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Thailand

It’s Jimmy time. Yes, while many of you are gearing up for the deep freeze at the Winter Classic with the Maple Leafs or Red Wings or toasting the new year at a posh hotel in New York or Jamaica, I’m home in Toronto counting my blessings and staying close to my overtaxed radiators so I can stay warm while I type up my list of Jimmy Award winners for the year that’s about to come to a close. I was immensely lucky in this past year and was able to visit some astonishing places and do some amazing things. Read more

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KOH SAMUI, THAILAND – What a great day. My first full day on this lovely island was actually spent almost entirely elsewhere; snorkelling up near Koh Phangan. We got hooked up with a tour that took us on a day-long excursion with really friendly and helpful guides and plenty of pop and water on board. It was about an hour to reach the snorkelling spot, a quiet kind of bay between two rocky islets off the coast of Koh Phangan, which is just north of Koh Samui and where they have those wild “Full Moon” parties each month. It wasn’t Read more

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AT THE FOUR SEASONS TENTED CAMP GOLDEN TRIANGLE, THAILAND – The service was exquisite. My tent was awesome. The trip to the Mekong River was fascinating. The water buffalo placenta at the nearby market was memorable. And the spa and the food and the setting were spectacular. But I’d be lying if I said the highlight of my one and-a-half day stay here wasn’t riding an elephant. As part of the experience, guests at the Four Seasons (voted best hotel in Asia recently by Conde Nast readers) are invited to try a two-hour mahout training exercise; learning a few basic Read more

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The hotel focus in Toronto the past couple years has been on five-star hotels or five-star hope-to-be’s. We’ve seen the opening of the lovely Ritz Carlton and the Shangri-La, which I quite like, as well as the Trump and the new Four Seasons. Now comes one of the few four-star “full-service” hotels to be built in Toronto in years. Delta Hotels and Resorts unveiled its flagship hotel in the city’s South Core neighbourhood during a topping off event on Oct. 8, marking the completion of the hotel’s 46th floor. Scheduled to open in late 2014, the Delta Toronto at Southcore Read more

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CHIANG MAI – Bustling but still spiritual. As a fairly seasoned traveler I should’ve known a popular city such as Chiang Mai would be a big place. Somehow I had envisioned a big village or small city, perhaps on a hill, with a series of winding alleys and small food carts. Instead, I found a busy city of some 1.5 million people with large hotels and scattered high-rise towers and wildly coloured tuk tuks and red and white and yellow pickup trucks with covered backs for passengers to ride in and endless shops and markets. Still, there are some quiet Read more

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