Sun rise, Mt MerapiDoes a holiday include waking up at 3am every day? Well it does when you're in Yogyakarta. By a quirk, dawn starts at 5 in the morning and night falls by 5 in the evening. To catch the sunrises, we set off at 4 o'clock every morning. The outdoor sites are most beautiful at sunrise, but more importantly, in Southeast Asia, the weather warms up rapidly after sunrise.  Yogyakarta after 8am becomes oppressively, intolerably...

How’s everybody doing? It's been a few months, but I'm not quite over my tiramisu-making, cocktail-crafting phase yet. These two worlds have quite a bit in common, as I discovered. Whatever combination of flavours that goes well together in a cocktail also works in a tiramisu. In a cocktail, there's an alcoholic base, the bitters (a flavour modifier), and the sweetness (sugar). In a tiramisu, the mascarpone layer provides the...