Luxury touring holidays

Luxury touring holidays: tailor-made for individuals

Cambodia has thrown its arms open the world, welcoming visitors with an enthusiasm and warmth and that makes holidaying here – even without its myriad attractions – an extraordinary joy. Cambodia’s people may be the country’s principle asset, their unbreakable spirit and infectious optimism prevailing against all odds, but it is Angkor Wat for which the country is probably best known – and understandably so. Siem Reap and Phnom Penh may be Cambodia’s main urban draws, but Cambodia’s spirit is essential rural, and the countryside is the best place to experience the rhythm of rural life and timeless landscapes of dazzling rice paddies and swaying sugar palms.
Hong Kong is teeming with people, cluttered with traffic, festooned in neon and dizzying with towering skyscrapers. It can be overwhelming at first, but swim with the current, navigate your way through its alleys and along its bay, and you’ll find a fascinating city that is endlessly enchanting. Perhaps Hong Kong’s most intriguing asset is its people, scurrying between offices and home, swarming its Central Market, gathering for dawn Tai Chi in the park, working the junks anchored in the harbour, flocking to the floating restaurants and bars after work.
Malaysia conjures up images of jungles brimming with exotic life, clippers cutting through the South China Sea and sultans sitting in opulent palaces, yet today is a place of thrusting, modern self-confidence. Two countries for the price of one, Malaysia is cleaved in half by the South China Sea, dividing the country into two distinctive worlds. The peninsula is a multicultural buffet of Malay, Chinese and Indian flavours, while Borneo hosts a wild jungle of orang-utans, granite peaks and remote tribes.
Singapore is a fascinating mix of cultures and temperaments, with immigrants from China and Malaysia, India and the West creating a rich, heady cocktail reflected in its architecture, with skyscrapers and subways sitting side by side with rickety riverside food stalls and colonial hotels. Home to the legendary Raffles Hotel, Singapore is equally famous today for its bustling Chinatown and Little India, with its mouth-watering cuisine drawing on influences from all round the Pacific. The Lion City is a superb, hi energy escape.
Thailand is visited by more people than any other country in Southeast Asia. With beautiful beaches and stunning cuisine, historic towns and colourful cities, it’s not hard to see why. Bangkok is the country’s spectacular gateway, a place of timeless wonder, with ancient markets and temples, centuries-old palaces and monks in saffron robes. In the north, Chaingrai province – aka the Golden Triangle – offers a wealth of river tours and hilltribe treks, ruined cities and cookery holidays, with Chiang Mai its stunning capital. In the south, idyllic islands are sprinkled into the Andaman Sea, with Koh Samui and Phuket merely the best known.
Vietnam is a land of extraordinary natural beauty. Soaring mountains and swaying rice fields, sweeping beaches and the mighty Mekong, Vietnam has it all, with Ha Long Bay and its iconic limestone towers the jewel in the country’s dazzling crown. Hanoi is its bristling capital, with elegant colonial buildings overlooking avenues buzzing with motorbikes; old, imperial capital Hue is the cultural heartbeat, with palaces and pagodas, tombs and temples, and a biennial arts festival worth the airfare alone; Ho Chi Minh City – or Saigon as it’s still universally known – is all hustle and bustle, an intoxicating blend of the old and the new, with teeming markets dwarfed by towering skyscrapers. The Mekong Delta provides an ancient, intoxicating foreverness of rice fields and sleepy villages, with river trips taking you along the country’s timeless lifeblood. Inland, peasant women in conical hats still tend to their fields, children ride buffalos along country paths and farmers scratch out a living from rice fields cascading down the sheerest of hillsides. But if Vietnam’s hilly countryside is beautiful, its coastline is simply stunning.