Best Affordable All-Inclusive Resorts

 

 

 

All-inclusive resorts that deliver surprising luxuries, service, and cuisine at an affordable (and predictable) price.

From February 2013By Ann Shields

As a Manhattan assistant district attorney and mother of three, Kerry Chicon can make a persuasive case for needing a break from stress and planning. So finding a low-maintenance vacation is her high priority: “When we travel with kids, we always go with an all-inclusive vacation,” she says.

Savvy travelers like Chicon aren’t just taking the easy way out—they’ve discovered that an influx of service-oriented hoteliers has raised the bar on the all-inclusive resort model, introducing more amenities and more of a sense of place.

Better still, the perks and convenience of an all-inclusive vacation can be had at a great price (from $307 per night at the Ocean Coral & Turquesa on Mexico’s Riviera Maya). Keep your eye out for air/resort packages offered by big travel providers, and you may find even lower rates.

One of the biggest improvements at all-inclusives like the Ocean Coral & Turquesa is the food. In years past, the cuisine at many all-inclusive resorts had all the flair of a Holiday Inn buffet, with a few slices of pineapple to signify location. Buffet lines haven’t disappeared entirely, but resorts are recognizing that showcasing fresh ingredients and local cuisine will lure guests with more refined palates.

Taking the focus on cuisine even further, Azul Beach Resort on the Riviera Maya calls itself “gourmet-inclusive”: The 148-room resort operates four full-service restaurants, several snack bars, and a lounge dedicated to tequila, just to keep foodies coming back.

Gone, too, is the desperately perky social director organizing a poolside conga line. Resorts are one-upping each other with an ever-expanding roster of diversions: golf, tennis, ziplines, kids’ clubs, snorkeling trips, Spanish lessons, beachfront climbing walls, kayaking, and trapeze instruction. Even lazing on the beach has received an upgrade: you’ll find hand-carved Balinese beach beds under palapas at Melia Caribe Tropical.

Lolling on the sand used to be enough; exploring outside a resort’s gates was discouraged. But some all-inclusives now embrace local pride. CocoBay urges guests to check out the nearby national park and local museums to get a taste of Antigua that can’t be experienced from a hammock. In Barbados, Mango Bay invites local bands to play and runs casually guided excursions to area shops.

Sure, you may be able to find great food, thoughtful service, and a wealth of activities elsewhere on the beach, but at what cost and after how much research?

These all-inclusive resorts guarantee vacations where, for a few nights, you can count on economic stability and ease of planning. Treat yourself to one of these trips as a kind of stimulus package for your budget—and your peace of mind.

Singapore on the company dime

Experience a crossroad of Asian cultures

 

 

It was a dream vacation, really.  The company was setting up some equipment in Singapore and needed someone to go.   I traded a first class ticket for two seats in coach so that my wife could accompany me on our first trip to Asia, and after a grueling umpteen hour flight from Denver through LAX and Tokyo, we finally touched down on the island and were whisked to the Intercontinental hotel in the dead of night. The fourteen hour time difference combined with the flight made for a serious jet lag, but after some serious sleep, we were out exploring this unique nation state.
  
Singapore is a cauldron of activity with throngs of people crammed into a small area, but it manages somehow to maintain a sense of order and calmness.  Downtown, modern high-rises alongside aging colonial architecture frame broad leafy streets and lush parks, making this a wonderful city for walking.  Ethnic neighborhoods offer fascinating glimpses, and tastes, of different cultures, and a series of quays along the river provide plenty of opportunity for al fresco dining.  During the frequent torrential downpours and the heat of the day, you don’t have to miss a beat, descending into a sprawling series of underground malls connected by pedestrian tunnels and an easy-to-use subway system.  

One such subway line carried me out to my job site the next day in the suburbs, emerging above ground into a residential area studded with lots of technology company campuses.  The work I did there over the next few days was interesting, but what I really remember is lunch.  Lunch was at an open air food court and market, where technology workers sat in long tables enjoying fresh made soups, stews, meat skewers and fried things, a mix of Malaysian, Indian and Chinese.  I devoured some kind of mysterious peanut soup that was fantastic and apparently significantly exotic enough to impress my hosts, who regaled stories of other foreigners who refused to eat anything questionable (which was mostly everything…).  Personally, this market was exactly why I was here.

