Blog Posts by Ben Tan

By Michele Koh Morollo

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Travelling can wreck havoc on your regular fitness routine and cause you to throw good nutritional habits out the window. That's why so many of us return from our vacations with a couple of extra pounds and a thicker waistline. Going on holiday or traveling for business often involves eating high calorie meals and skipping our daily dose of exercise. This doesn't bode well for a good vacation, as bad eating habits and being sedentary can leave us feeling lethargic and drained.

You can avoid slipping into vacation sloth by following these simple suggestions.

Snack Well, Fly Right
Travelling means time spent waiting in airport transit lounges, trains or bus stations — all places that have dozens of cafes and candy stores. Boredom and restlessness can drive you to buy candy bars, chips, chocolate and other high calorie foods that you simply do not need. To avoid the junk food trap, pack your own healthy snacks like unsalted almonds, a few pieces of fruit or a

By Michele Koh Morollo

Travel light but smart on your next beach holiday.

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For those living in Asia, beach vacations are very popular, thanks to easy access to a wide variety of close-by destinations, cheap airfares and hotels. Places like Phuket, Bali, Boracay, Nha Trang, Langkawi and Bintan are hotspots for Asian-based travellers who plan impromptu weekend getaways as often as once a month! As most budget airlines only allow one carry-on luggage for free, many wise weekend beach bums have learnt how to travel super light. Those who don't need that many creature comforts can manage well for three to four days on nothing more than a lightweight canvas backpack. But no matter how lightly you pack, here are ten beach vacation essentials that you simply cannot do without.

Extra Swimsuit
Bringing your swimsuit may sound like common sense, but do you really need to bring an extra set? You'll be in your bikini or trunks a lot on a beach vacation, so unless you want to wear something that is

TRAVELIFE Publisher Christine Cunanan fits seven Michelin-starred restaurants in four days of fine dining in Hong Kong.

Hong Kong offers enough gastronomic delights to excite even the most fastidious foodies. The Travelife team recently flew to Hong Kong to sample some of their best restaurants. We recommend the following with favorable ratings from the Michelin Guide.

Caprice

Caprice

Caprice at the Four Seasons Hong Kong is just about the best classical French dining experience in this part of the world. Chef Vincent Thierry, who came from the Four Seasons George V in Paris and who has been cooking at Caprice since it opened, has long been delighting the most fastidious diners with his controlled and refined cuisine. Caprice was a great favorite of Hong Kong's taitai and foodies in the know since way before the Michelin reviewers arrived, so tables have always been scarce since Day One.

But since the Michelin Guide put Caprice on the larger food map, it's become almost impossible to secure a

Although many may still envision Saigon, Vietnam -- now Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC) -- as a war-torn metropolis, in recent decades it has turned itself into a to a vibrant metropolitan city.

While visitors can see remnants of the Saigon's past amongst the churches, temples and old government buildings, they can also enjoy HCMC’s modern luxuries. We find the best places to do everything from eat to sleep in this Vietnamese city now filled with skyscrapers, designer malls and high-end cuisine.

Where to visit

There’s no better place to get a panoramic view of Ho Chi Minh City than at the first skybar in Vietnam: CHILL Skybar. Perfect for post-dinner drinks, visitors will be blown away by the views of the city skyline, with the only thing in between being a glass fence.

This newly opened skybar (October 2011) is designed by DWP Thailand, the firm behind world-renowned Sirocco in Bangkok, which explains its lofty concept.

Visiting HCMC is not complete without a trip to at least one

Woody and the gang might just put the magic back into the kingdom for the less-than-popular Hong Kong Disneyland

Feel like you've been shrunk to the size of a toy at Hong Kong's Toy Story Land.

The first of Hong Kong Disneyland's three-part US$468 million expansion, the new Toy Story Land, opened on November 17. It is almost identical to the first Toy Story theme area in Paris' Walt Disney Studios Park.

Visitors are immersed in the world of the characters from the Toy Story movies as Andy's backyard is recreated in the theme area using oversized props. Bamboo is used to represent large blades of grass.

At a loss

Hong Kong Disneyland is Disney's first park in China and was expected to draw hordes of Disney fans from the mainland. But it is not doing as well as hoped.

The park has been underperforming since it opened to much hype in 2005. Hong Kong Disneyland reported a net loss of HK$718 million in the 12 months that ended October 2, 2010.

Future competition to the park will come

Australians are world leaders at getting bumped upstairs: Here are the local secrets

That big, fancy Dreamliner has been flying over Australian skies, so travelers’ attention has turned to scoring a little luxury in their flights.

Australia’s a long way from anywhere, really, so business class airtime never goes astray.

And while a price war has seen some business class tickets to Europe drop below AU$4,000, including aboard China Airlines and Garuda Indonesia, it’s still a bit rich.

That’s why Aussies are the world leaders in two departments: trying to score a free upgrade and trying to scam one.

Scamming extra legroom is elementary

Locals have been exposed by an American Express survey.

A quarter of Australians try to score that seat that comes with complementary Champagne on arrival -- with men (29 percent) a little more likely to hustle than women (21 percent).

For two-thirds of travelers, the most common tactic is to straight out ask -- but you have to be a little more

From fire walkers to horse dancers, here are some of Singapore's more eye-opening festive celebrations

Singapore's annual calendar may be packed full of exciting happenings, but a handful of intriguing, centuries-old traditions take place well away from tourist eyes.

Check out these obscure but oh-so-interesting occasions:

Nine Emperor Gods Festival

These shrines are placed along the procession route, and are visited by the devotees bearing the gods' "sedans." Come the ninth lunar month (starts October 23 in 2012), while the rest of this island gets on with modern life, a little-known ritual unfolds in a corner of Singapore.

The Nine Emperor Gods Festival may not be the biggest occasion in these parts, but it is met with almost fanatical devotion by members of the Jiu Wang Yeh Taoist sect.

As its very name suggests, this pious party revolves around some heavyweight VIPs.

The Nine Emperor Gods are said to be heavenly beings who possess great influence over earthly matters.

By Michele Koh Morollo

The stress of travel can lower our immune systems, increasing our susceptible to colds or allergies. However in certain parts of the world, there are ailments more troublesome than the common cold. Travelers, especially those who travel to developing countries, are at risk of picking up dangerous illnesses that are transmitted through insects, contaminated food and water or people. Here are some of the most common travel-related illnesses and ways to prevent or treat them.

Mosquitoes Borne Illnesses

Many fatal diseases are transmitted through mosquitoes. The most common is Malaria, which according to the World Health Organization’s 2010 report, infects than 225 million and kills 781,000 people each year in Africa, India, Central and South America, the Middle East and Oceania and Southeast Asia. Other mosquito borne diseases include Yellow Fever, which is most prevalent in Sub-Saharan Africa and tropical South America, Dengue, most frequently contracted in