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Laos

The best way to see Southeast Asia: by bike!
<img loading="lazy" class="size-full wp-image-34540 alignright" src="http://www.butterfield.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/sea_kids-350c.png" alt="" width="350" height="374" srcset="https://blog.butterfield.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/sea_kids-350c.png 350w, https://blog.butterfield.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/sea_kids-350c-281x300.png 281w" sizes="(max-width: 350px) 100vw, 350px" />I’d be amiss to skip over B&amp;R’s favourite way to explore the world, by two wheels, so here are a few of my favourite routes and rides. If you’re trying to decide where to go, ask yourself what your activity level is, or what type of ride you’re seeking – hilly, flat, scenic, or with a lot of spots along the way to stop at?
If you want a mellow ride that’s relatively flat, my favourite ride in the Mekong Delta features a jaunt through local markets, rice paddies blowing in the breeze, and sometimes even joining along in the commute with local kids on their way to school!
For something hilly that will challenge your legs further, one of my favourite climbs is in Luang Prabang, Laos, as well as along the Hai Van Pass between Hoi An and Hue, Vietnam. The Hai Van Pass is particularly scenic with its twisting road, and was of strategic importance in Vietnamese military history. 
<img loading="lazy" class="size-full wp-image-34554 alignleft" src="http://www.butterfield.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/haivan-350-c.png" alt="" width="350" height="234" />
Biking the terrain in Northern Vietnam is also something I’m particular to: you will cross rivers, pass through rural villages, and even travel amongst towering limestone peaks. Feel like an adventurer and supplement your rides by taking a local boat through tunnels or hiking dramatic ‘dragon spine’ mountains for the full experience.
<img loading="lazy" class="size-full wp-image-34548 aligncenter" src="http://www.butterfield.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/ricefields_beggs-960-c.png" alt="" width="960" height="640" srcset="https://blog.butterfield.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/ricefields_beggs-960-c.png 960w, https://blog.butterfield.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/ricefields_beggs-960-c-450x300.png 450w, https://blog.butterfield.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/ricefields_beggs-960-c-768x512.png 768w, https://blog.butterfield.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/ricefields_beggs-960-c-900x600.png 900w" sizes="(max-width: 960px) 100vw, 960px" />
I’ve already touched upon this if you head to Cambodia, but the loveliest scenic bike routes are, unsurprisingly, found when you leisurely pedal from one splendid temple to another. The roads are flat, and you’ll find some nice 10 to 15 km stretches that will give you some room to open up and speed up. (Also, there are less chickens along the road to slow you down!)
<img loading="lazy" class="size-full wp-image-34551 aligncenter" src="http://www.butterfield.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/cambodia-stock-960-c.png" alt="" width="960" height="638" srcset="https://blog.butterfield.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/cambodia-stock-960-c.png 960w, https://blog.butterfield.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/cambodia-stock-960-c-451x300.png 451w, https://blog.butterfield.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/cambodia-stock-960-c-768x510.png 768w, https://blog.butterfield.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/cambodia-stock-960-c-903x600.png 903w" sizes="(max-width: 960px) 100vw, 960px" />

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Butterfield and Robinson's New Luxury Mekong Voyage

Experts + Insiders: Dane Tredway

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DuJour

Myanmar

Balloon Rides in Bagan

Italy

Favourite hotel in the world? 
<a title="Six Sense Ninh Van Bay " href="http://www.sixsenses.com/resorts/ninh-van-bay/destination" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Six Sense Ninh Van Bay</a> in Vietnam is a fun one. I love the isolation, using a bike to get around on the property, the personal pools for each bungalow, the personal butlers and the beautiful scenery.
<img loading="lazy" class="wp-image-18692 size-full" src="https://blog.butterfield.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/Christina_1.jpg" alt="Christina Cain" width="320" height="212" />
Favourite restaurant in the world? 
I’m a big fan of the simple, local food spots. One that comes to mind is in Nha Trang, Vietnam. They literally pull up plastic seats and a grill on the sidewalk and cook up the freshest catch right in front of you. It’s the simplest thing sitting on the sidewalk watching the world go by like the locals do, but it’s meals like this that stay in my memory.
Favourite bar/wine bar/watering hole in the world? 
I love little old enotecas (wine bars). One of my favourites is in Le Marche and is run by the local Sommelier association. It’s like stepping into a library of wine from the region. I also love the small old-style ones you find in the south of Italy where you can sit outside on the piazza and enjoy a glass of wine and people-watch.
Favourite bottle of wine? 
Depends on the season. When it’s cold outside, I love a good <a title="Vines 101: Piemonte Wine " href="http://www.butterfield.com/blog/2013/03/25/vines-101-piemonte-wine/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Barbaresco from Piemonte </a>. In the summer, I love a crisp white from the Südtirol and Alto Adige region in northern Italy, or a Rosato from the Salento in Puglia.
Do you have a favourite travel quote, mantra or words to live by? 
&#8220;Go with the flow&#8221; is the first. Be open, invite conversation, notice things.
Someone has just landed in a country they’ve never been to, where they don’t speak the language. What’s your number one piece of advice for them? 
Enjoy, turn off your cell phone, live in the moment.
And finally, what’s the craziest thing you’ve seen or done while on a trip? 
Ah man, you can’t ask that! You know the golden rule: what happens on a trip stays on trip. (Ed. Note: <a title="Tom Abraham" href="http://www.butterfield.com/blog/2013/09/26/experts-insiders-tom-abraham/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">I get that a lot</a>, but I keep asking. Tough crowd, these guides turned Trip Designers.)

