For now, to get to Koh Lanta, you must take a boat. At the Ban Hua Hin pier on the mainland of Krabi, cars, minivans, delivery trucks and, from time to time, a scooter with an entire family on it board a ferry with a flat deck and cross a…

At Sligachan, under the Old Bridge, a woman in a rain jacket kneels on the rocks and dips her face into the river. Local legend says that if you keep your face in the water for seven seconds and then let it dry in the wind, you’ll gain timeless beauty,…

At the western end of Ireland’s Beara Peninsula, a sturdy cable car extends out over Dursey Sound on a cable about 1,230 feet long and takes six passengers across one of the most powerful tidal races on the Irish coast. The journey lasts seven and a half minutes. Cork County…

On the third Sunday of September, the meadow at Ukanc fills with the sound of cowbells arriving before the cows do. Then the herders come down from the high pastures, shoulders loaded with the basenga, the whole kit of tools and utensils that made cheese possible above the tree line…

Austria’s second-largest city has a Renaissance fortress, a blue museum that resembles a friendly alien, and a Saturday market where people pour pumpkin seed oil on vanilla ice cream. Moreover, it is less crowded than it should be. Then there is the matter of the clock tower. The long hand…

Although the bus leaving the airport does not stop at Fairy Bridge, the small stone bridge spanning the stream on the main road to Douglas, the passengers still speak up. “Hello, fairies,” says one person, and a few more join in, partly in jest and perhaps some completely sincerely. The…

At the Long Bar inside Raffles Hotel, the colonial-era grand hotel on Beach Road that has hosted travelers since 1887, the floor crunches. Guests are invited to brush their peanut shells off the tables and onto the floor, and staff sweep them up by the thousands. In a country known…

Turkey’s third-largest city has more than 2,300 years of history, but İzmir isn’t defined by one famous monument. Instead, it’s a real Turkish city with its own food and character, and it’s close to three of the Aegean’s top day trips. After a few days, most visitors settle into the…

The first blue plaque that caught my attention was on a little shingled cottage in the West End, almost completely hidden behind a thick thicket of beach roses; the plaque depicted a Cape Cod house being carried across the waves on a boat, with a lighthouse in the distance behind…

The first word visitors to Fez pick up is not “hello” or “thank you,” but rather “balak,” meaning “watch out” or “make way.” When a mule with propane cylinders passes, its driver apologizes, and the lane closes up again behind him as if it were water. Even though Fez has…

Coffee rituals may appear odd from the outside—such as a Finn putting cheese into his mug, a Turkish bride placing salt into her suitor’s cup, or a Hanoi barman beating egg yolks into coffee because the milk ran out. Each person is doing the most natural thing in the world,…

The first time I saw Krampus was on a side street in the Old Town of Salzburg, and I should make it clear that “saw” is an understatement. What in fact took place was that a creature about eight feet tall, dressed in a fur coat and equipped with a…