We're back in the UAE and after a couple of days in Dubai (pictured*), we're chained to desks once again in Abu Dhabi - not our desks, but our friends', at their colossal home in the new part of the capital, off the island. The closest thing to a 'home' for us still being in storage in Dubai. A 'desk update' in publishing-speak suggests a guidebook update by phone and email. It's what publishers commission authors or in-house staff to do when they're not inclined to spend the money to send writers on the road. From what we're hearing, it's happening increasingly of late. But we won't have that. Aside from the fact that we still don't have a 'home' to speak of - this week marks our 45th month living out of our suitcases! - travelling is why we do what we do. Why on earth a travel writer would want to write something from a desk without having been to a place we'll never know. We've well and truly researched the stories and reviews we're currently writing up, having spent the last six weeks on the road travelling around Syria, Qatar and Kuwait. But we're paying for it now. We're tired. Chronically tired. My feet are wrecked. We've both been fighting off the flu for a couple of weeks although poor Terry has finally lost his battle. As we write, we're talking to publishers and potential sponsors about future projects - in Thailand, Syria, and the Arabian Peninsula - and in the interim we're considering trips to Lebanon, Jordan, Yemen, Iran, and possibly Kathmandu. We're also contemplating an opportunity that could keep us on the road even longer if it comes off, but more on that in the near future... for now, deadlines await. So what have you been up to and where are you going next?

* the pic is of the view from our room at Jumeirah Emirates Towers where we stayed recently; Terry had photographed the hotel and we'd done site inspections so many times over the years, but never checked in. Now we've stayed, we know why it consistently wins awards for being Dubai's best business hotel. While the rooms are a bit dated in terms of their style, they're impressively appointed, the lobby has always been one of the city's buzziest, and the towers and adjoining Boulevard are home to some of my favorite restaurants and bars, including Vu's, Noodle House and The Agency.

The best depository of dark tourism resources must be the the University of Central Lancashire's Dark Tourism Forum which has a long list of links to books, scholarly essays and media articles on the subject. Their definition of dark tourism also takes in a prison tourism and the specialised area of Holocaust tourism and genocide tourism. The body of articles on the site testifies both to an increase in interest in researching and writing about dark tourism in recent years as well as to an actual increase in the popularity of dark tourism. For instance, take a look at Post 9/11 Dark tourism booms, which states that 2.2 million people visited Ground Zero in 2002, and Visiting sites of tragedy to touch history, ease grief (CNN.com, 2008) which claims that 5.6 million visited the Ground Zero site in 2006. The Guardian and The Observer are another great source of articles; they've given dark tourism extensive coverage in recent years, with a number of first-hand accounts of dark touristic experience from Sarah Johnstone's Strange and unsettling: my day trip to Chernobyl (Oct, 2005) to James Hopkirk's visits with prisoners in Checking in to the Bangkok Hilton (also Oct, 2005).

Dark tourism is not new, as my readers (whose insightful comments always inspire further reflection) point out: Travel Muse recalls touring German war sites as a teenager, while Sandy suggests that The Crusades, which revolved around a fascination with the macabre, might also have been an early version of dark tourism. Indeed, the thesis of 'Guided by the dark: from thanatopsis to thanatourism', published in 1996 by A V Seaton, is that death is the one heritage that everyone shares and therefore has been an element of tourism longer than any other form of heritage. (Thanatourism is generally described as the desire for actual or symbolic encounters with death.) The nobility watched the 1815 Battle of Waterloo from a safe distance, while one of the American Civil War sites (Manassas) was immediately marketed as a tourist attraction after the war ended, according to UK scholar John Lennon in Journeys into Understanding in The Observer (2005). Indeed, the Auschwitz-Birkenaz concentration camp museum and memorial (pictured) was established in 1947, less than two years after the Red Army troops arrived in 1945 and found 7,000 emaciated prisoners there; it now receives nearly a million visitors a year. Debbie Lisle in 'Defending Voyeurism: Dark Tourism and the Problem of Global Security' (in Peter M Burns and Marina Novelli's Tourism and politics: global frameworks and local realities, 2007) argues that historical spectacles such as Roman gladiator matches and public hangings were also forms of dark tourism, and that the phenomenon also takes in sites of celebrity deaths, such as the site of JFK's assassination in Dallas and the site of Diana's death in Paris, as well as tours to modern conflict zones, from Bosnia to Mogadishu. It was just recently that tourists visited Iraq for the first time since 2003, starting with an independent traveller (see Fallujah's Strange Visitor: a Western Tourist in the New York Times) in February 2009, followed by a group of package tourists (see I took a picture to show my dentist in The Guardian, 21 March 2009). It's interesting to note that the group didn't consider themselves to be 'war tourists', claiming they were there for the history and culture, despite visiting places that are still very dangerous, such as Mosul, while the Italian independent traveller simply seemed naive. Neither the Iraqis nor Italian officials nor American marines interviewed for the story thought Iraq was ready for tourists yet.

