A cool hill city of painted kampung villages and the closest base for the Bromo sunrise.
Sumatra's capital, the Maimun Palace and the gateway to Lake Toba and the Bukit Lawang orangutans.
Fort Rotterdam, the pinisi schooners at Paotere harbour and the road to Toraja.
Penang's UNESCO capital: clan jetties, street art and the best hawker food in Malaysia.
The Bornean capital of Sabah, the base for Mount Kinabalu and the Tunku Abdul Rahman islands.
Old-town white coffee, colonial shophouses with street art and cave temples in the limestone hills.
The base for the Bolaven Plateau coffee farms, Wat Phou Khmer temple and the 4,000 Islands of the Mekong.
Riverside colonial town famous for its pepper, with the abandoned hill station of Bokor above.
The Bridge on the River Kwai, the Death Railway to Hellfire Pass and the Erawan waterfalls.
The first Thai kingdomโs capital: lotus ponds and walking Buddhas in a historical park best seen by bicycle.
The floating markets of the Mekong Delta at dawn, boats selling fruit under a pole that shows what they sell.
The gateway to Taroko Gorge's marble cliffs and the Pacific coast road.
Where bubble tea was invented, the Rainbow Village and the National Taichung Theater.
Taiwan's old capital: Dutch forts, hundreds of temples and the best street food on the island.
The Hwaseong fortress walls to walk in a loop, and the fried chicken street below them.
The Sunday livestock market and the Id Kah mosque, the Silk Road oasis where China meets Central Asia.
A Bai walled town between Erhai lake and the Cangshan mountains, the backpacker capital of Yunnan.
The car-free island of Gulangyu with its colonial villas and pianos, and the Fujian tea houses.
Tsingtao beer in plastic bags, German colonial villas and beaches on the Yellow Sea.
The Yellow Crane Tower on the Yangtze, hot dry noodles for breakfast and the Hubei bronze bells.
The Ice and Snow Festival, whole palaces built of river ice, and Russian onion domes on the main street.
The 'city of eternal spring' in Yunnan, the Stone Forest and the gateway to the ethnic south-west.
Karst peaks along the Li River, the landscape on the 20-yuan note, and a bamboo raft to Yangshuo.
Edo-period merchant streets in the Japanese Alps, a morning market and the spring and autumn float festivals.
The city of trees in Tohoku, Date Masamune's castle hill, the Tanabata festival and gyutan beef tongue.
Kobe beef, a harbour between the mountains and the sea, and the night view from Mount Rokko.
The largest city north of the Arctic Circle, the nuclear icebreaker Lenin and forty days of polar night.
Onion domes over meadows: five monasteries and thirty churches in a town with no buildings taller than two storeys.
A Kremlin on the bluff where the Oka meets the Volga, and the longest cable car across a river in Europe.
Russia's oldest city, the 11th-century St Sophia and the birch-bark letters of a medieval republic.
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