traveller | GlobalSalsa: travel writer Belinda Jackson

Dec

Tea drinkers, unite! The plight of the tea drinker in luxury hotels

Tea drinkers, come join my tea party!

“It’s a sultry morning in the Maldives and the mechanic is sweating as he tinkers with the sparkling La Marzocco espresso machine. All the while, hopeful guests watch, desperate for a morning hit.

“We’ve flown the mechanic in twice this month, as the humidity plays havoc with the machine,” explained the suave French general manager of this boutique, no-walls, overwater resort.

Unperturbed, I order my usual cup of tea. Earl grey, no lemon, no sugar and absolutely no milk on the side, thank you.

Unlike the coffee, the tea arrived moments later; a pot of hot water and two budget supermarket-brand tea bags languishing, insouciant as a couple of down-at-heel gatecrashers, by the pot.

Not leaf tea. Not even a decent bag, but the sort of pesticide-laden, waterproof tea bags that make you want to thump your head on the table in the midst of breakfast service. Reader, this particular resort cost $1000 a night.”

And so sets up my campaign for good tea.

Is it a crime to want a decent cup of tea? I love great coffee as much as anyone, but my start to the day is gentler, and more simple. Tea, hot water, cup. No expensive machinery required. And yet, hotels still fob tea drinkers like genteel Austen readers, mild-mannered to the point of insipid. Foolish, even.

The story has galvanised tea drinkers sharing their plight and the ways to negotiate travel (even luxury travel) while the world conspires against us. Many, like me, carry tea bags, or cheerfully pocket a rare, quality bag of tea in their hotels. Some travel with mini hot water elements to avoid using hotel kettles. Others pack tea cups to avoid the inevitable, hard-to-break, thick-lipped mugs forced upon us in hotel rooms.

“I ordered tea in a Hotel in Colombo and was served Lipton teabags in a tea pot, in a country which produces great loose leaf tea.”

“Well said! Am so over begging baristas in hotels and resorts for a tea pot so I can give my leaf the respect it deserves. And as for respect, be great if these venues could show a little to tea drinkers. Infuriating that I need to bring decent tea to kick start the day while coffee drinkers around me are indulged with flat whites, macchiatos and double shot espressos.”

How many times have you been in a cafe, your partner orders a cappuccino and you order an English Breakfast tea. For the same price they get an expertly barista crafted espresso and you get a cup of barely hot water with a no-name brand tea bag and tiny thimble of milk.

Hotels, restaurants and cafes will finesse the espresso, coo over the pour-over, obsess with the cold-press. Meanwhile, the rusted-on tea drinker is ignored.

You can read the full story, printed in the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age newspapers, here:

https://www.smh.com.au/traveller/inspiration/i-didn-t-want-coffee-so-my-1000-a-night-resort-gave-me-cheap-tea-bags-20251107-p5n8h9.html

Some readers told me to get a life (and stop paying $1000 a night for a hotel) but that’s the job! To review hotels, and to call them to account, from the $20 guest house to the $2000 a night Maldivian overwater villa.

There was also a lot of debate about tea bags, but I maintain that Singaporean brand TWG does an excellent tea bag (albeit at a price), but I will also pay homage to the tea counter at Harrods when in London, and Mariage Freres in Paris

What do you think? Are you a tea drinker?

Dec

Travels in mainland Greece with ABC Radio

Whenever anyone talks of holidaying in Greece, the islands tend to get all the glory. But what about the mainland?

Athens has everything to offer as a global city and holiday destination, but to my mind, the real story is Greece’s second city, Thessaloniki. The home of souvlaki, bougatsa and the frappe, Thessaloniki has done the impossible and makes instant coffee taste good! It’s the birthplace of Kamal Ataturk, and has been corralled into empires from the Hellenic to Ottoman, so expect great history, fantastic food and a waterfront location designed for post-prandial perambulation.

I joined Philip Clark on ABC Radio‘s national evening program, Nightlife, to tell of the wonders of mainland Greece. You can listen to our chat here, and tune in to ABC Radio every Monday night for his Monday Night Travel segment, which goes out to the world from 10pm.

To listen to the interview, visit this link: https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/nightlife/nightlife-travel—greece/104675428

On this trip, I drove from Athens airport south to the Peloponnese peninsula, to stay at the new Mandarin Oriental Costa Navarino – I’ll post a review here shortly. Then I drove back up to Athens (Athens traffic – ayeeeee!) and from there, joined Eurail, the European rail pass company, using their tickets to travel from Athens north to Thessaloniki, then crossed the border into Bulgaria, on to the capital, Sofia and then to its second city, Plovdiv. I have stories coming up in the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age newspapers, which I’ll post here as they’re published. To learn more about Eurail, visit eurail.com

Jul

Travel greats of G Adventures & Lonely Planet on The World Awaits podcast

This week on The World Awaits travel podcast, we bring you interviews with two of the biggest entrepreneurs in travel, @gadventures founder, the super-inspirational Bruce Poon Tip and then travel trailblazer Tony Wheeler, founder of Lonely Planet @lonelyplanet

