbekistan, the road out of town crosses a long bridge over what appears to be a sandy wasteland in which low shrubs struggle to survive. But after some distance, this turns out to be the bed of the formerly mighty Amu Darya, or Oxus, one of Asia’s longest rivers, now reduced to a relative trickle. Its headstream rises 2,500km (1,550 miles) to the southeast, on the border... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/travel-leisure/article/3219002/most-staggering-disaster-20th-century-now-offers-instagrammable-photo-sites-curious-tourists?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/travel-leisure/article/3219002/most-staggering-disaster-20th-century-now-offers-instagrammable-photo-sites-curious-tourists?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 01 May 2023 10:15:09 +0000 Perhaps because departures in Canada are now so few compared to during the great days of rail, boarding a train there is made to resemble setting off on some great voyage of questionable outcome. At Vancouver’s Pacific Central terminal, of slightly down-at-heel grandeur, you check in as if boarding a plane, and your not-wanted-on-voyage luggage is whisked away as if you were beginning a westward ocean crossing, rather than an eastward journey across the planet’s second-largest country. It will... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/travel-leisure/article/3216893/across-canadas-british-columbia-and-back-train-mountains-rivers-elk-and-moose-comfort-observation?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/travel-leisure/article/3216893/across-canadas-british-columbia-and-back-train-mountains-rivers-elk-and-moose-comfort-observation?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 16 Apr 2023 10:15:13 +0000 The Pera Palace, Istanbul’s most dignified and historic hotel, stands in the Beyoğlu district, a tangle of streets and staircases lined with appealingly battered belle époque mansions. They tumble down steep hillsides overlooking water in three directions, and were part of the expiring Ottoman Empire’s 19th-century flirtation with European institutions and architecture. When it opened, in 1895, the hotel, the first in the city built to European standards and intended for passengers arriving on... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/travel/article/3217061/istanbul-east-meets-west-turkish-city-has-seen-empires-rise-and-fall-and-has-historic-sites-and?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/travel/article/3217061/istanbul-east-meets-west-turkish-city-has-seen-empires-rise-and-fall-and-has-historic-sites-and?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 15 Apr 2023 05:15:07 +0000 The small mountain community of Untervaz, in the southeast Swiss canton of Graubünden, is in a state of gloom. This year, the traditional annual winter-banishing festival, known in the local dialect as Schibaschlaha, or “disc hitting” – which was once widely enjoyed in Switzerland but is now preserved mainly in this village of around 2,500 people – was cancelled. There was some grumbling, Untervaz mayor René Vogel says, but most villagers recognised that no other decision could be taken. The... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/travel-leisure/article/3211935/climate-change-halts-swiss-winter-festival-which-single-males-fling-flaming-discs-their-village?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/travel-leisure/article/3211935/climate-change-halts-swiss-winter-festival-which-single-males-fling-flaming-discs-their-village?utm_source=rss_feed Thu, 02 Mar 2023 11:15:08 +0000 For a blockbuster exhibition, “Vermeer”, which opened at Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum on February 10, is surprisingly small. Seventy per cent of the Dutch master’s known works are on display, but this still amounts to just 28 paintings, making the exhibition digestible and approachable, much like the paintings themselves. “Vermeer” is an art exhibition as much for people who don’t usually go to galleries as for those who do. Girl with a Pearl Earring (1665) is undoubtedly the most famous piece in the... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/travel-leisure/article/3211787/vermeer-exhibition-featuring-girl-pearl-earring-first-and-probably-last-time-so-many-dutch-painters?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/travel-leisure/article/3211787/vermeer-exhibition-featuring-girl-pearl-earring-first-and-probably-last-time-so-many-dutch-painters?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 28 Feb 2023 08:15:11 +0000 Tokyo is a jumble of areas of low-rise sprawl laced tightly together by highways and railways, all pulsing with the movements of millions of commuters. Visitors, drawn to the sights in Yoyogi Park and Ueno Park, and to the leafy grounds of the Imperial Palace, tend not to notice that the proportion of green space to total space in the city is very low – just 7.5 per cent, in fact. Yet Japan is a land mainly of forested mountains, and the side streets of Tokyo reveal its citizens’ yearning for... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/travel-leisure/article/3210544/tokyo-water-river-cruise-japans-capital-reveals-glimpses-nature-and-history-amid-concrete-and-steel?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/travel-leisure/article/3210544/tokyo-water-river-cruise-japans-capital-reveals-glimpses-nature-and-history-amid-concrete-and-steel?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 19 Feb 2023 08:15:10 +0000 The taxi from Athy, southwest of Dublin, drops us at the tiny village of Vicarstown, in Ireland’s County Laois, where, below the canal bridge, several long, narrow boats are moored side by side like pencils in a box. It is late in the afternoon after a long day of travelling, but Philip Crean, of Barrowline Cruisers, gives our family of four an introduction to the operation of the simple controls, and to the basic rules and courtesies of canal cruising. Here is the control for the pump that... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/travel/article/3209786/why-canal-cruising-through-rural-ireland-journey-through-time-much-space-and-theres-no-such-thing?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/travel/article/3209786/why-canal-cruising-through-rural-ireland-journey-through-time-much-space-and-theres-no-such-thing?