George Clooney Slept Here

If there’s one thing the A-list values in a vacation, it’s anonymity. Bhutan, a deeply spiritual kingdom in the heart of the Himalayans, didn’t even have TV until 11 years ago. So needless to say, the average Bhutan resident wouldn’t know Brad Pitt or Keanu Reeves from George Smith from Muskogee, Oklahoma. Unless you’re a reincarnated Buddhist monk, nobody in Bhutan would even think to ask for your autograph.

Called the Land of the Thunder Dragon, this extraordinary country that’s geographically cut off from the rest of the world also appeals to people mending from heartbreak. It’s where Demi Moore came after she and Bruce Willis broke up, where Richard Gere came after his divorce from supermodel Cindy Crawford and where John McCain traveled after going down in defeat to Barack Obama.

It’s also not a cheap place to visit. You have to really want to go there. Although you won’t be trailed by groupies or cameras, you do have to consent to being “hosted” by a Bhutan tour guide and pay the minimum $200 per day. Those who experience this unspoiled Shangri-La say it’s worth every penny.

For one thing, Bhutan knows what’s important. Instead of measuring GNP (gross national production that every other country uses to gauge its success), Bhutan keeps taps on its GNH (Gross National Happiness). Until 1962, there wasn’t even a national currency, let alone telephones or roads. The entire country is non-smoking, fashion is irrelevant (everyone wears a tunic) and people here still believe in spirits, demons, ghosts, yetis, angels and reincarnated saints riding flying tigers.

Its raw, natural beauty alone makes it worth the trip. Let’s just say an aisle seat would never do on a flight into Paro, Bhutan’s only airport.

As for the very–important GNH, it was introduced by the country’s fourth king who was inaugurated in 1974. King Jigme Singye Wangchuck knew that mere economic success doesn’t necessarily translate into a content and happy society. His innovative success measure was also an effective way to ensure that the country’s gradual modernization doesn’t disturb its Buddhist spirituality or its deep magical beauty. Evidently, it works. On a 2008 census, 95 percent of residents reported they were deeply content.

To find out more about this thin-aired land that’s straddled between ancient and modern worlds, contact www.tourism.gov.bt.

If you saw the movie “Swing Vote,” you might have noticed that Kevin Costner’s Bud Johnson was rarely parted from his Bass Pro baseball cap. And it wasn’t just because the character was a laidback, beer-swigging good ole boy. No, the Dances with Wolves actor is a fishing buddy of Johnny Morris, the guy who started Bass Pro. Costner and his band, Modern West, have performed at the flagship store in Springfield, Missouri and there’s a cabin named after him at Morris’s Big Cedar Lodge, a luxury resort in the heart of the Missouri Ozarks.

Sitting on Table Rock Lake, Big Cedar certainly qualifies as a fishing and hunting lodge, an upscale fishing and hunting lodge with cozy Adirondack-style cabins and taxidermy enough to give Teddy Roosevelt pause. But Big Cedar Lodge is much more than that.

Its 800 lushly-forested-acres have natural-fed swimming pools, hiking trails, five-star dining, tennis courts, a golf course, two spas, a cooking school, an about-to-open Natural History Museum (complete with the skeleton of a Woolly Mammoth) and the same kind of attention to detail that inspired Advertising Age to name Bass Pro one of the ten hottest brands in America along with Glee, Droid and Ciroc vodka.

The Kevin Costner cabin, like all the cabins, overlooks Table Rock Lake and has an impressive wood-burning fireplace, hand-crafted furniture, stained glass, exposed beams, a big deck and pictures of the Hollywood star scattered throughout. There are also cabins named for Tony Orlando (not surprisingly, it’s called the Yellow Ribbon cabin), Dale Earnhardt Jr., Porter Wagoner, Ernest Hemingway, former President George H.W. Bush (when his Secret Service agents first called, they were told it was sold out), Waylon Jennings (he and his wife renewed their vows at Big Cedar) and some of the conservation partners that Morris has worked with in the 40 years since he started Bass Pro in the back of his father’s Brown Derby liquor store.