As I'm way too busy writing books at the moment to blog, I'm going to post about the things I'm taking pleasure in reading during my coffee breaks. For starters, I'm enjoying catching up on my co-author and husband Terry's blog Wide angles, wine and wanderlust, and his recent post on Hester Blumenthal's food poisoning scare at the Fat Duck and how some journalists have been 'reporting' on the incident. Horrifying stuff! I also enjoyed Terry's post Don't believe the hype on how serving Hollandaise sauce in a Tetra Pak is not cool at all, and is a sure-fired way of getting your cafe crossed out of a popular guidebook. I'm glad Terry mentioned the Indian waiter in Abu Dhabi at a Korean restaurant we ate at years ago who showed us the Yalumba wine cask (wine 'box' for North Americans?) to demonstrate that the house wine was indeed a decent Aussie drop! But I was disappointed Terry didn't tell you the guy brought it out from behind the bar on a silver platter with a white linen cloth over his forearm. It was a 5-star hotel after all. Keep in mind this was nearly 11 years ago. As dreadful as the stuff was to drink, I was both bemused and touched by the gesture. I wasn't amused by the Tetra Pak of Hollandaise on the other hand. Mainly because that was my revolting breakfast and my $18 wasted (add another $30 to that, because Terry's breakfast was mediocre too and both the coffees were bad); because it's a place that gets glowing reviews in the guidebooks; and because it's a cafe that's in a rather hip Victorian surf town not far from Melbourne that should know better. Their reaction to my complaint was also appalling. Once again, something I might have expected from a waiter in Abu Dhabi 11 years ago who didn't know any better, but not from a... well, you get the picture. Now, Terry's Eggs Benedict (pictured) on the other hand, I'd gladly pay $18 for. This is the kind of food I get to eat when we're holed up writing. As busy as we are, he always makes time to cook good food. Rather spoilt, aren't I? So, go take a look at his blog and tomorrow I'll let you know what else I'm reading. Back to the writing...

'Is it hot in Dubai?', 'Do you know when Ramadan is?' and 'Am I right in thinking that as an Arab country there are some booze restrictions?' were just some of the questions asked of me by readers of the NineMSN Travel site during a live chat, that went hand-in-hand with our Dubai Insider’s Guide. It was fun to interact with people and give advice, because we rarely get to communicate with readers of our books and articles. The 'live' element was challenging. Several minutes before the designated start, a few messages popped up before I was bombarded with multiple Messenger boxes on my screen. Because I didn’t want to lose anyone, I jumped between boxes: 'Hi! How are you? Hang on please, I’ll get to you in a moment…” and then jumped back to the first person in queue. I fielded questions from 30 people in 60 minutes, and only lost four, which I thought was pretty good. There were specific questions like: 'I'm flying to London from Sydney later in the month and was planning to have a night or two in Dubai... what would be your top five things to do including two great places to eat? and 'If you were planning a holiday to Dubai, for 2 weeks say, how much spending money would be required and how much would 4* hotel be?' Readers asked about everything from the language spoken to safety issues for women - and Australians. One person wrote '... just wondering what image of Dubai to believe – that it's a nice holiday venue with good weather and facilities, or a building site packed with c-list celebs on free holidays given to them to boost exposure and tourism?' Good question. The exercise raised a lot of questions for me as a travel writer: Do people still do research before they travel? Or is pre-trip research a thing of the past? Will any of these people buy my guidebooks to Dubai before they go? And why haven’t they bought one by now? Or do travellers these days mainly rely on the Internet for their information, whether its TripAdvisor, Lonely Planet’s Thorn Tree or MSNTravel’s live chats? If so, will they have a less enjoyable or less meaningful time than if they did some real research and took a guidebook? Why am I even spending 18 hours a day writing guidebooks? Maybe I should become a ‘live chat host’ instead?