Singapore’s diversity reflects its location near the Asian Subcontinent, with a large Chinese population, and lesser but still significant numbers of Malaysians and Indians, among others.   While these groups live in naturally segregated areas, there is also an amazing blending.  Riding the subway during rush hour, you see people of all different cultures mixing and interacting seamlessly.  Streets wind past traditional Chinese medicine shops, Mosque minarets and ornately adorned Hindu temples.  Small microcosms of each culture offer small shops with products imported from home, as well as authentic restaurants and food stalls.  Open air markets are a tropical fruit paradise, and make sure not to miss the Durian, a large spiky fruit that smells strongly like used gym socks, leading to its banishment from indoor areas, but whose flesh is really tasty, especially in a fresh fruit smoothie.

The second week of our trip, we moved hotels from the extravagantly priced, but paid for by the company, Intercontinental hotel, to the Hilton near a major commercial area called Orchard Road.   We weren’t here for the glitzy Rodeo drive lookalike with Planet Hollywood, Saks 5th Avenue and Bloomingdales, but this is where the cheaper (and mind you I have my wife with me) hotels are.  It was here that we had a most challenging and rewarding Chinese Dim Sum experience.  I found a blurb in the hotel magazine about a hole-in-the-wall place called East Ocean that promised a local and authentic experience.  The first challenge was finding it, which turned out to be mostly because the door was completely unlabeled, but spying a family of hungry looking Chinese heading through the unmarked door and up a stairway, we took a chance and struck pay dirt.  We were indeed the only tourists in the place, which was packed and had a bit of a wait, but once we got to the table, the feast of smells, sights and tastes that define Dim Sum was unleashed upon us.  We didn’t know what many things were, and the servers rolling around the little metal carts filled with dumplings and sticky buns, couldn’t tell us.  That only made it better, as we bought plate after plate of the tasty morsels.  

The other big attraction in this western side of the island is Jarong Bird Park, a large nature area with hundreds of bird species represented in a variety of aviaries and well designed enclosures.  It is a spectacular and well run park, with acres of open fields, woods and water, providing habitat for tons of exotic birds.  There is also the large Singapore Botanic Gardens, which includes an impressive orchid garden, among lots of other tropical flora.  Days are spent meandering through these tropical nature areas, enjoying the warm nights, eating world class cuisine and street food, and experiencing a wonderful mixture of first world modern luxuries and third world markets and ambiance.  Singapore really is a truly fascinating city, clean and orderly on one hand, chaotic and exotic on the other, offering something for everyone.

Island Life on Utila

Enjoy the slow life on this Bay Island off of Honduras

 

 

ime really does slow down on an island, which is hard to comprehend for those of us caught up in the fast paced pressure cooker of modern society, but it’s the single thing I enjoy most about the island life.  The smaller the island, the slower the pace, and the first one I visited was also the tiniest I’ve been to, but it was just this smallness that made it such a special place.  In the southern Caribbean Ocean, just north of the Central American nation ofHonduras are the Bay Islands, a string of three small tropical islands, of which westernmost Utila is the smallest.

Known in backpacker circles as a great, cheap place to get your scuba diving certification, Utila offers little more to do, but plenty to enjoy.  Like the other Bay Islands, Utila is reached by a short ferry ride from the mainland coastal city of La Ceiba.  Unlike the rest of Honduras, English is more widely spoken than Spanish, and the native inhabitants are primarily Garifuna, descendants of Black Caribs, giving it a much different feel than the rest of the country.  Tourism has become the primary source of income, and Honduras recently made Utila a tax-free zone to encourage its further development, as well as standardizing scuba diving rates (read this as get there now before it gets overdeveloped).

Arriving at the docks is a mellow affair, with few or no hawkers, so take your time walking the several blocks of accommodations and dive shops before choosing.  The main road goes in both directions along the coast as well as going straight ahead to the uninhabited North side of the island, where the road literally just ends at an empty beach.  Most people come for the diving, and there are several places that offer free dives, dive courses and accommodation.  We stayed at Cross Creek, one of the larger hotels and dive centers, and signed up for the beginning PADI dive certification course.