Today, Bass Pro has 57 stores throughout the United States and Canada and, with turnstiles clicking, racks up some 110 million visitors a year, more than Disneyworld, the NFL and NCAA basketball. With live aquariums, waterfalls, fishing and hunting demonstrations and an elaborate Santa’s World that offers kids a free 5×7 photos with the Jolly One (Santas at the mall tend to charge), Bass Pro’s intricately-decorated Outdoor Worlds have become true family destinations.

In 1987, Johnny Morris expanded his brand with Big Cedar Lodge. Originally, he wanted a spot where customers of his Springfield store could test fishing boats. But he became intrigued with the two long-abandoned country resorts on the property, built in the 1920’s by Jude Simmons and Frisco Railroad executive Harry Worman, and decided to restore them. Today, those old wilderness mansions serve as restaurants on the property that he went on to turn into a gorgeous mountain lake resort.

There’s a cookie lady that places fresh gingerbread (shaped like cedar trees) on guests pillows at night and in the summer, families are invited out to Truman Lawn for kickball, pie-eating competitions, seed-spitting contests, wheelbarrow races and a big bonfire complete with S’mores. No wonder, Morris calls Big Cedar Lodge “his little slice of heaven on earth.”

Kevin Costner, Michael Jordan and Vince Vaughn think so, too.

Click here for more on this lodge that was once described as a cross between Disneyland and the summer camp from Dirty Dancing.

When Sir Richard Branson, the British billionaire who started Virgin Air, Virgin Records and hundreds of other Virgin brand products, decides to do something, he does it right.

When he was 28, with just six years of Virgin entrepreneurship under his belt, he bought a deserted island in the Virgin Islands (where else?) and turned it into private retreat for him and his family. Using local stone, Brazilian hardwoods, antiques, fabrics and bamboo furniture from Bali, his design staff and a $10 million budget built a 10-bedroom Balinese villa (every room has a 360-degree view) and five Bali guesthouses which were built in Bali, shipped to Tortola and reassembled on Branson’s private resort.

Branson’s kids are grown now and while he still uses his beloved Necker Island (In March 2008, for example, he hosted former British Prime Minster Tony Blair, Google’s Larry Page and Wikipedia’s Jimmy Wales for a summit on global warming), he also rents it out to private groups and individuals who don’t balk at the $53,000 nightly rate. As you can imagine, that tends to keep out riffraff.

Necker Island (named after the 17th century Dutch squadron commander Johannes de Neckere who discovered it) sleeps 28, has 14 private beaches, a staff of 60, its own spa (where guests like Mariah Carey, Elizabeth Hurley Pamela Anderson and Oprah Winfrey get caviar facials) and fleets of Hobie cats, windsurfers and boogie boards. If you rent the Bali Cliff guesthouse, one of five spread around the 74-acre island, you can even zipline from your front porch to the beach.

A Balinese drum gongs three times, calling guests to meals which can either be held in the Crocodile Pavilion where you’ll around a giant table carved in the shape of a crocodile or in the bar where James Bond movies play in the background.

There’s a floating sushi bar during Happy Hour, plenty of tree houses (Branson calls them love shacks) and pickup games of beach volleyball played with a coconut.

Steven Spielberg, Mel Gibson, Michael Douglas, Harrison Ford, Robert DeNiro and Kate Moss are just a few who have stayed at this exclusive island. Whether or not they donned the island’s signature pirate costumes, we can’t say.

It’s one thing to see a movie star on a screen. But to see them in the flesh, on the elevator, lounging beside the pool at your favorite hotel is a whole different bag of swag.

And one of your best bets for celebrity sighting is at awards show Gift Suites, held at nearby posh hotels. In fact, if you’d had a room last week at the Beverly Hills Four Seasons, you’d have likely seen LL Cool J, Loretta Devine, “Mad Men” creator Matthew Weiner, Penny Marshall, Lorraine Braaco and Cloris Leachman, to name a few. They all stopped by the HBO Luxury Suite before the 2011 Emmys to pick up free Carrera sunglasses, Invicta watches and New Era Hats.

