Month: January 2014

14 Creative V-Day Dates

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Not all couples celebrate Valentine’s Day. Some feel too old and too tired. Some think fine dining is too expensive, too fussy and too conventional–and they’re damn right. So why don’t you Valentine believers dump the boring dinners and try these things for a change? You have two weeks to prepare. Be kids again. Think of the things you loved to do when you were children, and do them. It can be as simple as going to the park, flying a kite, spending hours on a swing, visiting a museum/planetarium, or playing at an arcade. Learn to cook/bake your favorite dish. First, do the grocery, then clear the kitchen and drive everyone away. This is your date place. Now get to work. Play some music if it gets you in the mood to slice and dice. If you feel like flirting through a flour fight, go right ahead. Just remember you will eat what you cook. Take a walk or ride a bike. This is good for the heart, literally. Follow bike trails that will …

A Tale of Two Kingdoms

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“I’M NOT SHOUTING AT YOU LADYYY!” the angry salesgirl at the MBK mall in Bangkok shouted as we left her stall. She screamed a lot more of what I could only surmise as invectives in the Thai language. Shoppers stopped, heads turned. I suddenly imagined her pulling me into a catfight, so I walked as fast as I could, practically dragging my shocked grandmother away from the raging vendor’s stall. The screaming salesgirl, who was furious that we thought her merchandise was expensive, was the piece de resistance in our stressful, tourist-trapped first day in what Travel+Leisure readers dubbed in 2013 as the World’s Best City—Bangkok. Our Bangkok was nothing like the Bangkok of Hollywood movies and glossy magazines. Ours was real, rough and rowdy. The Grand Palace would put Disneyland to shame with its queues and crowd, observed my husband, a first-timer in the city who immediately and irrevocably fell out of love with it (it didn’t help that the entrance fee to the palace was THB 550). The strict dress code—no shorts or …

Kyoto’s Eternally Old Soul

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Everything in Kyoto is old. Our private guide, Shihoko Hirooka, was 73. My entire family’s jaw dropped when she entered the hotel lobby and introduced herself as the one who will shepherd our group of nine, young, hyper-excited tourists. “This is our guide?” my sister Abbie whispered as she pulled me aside and cast me a worried look. “That woman is older than Ma and Pa! We’ll be walking the whole day…” Shihoko’s website boasted of her more than 30 years of experience as a tour guide in Japan, so I knew our guide wouldn’t be young. But I didn’t imagine she would be this old, either. “So, are you from Kyoto?” I asked Shihoko as we walked to the train station. It was a lame attempt at conversation but somebody had to talk—my companions were still in shock that our guide was as old as my grandmother. “Well, I’ve lived here for 40 years, but I can’t really say I’m from here. In Kyoto, for you to be able to say that you are …