Like most inexpensive dive centers, Cross Creek is a magnet for traveling young people from around the world, either learning to dive, or master divers plying their trade.  We stayed in the clean and sparse hotel, which was a single row of small rooms with fans and small beds, fronted by an open terrace perfect for hanging hammocks and lounging.  There is a restaurant and bar on site, which the dive masters are required to work at to earn their keep, but often was not open.  The dive course involves classroom training a couple hours each evening, and diving from about 6 to 1 each morning, including quite of bit of prep time getting the gear ready and cleaning it when you return.  The remainder of the time we were free to explore the island, although often exhausted from the rigors of diving.  

Utila was hot, really hot, probably the hottest place I had ever been to that point.  By the end of the first day, I was walking everywhere shirtless and had given up trying to protect against the sand fly bites that now covered my body.  The heat is really what creates the slowness of island life though, and you can’t really have one without the other.  A siesta is normally taken in the midday, as it’s really too hot to do anything and much of the activity is in the relatively cooler mornings and evenings.  

Fresh seafood and simple ingredients are the staples of the food on Utila.  Most of the restaurants are single person affairs, ranging from a person’s home to a slightly larger restaurant with several tables.  At some of the smaller places, there may only be one item, whatever was fresh and available that day.  One of my favorite places like this was Xijing restaurant, with four shaded outside tables, and such tasty dishes as rice and beans, barracuda with fries, or if you time it just right, you can get some sweet rice, made with coconut milk, cinnamon, and sugar in a ten gallon vat over an open flame, and gone within half an hour.  Other staples of the island include fried chicken, grouper, tuna and conch.  Almost everything is accompanied by salad or fries (papas fritas).  Dinner will cost you less than 5 USD with beer.  Baked goods are a favorite at breakfast on the island, and if you’re up for a challenge, you have to find Taracina, a woman with a shack in the middle of nowhere offering the best Pan de Coco around, definitely worth seeking out.

Outside of eating, diving and relaxing in your hammock, there is deliciously little to do.  You can take the single track dirt road to the Northern side of the island, which is a couple hours walk through quiet palm trees and woods, to an empty beach on the other side.  There is a primitive Iguana research station that you can visit, or volunteer at and stay a while, and help protect the spiny tailed Utila Iguana.  There are some small cays to the Southwest that can be visited in your spare time.  You can hang out with fellow travelers and discover many things about the world.  Other than that, enjoy the sunsets, and the lack of excitement.  It’s what makes any island special, reminding us of what is really important in life.  Be careful though, because you may not want to come back.

Hiking the Sierra Norte

Experiencing the rural mountain villages of Oaxaca, Mexico

 

 

 

In the early afternoon heat, after experiencing the local Sunday tangui (market) in Tlocalula, we were bouncing along in the back of a flat bed truck ever higher into the mountains.  The back and sides of the platform, shared with six indigena women and a bushel of some type of flower, were open or barely covered, causing the increasingly cooler, wetter air to chill us into putting on our fleece jackets.  Finally above tree line, the desert scrub gave way to green forests, our height reinforced by the family of turkey vultures circling and diving over the steep mountain slopes alongside the road.  Out of nowhere appeared the small town of Cuajimoloyas, it's grouping of houses and businesses scattered up and down a grid of very steep streets.  The truck stopped and we stepped off to begin our two day trip into the Sierra Juárez mountains northeast of Oaxaca, Mexico, also called the Sierra Norte.

Our adventure began the day before at the offices of Expediciones de Sierra Norte in the capital city, where we decided on a day of hiking and day of horseback riding between Cuajimoloyas, Latuvi and Lachatao, three of the villages participating in the cooperative Pueblos Mancomunados run by the a group of non-governmental organizations.  The office provides tourists and locals with information and arrangements to explore 100 kilometers of trails connecting eight mountain towns by foot, bike or horse, eating local food and staying along the way in "rustic" cabañas.  The office collects a small fee (10USD) for their services, and writes up an itinerary with costs to be paid along the way to the individual towns.  These services provide important revenue for the towns and promote responsibility and protection of the forest land.  

In Cuajimoloyas, the cabañas are literally at the highest point in the village, looking out over what would be a great view if the town wasn't obscured by clouds.  They have electricity, hot water, were very clean, well built and maintained, which would be true for all of the cabañas we stayed in.  A quick walk down to the only open comedor yielded a hearty dinner of chile rellenos, chicken in a chipotle sauce and wonderful salsa and tortillas prepared by two women in a small kitchen attached to the dining room.  By the time we got back, a fire was raging in our room with more wood stacked for the night.  