At these suites, freebies known in Hollywood as swag are handed out to anyone (well, anyone with an agent and a nomination) that shows up.

It’s a shrewd advertising gimmick that has been known to rocket companies into the rarefied limelight of sizzling-hot brandland. The stars pick up all sorts of free things like five-day trips to Bora Bora, memberships at country clubs, diamonds, high-tech headphones, speakers and other stuff you don’t normally find at Target.

Used to be, each star just got a bag filled with chic loot worth as much as $50,000. But the IRS got wind of it and now, the stars, rather than having to declare for a bunch of pricey stuff they don’t want, are invited to the Gift Suites to make their selection.

So which hotels provided prime star watching during the 2011 Emmys?

1. Four Seasons. Always a hub of activity during awards season, this gorgeous hotel perfumed with its signature flower arrangements hosted HBO’s Luxury Suite that handed out specially-concocted cocktails, one for every HBO show.

2. W Hotel. GBK, always a star player when it comes to celebrity gift events, hosted their suite at the W where they passed out free trips to Fiji and ComforPedic memory foam mattresses.

3. The Mondrian. Singer/actress Christina Milian, TV personality/model Eva Marcille and actor/author Hill Harper were spotted collecting freebies during the Kari Feinstein Primetime Emmy Awards Style Lounge held at the splashy Mondrian.

Among the freebies offered: UppaBaby’s $680 Vista stroller (outfitted with shock absorbers and an organic bassinet with a pull-out sun shade); rare and red-carpet-ready blue diamonds from jeweler Sophia Fiori; Brahmin leather handbags (popular Saturday with actress Melissa Joan Hart and TV personality Samantha Harris); indestructible steel “True Blood” headphones by V-MODA; and vegan footwear from Michael Antonio Shoes.

Elton John, David Furnish and eight-month-old Zachary spent most of August in St. Tropez. Where did the doting parents go when they wanted a little beach time? The same place Naomi Campbell celebrates her birthday every year. Le Club 55, one of the most exclusive beach clubs on St. Tropez’s three-mile Pampelonne Beach.

Getting reservations for Sunday brunch at this beachside landmark is nearly impossible, not because it caters to celebrities (anyone’s welcome), but because everyone from Saudi princes and fast-lane billionaires to film and rock idols like to dine under tamarisk trees on its white-canvas-shaded deck. Lunching at Club 55 has long been a St. Tropez rite of passage.

The featured attraction? A gorgeous megasalad with monstrous heads of cauliflower, tomatoes big as softballs and perfect mushrooms, carrots, scallions and cucumbers, all artistically arranged atop a thick slab of cork. Oh yeah, and the beach.

Club 55 was launched in the year 1955 after the mother of Patrice de Colmont, the current owner, was asked by Brigitte Bardot, who mistook their family cabana on the north end of the beach for a restaurant, for 80 roast beef sandwiches. She wanted it for the crew on her film, And God Created Woman, that turned St. Tropez into the household name it is today. Even though it’s open to everyone and remains faithfully democratic (the King of Belgium was once asked to wash his own dish to help out the overbooked kitchen), Club 55 requires reservations.

It has a relaxed family-friendly vibe (that’s why Elton invited pal Neal Patrick Harris to come along with his 10-month-old twins) complete with backgammon tables, beach umbrellas and foam mattresses and its beach boutique sources the best small labels from around the world including handmade fabric sketchbooks and diaries by Willow Rose.

Click here, for more on the club the French call Cinquante Cinq.

Parmesan truffle butter popcorn, Calcutta marble belly stones and Northern Italian cooking by twin chefs, Nicola and Fabrizo Carro, were just a few of the luxurious touches available for Will Smith during Men in Black III script read-throughs at the Trump SoHo Hotel.

