Chinese New Year in Hong Kong & Glamping in Sri Lanka

Before featuring my holiday-related posts, let’s have a travel recap of 2017’s adventures starting with the first quarter of the year’s travels to Hong Kong for Chinese New Year celebrations and Sri Lanka to discover a new country and culture…and glamping!

Best Chinese New Year Celebrations

While Chinese New Year is not my family’s cultural tradition, Hong Kong remains as one of my family’s favorite cities. For a quick weekend getaway to witness the celebrations, we stayed at my favorite hotel in the world, the Mandarin Oriental Hong Kong. The Mandarin celebrates every occasion with class and style. I highly recommend staying or even just visiting the hotel to watch all the festivities, especially Dragon Dance. Read more about the celebrations in my past article.

Watch the video below of Mandarin Oriental’s 2017 Chinese New Year Dragon Dance. And subscribe to my YouTube channel for my latest travel videos!

 

Discovering New Cuisines

Each year, I try to visit at least one new country to discover different cultures and cuisines. Sri Lanka was another highlight of the first quarter of 2017. The people are friendly, the country has diverse landscapes from the tea plantations to the coastal beaches, and the cuisine has an interesting influence of local, European, Indian, and Southeast Asian flavors. Read more about Sri Lankan cuisine in my past article.

Sri Lankan Cuisine
Feasting on a Sri Lankan breakfast. The highlight of the trip always revolved around meal time, especially to wake up to a spread like this. One of my favorite parts of the cuisine is how they combined different condiments to add depth and variety to each bite

 

Coolest Hotel Experience of the Year

Because of Sri Lanka’s growing tourism industry, the luxury hotels and resorts are getting cooler and cooler. You can have the classic resorts by the beach, safari huts near the forests, and glamping tents with tea plantations, including one of the coolest hotel experiences of the year at Madulkelle Tea and Eco Lodge. Read more about Madulkelle’s luxury tent lodge in my past article.

Luxury Tent Madulkelle Sri Lanka Glamping
The view of the sunset against the tea plantation backdrop from the bed inside the tent. This one was one coolest hotel experiences of the year – definitely the most unique. If you travel to Sri Lanka, you must also stay in the countryside to enjoy the tea plantation culture

 

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