This post is an introduction to the property we’re staying at.
Where to stay in Battambang depends on what kind of holiday you want. If you want to get away from it all, there are beautiful boutique hotels in colonial style mansions and atmospheric wooden houses. If you want something cheap and cheerful, you'll find that too. Battambang has become one of our favourite places in [...]
Renting an apartment in Siem Reap can be challenging. While the rise of holiday rental websites such as HomeAway and VBRO and rent-a-room sites like Airbnb and Roomorama made it easier to rent short term properties and rooms in private homes, there are still things you need to be aware of when renting an apartment in [...]
I don’t remember the name of a single hotel concierge from any of the hotels we’ve ever stayed at over our many years of travel writing and we’ve checked into thousands. Yet I can name a couple of dozen or so concierges of holiday rentals we’ve settled into. I could also share some of their [...]
After a couple of months staying in boutique hotels in Siem Reap and Bangkok, we’ve reaffirmed something we’ve increasingly felt over the years and that’s that when it comes to choosing hotel accommodation when we travel, boutique hotels suit us better. We much prefer small local boutique hotels to big bland multinationals. We'll take more [...]
Spending a holiday in a villa rental with family or friends can be very special. But things can also go horribly wrong. Thankfully, after years of experience staying in holiday rentals we know how to avert disasters. Here are our tips to renting a holiday villa. We shared many delicious alfresco meals around that table [...]
Following our post on Tips to Renting Holiday Apartments — A Checklist a reader asked for tips on how to avoid holiday rental scams and getting ripped off when booking self-catering accommodation, such as how to handle money, how to make sure places are reputable, and whether there are ways to vet holiday rentals. We did what we [...]
I’ve lost count of the number of self catering properties we’ve settled into, from holiday houses and villas to serviced apartments and apart-hotels, from staying only in holiday rentals during our 2010 grand tour to last month testing out short-term apartments in Phnom Penh. We thought it time to share some of our best tips to renting [...]
Where to stay in Sydney, a destination with a stupendous harbour and stunning skyline matters if you want a room with a view, a jawdropping harbour view. There are some cities where it's not important what’s outside your hotel window, but in Sydney what's outside will take your breath away. Sydney is a city where you [...]
Where to stay in Sydney? Well, just like Melbourne, Sydney has plenty of choices when it comes to somewhere to check in — boutique places, flashy five stars, backpacker hostels, and, of course, our pick: apartment rentals. Just as we did in Melbourne, we got to try a huge range of accommodation over a couple of [...]
While we’re big fans of holiday rentals and serviced apartments for stays longer than a few days, and for shorter periods we’ll opt for a boutique hotel, we do see the advantages of staying in a big city hotel, and that's exactly what we did on a recent trip to Melbourne. A big advantage of [...]
The Best Melbourne boutique hotels include everything from stylish art hotels themed around great Australian painters to renovated heritage pubs with chic contemporary rooms and buzzy bars downstairs. Where to stay in Melbourne depends on how you're planning to spend your time, whether you're going to base yourself in the heart of the city, the inner-city or [...]
Where to stay in Melbourne? Apartment rentals, boutique hotels, big luxury hotels, backpacker hostels, Melbourne has it all. And it seems like we got to try them all over two trips, which saw us checking in and out of countless different types of accommodation all over the city. While Melbourne has plenty of lavish luxury [...]