Although Agent J chose to bunk in a five-bedroom, 6.5-bathroom apartment at 25 Bond Street during the four-month shoot (and piss off a lot of SoHo residents with the 1150-square-foot double-decker trailer he parked on city streets), he rubbed elbows with fellow millionaire Donald Trump’s year-old SoHo property at early rehearsals.

Unlike typical Manhattan hotel rooms that are pint-sized and offer views of brick walls of the building next door, Trump SoHo features impressive-sized rooms and floor-to-ceiling windows with views of the Hudson River, the Empire State Building and other prime Manhattan real estate.

With Fendi Casa furnishings, hand-tooled leather, Bellino sheets, automated room curtains and a stunner of a lobby, the 46-floor hotel (it’s The Donald’s second New York hotel) is the first big luxury hotel to get its toe in the trendy SoHo district.

Getting a lot of buzz are the spa’s two Turkish-inspired steam rooms, one for men and one for women. Like in Istanbul, Trump’s steam rooms are called hammams, have domed ceilings and therapists who use Turkish exfoliation mitts (called kese) and cotton soap bags (called torba). But here, the hammams have gracefully-arranged orchids and personal attaches to coddle the guests.

Next time Will’s in town, he might consider one of Trump SoHo’s 11 penthouse suites. The 33rd-floor version has its own pool table, high-end A/V equipment and views that he’d never get in that monster, view-blocking movie trailer.

Click here for more on Trump SoHo that also has South Beach transplant, Quattro Gastronomia Italiana, the ultra chic Kastel cocktail lounge (try the Bramble, with Plymouth gin, St. Germain, fresh lemon and homemade jam) and Bar D’Eau, a rooftop bar next to the mosaiced pool and bocce court.

Between caring for twins, whittling down American Idol contestants and getting unhitched from a seven-year marriage, Jennifer Lopez hasn’t had much time lately to enjoy her favorite indulgence—the spa at Las Ventanas al Paraiso.

Located at the very tip of Mexico’s Baja Peninsua, this block where Jenny’s from (at least in her down time) has also been known to host such A-listers as Jessica Alba and Cameron Diaz. With just 71 suites (and every room is a suite with handmade Mexican tiles, fireplaces and lanais) and private pools in every size and shape, camera-shy celebs feel like they have the Sea of Cortez to themselves. Even the zip-lipped staff of butlers, maids and gardeners only appear when guests need something. The rest of the time, they navigate the property in specially-built underground tunnels.

At the spa that J-LO told Harper’s Bazaar was “her favorite,” she enjoys private treatments in one of three spa suites. The spa also has a walk-in rainforest shower and a fancy-schmancy holistic twilight ceremony that uses candles, sage, an eagle feather and an acting shaman to purify and balance energy. It should go without saying that each spa guest gets his or her own dedicated butler to cater to every whim.

Of course, the whim-catering is not just at the spa. Owned by Ty Warner, the mastermind behind beanie babies, Las Ventanas al Paraiso (translated, it means “Windows to Paradise”) is where many now-standard hotel perks were first innovated: poolside Evian mist spray, loaner I-pods (Kindles before that) and Sony location-free TV, to name just a few.

Every suite has a telescope (the display of stars in the sky is even more notable than the display in the spa suites), locally hand-crafted wicker dolls with inspiring messages are left on pillows at night and not only do guests choose their pillow preference, again standard at many luxury resorts, but they get a menu of linens. This hotel even has an official Department of Romance that has been known, among other things, to secretly create personalized “Will you marry me?” videos or, better yet, proposals delivered by a mermaid or in a message “found” in a bottle.

And while the Department of Romance concocts some pretty amazing “dreams come true,” it didn’t do a lot for Sean Penn and Scarlett Johansson who rendezvoused at the stellar property in early March of this year. Some relationships, I guess, even a Department of Romance can’t cure.

There may be no such thing as a dumb question, but if you ask “how?” during mahout training at Anantara Resort’s Elephant Camp, the pachyderm you’re driving is likely to come to a screeching halt. “How,” after all, means “stop” in elephant language. But never fear, a quick “pai” which means “go” should quickly catch you back up to the rest of your class. Another useful word is “baen” which means “turn,” which could come in mighty handy in an elephant camp that’s located at the confluence of the Mae Khong and Ruak Rivers.

