2006: The Year in Travel

What was your most memorable trip this year? Hiking the Kelabit Highlands of Sarawak and winding up on a wild-boar chase through the jungle.

Your most memorable meal (not necessarily on the same trip)? Same trip. Eating jungle food from the Kelabit Highlands—wild roasted boar, stir-fried ginger flower, sauteed jungle fern—at a communal dining-room table with visitors from Europe and America, at a guesthouse more than a mile from the next building, surrounded by the sweetest mountain air and the quietest night. Also, Sabor, a Brazilian churrascaria in my hometown of Milwaukee. Critics should stop whining about the $40 set menu. This place takes Wisconsin dining to a new level.
What was the most exciting thing that happened close to home? A military coup. Actually, it wasn't very exciting, but it was perfectly tourist-friendly. No blood. Lots of smiling soldiers and tanks. A carnival affair, really, with food and balloons and photo ops with little kids in military suits.
Did you stay in, or visit, a hotel that particularly wowed you? Knai Bang Chatt on the Cambodian coast in Kep, four Art Deco houses (three refurbished, one built anew) redesigned the way they were before Cambodia's civil war—stunning. Also The One Hotel Angkor, Siem Reap, a funky one-room hotel with a rooftop hot tub.
What place did you find overrated or disappointing? Hotel de la Paix, Siem Reap. Terrible location. No excuse for the snobbery. (The hotel, only the hotel, not the bar or the restaurant.)
What was your worst (or funniest) travel experience?
Traveling the old Ho Chi Minh Trail in Laos with bombs, left from the U.S. bombing campaign in the 1960s, detonating around us as villagers cleared their fields for planting. Staying in that village, where every step was potentially life-threatening. Then leaving, knowing the locals couldn't.

2007: RING IN THE NEW

What's going to be hot this year? Ever more tourists come to the triad of Thailand, Laos, and Cambodia. It's a circuit. But more and more are picking Siem Reap and Luang Prabang as their favorites, some skipping Thailand entirely.
What is going to be the big-deal hotel opening? In Thailand: the Shangri-La Chiang Mai; the Barai, Hyatt Regency, at the beach resort of Hua Hin; The Library Hotel and The Four Seasons, on the island of Ko Samui; Soneva Kiri, on the island of Koh Kood; Evason Hideaway, on the island of Yao Noi; and the ALiLa, in Phuket.
Is there a restaurant or a chef whom everyone is watching? Paul Hutt, of the Meric restaurant at the Hotel de la Paix, Siem Reap; Pang Kok Keong, pastry chef of Singapore's Canele Patisserie Chocolaterie; Michael Ma of IndoChine (Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Hamburg, and planned for Jakarta and Phuket).
What trips do you have planned for 2007? Laos, New Mexico, Gujarat, Nepal, Sweden, back to Sarawak.
Where do you most want to go in the world that is still a dream away? Bhutan, Morocco.
Where wouldn't you go even if you won an all-expenses-paid, first-class trip? Iraq. At least not on my own, which is the only way I like to travel.