New hotels

Jia, the first Philippe Starck hotel in Asia, is also a boutique first for Hong Kong. Located in the Causeway Bay shopping hub, this apartment-style hotel is geared to hip travellers seeking a more unconventional city bolthole. The 57 apartments include two penthouses, there's a rooftop Jacuzzi, sundeck and - this being Asia - more hi-tech accoutrements than you can shake a remote at.

· Jia (jiahongkong.com). Studio hotel apartments from £84 per room per night; weekly from £362 with 20% off until March 31. Includes breakfast, evening wine, gym access and a welcome massage.

In Cambodia, the new 18-room Shinta Mani Resort and Spa in Siem Reap's French quarter claims to serve the best contemporary food in the Mekong region, while Asia's first W hotel makes its debut in Seoul, in June. From its location on the slopes of mount Acha, the Zen-inspired W Seoul will have stunning views over the Han river, with its piece de resistance a glass-bottomed pool perched atop a giant tank of tropical fish.

· Doubles at Shinta Mani (sanctuaryresorts.com) start at £144 including a massage.

· W Seoul (starwood.com/whotels), opening June 15. Doubles from £157.

The Six Senses group, whose "barefoot luxury" portfolio includes Sonevas Fushi and Gilli in the Maldives, will open a Hideaway property in Vietnam in November. Ana Mandara Ninh Van Bay will feature 54 poolside villas and the resort comes with its own river and waterfall.

· Prices not available yet; six-senses.com.

A raft of boutique properties has also opened in Thailand, where eco-adventure, personal service and local flavour are dish of the day. Examples include the 40-room Phulay Beach, a 50-minute drive from Krabi airport; the 10-suite Aleenta in Pran Buri, well received by Posh and Becks; Thailand's first tented safari camp, the Elephant Hills Jungle Camp in Khao Sok National Park and the spectacular Racha resort. A 25-minute speedboat ride from Phuket, The Racha's 75 minimalist villas are dotted around a coconut plantation on what is regarded as one of the region's most pristine beaches.

For those who want to get more off the beaten track, Angsana Resorts has launched a boutique collection of secluded properties in Sri Lanka, China and Laos. First to open was the 47-room Gyalthang Dzong Hotel, a Tibetan-style hideaway in the heart of Tibetan China; new this month is the Deer Park Hotel in Giritale, Sri Lanka; and the Maison Souvannaphoum opens later this year in Luang Prabang, Laos.

· Tropical Locations (tropical-locations.com) has five nights at The Racha from £730pp including speedboat transfer, and five nights at the Phulay Beach from £790pp. Both include flights. · Magic of the Orient (magicoftheorient.com) combines two days at Elephant Hills with eight at the Theptharo Lagoon Beach Resort from £1,076pp including flights, transfers, some meals and tours. · Gyalthang Dzong Hotel (coloursofangsana.com). Doubles from £65.

Hugging a hill ridge with views over a jungle canopy to the Mekong, the new Anantara Golden Triangle also boasts its own elephant camp offering a three-day mahout training course. And, if you're fond of the pachyderm, but not that fond, there's always the Elephant Bar ...

· Travelmood (travelmood.com) has doubles at the Anantara from £68pp.

New destinations and tours

The thirst for new and "undiscovered" islands in Thailand continues - two years ago, the talk was of Ko Lanta and Lanta Yai. This year, new flights from Bangkok to Trat - a short ferry ride from Ko Chang - and two new Amari resorts have opened up the pristine beaches and virgin rainforest of Trang province, south of Phuket, and Ko Chang, the largest of a 47-island group in Ko Chang Marine Park. Visitors can kickback or indulge in soft-adventure activities like kayaking through mangrove swamps or exploring Trang's complex cave systems by boat.

· Thomas Cook Signature (tcsignature.com) has five-nights' B&B at the Amari Trang Beach Resort from £859pp inc flights.

· Kuoni (kuoni.co.uk) has five nights at the Amari Emerald Cove Resort on Koh Chang Island (opening in April) from £818pp including flights.

There's nothing new about Langkawi, a 104-island archipelago sweeping across the Andaman sea. But direct flights launched in October from Heathrow have cut plane-to-beach time by three hours, putting this tropical gem off Malaysia's northwest coast firmly on the UK holiday map. Four Seasons will open a resort later this year.

· Premier Holidays (premierholidays.co.uk) has five nights' room-only at the Langkawi Beach Resort from £715pp including flights.

Cambodia's northeastern province of Ratanakiri has bizarre graveyards with carved spirit guardians, remote ethnic villages, a spectacular crater lake and a capital whose red-dust roads conjure images of America's wild west.

· Audley Travel (audleytravel.com) has a 14-night tour of Cambodia for £2,095pp.

Christina Ong's winning formula wooed Asia last year when Como Hotels opened the Metropolitan Bangkok. Now the design diva has set her sights on Bhutan, where Como will open the Uma Paro resort in June. Although visitor numbers are tightly controlled in Buddhist Bhutan, this hillside property overlooking the Paro valley is set to raise the profile of the relatively unexplored kingdom.

· Bales (balesworldwide.com) has a 15-day Dragon Kingdom tour visiting five destinations in Buhtan, including Paro from £3,120pp including flights, meals and transfers.

