Practical Asia travel: currencies, VPNs, food you must try, cross-border logistics.
A Kyoto food guide that skips the ¥30,000 kaiseki and points you to the ¥900 obanzai set that actually matters. Where to eat yudofu at Nanzenji, yuba in Higashiyama, matcha at Nakamura Tokichi, and kushiage on Pontocho — with prices, bus routes, and the one-night itinerary I would follow.
A yakitori counter under the Shimbashi tracks, a natural-wine bar in Nakameguro, a six-seat Golden Gai room at midnight. Tokyo sorts itself by neighbourhood and by hour, and this is the map I wish someone had handed me on my first real trip up twelve Tokyo food districts, named restaurants, station exits, real prices.
A working map of Chinese dumplings by region — jiaozi, xiao long bao, sheng jian bao, wonton, har gow, siu mai, baozi, guotie, zongzi, and the Silk Road cousins. How each one differs, where to eat them, how to order without looking lost, and the soup-dumpling bite technique that first-timers always get wrong.
Dim sum is the meal Hong Kong defines itself by — the Saturday family gathering, the Sunday-morning ritual, the long slow breakfast-through-lunch that takes a morning because it is supposed to take a morning. This is a proper guide: the tea pouring and the finger-tap thank you, the stamp card, the canon of ten dishes you actually need to know, and where to eat them — Luk Yu, Lin Heung, Tim Ho Wan, Maxim Palace, and the Sham Shui Po cheap-and-good end.
George Town has the specialist stall, the duck egg upgrade, and the loose-egg oyster omelette. A Penang hawker food guide with street names, ringgit prices, closing days, and honest verdicts from four trips.
The Bangkok street food scene — Yaowarat after 9pm, Victory Monument boat noodles, Go-Ang khao mun gai in Pratunam — mapped by neighbourhood and hour. Thirty-odd dishes by name, in Thai and English, with current baht prices (2026), MRT/BTS exits, and the stalls actually worth queuing for. Plus what to skip.
A Seoul-first field guide to Korean food: samgyeopsal etiquette, the kimchi spectrum, Gwangjang Market at night, dolsot bibimbap, chimaek, and the detours to Jeonju and Busan that are worth the KTX ride. First-person opinions, prices in won, metro exits where it matters.
A field guide to the tropical fruits of Southeast Asia — what durian, mangosteen, rambutan, jackfruit, salak and the rest actually taste like, when to find them at peak season, which wet markets give the best prices, and which ones are genuinely worth chasing over the rest.
Most guides call an izakaya a Japanese pub. They are wrong. Here is what actually goes on behind the blue curtain — the otoshi cover charge, the drinks rhythm from beer to sake to highballs, the yakitori vocabulary, and where to eat like a salaryman instead of a tourist, with yen prices and specific Tokyo stations.
Cha chaan teng — 茶餐廳, Hong Kong’s mid-century tea-cafe, now intangible cultural heritage. Silk-stocking milk tea, pineapple buns with a slab of butter, baked pork chop rice, and the specific joy of being efficiently shouted at by a waiter who has thirty other tables to turn over.