Experts + Insiders: Christina Cain

Cuisine 101

<h5>Salads</h5>
<figure id="attachment_18435" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-18435" style="width: 320px" class="wp-caption alignright"><img loading="lazy" class="wp-image-18435 size-full" src="https://blog.butterfield.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/Burmese_salad.jpg" alt="Burmese cuisine " width="320" height="212" srcset="https://blog.butterfield.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/Burmese_salad.jpg 320w, https://blog.butterfield.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/Burmese_salad-124x82.jpg 124w" sizes="(max-width: 320px) 100vw, 320px" /><figcaption id="caption-attachment-18435" class="wp-caption-text">No trip to Myanmar is complete without enjoying the traditional fermented-tea-leaf salad.</figcaption></figure>
Another delightful surprise I discovered in Myanmar is that fresh, raw salads are commonplace at Myanmar meals. I’m not talking about boring iceberg lettuce with tomato and cucumber salads, I mean salads of heirloom tomatoes, or crunchy green bean salads mixed with peanuts and fried garlic. Even more exotic salads I loved were lotus root salad, pennywort and citrus leaf salads, and no trip to Myanmar is complete without enjoying the traditional fermented-tea-leaf salad.
A tea-leaf salad consists of fermented green tea leaves, onion, tomato, fried crispy garlic, and crunchy nuts and toasted beans. I think one of the factors that help to make the salads so delicious in Myanmar is that they use local and seasonal produce. As the ingredients are so fresh, you don’t need to add much to get simple salads that are bursting with flavours. I highly recommend sampling as many salads as you can while visiting.
<h4>Still Hungry?</h4>
Burmese cuisine offers way too many pleasures to be contained in a single blog post. <a title="Cuisine 102: More Myanmar Cuisine " href="http://www.butterfield.com/blog/2014/06/02/cuisine-102-myanmar-cuisine/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Click here to learn about my all-time favourite dish in Myanmar—and the country&#8217;s favourite sweet treats!</a>