Much of the mythical desert, forest and grassland scenery featured in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon was filmed in a seldom-visited region of Inner Mongolia, far from China's well-trodden tourist paths. At the luxury end, Cox & Kings has introduced a 15-night all-encompassing Mongolia tour, while Dragoman has a new 16-night tour visiting Datong, home to ethnic Mongols, that offers the intrepid a chance to float down the Yellow River on sheepskin rafts.

· Cox & Kings's (coxandkings.co.uk) Mongolia: Land of Blue Sky tour costs from £2,225pp.

· Dragoman (dragoman.co.uk) has a China and Inner Mongolia tour which costs £695pp plus a $260 kitty.

Upmarket operator Abercrombie & Kent has introduced another of Asia's least-visited destinations, Tibet, also featured by Explore Worldwide in its new 17-day trip that encompasses a formidable but rewarding expanse of territory from Yunnan's Tibetan plateau across the "roof of the world" to the capital Lhasa.

· Abercrombie & Kent's (abercrombiekent.com) Roof of the World tour of Tibet costs from £2,840 (for travel November-December), including flights, transfers and full-board accommodation.

· Explore Worldwide (exploreworldwide.co.uk) has an Across the Roof of the World Tibet tour from £2,000pp.

Trains

Eastern & Oriental Express's luxury Thai Explorer train journey proved so popular when trialled last year that the journey has become a permanent fixture for 2004. The three-day round-trip goes from Bangkok to Ayutthaya, Chiang Mai, Lampang and Kanchanaburi (for the river Kwai).

· E&O (orient-express.com). A Pullman Thai Explorer compartment costs from £780pp; the 11-day Land of Smiles holiday featuring the train journey and including internal flights costs from £1,835pp.

Billed as the Orient Express of India, the Deccan Odyssey is a seven-night luxury train journey that travels through the heart of Maharastra, with stops at temples, beaches, villages and ancient capitals. Facilities include an on-board spa.

· Deccan Odyssey (deccan-odyssey-india.com) from $295pp based on double occupancy.

The Skytrain has worked wonders for traffic-choked Bangkok. Not only is it being extended this year, but the city is also to gain an underground metro in August. There will be 17 stations and four Skytrain interchange stations.

Boats

Despite avian flu Asia tour operators are tipping Indochina as one of the successes of 2004. Infrastructure developments over the past few years have seen a proliferation of cruise boats on the region's main artery, the Mekong. New deluxe cruising options include the traditional wooden Khmer-style Toum Teav which sails from Saigon to Phnom Penh and Siem Reap (for Angkor), and the Tonle Pandaw which will run upstream and downstream cruises between Saigon and Siem Reap. A new teak-fitted "expedition ship", the Mekong, is also sailing between Saigon and Siem Reap. For a faster alternative, Magic of the Orient now incorporates a speedboat link between the Mekong Delta in Vietnam and Phnom Penh in its 12-night Temples of Angkor tour taking in Saigon, Siem Reap and a three-day Delta cruise.

· Mekong Travel (mekong-travel.com) has six-night cruises on the Toum Teav from £770pp full-board.

· Silverbird (silverbird.co.uk) has trips on the Mekong from £1,899pp including flights, eight nights on-board and four in hotels.

· Magic of the Orient (magicoftheorient.com). Temples of Angkor leads-in at £1,439pp including flights, transfers, guide and full-board cruise.

Thailand's first inland cruise ship, the colonial-style River Kwai, has opened up an entirely new area for river tourism in Kanchanaburi province west of Bangkok. Cruises start and end in Bangkok and include excursions to temples, historic sites, Khmer ruins, and the infamous Death Railway and bridge.

· Cruise Asia (cruiseasia.net) has four-day River Kwai cruises from £235.

India's Taj and Oberoi hotel groups have both launched cruise boats - Oberoi's eight cabin Vrinda explores the backwaters of Kerala, while the smaller, three-cabinTaj yachts offer day and overnight cruises of Kerala and Mumbai.

· Abercrombie & Kent (abercrombiekent.com) offers cruises on the Vrinda.

· An overnight cruise on board a Taj yacht costs £250pp (based on six passengers) including dinner, cold drinks and butler service; tajhotels.com.

Explore the Yangtze river on board the five-starCentury Star, which makes its maiden voyage between Chongqing and Wuhanthis month. The recently dammed Three Gorges are among tour highlights.

· Noble Caledonia (noble-caledonia.co.uk). A 13-night all-inclusive Imperial Treasures of China tour including a seven-night Yangtze Cruise costs from £2,495pp.

Attractions

Having legalised bar-top dancing and the use of explicit language in theatrical performances, Singapore has gone one step further in its efforts to shake its famously uptight image by opening one of Asia's first reverse bungy jumps, the G-Max. "Jumpers" sit in a three-seater capsule suspended by bungy cords and are catapulted upwards at speeds of up to 200kph.

· G-Max (gmax.co.nz). Open daily, single jumps cost £10.

Visitors to Thailand's Golden Triangle can have a potted history of the opium wars and South East Asia's resulting drug-trafficking industry at a new £5.5 million Hall of Opium Museum in Chiang Rai entered through an underground tunnel.

· Opium Museum (hallofopium@doitung.org) open Tues-Sun; entry £4.

Hot on the heels of Saigon's Ben Thanh night market in comes the Dong Xuan market in the old quarter of Hanoi. The market will be open from 8pm to around midnight, dishing up the usual array of mouth-watering street food, designer knock-offs, and art and handicraft stalls.