Hotel gurus Mr and Mrs Smith recently shared their secrets as to How Smith finds hotels on their engaging blog. Mrs Smith is a Cool Travel Guide reader and after she recently commented on my post Don't judge a guidebook by its cover: judge it by its author, I asked her how she selects hotels. Mr and Mrs Smith use a combination of sources: their staff, members, hoteliers, press releases, the media, Smith spies, and hotel books. Travel writers draw on a similar set of resources, dividing We our hotel research into pre-trip and on-the-road research:
* PRE-TRIP RESEARCH
1) Travel guidebooks & websites - if we're updating a guidebook, we'll start by looking at the hotels in the book, to see what's in there and what's missing. Then we skim through other guides on the destination. Because publishers like Lonely Planet, DK, Fodors and Frommers have put so much content online, we don't even need to visit a bookshop. What are we looking for? Overlap first of all. If a hotel appears in every guidebook then it had better be special or it had better be the only one in town. If it doesn't appear anywhere else, then we need to find out why. We make notes on these things which we'll investigate later in person.
2) The Internet - we'll look at the websites of hotels on our list and make notes as to which look suitable, suspect, or so fabulous we have to investigate further. We'll check hotel booking sites like Design Hotels, i-escape, Tablet, Hip Hotels, Holiday Pad , Small Luxury Hotels of the World, Leading Hotels of the World, and of course, Mr and Mrs Smith, to see if there are any new hotels that could be worth considering. We'll also do some random Googling. Occasionally we'll check Trip Advisor; there, we're not looking for new properties (as we're more interested in reviews by professional travel critics, people who spend more nights in hotels than they do at home) but rather to confirm any suspicions we might have about a place.
3) Hotel GMs & PRs - because we've stayed at, inspected, reviewed, and photographed tens of thousands of hotels around the globe, we have a lot of friends who manage and work at hotels, so we hear about new hotel openings over conversation, whether it's by email or at dinner, drinks or parties.
4) PRs & press releases - ditto; we have contacts who work on staff at hotels as Public Relations, Media Relations or MarkComm managers, or for PR agencies representing hotels, so we're on a lot of mailing lists and feeds. Dozens of emails arrive in our In Box every day about hotel openings (including invitations to launches!) See Terry's photos of the behind-the-scenes preparations and glam opening of the InterContinental Dubai Festival City earlier this year here.)
5) Travel media - we read every travel magazine and newspaper travel section there is, as many in-flight and hotel mags we can get our hands on, and frequently scour their websites. We subscribe to all the industry and trade feeds and online newsletters. I don't tend to look at travel websites or blogs like Hotel Chatter for new hotels, because generally they've received the same press releases I have, and I'd rather read the information straight from the source than someone else's interpretation. While I occasionally rip items out of travel magazines, due to their long lead times we tend to know about the hotel, and have probably already stayed there, by the time the issue hits the newsstands but their still handy for some we may have missed.
* ON-THE-ROAD RESEARCH
6) Hotel experiences - once we're on the road in a destination, we'll be testing out hotels by staying, eating and drinking at them (both undercover and through arrangement), and by doing hotel inspections. We'll also hear about new hotels this way. While the hotel PR is showing us a suite, she'll probably say "Oh, have you seen the suites at the new xxx hotel? I hear they're lovely but not as spacious as ours."
7) Leg-work - once we arrive at a destination, we'll have a lot of places to check out and try, restaurants, cafes, bars, clubs, shops, museums, galleries, and other attractions, and during encounters with people at these places, we'll inevitably hear about hotel openings.
8) Accidental discoveries - as we pound the pavements of a city all day every day, there'll always be one or two hotels we stumble upon that we haven't read heard about and nobody has mentioned. They may have just opened or may still be under construction, or maybe it's a hidden gem that's been continually over-looked or recently renovated. Either way, we'll be in there checking it out.

So, how do you hear about hotels? And have you ever discovered secret gems that weren't in any guidebooks or websites that nobody seemed to know about? Pictured: our studio apartment at the sublime Aleenta Phuket, which we experienced last October while we were in Thailand for DK.

