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Mergui Magic

Island-hopping in Myanmar’s

idyllic archipelago

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DESTINASIAN.COM – APRIL / MAY 2015 APRIL / MAY 2015 - DESTINASIAN.COM

GOOD TO GO UPDATE

TOUR DE FORCE

Lavishly illustrated with period photos and antique maps, The Romance of the Grand Tour – 100 Years of Travel in South East Asia (Talisman Publishing) is a nostalgic exploration of the region’s legendary port cities during the colonial era. A director at Singapore’s National Heritage Board, author Kennie Ting retraces the steps of an East of the Suez Grand Tour that takes in old-world Rangoon and Singapore through to the Dutch East Indies cities of Batavia and Surabaya. If the Merchant Ivory team had ever written a travel guide, it would probably have looked a lot like this. —Daven Wu

ISLAND FLAVORS

The first ever Ubud Food Festival is being held this year, putting the theory that food is the window into a culture into practice. Headed by the same folks behind the Ubud Writers & Readers Festival, the event will explore the diversity of Indonesian cuisine, filling the central Balinese town of Ubud with three days of panels and tastings led by restaurateurs and food specialists, farmers’ markets, and cooking demonstrations and master classes taught by some of the best chefs in the region (June 5–7; ubudfoodfestival.com). —GL

WHIT LARGE

At the point where Lower Manhattan’s Meatpacking District of list-only clubs and designer flagships begins transitioning into the West Village’s brownstones and cafés, the Whitney Museum of American Art opens the doors of its new, ultra-contemporary home by the Hudson River on May 1. With one of the world’s foremost collections of its kind numbering 21,000 works and counting, the bastion of 20th- and 21st-century art had long outgrown its uptown address at the Marcel Breuer building, which the Metropolitan Museum of Art will take over as an outpost of its own. The Whitney’s new Renzo Piano–designed digs more than doubles the museum’s former size at nearly 20,000 square meters, including indoor and outdoor exhibition spaces overlooking the High Line, a 170- seat theater, and two eateries conceived by famed New York restaurateur Danny Meyer. The inaugural exhibition America Is Hard to See (through September 27) focuses on American art from 1900 onward, including works by Hopper, O’Keeffe, and Calder. Call it a modern housewarming (99 Gansevoort St.; 1-212/570-3600; whitney.org). —Gabrielle Lipton

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On the MoveThe downtown home of New York’s Whitney Museum.

P.S. May also ushers in the fourth annual Frieze New York art fair, showcasing more than 190 of the world’s leading galleries in a custom-built tent on Randall’s Island in the East River (May 14–17; friezenewyork.com).

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INDONESIAN INSPIRATION

Once fashioned into the kimonos of Japanese nobility and gowns of Marie Antoinette, the intricately dyed and woven

threads of ikat—Indonesian for “to tie”—are nothing new in the realm of status symbols. Most recently, their hazy, cloud-like patterns are the inspiration for Hermès’s new tableware

collection, Voyage en Ikat. Made in the French porcelain capital Limoges, the pieces comprise a dinner service set

ranging from saucers to a soup tureen, each with beautiful jewel hues of emerald, sapphire, and ruby bleeding across

their surfaces, touched with 24-karat matte gold hand-applied by Hermès craftsmen (from US$230; hermes.com). —GL

LAKESIDE LUSTER

As one of Myanmar’s biggest draws, Inle Lake has no shortage of hotels on its shores. But with the opening of Sanctum Inle Resort comes a refuge unlike the rest, modeled after a European monastery with 96 rooms often featuring vaulted ceilings and arched windows. Given its cigar lounge, wine list, gardens, and spa, Sanctum is a far cry from asceticism, but after days spent on its tours of the lake, a nearby winery, and Kakku Temple, who would want to return to anything less? (Maing Thauk Village; 95-1/860-4945; sanctum-inle-resort.com; doubles from US$484) —David Tse