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Lara Dunston, Travel and Food Writer

Lara Dunston

Travel and Food Writer

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Blog Posts

The posts are archived. Mainly from my site “Cool Travel Guide” where I wrote about our travels before 2010 when we started Grantourismo Travels.

Find Cheap Hotels With Trivago

Lara DunstonJune 29, 20126 min read
Find Cheap Hotels With Trivago

While researching hotel prices for a story on Sydney, I discovered trivago, supposedly the world’s largest hotel comparison site. My first thought was: why had I not been using the site before. I had heard about the site previously, took…

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Are You Ever Too Old For…Youth Hostels?

Lara DunstonJune 26, 20125 min read
Are You Ever Too Old For…Youth Hostels?

Australia has become a very expensive destination for foreign travellers who aren’t earning the high incomes that Aussies are currently earning. Hotels, flights, public transport, restaurant meals, and entry fees are all considerably more expensive in Australian capitals like Melbourne,…

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How Much Time Is Enough Time In A Place?

Lara DunstonApril 25, 20125 min read
How Much Time Is Enough Time In A Place?

One of the most infuriating things for a travel writer is being told, “You haven’t stayed long enough” or “you can’t see everything/anything here in a month – you can’t even see it in a year!” Let me explain why……

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To Travellers Who Have Dared To Live Their Dreams

Lara DunstonApril 6, 20125 min read
To Travellers Who Have Dared To Live Their Dreams

“Did you imagine you would really be travelling the world and earning your living from your travels?” one of my dearest and oldest friends Becky wrote in an email to me the other day. “It’s quite extraordinary when you look…

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Welcome to the New Cool Travel Guide

Lara DunstonApril 6, 20124 min read
Welcome to the New Cool Travel Guide

The re-launch of Cool Travel Guide has been a long time coming. And while this is a soft launch of sorts, we still have a few tweaks to make, loads of archival posts to re-tag, and some text to finish.…

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An update from the road… we’re on our grand tour and we’re in Montenegro!

Lara DunstonMay 5, 20101 min read
An update from the road… we’re on our grand tour and we’re in Montenegro!

This is the longest I’ve gone without posting on my poor neglected Cool Travel Guide. You want to know why? Drop by Grantourismo and you’ll see that we’ve been a tad busy on our yearlong grand tour of the world,…

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Brief Bio

Lara Dunston is a Cambodia based Travel & Food Writer and has regular gigs with: The Guardian, CNN, Australian Gourmet Traveller, Feast, Delicious, The Independent, Telegraph, National Geographic Traveler / Traveller, Get Lost, Wanderlust, Travel+Leisure SEA, DestinAsian, AFAR. Read more here.

