Meet globetrotting couple Lara Dunston and Terence Carter, an Australian-born, Southeast Asia-based food and travel writer and photographer team and publishers of Grantourismo. Authors of scores of guidebooks and thousands of travel and food stories, we launched Grantourismo in 2010 with a yearlong grand tour of the world devoted to slow, local and experiential travel; more immersive, engaging and enriching forms of travel that we believe are also more sustainable, responsible and ethical, and ultimately more meaningful and more memorable.
Hi, we’re Lara and Terence
We launched Grantourismo in 2010 with a yearlong grand tour of the world and a mission to explore ways of making travel more meaningful and more memorable through slow, local and experiential travel. We may have settled down after seven years on the road and made Siem Reap, Cambodia, our home since 2013, but nothing else has changed.
On Grantourismo we still write about the places we travel and settle into, the food we eat and cook, people we meet, things we do and learn, and the experiences that change us. We’re also developing cookbooks and occasionally craft itineraries and host culinary tours and creative retreats in Southeast Asia.
Since we launched Grantourismo, we’ve been responsible for inspiring countless travellers around the world to travel differently, including the millions of readers who have visited Grantourismo over the last 15 years: very few people were staying in apartment rentals when we were advocating ‘living like locals’ and writing about our ‘homes away from home’ around the world. Slow travel was niche and nobody was talking about ‘experiential travel’.
You can read more here about Grantourismo and how to work with us.
This page is about us, our personal journey, backgrounds, projects, professional careers, publications we’ve contributed to, places we’ve lived and settled into, and the skills, experiences and expertise that equip us to cover the subjects and create the content we do on Grantourismo, a very personal passion project.
Please note: we don’t accept ‘guest posts’ (see our editorial policy) and we don’t use AI to create content. Everything is made by humans, us. If you’d like to work with us, contact us here.
About Lara Dunston and Terence Carter
We started travelling and collaborating together creatively in Australia in the mid-1980s — before we made a romantic, country music-themed, low-budget road movie in Outback Australia, and before we eloped to Las Vegas to get married in the Little White Chapel, after a six-week back-tripping trip around Mexico. We spent our honeymoon doing a road trip along Route 66, inspired by American songs.
Since leaving our home of Sydney to move abroad in 1998 for jobs in the United Arab Emirates, we’ve lived in Abu Dhabi and Dubai for 7.5 years, from where we would explore the Middle East and Europe, and embark on guidebook writing careers, authoring the very first guidebooks to Dubai, Abu Dhabi, the UAE, and Syria and Lebanon for Lonely Planet and Dorling Kindersley.
We lived out of our suitcases travelling the world for 7.5 years, 12 months of that period on the slow, local and experiential grand tour that launched Grantourismo, before settling down in Southeast Asia, initially in Bangkok, Thailand in 2011, then in Hanoi and Hoi An in Vietnam in 2012, before settling in Siem Reap in 2013.
Based in Cambodia ever since, the focus of our work has been on Asia and Australia although we have no hesitation in hopping on a plane and flying halfway around the world for the chance to create stories that inspire people to travel more meaningfully and more memorably.
Our Published Work
We love to immerse ourselves in places and culture and connect with people to create stories and books. For instance, we spent a month in Phuket to produce a feature on Phuket cuisine for Australian Gourmet Traveller. At the same time we were creating posts for Grantourismo.
Other work highlights includes a 10-page feature on Bangkok’s new breed of chefs and a 12-page feature on the young Siem Reap chefs elevating Cambodian cuisine.
Lara also loved being the Asia editor for Truth Love and Clean Cutlery, a guide to the world’s most ethical, responsible, altruistic, and sustainable restaurants; founding editors include Alice Waters, Jill Dupleix and Giles Coren. (Read more here.)
Magazines, Newspapers, Websites
Our words and pictures have appeared in magazines and newspapers and on websites and blogs around the world. The long list of publications includes The Guardian, CNN Travel, Australian Gourmet Traveller, Delicious, Feast, Conde Nast Traveller UK, Conde Nast Traveller China, DestinAsian,Travel+Leisure Southeast Asia, National Geographic Traveler USA, National Geographic Traveller UK, Al Jazeera, The Independent, The Telegraph, Sunday Times Travel Magazine, BBC History, Wanderlust, Get Lost, AFAR, International Traveller, Hemispheres, Lifestyle+Travel, Voyeur, Ritz-Carlton magazine, Four Seasons magazine, Raffles magazine, Bangkok Airways’ Fah Thai, Emirates’ Open Skies, Gulf Air’s Gulf Life, Jazeera Airways’ J magazine, Garuda’s Colours, Qatar Airway’s Oryx, Thai Airways’ Sawasdee, Silk Air magazine, Dusit Hotel’s Eight magazine, Business Traveller, Executive Traveller, Paperplane, Fibers, Connect, Voyageur, M Lifestyle, Ocean, Interval, Southeast Asian Globe, Cape+Kantary, Marriott Traveller, The National, Sydney Morning Herald, Melbourne Age, Sunday Telegraph, USA Today, the Phnom Penh Post, and dozens of newspapers in the USA, from the Houston Chronicle to Chicago Tribune, where our work was syndicated.
Guidebooks and Other Books
Together we’ve researched, authored, updated, contributed to, and Terence has also photographed, some 60 guidebooks for Lonely Planet, Dorling Kindersley, Footprint, Rough Guides, Fodors, AA Guides, Thomas Cook, Insight, and Hedonist’s Guides.
We’ve also undertaken other commissions for guidebook publishers, from presenting destination videos for Lonely Planet, creating walking tours of Paris, and writing hundreds of hotel reviews for Lonely Planet’s first accommodation website.
