I just returned with my family from a year-end vacation in Cebu, in the central part of the Philippines. While we spent most of the time...

It is Christmas Eve today and Christmas tea has made its annual appearance. Typically flavoured with cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg and orange...

Luís Vaz de Camões, the 16th century poet, is such a towering figure in Portuguese literature that the Portuguese language itself is...

It was Halloween recently and pumpkins were suddenly all over the place. My son's friend Kenji, whose father is Japanese, came for a...

I'm on a family vacation this week in Java, Indonesia, and have been looking for more signs of Portuguese influence to build on my...

With the G20 wrapping up today in New Delhi, the world's eyes are on India. While the Portuguese history of Goa, India's smallest and...

The Catholic Church's World Youth Day that just ended on August 6 saw thousands of pilgrims from all across Asia travel to Portugal. One...

My family and I are back in Toronto for a home visit to see friends and family, and folks here are still talking about the recent mayoral...

Mystical Bali is often called the Island of the Gods, apparently because of the abundance of temples there. As I was reminded on a recent...

The mango is considered the 'king of fruits' in India and features prominently in its ancient culture, from religion to art to poetry....

Sri Lanka, formerly called Ceylon, has been known to much of the rest of the Old World for over 2000 years, from the Greeks, Romans,...

My last post on the 15th century Portuguese merchant-spy Pêro da Covilhã prompted quite a bit of debate among some readers around how the...

In the history of the Portuguese Age of Discoveries, the focus has been on the maritime exploits of the day, with Bartolomeu Dias sailing...

When the Portuguese took control of Malacca in 1511, the Sultan of Malacca escaped south and founded the Johor Sultanate, which included...

This year, 2023, will see Japan and Portugal celebrate 480 years of relations between the two maritime countries at opposite ends of the...

I just spent a week holidaying with my family in Manado on the northern tip of Sulawesi, the fourth largest island in Indonesia. Aside...

Many thanks to João Pimenta, the Beijing bureau chief of the Portuguese news agency Lusa for reaching out to me. He noticed this blog...

My last post on Asian influences on Portuguese food sparked off lots of comments, showing how viscerally important food culture can be to...

I recently had an interesting conversation with João Pimenta, bureau chief for the Portuguese Lusa News Agency who's lived in China for...

Kerala, a state on the southwest coast of India, is perhaps not particularly well-known in the rest of the world. I first heard about it...