During the three-day mahout training course, you’ll learn to bathe, feed and care for your assigned elephant. You’ll master basic elephant commands (around 70, at last count) and how to communicate with your 3-ton steed by lightly touching him or her behind the ears. From the back of your jumbo beauty, you’ll also explore the forests of Northern Thailand, Laos and Myanmar, all of which are within elephant bugling distance from the camp.

The mahout training course is not for late risers. Elephants and their mahouts start their day at 6:30 a.m. when elephants are rounded up from the forest, driven back to the camp and given a few moments for morning ablutions. From there, you’ll be taught how to mount your elephant—either up the side or by leap-frogging over its bowed head—and given time to acclimate to the big beast’s roll and sway.
After lunch, you’ll use the movement commands you hopefully mastered during the morning session to drive your trusty mount to the Ruak River for its all-time favorite activity—river bathing. And, yes, trainees are expected to get in the water with their charges although staying on their back would be nearly impossible anyway–especially if you happen to get Lawann, the village flirt who is never shy about showing her feelings.

“The elephants at the camp are used to working with people and, like the best teachers, are extremely patient. Like humans, elephants learn to trust people over time, so we encourage guests to hand feed their teachers with plenty of sugar cane and bananas,” says John Roberts, the British director of Elephant Camp. Each elephant, he says, eats around 550 pounds of food a day.

At the end of your three-day workshop, you’ll take a “driving test” and, if you pass, you’ll get an official certificate of mahout competence. You’ll also get your own blue denim mahout shirt.

Says Roberts, “I don’t feel too guilty for turning less than competent mahouts out on the streets. So far, there have been no reports of accidents. At least not yet.”

Anantara’s Resort’s 160-acres of bamboo forest, nature trails and river banks provide an ideal habitat for the resort’s four elephants, all of whom came here from the Thai Elephant Conservation Centre in Lampang, 360 miles north of Bangkok.

In addition to the three-day mahout course, the Anantara also offers a world-class spa, a cooking school, longtail boat rides, treks to hill-tribe villages, mountain bikes, tennis courts and tours to everything from the last spawning ground of giant catfish to the Hall of Opium to Doi Tung where you can buy hand-woven rugs, mulberry bark paper, ceramics and locally-grown Arabica coffee.

For more on Antantara Elephant Camp, click here.

“Auto racing, bull fighting, and mountain climbing are the only real sports … all others are games.”
– Ernest Hemingway

There’s a reason American Express, Citibank, Chevron, Pepsi, and hundreds of other corporations have sent their employees to Skip Barber Racing School. And it’s not because they want faster drivers.

“It develops confidence,” says Rick Roso, the company’s marketing manager and an occasional instructor. “When you do something that you thought you couldn’t do, something that seemed impossible, it carries over into other parts of your life.”

But what’s so impossible about racing a car?

“When you watch it on TV, it looks easy,” Roso says. “But that’s only because you don’t feel the g-forces, the braking forces. When you’re in a race car, it’s ten times more difficult than it looks. You’d be surprised how many people don’t want to come back after the first day.”

That’s where the confidence building comes in. Skip Barber instructors, all competitive drivers, are masters at pushing through those psychological barriers, those fears that inevitably taunt you when you realize you’re going to be hurtling around a racetrack at 130 miles an hour in a flimsy, 1,100-pound car.

That’s why Roso has often heard the three-day racing school referred to as the “Outward Bound of motor sport.” According to him, it will do a lot more than teach you how to downshift, brake, corner, and pass other drivers on the straightaway. It will make you a better person. “When you do something this radical, it changes you,” he says.

It also qualifies you to race (yes, actually race) in the Skip Barber Race Series, the largest open-wheel amateur championship in North America. Drivers with career aspirations have long used the Race Series as their entrée into the sport, but most of the drivers in the series are everyday folks who just want to take a green flag, to actually be behind the wheel when they hear that familiar refrain: “Gentlemen, start your engines.”