After breakfast at the other comedor in town (and the best coffee and hot chocolate of the trip), we met Evencio, our guide, back at the cabaña around 10am for the start of our first day's hike.  The conversation was lively as we hiked down a wide dirt track past giant cactus, bulls and burros, occasionally passing farmers working their land, all the time descending out of the clouds.  The track eventually became smaller and we found ourselves in the eerie mist, on a rock pinnacle surrounded by trees covered with hanging moss. This was the halfway point where we met up with Javier, our guide the rest of the way to Latuvi.     

We quickly made our way down steep hills till we reached a stream with a trout farm, perfect for a meal or a quick rest.  The climate was much warmer here and the pastoral country setting was relaxingly idyllic.  After having a cerveza with our guide, we finished the primarily downhill hike with two exhausting kilometers up a steep road, cresting at the tiny town of Latuvi and the welcoming promise of a hot shower and rest.  Latuvi's center was at the top of the hill, with a small school, municipal building, a couple comedores, and the dramatically perched cabañas, with a panoramic view of the valley below.  The hillsides tumbled down from here, dotted with small houses and farms, all seemingly basic structures juxtaposed by electric wires running across rooftops and clusters of satellite dishes.

Life in these villages is much slower and less rigid than in the city.  Time is largely irrelevant as people go about their daily lives, going to school, working the fields, or providing the limited services available, guided by a natural pace more than the exact hour.  Often, while looking to pay for the cabaña or meet the next guide, we were told "mas tarde", a phrase that literally means "later", but more loosely translated, meant "sometime in the future, someone might be along and will probably come find you".  There is literally nothing to do in these villages for tourists but to unwind and soak in the sun and slow pace.  

The next morning, our guide Miguel appeared at the cabaña with two small horses named Fito and Guerra.   We mounted and with Miguel leading the way on foot, proceeded down the cobblestone main street, veering off onto a narrow dirt track that wound its way down steep switchbacks till we reached the bottom of the valley.  The path follows an ancient Zapotec trail along the small river for seven or eight kilometers past small subsistence farms, dry brown, yellow, and light green grass and scrub, that reminded me so much of Northern California in late Summer, it was easy to understand Mexico's historical attraction to the state that used to be theirs.  The horses struggled up and down rocky trails, carefully choosing their steps to avoid plunging down the hillside.  After four hours, we ambled into Lachatao, and were instantly smitten with the sleepy hamlet.  

Santa Catarina de Lachatao feels bigger but quieter than the other towns, centered around an old stone church that provides a sense of colonial times.  Our cabaña had a balcony overlooking the church and from here we watched the hours tick by, seeing nothing but the occasional dog, or student learning their lessons in one of the church's outer alcoves.  One of the highlights of the trip was a dinner we had at Restaurant Los Pinos, a one table affair in the kitchen of the owner Sylvia, whose house sits on a farm with a greenhouse, where she grows all of her ingredients naturally.  We had excellent tasajo (thin skirt steak grilled straight over the burner flame), an excellent nopalito (cactus) salad, and the ever present frijoles (black beans), salsa and tortillas.  While the food was fresh and wonderful, the best part of the meal was the conversation, as other members of the family came and went, greeting and engaging us warmly.  By the end, we felt in some strange way that we knew these people, had been part of their lives in some small way.

The bus to Oaxaca left early the next morning from the square in front of our cabaña, and we had not yet paid.  The teenager who we were supposed to pay had taken “mas tarde” to the extreme, and never come back.  We left the cash in the room and boarded the brand new Mercedes mini bus.  As it wound its way down the narrow switchbacks, more and more passengers got on until it was standing room only.  Kids in school uniforms, university students with laptops, old women with goods to sell at the market and families heading to larger towns for services or work.  Provided as a free service to the people of Lachatao, the bus is a visible example of the direct impact tourist dollars make to the people of the eight towns participating in the decade old ecotourism project.  Visiting the towns of the Sierra Norte gave us a glimpse of modern day rural Oaxaca, an introspective and unique journey that will hold a special place in our memories.

Fiji Resort at Namale

Find paradise in the unspoiled Fiji Islands

 

 

 

Getting married changed many things in my life, including the way I travel.  Convention breaks downtravelers into two groups, and as Rolf Potts puts it in Storming the Beach, “tourists leave home to escape the world, while travelers leave home to experience the world”.  I was always in the traveler category – backpacking for months around Europe, paddling down the Amazon, diving in the Carribbean – seeking out that exotic experience.

