It’s Kimberley cruising season again. Time to get thee to a travel agent or on-line booking site. The hottest destination in Australian travel is West Australia’s far north coast, the exotic and untouched Kimberley, one of the world's last wilderness frontiers. Red rocks and crocs, massive post-Wet waterfalls, prolific birdlife, and harbours you could drop Sydney’s Port Jackson into and not even notice the splash. The size of Japan, and with the population of an average Australian city suburb, you’ll never feel crowded in the Kimberley. The only way to see the area properly is by a coast-hopping cruise boat. There are several that do the stretch between Broome and Wyndham. Multi-award winning Pearl Sea Coastal Cruises operates the luxury “Kimberley Quest II”, with seven- and 14-day itineraries. The 25-metre, purpose-built vessel accommodates just 18 passengers in fully air-conditioned cabins with private ensuites. Its skipper and crew (which includes a gourmet chef), not to mention expert guides, know every bay and inlet, reef and waterfall of this astonishing region. As if the Buccaneer Archipelago, Montgomery Reef and the awe inspiring King George Falls aren’t enough, then they take you to ancient galleries of the enigmatic, 17,000-year old “Bradshaw” rock art and more recent Aboriginal Wandjina art. www.kimberleyquest.com.au

Chatuchak Weekend Market
               
No one gets out of Bangkok without shopping and the biggest, cheapest, noisiest place to do that is Chatuchak Weekend Market. Catch the Sky Train to the northern end of the line, Mo Chit, and you can’t miss the riot. With more than 8000 stalls selling everything from clothes to curios more pirate clobber than the Caribbean, you'll need extra bags to carry home the loot.
 
Chatuchak has bragging rights on “The World’s Biggest Weekend Market.” Amid its melee you’ll find everything from tin tacks to hot dogs, puppy dogs, antiques, tropical fish, tropical fashions, Buddhas, brollies ... The list is inexhaustible. This is where Thais go to bargain with Thais. Not for them the downtown tourist traps like Patpong night market that, although convenient, is now very cramped and shabby.
 
At Chatuchak, Thai shoppers go baht-to-baht with pumped-up stallholders, getting down to the real worth of that antique lamp, those slacks, songbirds or ceramics. You’re expected to the same – bargain hard, have fun. Stalls stretch about as far as the eye can see, making it a challenge to find that obscure souvenir you’re seeking. Accept that you’re going to get lost for a while: set a rendezvous time and place with any companions — you’re sure to become separated. Small kids may find Chatuchak a bit overwhelming but you’ll love it.

Details: www.bangkok-city.com/chatuchak

EDITOR-AT-LARGE

The green fjords of Vava’u look like Norway gone troppo. One of my best journeys last year was the pleasure — no, thrill — of sailing amid the 40 islands of this beautiful archipelago in northern Tonga. The place is a water maze of inlets and cliffs that lead from one turquoise lagoon to another. Sunset is a bucket of lava sloshed across the sky. Whales romp. Sailors go bonkers over the calm waters, consistent breezes and postcard anchorages .

Tonga is like a low-rise Tahiti; French Polynesia sans the French. Its gem is Vava’u, regarded as one of the world’s best yacht cruising grounds. The yacht I was on was part of a fleet in a 10-day sprint-dawdle-sprint “fun regatta” known as the annual Kalia Cup. However, it’s not necessary to be a racer. Sydney-based Mariner Boating Holidays (www.marinerboating.com.au), organizers of the Kalia Cup, can have you in a very nice charter yacht at very modest prices about as easily as saying “Vava’u” — which, fittingly, rhymes with “Wow.”

I maintained the nautical rage by heading to Phuket in November, to join a very different kind of sailing vessel, the modern tall ship, Star Flyer (www.starclippers.com). One hundred and twenty passengers on board, rather than just the three of us in Tonga. The Flyer is a romantic creature – a fully-rigged barquentine with all mod cons below deck and excellent food on the table. For a week we bimbled among a lei of Andaman Sea islands, including the beautiful Ko Similan archipelago and Phang Nga Bay, as well as more obscure isles like Ko Adang. Some of these Thai marine national parks are perhaps the most translucent, coral-and-fish thronged waters I have ever swum in. And, at last, a cruise without the white shoes and chintzy revues.

“If you think Guilin is beautiful, wait until you see Yangshuo,” goes a Chinese saying. Guilin, in Guanxi province, southern China, is famed for its dragon-spined karst mountains ridges. You know them, literally, from a thousand scroll paintings: stands of bamboo frame soaring peaks that tower above a misty gorge. In the flesh (or stone) Guilin is pretty enough, especially when compared to other Chinese provincial cities, but we found its original, poet-inspiring beauty surviving 80 km away, down the lazy, twisting, jade River Li. A half-day river boat cruise to Yangshuo was like floating through one of those famous scroll paintings — complete with cormorant fishers, river rafts, bamboo groves, pine forests and hundreds of misty peaks. All that was missing was a bearded T’ang poet like Meng Chiao sitting on the bank, jotting lines that a mere travel writer will never top, such as: “These times, the traveller’s heart / Is a flag a hundred feet high in the wind.”

The Ginza’s gone gonzo with gizmos. I’m just back from my first look at Japan and especially at the great skiing in Nagano, but what I (like many visitors) find myself remembering mostly are the little, gee-whiz technological side-shows. Example: on introduction, Tokyo Biz Dude cracks out his business card to Nagano Biz Dude who whips out his cell phone camera and takes a picture of the card — not of its name and address text but of a bar code panel to the side. Instantly he has all the other guy’s contact information downloaded into his phone memory. Hai!

Rocketing through the beautiful winter snowscape of Honshu on the shinkansen at 270 kmph (as opposed to 70 kmph on a NSW rattler) I noticed a small advert in the train vestibule for a personal “mouthcam.” Every morning you may pop this toothbrush-size, remote mini-video camera into your mouth, turn to your monitor and have a quick squizz at the horror billabong of fangs, fillings, plaque, tongue fuzz and post-breakfast pickles that lurks behind your smile. The next step, presumably, is that you rush for your cell phone and speed dial your dentist for an appointment. Why do I suspect that the R&D on this little scare-cam was eagerly bankrolled by a cabal of very savvy — yes — dentists?

If the cab that had fetched us to Tokyo Central Station had located our side-street Ginza hotel by using a dashboard-mounted GPS navigation screen, it should have come as less surprise to me that, at the other end of our rocket-train journey, the roads of the snow-bound Hakuba ski resort in seemed curiously free of snow — with no clearing vehicles in sight. The roads, of course, feature built-in electrical heating grids that keep the surface at a constant snow-melting temperature.

It’s old news by now, but even the humble dunny is high-tech in Japan. Here a toilet looks like something that has mated with a washing machine — which is close enough to the truth. First surprise is the heated seat. Second one is the control panel console to your right. Delicacy forbids me from going into too much detail, but suffice it to say that at your fingertips are buttons summoning an instant bidet and various other watery functions and pressures. In a Japanese society that’s fixated on labour-saving devices, the future, even in the loo is, I suspect, hands-free. Hai!