To listen, find us on Apple Podcasts https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-world-awaits-travel-tales-to-inspire-your-wanderlust/id1689931283
Spotify https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/theworldawaits
or listen via our website https://theworldawaits.au/home-2/episodes/

Social entrepreneur, New York Times bestselling author and G Adventures founder Bruce Poon Tip talks about his decision to take his company into the luxury space after three decades – and what it means to you, the traveller. “The beautiful thing of travel [is] you have the opportunity to transform lives if you step out of your comfort zone,” says Bruce Poon Tip, gadventures.com

Anyone who’s ever used a Lonely Planet guidebook will have read the story about how Tony and Maureen Wheeler wrote and published their first guidebook, Across Asia on the Cheap, on their kitchen table in 1973, finally selling the Lonely Planet behemoth in 2011. Tony talks about counting countries, flying with carry-on only, his favourite country and the art of travel. He also shares what he’s reading now, tonywheeler.com.au

We also have a gorgeous giveaway from another travel entrepreneur, Tracy Morris of @theblondenomads whose @gypsealoop is an innovative gold or silver hair tie bangle.

To win, email us at hello@theworldawaits.au and tell us where you’d like to wear the bangle. Bonus entries if you like and follow on instagram at @theworldawaitspodcast and tag a friend!

May

Hotels reborn: 10 historic buildings that are now luxury hotels

Where are you sleeping tonight? In a prison cell? A castle? A monastery. A jam factory? I’m talking about rooms inside buildings that have been reborn as hotels – buildings that may otherwise have fallen into irretrievable disrepair, or worse.

Traveller cover photo The Interlude @ Pentridge Prison

This weekend, my cover story in the Traveller section of the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age newspapers is about hotels whose buildings have served a previous life – I rounded up 10 across Australia and abroad, with an extra serve of five Australasian hotels on the side. I looked at hotels as far apart as London, Peru and Turkey, which have been train stations, palaces, even a state Department of Education. Some, like the Las Casas de la Juderia, in Seville and London’s St Pancras Renaissance, were from recent travels. Some, like The Interlude here in Melbourne’s Pentridge Prison complex, are only just about to open. All are close to my heart.

Sometimes, it’s the location or the beauty of a building that lures developers to imbue it with renewed life. Other times, it’s the building’s backstory that a visionary can weave into its incarnation, to be reborn with new purpose.

“Heritage is the art of saving what is useful and beautiful, but also updating it for modern use,” says Terry Fripp, of Kerry Hill Architects, whose projects include Perth’s much-lauded COMO The Treasury, formerly Western Australia’s historic State Buildings.

It’s the ultimate act of recycling: reusing existing resources while also giving back, in the form of hotel restaurants, bars, spas and event spaces that are, for the most part, accessible by the public.

Click here to read my story on the 10 great hotels reborn, with another serve of five Australasian hotels on the side.

or see https://www.theage.com.au/traveller/inspiration/10-historic-buildings-reborn-as-stunning-luxury-hotels-20230512-p5d7vp.html

Nov

Better than Bali? Why Malaysia should be on your travel radar in 2023

Some destinations are once-in-a-lifetime destinations – think Antarctica or Svalbard. Others, like Bali, receive an annual visit from many Aussies. Malaysia is one of those that falls in between – before the rise of the Middle Eastern hubs of Dubai and Abu Dhabi, Kuala Lumpur (KL to its friends), Bangkok and Hong Kong were the trio of stopovers on our European sojourns.

This year, it’s back on my list, as I transited KL on a one-night stopover, went deeper into Langkawi and Penang and, now, find myself in the wilds of Malaysian Borneo, exploring the sta

te of Sarawak and all its exotic glories, from sun bears to head hunter tribes, orang utangs to jungle food.

While we can’t get enough of Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam, Malaysia is still largely undervalued, if not ignored, by us, despite affordable direct flights from Australia, fabulous food, unique wildlife and unrivalled value for money.

Click here to read my story in the Traveller section of the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age newspapers, and you can see plenty of of my snaps on instagram from Sarawak, including its capital, Kuching, on the Santubong peninsula and down on the Malaysia-Indonesian border, here in Borneo, click here.

Oct

Terminal boredom: free things to do in airports

I don’t mind wandering airports – empty or busy, I find them a fabulous use of time. I love the exotic layers you’ll find in the big, Middle Eastern hubs, as yogawear-clad Australian girls sit alongside men in Oman’s national dress of gleaming white dishdasha, or hikers unlace their heavy boots beside the perfectly manicured Parisian couple. I like finding the local cuisine – often a tricky quest amongst the increasingly globalised food courts found in most airports – and the essential souvenir.

However, if shopping for sherry vinegar from southern Spain or 80% chocolate from Ecuador is too boring for you, I offer you my contribution to the Sydney Morning Herald/The Age’s Savvy Traveller section, which lists some of the coolest free things to do in airports around the world.