So when my fiancé suggested we get married in Fiji at an all inclusive resort, I shrank back in terror at the mere thought of eating teriyaki chicken dinners with a bunch of tourists and paying for drinks with little beads.  The actual experience was quite the opposite however, and the Namale Plantation Resort surpassed both my craving for the exotic and the remote, and her desire for rest and relaxation.  

Namale is on the second largest island in the Fiji archipelago, Vitu Levu. The island consists of tiny villages, two small towns (I hesitate to call them towns and only do so in contrast to the even tinier villages), and a couple of other resorts including the Jean-Michel Cousteau Fiji Islands Resort, a symbol of the fantastic diving in the area.  Namale sits on 125 lush acres between the forest and the ocean, dotted with coconut trees, brilliant flowers, crystal turquoise water and unspoiled white sand beaches. 

At the time, the entire resort hosted a maximum of eight couples, and for most of our stay, there were only two other couples, which provided for a really wonderfully secluded experience.  They have recently expanded the resort, adding 200 more acres (to protect the outlying rain forest according to the website), doubled the number of huts to 16, and added a 10,000 square foot spa, a convention center and a couple of private villas, so that extreme seclusion may be harder to come by.  
 
The wood frame huts (bures) with thatched roofs had no televisions, telephones or air conditioning, providing a true sense of elegance and simplicity.  They are beautifully appointed, spacious and airy, with screened windows, and a full bathroom with running water.  Our honeymoon suite was right along the water, and had a Jacuzzi tub overlooking the empty beach, as well as a wonderful private deck perched over the water.  The king size canopy bed was covered romantically in white down and draped with mosquito netting, turned down and awaiting us every night after dinner.  

To say Namale offers world class cuisine in an exotic setting is an understatement.  The day begins with breakfast on the deck of the Main Bure, a buffet of wonderful pastries, fruits, yogurts, and cereals as well as made to order eggs, meat, fish and potatoes.  The banana syrup is not to be missed.  Lunch can be had anywhere on the resort including by the pool, in your suite or any spot of your choosing on the grounds.  You can also request a picnic lunch should you plan on being somewhere else at lunch time.  All meals came with the freshest of salads and breads.  Dinners were in the Main Bure, either in the central dining area, or more often, just the two of us at a private table on a series of tiered decks overlooking the bay.  There was always a seafood dish and a meat dish, and vegetarian was easily accommodated as well.  The preparation and presentation was fantastic, the service was attentive, but not intrusive, and the pace was relaxed.  The dishes were created from locally available ingredients, and included many local flavors like the dark green Ron-Ron soup made from Taro leaves and coconut milk, or the native Walu fish in a paprika sauce with asparagus and Kokoro.

Alcohol is included and can be had at any time, including bottles of French Champagne.  Each dinner boasted Red and White wine from some of the world’s best vineyards.  There is a top shelf bar in the Maine Bure, where we had a drink called the Banana Fijian, a frozen drink made from Galliano, Coconut Passion Liqueur, Crème de Banana, Fruit Juice and an actual Banana, blended and topped with whip cream.  We reproduce this drink at home for special occasions to this day.  

There were other activities during the day other than eating, both organized and not.  You could ride a horse up through the villages in the forest or hike up lonely hillsides to panoramic vistas of the island.  There were kayaks and canoes to take out on the peaceful bay or rolling ocean.  There are hammocks throughout the resort to lie on, and some smaller hikes, one especially nice is to a peak overlooking three water spouts that erupt explosively.  When the significant tide goes out, you can reef walk, but make sure to use the reef walking shoes found at the dive shop.  

The diving is world class and they run dives any day of the week from the dive shop on the resort.  There are many coral walls and pinnacles in the area, offering shallow and deep dives, amid colorful schools of fish swirling in every direction.   We had a couple of nice encounters with huge schools of Reef Sharks and Barracuda, an extremely poisonous Sea Snake, and some Giant Clams.  Two tanks will cost you USD50, and is one of the few extra charges at the resort.  Snorkeling is also wonderful and can be done right off the beach or in deeper waters.

Despite the isolation of the resort, we had lots of wonderful contact with the local people, who welcomed us and let us participate in their rituals including the Kava drink ceremony, a traditional wedding and village markets.  Even though it was an all-inclusive resort, we weren’t isolated from the society we were visiting, in many ways, providing the best of both worlds.  There is so much more I want to write about this experience, so look for the second part of my Fiji experience coming soon.

