TRAVEL NEWS

Gourmet food from the microwave?

On nights when the last thing you want to do is measure, dice, and season, there’s a place you can go. Trader Joe’s has achieved a cult following because they offer unbeatable produce, prices, and convenience—we’re talking aisle after aisle of frozen meals so divine you’ll feel comfortable passing them off as your own. While we might ideally like to be eating our way around the world, for now, we’ll have to simply eat our way through the Trader Joe’s freezers that contain everything from their fan-favorite orange chicken to the ready-in-minutes gnocchi. We’re trying the top-rated frozen meals from this cult-favorite grocery store and ranking them, because knowing where to find an under-$5, microwavable chicken tikka masala that’s also appetizing is important. These 10 dishes are the best of the best.

Meet the gods, giants, and ambulatory volcanoes behind your favorite works of nature.

Plate tectonics, erosion, termites. These scientific explanations for how mountains, volcanoes, and their ilk are created are all well and good, but where’s the drama? What about the less accurate but more exciting explanations for some of the world’s most incredible natural wonders? If you like your origin stories with a little more narrative flair, discover the myths and legends that explain how these natural wonders came to be.

♫ Gimme, gimme more, gimme more ♫

Sleek, sterile rooms and perfectly Marie Kondo’d apartments are all well and good, but there’s something to be said for a place where every available square inch is jockeying for your attention. These places are designed so that no matter where you look, your senses will be utterly delighted (and occasionally a little bewildered).  

Relive some pretty interesting glory days.

Once they were imposing hubs of their nations, home to emperors, kings, and sultans. Now they exist in the shadow of current national capitals and tourist magnets like Tokyo, Bangkok, Beijing, Seoul, and New Delhi. Asia is littered with former capitals, many of which are unappreciated tourist destinations despite possessing rich remains of their glory days. From the Japanese city dominated by deer, to an abandoned Thai citadel, India’s British-influenced hill station, and the Malay kingdom that sprouted from a fishing village, here are 10 of Asia’s most intriguing former capitals.