By Terry and Lara
When we were in Milan recently we had drinks with some hotel executives we’d met in Istanbul while attending the W opening. The PR person of the Milan hotel where we’d met for aperitivi told us how impressed she was that we’d had several story commissions on the hotel, its restaurant and Chef Jean-Georges, and that those had been published already, and she asked if we wanted to be included the next time she was coordinating a press trip. We very politely declined and she understood exactly why. If we’d been on a journalist’s junket in Istanbul we wouldn’t have had the freedom to pursue the stories that we did. And she agreed. But it was our recent visit to Venice where we got to observe the behaviour of one too many tour groups, and a story we read on spas in Thailand (more on that little gem soon), that brought home one of the reasons why we really don’t like the organised press trip. It’s because of its complete disconnect with the kind of travel that ‘normal’ travellers do. In a nutshell, junket journalists are treated like a cross between pampered pooches, 80-somethings on a shore-leave guided tour from a cruise ship, and package tourists whose last independent thought for the duration of their holiday was figuring out how they managed to get their name tag on upside down at the airport. We write for independent travellers, and by travelling independently ourselves we gain a better understanding of the logistical challenges that independent travellers face. Junket journalists don’t have to worry about finding that carpark in Venice, deciding how best to lug those bags to the hotel (do we walk, pay a porter or take a water taxi?), decide whether the exorbitant cost of the parking and ludicrously expensive Internet access means we should be changing hotels, and so on. These decisions are taken away from the junket journalist, who can just concentrate on gushing about how fabulous it is to be on a junket and to be a travel writer. While publications will sometimes state that the writer stayed courtesy of such and such a hotel or was flown in by a certain airline, and that’s great to see, we also believe that travel journalists should declare whether they were on a junket or not, so the reader can judge for themselves how much salt to sprinkle on the tale. We’ve read so many of these gushy stories, we can usually tell by the end of the second paragraph. But can you? And would knowing that the writer had been on a free package tour to the destination affect your reading of the story? What are your expectations of a writer and their travel experience when reading a travel story?

*Terry Carter is my husband, co-author, and a travel photographer

Our research last year for the Syria chapter of our recently released Lonely Planet Syria and Lebanon guidebook required that we visit everything already in the book, along with many more sights that weren't in the guide. And while we loved visiting all of those "out of the way castles and ruins", when making decisions as to what to include and exclude in the manuscript we have to think about how much other readers might enjoy what may appear to be merely a pile of rubble to anyone but the most avid archaeological enthusiast. In some cases, the ruins of a castle may be rather spectacular (like the one pictured) and may well be worth the effort to get to. But most readers, who are staying in Syria for an average of five days, might not want to spend a long day travelling (or indeed several days) to get to the site, especially if the journey involves long waits between buses in the middle of nowhere and perhaps even a spot of hitchhiking to get there.

The other consideration we have is word count. We can't just keep adding sights to books, and therefore adding paragraphs and pages. In fact, for almost every book we ever worked on for Lonely Planet we were required to reduce rather than add new text. So, in order to add a few paragraphs to include some of those off-the-beaten-track places some readers would love us to include, we'd have to remove sights elsewhere. When it comes to making those decisions we have to ask ourselves whether we should cut a popular site that might be visited by thousands of travellers to include an out of the way castle that may get visited by only a few hundred people? And with a country like Syria (and, now, under the current political climate, also Lebanon), we have to give this serious thought. How many people are actually using our book and visiting these places? When we did our six week road trip around Syria we only bumped into around 20 other travellers. We were alone at most major sights.

It would be heavenly to write a book with an endless number of pages and complete freedom to include everything we wanted to. But it would also have to have a fee to match. And that's another interesting consideration. How many publishers are going to pay us to go to all those out-of-the-way sights that might only ever get visited by a few hundred travellers at most? Not Lonely Planet that's for sure. And probably not many other publishers either...

We've just received our author copies of our recently released Lonely Planet Syria and Lebanon guidebook and I'm rather excited to see it in print as we put a lot of hard work into it. Admittedly, seeing a book for the first time is not as thrilling these days as it once was, especially as we've now written, contributed to and updated around 35 guidebooks. And it's even less exciting when Lonely Planet sends you a few mangled, well-thumbed copies, rather than issues that are hot off the presses and smell freshly printed! The fact that we researched it over a year ago, from April to June 2007, also takes a bit of the edge off it. Just thinking that some of it is already out of date makes me cringe. But such is the nature of publishing - books take forever to get from research through writing to manuscript submission, then through editing and author queries until they finally go to print...