Canadian Tulip Festival in Ottawa

Tulips create the perfect backdrop to experience this wonderful capital city

 

 

 

 

St. Valentine’s Day is noted for roses, but the holiday always reminds me that my wife’s favorite flower is actually the tulip, something that can be hard to come by in a snowy February in Vermont.  Planted before the first frost of autumn, they’re quickly forgotten about until they emerge unexpectedly in the sunny warmth of spring.  The red, yellow, purple, pink and white heads on single smooth green stalks begin to frame gardens and walkways around the country, reflecting our fascination with this simple and elegant flower from Holland.  As a belated gift last spring, I took my wife to one of my favorite Canadian cities, Ottawa, which just happens to host an annual Tulip festival that showcases both the city and this wonderful flower.

This quaint capital city reflects both the English speaking majority and the French speaking Québécois minority, divided by the Ottawa River separating the provinces of Ontario and Quebec.   Punctuated by beautiful parks, stunning architecture, scenic river overlooks, and lively outdoor markets and cafes, Ottawa is relatively small and often overlooked, lying midway between the larger cities of Toronto and Montreal.  While winter might be a challenge here, since it’s considered one the coldest capital cities in the world (with an average temperature of 41.9 degrees Fahrenheit), the spring and summer months are fantastic, perhaps made more so by the contrast. 

The Canadian Tulip Festival began in 1953, several years after Princess Juliana of the Netherlands gave Ottawa 100,000 tulip bulbs to show appreciation for the city’s harboring of Holland’s exiled royal family during World War II.  The eighteen day extravaganza each May has become the largest Tulip festival in the world, hosting hundreds of thousands of tourists viewing millions of tulips spread throughout the city.  Many of the events are free, or can be accessed with an inexpensive pass including transportation between the venues on the “Tulip shuttle”.  The event has grown in scope, and features musical concerts, competitions, and a formal Tulip ball including beautiful dresses made from flowers.  Visiting in the beginning of the festival can be risky since the weather determines when the tulips bloom en masse, but the crowds increase as the weather gets warmer, so going early can often be a risk worth taking.  Make sure to take in the lower key display at Commissioner’s Park, set in a beautiful suburb surrounding Dow’s Lake.

Unless you’re a horticulturist however, the amazing variety of colors and styles of tulips mostly provide a stunning backdrop to experience the rest of the things this city has to offer.   The downtown area is about four square blocks and centered on the ByWard Market, featuring lots of indoor and outdoor vendors selling their wares, from crepes to cheese to hot sauces and pretty much else anything you can imagine.  It’s surrounded by specialty shops, boutiques, cafés and restaurants, and cute little cobblestone alleys where you can sit and watch the world go by. 

For people watching and an interesting menu, I especially recommend the Fox And Feather Pub, tucked down a picturesque pedestrian street.  On a hot day, they had a refreshing melon bisque special, Leffe beer on tap, and they even welcomed our overheated canine companion providing ice water and lots of attention.  There are plenty of other bars and clubs around which create a relatively subdued but fun nightlife.  For those fans of Douglas Adams, one that sticks out is a club called Zaphod Beeblebrox that is known for live music and festive young crowds.

Despite the small area, downtown Ottawa (called Centretown) also reflects the melting pot of cultures with a variety of restaurants from high end cuisine to hip vegetarian joints, and choosing one may be a challenge.  One of our favorite places we always go back to the Calendario Azteca restaurant, a very authentic journey through the cuisine of Mexico, including the rare Huitlacoche, a mushroom that grows on the corn cob, spiced and served in a crepe.  There is also a Little Italy (and it’s really little), and we had a wonderful meal at Trattoria Café Italia which offers a large menu of traditional items including a number of vegetarian options.  You can also snack your way through the market, and if you’re not from the area, don’t miss the bagels made Montreal style at Continental Bagel.