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 11 Feb 2023 08:15:08 +0000 “If the tsunami warning comes,” says the attendant at the Iwate Tsunami Memorial Museum, “you must go this way.” She points out the road to a primary school visible on high ground in the distance. “Twenty to 25 minutes by walk,” she says. “Ten minutes by run,” I reply. During eight days travelling south on foot down the east coast of Japan’s main island of Honshu, on the newly created Michinoku Coastal Trail, a friend and I have seen plenty of evidence of the destructive power of water:... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/travel/article/3208155/hiking-japan-honshu-coastal-trail-celebrates-post-tsunami-reconstruction-while-guided-walk-rural?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/travel/article/3208155/hiking-japan-honshu-coastal-trail-celebrates-post-tsunami-reconstruction-while-guided-walk-rural?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 28 Jan 2023 23:45:10 +0000 The Ark, a mud-brick fortress of mostly 16th century construction that towers over Bukhara, in Uzbekistan, is now a museum with displays devoted to the once independent city state’s history. These include a portrait of one Lieutenant-Colonel Charles Stoddart, who arrived as an envoy from the British Empire to the Emir of Bukhara in 1838. From the 16th to the 20th centuries, a sign explains, “Bukhara khanate received many travellers, scholars and diplomats from the foreign countries”. It neglects... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/travel/article/3207390/samarkand-bukhara-khiva-uzbekistans-ancient-cities-reveal-best-heritage-rich-country-central-asia?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/travel/article/3207390/samarkand-bukhara-khiva-uzbekistans-ancient-cities-reveal-best-heritage-rich-country-central-asia?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 21 Jan 2023 05:16:15 +0000 Few visitors to Uzbekistan in Central Asia make it as far west as Nukus, a city whose rigid grid of streets reveals it to be the product of Soviet-era planning. Unlike ancient Samarkand, Bokhara and Khiva, it lacks warren-like old towns and ancient mosques, madrasas and minarets. But distant Nukus is home to the snappily titled State Museum of Art of the Republic of Karakalpakstan Named For I. V. Savitsky. The city is the capital of the autonomous republic of Karakalpakstan, a large, mostly... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/arts-culture/article/3204798/central-asian-hoard-avant-garde-art-soviet-era-draws-belated-attention-just-its-visionary-founder?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/arts-culture/article/3204798/central-asian-hoard-avant-garde-art-soviet-era-draws-belated-attention-just-its-visionary-founder?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 31 Dec 2022 05:45:09 +0000 Not even the thick walls of the 15th-century Schloss Wurzen can keep out the morning birdsong, which seems particularly loud in this quiet corner of Saxony, near Leipzig in eastern Germany. It acts as a call to an early breakfast in the dining room of the castle turned hotel. Its twin-towered, moated bulk seems more suited to a robber baron than to the bishop for whom it was built, but today it is an appropriate base from which to reach other castles dotting the high points of this quiet corner... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/travel/article/3204272/colditz-country-castles-saxony-eastern-germany-are-historic-spectacular-and-remarkably-free-visitors?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/travel/article/3204272/colditz-country-castles-saxony-eastern-germany-are-historic-spectacular-and-remarkably-free-visitors?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 24 Dec 2022 10:15:13 +0000 There seems no better way to mark the 150th anniversary of the opening of the first railway line in Japan – a narrow-gauge route from the Shimbashi district of Tokyo to the port at Yokohama – than to arrive in the Japanese capital by “bullet train”, or shinkansen super express, and stay at Tokyo Station. There are trains everywhere you look in the city, and Tokyo Station, the hub of a vast rail network, is a train spotter’s paradise. It’s impossible to overstate the comfort and convenience of... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/travel-leisure/article/3203361/after-150-years-rail-travel-its-still-heart-japanese-culture-and-worth-trip-japan-see?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/travel-leisure/article/3203361/after-150-years-rail-travel-its-still-heart-japanese-culture-and-worth-trip-japan-see?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 18 Dec 2022 11:08:12 +0000 Alexander Lauber, creative director of Viennese niche perfume house WienerBlut, has been receiving inquiries from customers as to whether he has altered the recipes of his peculiarly Viennese fragrances. But he has not done so. However, within the abstract world of niche perfume there are changes in the wind. “There is actually a demand for more intense formulas which can be probably attributed to Covid,” says Lauber at his discreet central Vienna office in Austria. “We don’t really know if... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/travel-leisure/article/3202390/can-you-bottle-smell-vienna-how-pastries-books-roses-and-even-notes-rot-can-bring-austrian-city-mind?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/travel-leisure/article/3202390/can-you-bottle-smell-vienna-how-pastries-books-roses-and-even-notes-rot-can-bring-austrian-city-mind?utm_source=rss_feed Fri, 09 Dec 2022 08:15:15 +0000 Photographer Natacha de Mahieu has been turning her lens on some of the world’s most photographed sights. But she’s not doing it to tell us anything new about them. She wants to tell us something about ourselves. The 26-year-old Belgian photojournalist’s new series of images, “Theatre of Authenticity”, is a reaction to the way social media has brought us a form of mass individualism, in which many of us go to the same places and take the same images as everyone else – the ones we’ve seen on... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/travel-leisure/article/3195218/photos-people-top-instagram-spots-taking-selfies-are?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/travel-leisure/article/3195218/photos-people-top-instagram-spots-taking-selfies-are?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 08 Oct 2022 11:15:11 +0000