Cuisine 101: Burmese Cuisine

<h3>Vital Stats</h3>
Years in Travel Business: 15 (including a long maternity break!) 
Years with B&amp;R: 5 
Countries/Regions of Expertise: Iceland, Morocco, Japan 
Countries visited: 24 
Countries lived in: South Korea, Japan and Canada 
Trips planned (estimate):  Dozens and dozens&#8230;
<h3>Q&amp;A with Orsolya Kako</h3>
Let&#8217;s start with your name—&#8221;Orsolya Kako&#8221; must get butchered a lot. What&#8217;s the worst bastardization you&#8217;ve come across? 
Well, this is an easy one. You know everyone pronounces my name as “Ursula” and that started in kindergarten when my teacher looked at my Hungarian name and said, “Well, I can’t pronounce that, so we’ll just go with &#8216;Ursula&#8217;” and that stuck to this day&#8230;  So, to answer your question, the worst bastardization is not even trying!
What’s your preferred method for immersing yourself in a country or region? 
When arriving in a new region, I love to just hit the sidewalk, walk and take in all the sights and sounds of the location, sit at a sidewalk café and just observe.
What&#8217;s the craziest thing you&#8217;ve done on trip? 
My first time in Iceland was during the summer of 2010 and was just a few months after the big eruption of the Eyjafjallajokull that stopped flight traffic over to Europe. We stopped to have a glimpse of our first glacier and we saw people with a guided tour of hikers with crampons going for a glacier hike. It looked so cool that we arranged one for the next day. It was so fun to put on crampons and dig into the ice—the ice was totally covered in soot from the recent eruption, so it looked like we were climbing on a black-sand beach. There were little streams where the glacier was melting that revealed the bluest blue of the glacier—so beautiful! We got up close to some pretty deep crevasses that showed us how massively deep the glaciers really are—amazing!
Let&#8217;s do some favourites: what&#8217;s your favourite trip you’ve ever taken? (I know, I know, but try to narrow it down to one!) 
Chile—I loved the diversity of the geography—from the driest desert in the world to the beauty of the <a title="Torres del Paine National Park " href="http://www.conaf.cl/parques/parque-nacional-torres-del-paine/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Torres del Paine National Park</a>.
Do you have a favourite hotel in the world? 
That’s as impossible as choosing my favourite child! Up there though, if pressed, are <a title="Abbaye de La Bussiere" href="http://www.abbaye-dela-bussiere.com/home.shtml" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Abbaye de la Bussiere</a> in Burgundy, <a title="Dar Ahlam" href="http://www.relaischateaux.com/en/search-book/hotel-restaurant/darahlam/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Dar Ahlam</a> in Skoura and the <a title="Four Seasons Budapest " href="http://www.fourseasons.com/budapest/‎" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Four Seasons in Budapest</a>.
<figure id="attachment_51427" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-51427" style="width: 454px" class="wp-caption alignright"><img loading="lazy" class="size-medium wp-image-51427" src="https://blog.butterfield.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/DarAhlam5-454x300.jpeg" alt="Dar Ahlam" width="454" height="300" srcset="https://blog.butterfield.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/DarAhlam5-454x300.jpeg 454w, https://blog.butterfield.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/DarAhlam5-907x600.jpeg 907w, https://blog.butterfield.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/DarAhlam5-768x508.jpeg 768w, https://blog.butterfield.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/DarAhlam5-1536x1016.jpeg 1536w, https://blog.butterfield.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/DarAhlam5.jpeg 1772w" sizes="(max-width: 454px) 100vw, 454px" /><figcaption id="caption-attachment-51427" class="wp-caption-text">Dar Ahlam</figcaption></figure>
Favourite bar/wine bar/watering hole in the world? 
A little hole in the wall that&#8217;s a 10-minute walk from my house in Toronto. We can pop out any time for a drink and run into a familiar face.
How about a favourite dish or restaurant? 
I&#8217;m tempted to say Thai street food from the food carts in Bangkok, but tapas from a little hole-in-the-wall restaurant in Barcelona is up there, too.
Of all the trips you&#8217;ve designed, do any moments or stories really jump out at you? 
Well, I had a couple who loved their <a title="Burgundy" href="http://www.butterfield.com/blog/france/burgundy/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Burgundy </a>biking trip so much last year that they got engaged! So that&#8217;s high on the list.

Experts + Insiders: Orsolya Kako

Beverages

Chanoyu

Cuisine

Regional Delicacies

<h2>“Courtesy, politeness, modesty&#8230;&#8221;</h2>
Many of Japan’s feudal warriors were lovers of the tea ceremony. Oda Nobunaga, the ferocious mid-16th-century leader, was forced to honourably disembowel himself when he was ambushed by a treasonous general after taking a chanoyu interlude en route to war. He was avenged by another fan of the tea, Toyotomi Hideyoshi. The expansionist leader once held an elaborate 10-day tea ceremony after a successful campaign in Kyushu. His interpreter, the Portuguese Jesuit Juan Rodriguez, wrote of the Japanese tea ceremony: “Courtesy, politeness, modesty, exterior moderation, calmness, place of body, and soul without any pride or arrogance, fleeing from ostentation, pomp, external grandeur and magnificence.”
The Japanese tea ceremony uses a special green tea that is very bitter, so a sweet, pounded rice-and-bean paste is presented before the drinking. Cha kaiseki, a special type of kaiseki-ryori, evolved as part of a full-length ceremony. Today, as in feudal times, it consists of a seemingly unending course of tiny porcelain or lacquer dishes with artistically arranged vegetables, fish and rice.
The entire meal is a combination of texture, flavour, aroma and seasonal foods. Like nature, the tea ceremony provides balance.

In Chanoyu, A Profound Influence

asia-pacific

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