Besides being the provincial capital of Ontario, Ottawa serves as the national capital, and it has the official and parliamentary buildings to prove it.  Most of them border Major’s Hill Park along the western bank of the Ottawa River, and they’re joined by cultural landmarks like the National Arts Centre, National Gallery, the Mint, and a War Memorial.  Take a scenic walk across the Alexandra Bridge into Quebec and visit the Canadian Museum of Civilization in the Hull area, which includes an IMAX theatre.  While this side of the city doesn’t have a lot of restaurants, there are a number of nice patisseries and coffee shops.  The best place to stay if you can swing it is the Fairmont Chateau Laurier, which looks like a castle, and sits right on the river along with the other buildings on Parliament Hill, making it the perfect location to walk anywhere.

In all, Ottawa provides a compact, scenic and multicultural experience easily explored in a long weekend.  Make it extra special by visiting in spring during the annual Tulip Festival, sure to impress the one you love.

Beaming Bali, Indonesia

Cycling the Balinese path to happiness

 

 

 

Everyone in Bali smiles. Big, broad, beaming smiles. And all that’s necessary to evoke it is eye contact. Even when they may be preoccupied with weaving their scooters through traffic or carrying a heavy, flailing pig across the road, you only have to hint at a smile from your own lips and the response is immediate and electrifying.

"Transport?" queried a smiling young man on a sidewalk in Ubud, an artsy town in the south-eastern hills. It’s a frequent offer on the streets of nearly every town in Bali. Everyone with a car will offer you a ride for a small price. You may say "no thank you" seven times on Monkey Forest Road in Ubud. But what’s heart-warming is that you will always receive an enthusiastic "Welcome!" in response.

As one of Indonesia’s luxury destinations, Bali is a truly service-oriented society and economy. Away from the resorts on the coast, there is less commercial zeal and more genuine friendliness. Culturally, Bali differs from other Indonesian islands, and indeed is an exception in this predominantly Muslim country with its Hindu-Buddhist history. It is this history that shapes the Balinese approach to life and the Balinese landscape.

Exploring the surroundings of Ubud on bike is perhaps the best way to take in the beautiful landscape, with all its rice terraces, temples, villages and cackling roosters. I signed up for a daytrip with Arung from Bali Moon Group. We began with a morning stop at an eclectic orchard growing everything from mangosteen, papaya and peanuts to cacao, coffee beans and tea leaves. Arung also introduced us to salak, a fruit with a brown, snake-scaled skin that looks like a nut inside and tastes like mixture of apple and pear.

After an invigorating ginger tea we were driven up to the edge of Mount Batur. The mountain bikes were unloaded and we were ready to start off downhill back towards Ubud. Arung had assured us back in the office that it was "all downhill", but some of us were taken aback by how steep downhill can be. And the road was just a rocky path. One of the English girls on the excursion already wanted to make use of the trailing van service that carried our backpacks, but was persuaded to stick with it since it would get easier.

Our reward, when it began to level out, was a school full of excited children running towards the road to greet us. Six and seven year old boys were exploding with excitement, seemingly overwhelmed by such an unexpected visit from strangers. "Hallo! Hallo!" they squealed, vying to make eye contact with any one of the cyclists and jumping for high-fives. Wide-eyed awe and giggles rippled through the crowd as our group responded to their eagerness. It felt like the Tour de France. A few boys ran with the bikes until they were out-paced or came to the end of the village.

We cycled along rice paddies, many of them flocked by ducks feeding on leftover grains. In the rolling countryside I could hear the lovely sound of bamboo music and wind chimes everywhere. We passed through several more villages, all laid out on a sloping north-south axis and flanked by walled enclosures that are the typical Balinese. Each had an elaborately carved gateway and immediately behind it a wall, the aling-aling, to keep floating evil spirits from sweeping in through the open gateway.

In one village an old man on a moped scooted up beside me to ride tandem and indulge in conversation. His smile was wide, his questions direct. "Where you from? Where you stay? Where you go?" He exudes a pride in managing dialogue with a foreigner and brushes off the cajoling of youngsters. As we neared the open countryside he veered off back into his village and signalled his final sentence with a wave,"The Balinese people welcome you. Good time."

Everyone, just everyone, genuinely wants to have contact and wish you well. When we came to the end of our cycle we were invited into a family home. The residential compound had sleeping pavilions for extended family members, a fountain in the middle, a temple and a low table for us to share dinner. A typical Indonesian meal is a selection of hot and cold plates, with spicy meats, peanut sauces and sautéed vegetables. Everyone was exhausted from the combination of heat and pedalling, and completely ready to feast on the buffet.

When our host came to collect our finished plates, she asked simply "Happiness?"