Food and drink

Discovering new food is one of the greatest pleasures of travelling – and Sri Lanka is no exception when it comes to tantalising those taste buds.

Curious to know when to try your favourite tropical fruits in Sri Lanka? Discover when you’ll get the best coconuts, mangoes, bananas and more, and how to best enjoy them.

Fresh, aromatic and searingly spicy, the ‘real deal’ Thai food is probably nothing like what you have experienced at a local Thai restaurant in the UK. While Thai cooking varies…

If you’re looking to head abroad this summer, you may be facing the toss up between sticking to Europe or travelling further afield. True: we may be biased. But we…

Indian food enthusiast and travel expert James shares his top 5 recommended food experiences in India. The restaurant curries in the UK are totally different to authentic Indian cuisine and tasting the real dishes is an enlightening experience. From mouth-watering, juicy chicken and beef kebabs – seasoned with spices – to tapas style potato and chickpea dishes, and lightly fried pakora, there’ll be something for everyone.

ETG travellers John and Lesley recently visited, Chiang Mai where they enjoyed our ‘Thai for a day’ experience. Joining a local family for a tour of their stilted teak Ruen…

We asked the resident chef of Jungle Beach on Sri Lanka’s east coast to share his favourite recipe with us. He chose Trincomalee crab curry, a delicious dish best served with a beautiful view over the sea and a cold drink.

In 2011 Myanmar (Burma) opened to the world but there was little infrastructure to cope with the influx of tourists and few had had the chance to research experiences beyond the main sites. Five years on, this has all changed. Across the past few years, we’ve sent five of our country experts on reconnaissance missions to explore the best ways to get you under the surface of Myanmar, here travel specialist Matt shares his top 5 new experiences.

Mark is our expert streetfood tour leader. Made famous within his field by his blog ‘Sticky Rice’, now he and his team of foodie experts guide our travellers to the best stalls to try the most delicious food. Here he explains how he became interested in Vietnamese cuisine and why he does what he does.

As the Christmas season fast approaches, we thought we’d divert your mind away from the potatoes, brussel sprouts and turkey with some of our favourite Asian culinary treats. That’s why, over the next few weeks, we’ll be sharing some brilliant festive recipes with an Asian twist.

Something you hear all over Vietnam is “same same but different”. This means things are familiar but not the same.

We asked some of our favourite hotels in Vietnam to give us their favourite recipes for classic Vietnamese dishes. Here is what they came up with!   Ca Kho To…

In our ‘Travel Tales’ series, our Travel Consultants share their travel stories. Our Travel Consultants regularly travel to the destinations they specialise in. This is how each hotel, experience and…

In our ‘Travel Tales’ series, our Travel Consultants share their travel stories. Our Travel Consultants regularly travel to the destinations they specialise in. This is how each hotel, experience and…

Nick, one of our Vietnam specialists, went on our evening vespa tour of Saigon. From sampling frog, to secret cafes to learning to maneuver through busy streets, here he shares…

Regular readers of this blog will have noticed that some of the contributors have a natural bias toward food-orientated stories. From the start of our very first adventures in Asia,…

The sprawling metropolis of urban Bangkok, with its crowded downtown skyline and sprawling, dense suburbs is best truly appreciated from above. Fortunately, many of the city’s taller buildings are home…

Visitors to Sri Lanka’s capital Colombo between July 14th and 24th should pop along to the fourth ‘World Spice Food Festival’ and zap their taste buds with a dazzling variety…

South East Asia has some of the best food the world – fresh, varied and available at every glance. Indeed, many of our customers cite the quality and range of…

Ariyasom Villa is one of our favourite hotels in Bangkok and is one of the city’s more unusual and unique places to stay. Beyond the superb location, luxurious rooms and…

Rick Stein did us a massive favour by doing a programme that focused, almost exclusively, on the area that we specialise in. Apart from Laos, all our bases were covered – Sri Lanka, Vietnam, Cambodia and of course, Thailand. A big ‘thank you’ to Rick then, as we saw a definite increase in inquiries from the sort of people keen to do something a little different and sample the true flavours of the region – something which we can deliver!

I’m in on way to New Zealand via Singapore and I have a 24 hour stopover. Keen to remind myself od the flavours I remember, I asked a friend who was brought up in Singapore and returns often to tell me what to eat given 24 hours in Singapore.

Like, Sapa, our visit to Hue was short and was more a passing through in order to see some of its impressive sights, rather than a chance to soak up the atmosphere of the ancient city. This was a shame. It is a pretty city set on the Perfume river and the tombs and citadel of the Nguyen dynasty comprise a Unesco World Heritage site.

For years intrepid backpackers (our co-founder Tom Armstrong among them) have raved about the quality of Beer Lao, the locally brewed beer served throughout Loas but rarely found elsewhere.