Travel & Leisure

Classic Passages

For a journey that will challenge body and mind, travel in the footsteps of literature’s most memorable characters. Here are eight extraordinary adventures and the eight great books that inspired them

(and other lessons learned riding shotgun through Asia’s culinary hot zones with chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten)

The streets of Old Bangkok glisten with rain, giving the narrow Portuguese-built trader lanes a clean, freshly showered appearance.

For a moment, the city seems content to enjoy the calm. Men linger in doorways to smoke cigarettes. Women peer through blinds before emerging on stoops. And intermittent beams of noonday sun cast random spotlights on noodle carts, spice stalls, and, briefly, a Frenchman holding two fistfuls of aniseed to his nose.

He looks enraptured, as if seeking transcendence through scent.

Cheater's Golf

How to sneak your way out of the sand trap and into the hole

A once-simple diversion invented by glengarry-topped Scotsmen strolling the moors with their sticks, golf has come to resemble some high-tech war game. But before you drop a bundle at the pro shop, realize that no amount of graphite or titanium is going to turn a mediocre player into a (Gary) Player. Despite the numerous "breakthroughs" in golf technology, the driving distances of the best professional golfers have increased about 30 yards since 1968. Meanwhile, the average winning score has fallen less than one stroke per round in 40 years. Here are several better—and cheaper—ways to improve your score.

What Chefs Crave

If you want a window into a man’s soul, look in his refrigerator. If you want a window into a chef’s soul, ask him what he eats on his day off

Among the most persistent male fantasies, right up there with the secret bar where supermodels go when feeling frisky, is that of the after-hours dive where chefs slum it. Picture a joint with sawdust on the floor and masters of haute cuisine pigging out
on meat loaf, chili, or that apotheosis of California cuisine—no, not Alice Waters, but
a burrito so thick it could choke Erik Estrada. Sadly, this fabled hideaway does not actually exist. Instead, each chef has his or her own guilty pleasure. However, in the interest of making dreams come true, Best Life has put together an incredible simulation. We’ve cajoled Nobu Matsuhisa, Daniel Boulud, Thomas Keller, and other world-class chefs into coming clean about the food they dream about while the rest of us are dreaming about getting through to the reservation lines at their restaurants.

The Book That Changed My Life

Author Jonathan Lethem on the book that transformed him