I went online to see if there were any reviews of the book yet but unfortunately all I could find were a few Amazon.com reader reviews which, while attached to this edition, are actually for the last edition. Some were written 8 years ago and so apply to an ancient edition while one 2007 review applied to an edition we wrote that was already 4 years old, so obviously some content was out of date when the reader used it. Interestingly though, we used that edition when we were on the road last year and it was in pretty good shape. The way we research is to methodically check everything in the current book as we're travelling from town to town, retaining anything that's still open and is worthwhile, deleting or downgrading anything that's closed or is not as good as it once was, and then looking for places to replace any deletions. One reader writes of that edition: "It only gives you the most popular sites and then a few it claims are "off-the-beaten-track" but really aren't. It misses some of Syria's best out of the way castles and ruins." What he fails to consider is that we all travel differently. Some of us are more intrepid than others, and what might be a well-trodden sight for one reader might be well and truly "off-the-beaten-track" for other less adventurous travellers. And let's face it, Lonely Planet guides are mainstream books aimed to appeal to a wide cross-section of people. As someone who has been to Syria many times, when I next visit I won't be using a Lonely Planet or any other guidebook. My own well-thumbed and rather ragged version of Ross Burns' Monuments of Syria will be enough to guide me.

Pictured? My co-author/husband Terry at one of those out-of-the-way sights that may not be off-the-beaten-track enough for everyone. The first person who can identify the site gets the most mangled copy of the new guides that Lonely Planet sent me! How's that for incentive?

We've been on the road in Northern Italy since Tuesday when we picked up our Fiat Bravo from the car rental company in Milan. I'm not telling you which company because I don't want to give them coverage. After several problematic rentals with them in Cyprus, Crete and Rome, we gave them another chance after they reimbursed us for the expenses incurred from the last mess-up and assured us this would be a perfect hire. No such luck. Despite the UK customer relations guy re-confirming the booking with the Italy office, we had problems yet again, wasting hours in the Milan office because our voucher looked different to the normal vouchers according to the woman behind the desk. No matter that it was the only voucher that we were emailed, the wording was the same as her voucher, and it said "this is your car rental voucher". Yet still she wouldn't believe it was a voucher and we argued black and blue, wasted over an hour in the office, and we had to call the UK head office to get them to fax our voucher before she'd let us take the car. Italy isn't easy. Italians may have an easygoing nature socially, but when it comes to their professional life, they're sticklers for protocol and processes, and there's more bureaucracy and red-tape here than I've seen anywhere before. The delay at the rental office meant a delay checking out of our apartment which meant it was lunch time when were leaving and we were stuck in Milano traffic for an hour trying to get out of the city. Oddly enough our sense of humor returned and we began to joke about how these people got their jobs. We imagined their interviews: "Any IT skills?" "No." "Interpersonal skills?" "No." "Are you inflexible and a stickler for the rules, even when they make no sense?" "Yes." "Any kind of problem-solving skills or lateral thinking abilities?" "Of course not!" "Do you find that dealing with the public gets in the way of a good coffee break and gossip with your co-workers?" "Absolutely!" "Then you've got the job!"

The weather is still perfect in Milan - it's another balmy summer's evening. Terry's out shooting, and I'm still holed up in the apartment writing (and, um... blogging in my coffee break). Something the Renegade Writer thinks would be impossible for her to do - she said my post about the nightmare my dream job had turned into set her straight about travel writing and she'll no longer be fantasizing about all-expenses-paid travel writing trips. But there's good news in my In Box today that could make her change her mind... one of Milan's best chefs agreed to do an interview and shoot for the book, we're also shooting at La Scala next week and taking a look backstage as well as interviewing the head of scenic direction. Planning for other shoots in museums and shops are starting to come together. And some rather exciting news this afternoon: we had an offer to do another book today, for a publisher we've never worked with before, which is always nice. And it's in one of our favorite cities, which is even better. The problem is our schedule, which is fairly full (an understatement), so unless they can shift the deadline, it's not looking possible. But the news I think I'm getting more and more excited about the more I think about it... we've been invited to La Traviata at Teatro alla Scala next Friday night!! What will I wear???

