Last year, I stayed in some incredible hotels Sri Lanka: The Fortress Resort & Spa near Galle was particularly dreamy. As I start planning my travels for 2025, I've been reminiscing about some of the other beautiful places I've stayed in over the years. I've put together this selection of my most unique and memorable stays around the world. I hope it helps inspire your own holiday plans!

I was sad to bid farewell to my old passport this week — not just because it was an EU one (*sob*) but also because the stamps inside remind me of the travel experiences I've enjoyed over the past decade. To highlight some of these wonderful memories, I decided to pick one photo from each year, and boy was that hard! (I cheated because the header image features an 11th photo!)

As 2019 comes to a close, and a new year begins, it’s time for my annual round-up of my favourite five photos of the year that feature me jumping for joy in various locations. Regular readers will know that I use this post as a way of looking back on my travels throughout the year. And this year, I visited nine countries, including three that were new to me — Estonia (new), USA, Germany, Switzerland, Slovenia (new), Malaysia (new), Singapore, Spain and France. 

In this, the first and most delicious of my ninth annual end-of-year round-up posts, I highlight some of my favourite coffee shops, restaurants and dishes of the year, both in London and on my travels. This year, I visited nine countries (Estonia, the US, Germany, Switzerland, Estonia, Malaysia, Singapore, Spain and France). From £4 chicken rice in Singapore to tempting tasting menus in Tallinn, as well as sublime speciality coffee, it's been quite a year. As usual, I've only included places I visited for the first time in 2019.

Specialty coffee wasn't my main reason for visiting George Town on the Malaysian island of Penang, but I was delighted to visit six great coffee shops and roasteries during my short visit. 

At the start of my two-week trip to Malaysia, I spent a couple of days in Kuala Lumpur. As I had a lot to pack in, I didn't have much time to explore the city's specialty coffee scene, but managed to visit several of the cafes and roasteries on my list. In my Google Map, I've also added two coffee shops I didn't manage to visit, as well as two roasteries whose beans I sampled elsewhere in Malaysia.

When I was at school, a number of my classmates raised money for a conservation trip to Borneo, combined with some jungle trekking and the climbing of Mount Kinabalu. I hadn’t yet got the adventurous-travel bug and didn’t go, but later came to regret that decision. So, I couldn’t spend two weeks in Malaysia without finally visiting the world’s third-largest island.

I flew in to Penang, Malaysia’s fourth-largest island, from KL on a Thursday evening. From Penang Airport, it was a 30-minute (23 RM) Grab ride to the centre of George Town, Penang’s state capital, and Malaysia’s second-largest city with a population of over 700,000. I spent about three days in George Town, which gave me a good taste of the city — quite literally, since the food was one of my main reasons for visiting!

When planning my trip to Malaysia, I drew on the advice of several friends who've visited the country. The Perhentian Islands came up consistently as a must-visit destination. 

When researching destinations for my big trip, I initially ruled out Malaysia as it was the rainy season during September, which was the best month for me to go. But I soon realised that the country has several more regional rainy seasons and in any case, rainy sometimes just means one brief but heavy downpour per day, if that. And so I found myself landing in Kuala Lumpur early on Saturday evening — the start of my two-week trip to Malaysia and of two days and three nights in KL itself.