Related Websites

Our travel website:
GRANTOURISMO TRAVELS

Our full service digital media agency:
GRANTOURISMO MEDIA

Our Cambodian retreats site:
SIEM REAP RETREATS

Partner Phtography Site:
TERENCE CARTER PHOTOGRAPHY

Latest on Instagram

How are you all doing? We’re back in beautiful S How are you all doing? We’re back in beautiful Siem Reap after a whirlwind trip to the Cambodian capital to get Terence an emergency passport and take the opportunity to start updating our Phnom Penh guides. But I still want to share some Phnom Penh pics with you, in case you’re planning a Cambodia trip. And you should! A post on that subject going up soon on Grantourismo.  We spent a full day cleaning the apartment, which flooded while we were away – seems they had wild storms in Siem Reap with horizontal rain! Good thing I wasn’t here as it would have triggered memories of the nightmare of an apartment we moved into after the pandemic began, which flooded *every* time it rained.  I made a beeline for the markets to buy some beautiful produce and have been busy recipe testing, cooking and writing, while Terence, in between shooting dishes for me, has been occupied with the new Grantourismo design.  You may only notice small design tweaks, as the main point was to move it to a new theme to speed things up, as it’s a big site, being 12 years old with thousands of posts. I’ll let you know when it’s done so you can test it for us x  Pictured: the famous stall at Psar Chas or Old Market in Siem Reap, which specializes in all things preserved and fermented, from prahok (fermented fish paste) and juicy Siem Reap sausages to smoked fish and buffalo jerky, a fantastic drinking snack.  #SiemReap #market #OldMarket #PsarChas #foodstall #cambodianfood #khmerfood #localfood #localproduce #fermentedfoods #preservedfoods #fermentedfish #prahok #buffalojerky #sausages #fishpaste #shrimppaste #foodwriter #foodblogger #travelwriter #travelblogger #culinarytravel #foodtravel #marketlover
Hello @foodpanda_hongkong Glad you liked our phot Hello @foodpanda_hongkong 
Glad you liked our photo, but you do not have the rights to use it. You’re stealing our livelihood when you steal our content. Remove it now. @foodpandaglobal is owned by the billion dollar company @deliveryhero — you should be paying for images instead of stealing them from us and other small publishers and photographers. Or creating your own content.
We do.
It’s reassuring that in a city that’s changed It’s reassuring that in a city that’s changed so dramatically in recent years — so many buildings have been demolished to make way for lofty apartment blocks and towering hotels, completely changing the character of some Phnom Penh neighbourhoods — to find a heritage building that’s received little more than a coat of paint. (It used to be a pale lemon colour.)  The home of UNESCO’s Cambodia offices, the 19th century villa has long been one of my favourite French colonial buildings in Phnom Penh. Whenever I stroll by I imagine it as a breezy bar and restaurant, open for architecture- and history-lovers to soak up the atmosphere, rather than private offices closed to the public. But at least it’s still standing.  #phnompenh #travelwriter #travelwriterslife #lifeofatraveller #travel #travelgram #traveladdict #travelling #travelblogger #heritage #architecture #colonial #indochine #french #frenchcolonial #villa #mansion #colonialarchitecture #frenchcolonialarchitecture #facade #balconies #balustrade #cambodia #cambodianarchitecture
I knew I couldn’t keep up the pace of posting af I knew I couldn’t keep up the pace of posting after so long away from social media 😂 We just got too busy and something had to give...  A few of you asked where the pizza shot was from @pizza4pscambodia in Phnom Penh, so here you go... half salami and chorizo, and Parma ham and house-made burrata, which is luscious and creamy.  Someone else asked what is Japanese pizza exactly... it’s not okonomiyaki, which I know a lot of US food sites call ‘Japanese pizza’, even though it’s not, it’s a battered pancake.  Firstly, the actual type of pizza is Neapolitan-style, the original pizza invented in Napoli (Naples) in Italy — thin soft base spread with tomato sauce, baked quickly in a pizza oven on super high heat, with a puffy, slightly chewy crust, and a base that becomes a bit wet in the centre.  However, whereas Neapolitan pizza has very strict rules, otherwise, it’s not Neapolitan, Pizza4Ps’ pizzas are ‘Neapolitan-style’, as they get very creative with their toppings, using Japanese ingredients such as seaweed. It’s this — and Japanese owners — that makes it Japanese pizza, a style that began in Japan post-World War 2, when an Italian-American war vet is said to have started the first pizzeria, making the Napoli style, not American styles, of pizza.  A couple of you also asked to see the dramatically different Phnom Penh skyline. The changes are breathtaking if you haven’t been to the Cambodian capital in a few years. I’ll share that pic shortly.  #phnompenh #cambodia #travelwriter #foodwriter #travel #food #foodblogger #travelblogger #travelingram #lifeofatravelwriter #lifeofafoodwriter #traveltips #restaurant #phnompenhrestaurant #pizza #pizza4ps #pizzaoven #pizzalover #japanesepizza #neapolitanpizza #neapolitanstylepizza
That’s our pizza going into the oven at @pizza4p That’s our pizza going into the oven at @pizza4pscambodia yesterday, the Phnom Penh outpost of the Japanese-owned restaurant group. It started out with one hugely popular restaurant in Vietnam some years ago, hidden down a lane in Saigon’s Japantown, and now has restos scattered up and down the country.  Pizza4Ps’ Japanese pizza has a thin base and thick crust, and while it’s more Italian than the American-style so popular in Cambodia, it tends to be wetter than Italian pizza, especially if you order their pizza with a ball of heavenly house-made burrata, which the waitress slices into at your table, spreading the luscious creamy cheese over the pizza. So good!  There are also no rules when it comes to the toppings, so while we had to try our favourites from the mother restaurants — Parma ham and burrata, and their own chorizo and salami — we took note of their Cambodia inspired creations. These include a a very pretty nom banh chok pizza spread with a freshly pounded Khmer herb and spice paste and sprinkled with edible flowers, and a whole page of salmon dishes. Cambodians are crazy about salmon.  #phnompenh #cambodia #travelwriter #foodwriter #travel #food #foodblogger #travelblogger #travelingram #lifeofatravelwriter #lifeofafoodwriter #traveltips #restaurant #phnompenhrestaurant #pizza #pizza4ps #pizzaoven #pizzalover #japanesepizza #restaurantdesign #restaurantinterior
One thing I have not missed as a travel writer dur One thing I have not missed as a travel writer during the pandemic has been the fast pace of these updating trips. No matter how hard we work to try to squeeze everything in, something always gets left out, as we run out of time each day. And we’ve been doing this for decades, it doesn’t get easier; we haven’t figured out a magic formula.  One place I was determined not to miss trying was the new-ish @pizza4pscambodia — the first Cambodia branch of a Japanese owned Vietnamese based restaurant group specialising in Japanese pizza. I was so pleased we got to enjoy a quick lunch there yesterday, even if we weren’t able to sample their 4Ps craft beers (liquor sales were banned for two days during the local govt elections) and even if the service wasn’t as good as it is in Vietnam.  Apart from the style of pizza, three things really distinguish @pizza4ps — they work with local farmers to source the best quality local organic produce and you can really taste it; they produce their beautiful cheeses and charcuterie in house when they can’t source it locally (their creamy burrata and mozzarella are sublime); and they are a zero waste restaurant. I’ll tell you more in the next post.  #phnompenh #cambodia #travelwriter #foodwriter #travel #food #foodblogger #travelblogger #travelingram #lifeofatravelwriter #lifeofafoodwriter #traveltips #restaurant #phnompenhrestaurant #pizza #pizza4ps #japanesepizza #restaurantdesign #restaurantinterior

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ALL MEDIA (WORDS AND IMAGES) COPYRIGHT © 2007–2022 LARA DUNSTON AND TERENCE CARTER | ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. DESIGNED IN APARTMENT RENTALS, HOTELS AND RESORTS AROUND THE WORLD BY GRANTOURISMO MEDIA. ASSEMBLED IN SOUTH-EAST-ASIA.

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