Countless Australians travel the well-worn trail to Bali each year, and then decry its crowds and commercialism, not knowing that just a quick flight east there’s a clutch of unspoilt islands where hair braiding (and sometimes power) is nowhere to be seen.

With visions of grandeur playing in her head, Jennifer Pinkerton has a castle-lite experience in a new take on an old classic.

John Borthwick meanders along the rivers of Myanmar on a gracious cruiser steeped in the history of this curious and contradictory land.