Graduates of Skip Barber’s Three-Day Racing School are automatically qualified for the Race Series. On these race weekends, which culminate in four regional championships, Skip Barber brings the cars, the pit crews, and the fireproof jumpsuits. All you do is show up. And fork over the cash for Friday practice—mandatory if it’s your first time–and two advanced on-track programs.

But back to the qualifications. According to most experts, you get 90 percent of what you need to know to race competitively in the three days of instruction. The other 10 percent comes through “seat” time—time spent practicing and experiencing the various track layouts and surfaces, driver attitudes, and weather changes.

The Three-Day Racing School, the company’s bread and butter, is held at some of the best tracks in the United States and Canada, the same tracks the pros race on. In fact, if you look down a roster of pros, you’ll find that a good percentage of them have also trained with Skip Barber.

“You take an average NASCAR field of 43 drivers and usually about a dozen would have gone through our driving school,” Roso estimates. “At Indianapolis, you’re looking at 30 to 35 percent that would have trained with us.”

That’s not to mention the school’s impressive celebrity alumni including Paul Newman, Al Pacino, and Charlie Sheen. Not that you need any kind of credentials.

“We don’t presume any knowledge on your part,” Roso says. “We even get folks from New York whose only experience in a car is a cab.”

Skip Barber started his school in 1975 with four students and a pair of borrowed race cars. By the end of the first year, he was $10,000 in debt. But the same mentality that propelled his success as a professional driver wouldn’t let him give up. Today, the company (Barber sold it in 2002 to concentrate on the famous Lime Rock Park racetrack that he was able to buy after the racing school took off) owns 200 high-performance race cars. It has locations in Sebring and Daytona Beach, Florida; Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin; and Monterey, California, as well as its headquarters in Lakeville, Connecticut. From those four locations, the company shuttles cars and instructors around the country, scheduling the three-day racing schools, as well as one-day, advanced, and high-performance courses.

Skip Barber Racing School, P.O. Box 1629, Lakeville, CT 06039, 800-221-1131, www.skipbarber.com.

Working in Quito? Fine, stay at the Holiday Inn or the Marriott. But if you´re going to Ecuador as a tourist, as someone hoping to explore a different culture, then there´s no aceptable excuse for choosing a chain hotel that, for all intents and purposes, is a mini-U.S, barely different than the one back home.

My daughter and I, traveling in Ecuador for six weeks, picked Café Cultura, a boutique hotel within walking distance of historic Old Town Quito. A renovated colonial mansión, Café Cultura is owned by an Ecuadorian architect and painted from floor to ceiling in inspired frescoes by famous Ecuadorian Fausto Merchán. When Laszlo Karolyi, the architect, began renovating the mansión that once served as the French Cultural Center, Merchan was an unknown and Karolyi, quick to recognize his talent, wasted no time sending him to art school.

At the same time Café Cultura represents real Ecuador, it´s not so foreign as to scare rusty Spanish skills back into hiding. Most of the staff speaks English and its handsome, wood-paneled library is filled with guidebooks, magazines and newspapers in many languages.

Every night when my daughter and I came back from exploring the Quito sights, we´d nestle in front of three giant fireplaces and talk “Ecuador”¨with Germans, Brits and other gringos who were all as taken with Quito´s 450-year history and high-altitude beauty as we were.

With its fireplaces, antique rugs and big garden complete with peacocks and hummingbirds, Café Cultura has the feel of old time Colonial Quito. Each of its 26 rooms is different, each a piece of art in its own right. We stayed in Suite 2 that had a sunlit sitting room that was perfect for early-morning journaling.The restaurant, also graced by a giant fireplace, served exotic fresh-squeezed juices, homemade breads and other Ecuadorian delicacies.

As for those tourists staying two blocks away at the Holiday Inn, all I have to¨say is “Better luck next time.¨”