While some writing and photography commissions keep us on the road for a while crisscrossing regions and countries, as we've just done researching the Calabria guidebook, others, such as city guides, require us to settle down in one place for a while to do research. Usually we rent an apartment and create the 'home' we miss when we're on the road and we endeavor to live like locals as much as possible. This post is the first in a series called 'At home in (insert city)', which I'll write whenever we're based in one place for a while, and where I'll share both the fun stuff and the occasional frustrations of living in 'foreign' cities. We're in Milano now and the image is that of the French doors in our dining and living area and the view from our fourth floor across to an apartment block that's typical of our neighborhood, the Navigli. Navigli refers to the two canals that run through this lively area of Milan, a neighborhood jam-packed with restaurants, bars and cafes and funky little shops, that still has a village feel. From the window I can see elderly ladies who've dressed up to go to shopping exchange niceties with friends they bumped into on the street, dreadlocked Italian students with their art portfolios over their shoulders cycling home from university, and on the balcony opposite a a hip young gay couple sipping something in champagne flutes, as they too enjoy the action down below. We arrived a week ago and after we unpacked and set up our work space on the dining table, I looked out the window and said to Terry: "We need to make sure we always rent apartments with a room with a view - it's just so inspiring." Terry agreed. The view provides a constant source of entertainment, amusement, information, and of course, inspiration. We not only enjoy what we glimpse when we glance up from our work, but we sit in front of the window and appreciate the aspect more fully when we take breaks for coffee or lunch or a glass of vino bianchi in the evenings. Those are the times when, looking out that window, we learn about the rhythms and rituals of the everyday lives of the locals as we watch them go about their daily business, heading off to work, returning home, eating out, meeting friends for drinks, even watching the football together as they were in the bars tonight. Aside from the 'research value', it's just such a joy to take in the vistas and the vibe of life on the street. And enjoy the changing light.

When we're inspecting a hotel as part of our research for a new guidebook, we're often whisked around the property at a rapid pace by the sales, marketing, PR or media execs, or even the GM at hotels that care. We're given a tour of the entire place - guided to breakfast rooms, restaurants, cafés, bars, pools, fitness centers, spas, kids clubs, and often business meeting and function rooms (despite our protests that our audience isn't interested in these, nor are we, and we have no intention of writing about them), and we're shown half a dozen different rooms. Fortunately I research and write with my partner Terry so we take turns at role-playing. One will ask questions, show interest and make small talk, while the other scribbles notes furiously, snaps memory pics, and - while the first is carefully keeping the hotel staffer out of sight - scrutinizes how clean the bathroom really is, prods the mattress for firmness, closely notes how worn the carpets are, and so on. No matter how thorough the tour is, it can never compare to actually experiencing a hotel. It's only then that you find out how warm the welcome truly is, how friendly, efficient and professional the staff are, whether the food tastes any good, how comfortable the mattress really is, whether the room is quiet or noisy at night, etc. And only by staying at a hotel for a couple of days do you really appreciate the attention to detail and thoughtful little touches. I will risk making us sound like snobs to say that this is where five stars such as the Four Seasons really excel, and boutique hotels and budget digs often fall down. Take the Four Seasons Thailand resorts. While you can expect to find big fluffy towels, soft bathrobes and slippers, beautiful toiletries, and handmade soaps, and practical amenities like umbrellas, flashlights, hair-dryers, and shoulder bags for the pool, where they really surprise is in their unique extras matched to the resort. At Koh Samui, you'll find complimentary his and her flip flops, a yoga mat in the cupboard and an i-pod docking station. At the Golden Triangle Tented Camp there's a denim mahout's outfit for your elephant riding; complete your mahout training and you'll be given one to take home. At the end of your cooking course at Chiang Mai, you'll be presented with a gift of chopsticks, rattan place mats, a chef's apron, and certificate. It's these little touches that make a room comfortable, a stay seamless, and a hotel experience memorable. We'll never forget a stay at a simple family-owned budget hotel in Turkey where soon after setting down our backpacks in our room the owner brought us a big bowl of plump juicy strawberries, and he drove us to the bus station the next day. It may not have been the Four Seasons, but those thoughtful gestures were just as unforgettable.

This month-long research trip in Thailand for the new DK guidebook has been one of the busiest commissions we've ever undertaken. It's also been one of the most sublime. We've flown, driven, ferried, and trekked thousands of kilometers in southern and northern Thailand, in our quest to review some 280 hotels and restaurants. So please forgive the silence. There's been little time for blogging in between hotel inspections, spa treatments, breakfast, lunches and dinners, and activities that have ranged from cooking classes and elephant mahout training to ox cart rides and jungle treks. Then there are all the tedious things in between - checking in and out of hotels every day or two, picking up and dropping off hire cars, checking in at airports, hanging out in lounges and waiting at baggage carousels, and sitting in our car as we wait in line for the inevitably late car ferry - all of which consume an interminable amount of our precious time. The continual travel and constant activity has meant little time for relaxation. As I'm writing a new spa spread for the next edition of the guide, and both my partner Terry and I are working on spa-focused stories for travel magazines, our spa 'research' has comprised our only down time. Along with an hour here and there to test out our private infinity pools (such as this one at the Four Seasons Koh Samui). It's these moments of pampering in tranquil treatment rooms and gazing out across the tops of palm trees to serene sea vistas that have kept us sane. Naturally, we don't expect any sympathy.