HONG KONG - Long before there was Hong Kong Disney, there was Ocean Park Hong Kong, a local theme park where many who grew up in this former British colony spent their youth. Then, when the glitzy Hong Kong Disney opened in 2010, Ocean Park was almost forgotten.

BANGKOK - The steel- hulled long-tail boat slams violently against some unusually high waves churned up in the Chao Phraya River by a far-off typhoon. I brace myself as the captain signals he’s about to veer hard left and abandon our original course. He aims his arrow-straight boat at a small canal leading off the river and soon we are floating on calmer waters.

INN PAW KHON, MYANMAR - The boatman frowned at my instructions. “Inn Paw Khone,” I told him, naming a village built on stilts toward the far end of Inle Lake, in central Myanmar.

TOKYO - Each year, on the Saturday closest to November 15, children aged 3, 5 and 7 all across Japan dress up in traditional garments — kimonos for the girls and hakamas for the boys — and are taken by their parents and grandparents to shrines to participate in an ancient ceremony called Shichigosan.

BALI, INDONESIA - At Bali’s ancient Pura Besakih temple at 2 a.m., the night fog rests on the dragon statues as if they’re going to wake soon.

TAITUNG, TAIWAN - We had only five kilometres left to cycle that day, but it was hot, our muscles were complaining and the long road ahead of us sloped upwards, reminding us that we’d have to work that much harder to get to our final destination.

SAPA, VIETNAM - All I knew was that the cable car was now running. I did not plan to take it, let alone imagine that it might prove the highlight of my trip. My guidebook scorned the venture, saying it would relay more people in an hour to the top of Vietnam’s highest point, Mount Fansipan, than the number of climbers who summit it in an entire year. With the cable car, the guidebook said, “the appeal of standing alone on a remote peak” would no longer be an option.

HUAY NAM RIN, THAILAND - The morning sun glows red through the trees. The mountains they call the Golden Triangle — where the borders of Thailand, Myanmar and Laos meet — frame the scene from our balcony in the northern Thai city of Chiang Mai.

UBUD, INDONESIA - White smoke rises from five aluminum trays nestled on damp earth as we round a bend hiking toward Ubud’s famous Monkey Forest sanctuary.

BATTAMBANG, CAMBODIA - The narrow bridge does not inspire confidence. It is made of wooden planks laid beside each other with conspicuous gaps between them. At the other end, a child takes no chances and walks her bicycle, rather than riding it.