Dubai,I think is a big bore - a city deliberately built to appeal to tourism, and only built for that purpose, and not possessing a valid culture or history of its own.

If I tell a hotel I'm a travel writer, I can't get out of there without spending a few hours looking at every single room!

To travel best requires some time preparing for your visit to a particular location - that you don't travel anywhere without spending a few nights reading about the culture and history of the place you are visiting. This is what most of us don't do - we fling ourselves on an exotic destination hoping that someone will tell us what we are looking at, but by that time it's too late, and all the lectures and tour guides simply add to our confusion.

I regard Paris as a feast for the eyes, the senses and brain. It is a phenomenal city.

My favorite place that I've been to that most people haven't been to is the Golden Triangle in the northeast of Thailand, which is inhabited by people as if in the Stone Age, without any form of power, without running water, simply living in huts on stilts.

My favorite place in the whole world is the city of Paris. to me, Paris stands at the frontier of every major category of travel - in food, art, theater, history, in so many different areas that I simply don't get tired of it.

Once abroad, I eat one meal a day picnic-style: Ive learned that no mature stomach can tolerate an endless routine of rich restaurant meals.