Top of my list is Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport (AMS), which has a longstanding collaboration with the country’s most important art gallery, the Rijksmuseum – long before art in airports became A Thing.

Too tame? Dress up in hanbok in Seoul, pat a Giant Flemish bunny in San Fran, chase butterflies in Singapore or cruise an archeological museum in Athens.

To read my story in the Traveller section, click here

https://www.traveller.com.au/long-delay-or-layover-find-free-things-to-do-at-the-airport-h26j08

Mar

Australian expats: celebrity stylist in Midtown Manhattan

After nearly two full years, I’m so pleased to let you know that my Expat column is back! Published each week at Traveller, I hunt down Australian expats living around the globe, and ask

Australian expat Lazarus Douvos lives in Midtown Manhattan, NYC, USA

them to share a little of their lives with our readers.

This week, we’re in Midtown Manhattan, where Melbourne hair stylist to the stars Lazarus Douvos shares a little about his daily life – where he takes his almond-milk cappuccinos, his favourite bookshop, a hidden bar and where he goes to meditate, on the banks of the East River.

“Life was picture perfect in Melbourne: I had the boyfriend, the dog, the country house. But I had the immediate feeling that I belonged here,” he says of his arrival in NYC, almost 13 years ago. A former stylist for the late Joan Rivers and Gucci, Lazarus’s latest perfumed hair care range is The Love Note collection (see lazarusdouvos.com, agencedeparfum.com.au).

Click here to read the interview, which was published in the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age‘s Traveller section.

If you’d like to suggest someone for the column, there are a few rules: they have to be Australian, and have lived in their adopted hometown for at least two years – because six months in Bali does not an expat make. Drop me a line in the comments below, I’d love to hear from you!

Mar

Bringing Finnish Lapland to Helsinki, Finland

During winter, snow-laden winds sweep across lakes and tundras of Finnish Lapland, freezing all in their wake. Reindeer forage for lichen in the chilled earth, and the brief minutes the sun rises above the horizon are bookended by a deep blue twilight that heralds the return of the polar night.

A thousand kilometres south, there’s no snow on the footpaths of the Finnish capital, Helsinki, but it retains its connection with the drama of the deep north through Lapland Hotel Bulevardi, in the chic Design District.

Let me tell you: breakfast buffets, I’ve had a few. But this one – inspired by the food of Lapland – is one of the most intriguing.

To read my story, published by Essentials Magazine, click here

Feb

How to sauna like a Finn

Over Christmas and New Year, I spent my days leaping in and out of saunas like a lemon into a G&T in Scandinavia. My first dip was in the Allas Sea Pools on Helsinki’s waterfront.

Dashing from the sauna to the outdoor pools is an exercise in fortitude when there’s a stiff wind coming in off the Baltic Sea, and you’re clad in nothing but wet swimmers. I then worked up to dashing out of the sauna and rolling in the snow, further north in Oulanka National Park. And finally, in Stockholm, cooled off by leaping into a lake at Hellesgarten, on the Stockholm archipelago.

Never have I been so clean. I also learned a few tricks and faux pas – for a start, you can ditch the swimmers inside the sauna, though most people slip on swimmers to go into the pools or snow.

I took the chance to chat with Maia Söderlund, of Allas Sea Pool, for the fine print on sauna etiquette.

Click here to read my The Knowledge column on how to sauna like a Finn, which was published in the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age newspapers, and online at Traveller.com

Oct

Journey through three ‘Stans

I have just spent six days on the Golden Eagle – a private train travelling along the web of Silk Road routes, from Almaty in Kazakhstan though Uzbekistan and to Ashgabat, Turkmenistan.

I’ve long wanted to visit the ‘Stans, but as the song goes, it was just that the timing was wrong. So the chance to visit aboard a luxury train couldn’t be passed up.

Travelling along the Silk Road, my journey from Almaty to Ashgabat.

Of all the stops on this journey – Almaty, Samarkand, Bukhara, Khiva and Ashgabat, the winner of the beauty prize is Samarkand.

Its Registan Square, pictured above, is just so big, and so awe inspiring, it’s almost overwhelming to try to take in all its beauty in one day, let alone in one photo.

However, it was the quieter, more secretive streets of Khiva that possibly caught my attention. Even though its historic Old City isn’t lived in anymore, it just seemed to have more life. Maybe it was the fact it had more scarf and textile shops, each tucked into a picturesque niche lined with Uzbekistan’s trademark turquoise tiles.

This part of the world is no stranger to travellers – these oasis towns have been receiving new ideas, cultures, languages and religions since time began.

But they’ve slipped off the radar in recent decades, only to be coaxed back on by new, more lenient visa requirements and our desire – and ability – to explore further, with international flights now into all the major cities.

A few details:

I flew into Almaty and out of Ashgabat via Dubai with its low-cost carrier, fly Dubai.

The Golden Eagle is a luxury private train that started its great rail journeys on the iconic Trans-Siberian route across Russia, www.goldeneagleluxurytrains.com

Disclaimer: I was a guest of Golden Eagle Luxury Trains.

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