Backstage at Bangkok International Fashion Week

Backstage at Bangkok International Fashion Week. Copyright © 2023 Terence Carter / Grantourismo. All Rights Reserved.

Interviewing Thai fashion designers and photographing models backstage during the 2011 Bangkok International Fashion Week was the last thing we expected to be doing when we went to Bangkok to work on a first edition Hedonist’s Guide to the city. While it’s not unusual to find us in restaurant kitchens interviewing chefs or out and … Read more

Tables Are Turning in Thailand – There’s A Restaurant Revolution in Bangkok

Tables Are Turning in Thailand – There's A Restaurant Revolution in Bangkok. La Table de Tee, Chef Tee Kachorklin. Bangkok, Thailand. Copyright © 2023 Terence Carter / Grantourismo. All Rights Reserved.

Tables are turning in Thailand‘s capital. There’s a restaurant revolution in Bangkok. In the last twelve months a new wave of chefs has transformed the city’s gastronomic scene, giving food lovers something to salivate over other than cookie-cutter Thai and generic ‘international’ fare. Each of these groundbreaking chefs is doing something that is fresh for … Read more

Making Merit En Masse: Giving Alms to 12,600 Monks in Bangkok

Making Merit En Masse: Giving Alms to 12,600 Monks in Bangkok on Visakha Bucha Day. Copyright © 2023 Terence Carter / Grantourismo. All Rights Reserved.

Shades of saffron, mustard and tangerine stretched as far as our eyes could see – the robes of some 12,600 Buddhist monks from southern Thailand who travelled by bus to Bangkok to attend the mass alms giving to commemorate Visakha Bucha Day*. The sun may still have been low in the sky when we got … Read more

Port, Wine and Bacalhau in Portugal’s Douro Valley – Wine Diary Part 2

Port, Wine & Bacalhau in the Douro Valley, Portugal: Part 2. Copyright © 2023 Terence Carter / Grantourismo. All Rights Reserved.

Our third morning in Portugal’s UNESCO World Heritage-listed Douro Valley wine region began with the now mandatory drive through magnificent countryside, our small bus skirting the edge of the misty valley before climbing up to Favaios, on a plateau which at 600 metres is the Douro’s highest point. Favaios is home to Quinta da Avessada, … Read more

Tasting Port, Wine and Bacalhau in the Douro Valley, Portugal Part 1

Douro Valley Diaries – Tasting Port, Wine and Bacalhau in the Douro Valley, Portugal (Part 1). Copyright © 2023 Terence Carter / Grantourismo. All Rights Reserved.

So we’re in the Douro Valley? I’m not sure if it was the three days of intense activity at Wine Pleasures’ International Wine Tourism Conference in Porto, Portugal – watching presentations, live-tweeting, blogging, networking, lunching, drinking and dining, and, on the last day, giving a presentation on Grantourismo. Or whether it was the twelve months of … Read more