We have also contributed to inspirational coffee table books for Lonely Planet, including The Travel Book, The Asia Book, and Blue List, and Lara wrote for Rough Guides Clean Breaks. We currently have a handful of book projects in development, including cookbooks and a food guide.
Lara and Terence have written everything from profiles to long-form narratives and covered a wide range of topics over the years, including chefs and restaurants, food and culture, campervaning and road trips, hotels and spas. Whatever subject we write on, our passion for slow, local and experiential travel has permeated our travels and creative work.
Our Careers as Creatives
Although we began our travel and food writing careers writing guidebooks, the first of which was The Sydneyside Guide, which we wrote for a Universal Press compact street directory way back in 1995, Terence’s publishing career began many years earlier as a technical writer before he moved into book design.
Throughout the 1990s Terence designed books and CD-ROMS before becoming manager of a publishing department for UP, Australia’s largest publisher at the time. He designed some of Australia’s first websites, including a travel site, and after moving to the UAE, worked as an editor for a TV station, designed websites and multimedia products for a university, before starting his own web design business.
Lara kicked off her life as a creative contributing stories to Sydney University newspaper Honi Soit in 1986, and later wrote for film publications like Film News and Independent Filmmaker, before taking on a job as a media researcher for a member of parliament.
We made films together in the 1990s, including our first feature film, called Come By Chance, and during that time Lara wrote on film, taught film and writing, had a teen fiction novel published by HarperCollins, and worked in media relations, including as a publicist for a photography gallery.
Terence had his own indie-pop band, playing in venues around Sydney, but nearly changed careers to become a chef, working weekends at a friend’s Italian restaurant while Lara was in South America on a film festival tour for her Masters degree thesis on Latin American cinema.
It was initially Lara’s work that took us to the United Arab Emirates in 1998 to accept a university-level job teaching film, media production and writing to young Emirati women. There, we serendipitously fell back into travel writing after complaining about a guidebook we’d used.
Lara’s detailed notes resulted in an invitation to write for Lonely Planet and soon after we were writing first edition guidebooks on Dubai, Syria and Lebanon. More book commissions quickly followed, including guides to the UAE, Paris, Milan, Lisbon, Amsterdam, Greece, Perth and Western Australia, Australia, and Buenos Aires, among other destinations.
While we loved how guidebook research enabled us to fully explore a city or country, meet local people, and really get beneath the skin of places, we found that we were just as delighted to fly into a destination for a couple of weeks on magazine assignments to interviews chefs, artists, musicians, designers, and writers.
Our Educations and Qualifications
Terence and Lara have a handful of creative degrees between them.
Lara has a Bachelor of Arts in Communications, majoring in screen studies, filmmaking and writing (University of Technology, Sydney); a Master of Arts in International Studies, specialising in Latin America (University of Technology, Sydney); a Master of Arts in Screenwriting (University of Bournemouth); and began a PhD on the intersection of film and travel (University of Belfast; incomplete), which she postponed to become a full-time travel writer.
Terence’s qualifications include a Bachelor of Arts in Communications (University of Technology, Sydney), majoring in photography, film and digital media, and a Master of Arts in Media Studies (University of Leicester).
For many years, while undertaking our studies and in the years after, we made films together, Lara wrote in all forms, from poetry to scripts and teen fiction, Terence produced photography and multimedia, and Lara would end up teaching trans-media storytelling.
As a result of our education and experience, we find it natural to tell stories across all forms of media.
Our Digital Media Experience
We’ve created content for many digital forms from writing interactive walking tours for the Sony PSP to presenting destination videos for Lonely Planet TV.
We’ve contributed to a long list of travel sites over the years and have found ourselves doing everything from blogging for Viator, writing hotel reviews for the websites of Mr and Mrs Smith, i-escape and Travel Intelligence, to creating digital travel guides for Sherman’s Travel, World Travel Guide and Fodors, and content for Miss Citty Kitty, World Nomads, Bravofly, and Marriott Traveler websites.
We were NineMSN Travel’s Dubai Insiders and destination experts for Triporati while Lara was the Dubai Travel Expert for The Telegraph travel website, and local expert for Siem Reap and Dubai for the AFAR website.
Lara and Terence have written everything from profiles to long-form narratives and covered a wide range of topics over the years, including chefs and restaurants, food and culture, campervaning and road trips, hotels and spas. Whatever subject we write on, our passion for slow, local and experiential travel has permeated our travels and creative work.
Countries We Have Experienced
The countries we have experienced, lived in and travelled in for work and pleasure include (in alphabetical order) Andorra (seriously, it’s a country!), Argentina, Australia, Austria, Bahrain, Belgium, Bolivia, Brazil, Bulgaria, Cambodia, Chile, China, Costa Rica, Croatia, Cuba, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Egypt, England, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Israel & Palestinian Territories, Italy, Japan, Jordan, Kuwait, Laos, Latvia, Lebanon, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Macau, Malaysia, Mexico, Monaco, Montenegro, Morocco, Myanmar, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Oman, Paraguay, Peru, Poland, Portugal, Qatar, Russia, San Marino, Scotland, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Syria, Thailand, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, USA, Uruguay, and Vietnam.
We would love to experience, write about and photograph your country or city, too. If you’d like to commission or collaborate, send an email to tell us what you have in mind. We’re here to tell your story, to inspire people to explore your destination in more immersive and enriching ways, and to help travellers make their trips more meaningful and more memorable.
See our Work with Us page and reach out to us on our Contact Us page (links above).
Warmest,
Lara and Terence