In this context, it’s best to define mystery cities because few residents of the world may know much about these places and even fewer visit them, and yet they still have many discoveries to supply travelers.
According to the Australian online portal Traveler, read here the list of top 10 secret cities in Asia, that are also known as secret places amongst the perfect places to go to on the earth.
TAKAYAMA, JAPAN
Compact, serene and surrounded by the rolling hills of the Japanese Alps, Takayama is pure charm.
There is a superb collection of Edo-style merchant houses along Ojinmachi, and each morning from about 7 a.m., the Miyagawa Market brings colours and fragrant scents to the riverside walking path that gallops through the center of Takayama.
Above town, the Higashiyama walking trail winds through a dozen historic Buddhist temples with huge bronze bells and shingled roofs. Hidden within the cypress forest above the temples are Shinto shrines dedicated to Kami, the sacred essence manifested in nature.
GALLE, SRI LANKA
Surrounded by the solid partitions of the fort, the old town of Galle is a gridded street and world heritage zone, crammed with memories of the times when sahibs drank pink gin on the verandah of the Grand Hotel.
Pedlar Street is a central café, stuffed with shabby chic restaurants, colonial mansions converted into popular hotels, antique shops, jewelers and galleries. Former gun positions along town partitions have turn into a favourite place for courting couples who hide their kisses behind open umbrellas.
FORT KOCHI, INDIA
The northern end of the blunt thumb that protects town of Kochi from the Lakshadweep Sea was the middle of the spice trade in southern India and coveted by European powers.
It’s an enchanting place, a lazy, ruined mélange of intersecting Arab, Portuguese, Dutch and British cultural trends dating back over 1,000 years.
It can be a backwater ripe for redevelopment, emerging from its post-colonial torpor, with spice warehouses and merchants’ houses now tended by the international-style brigade.
LIJIANG, CHINA
Lijiang Old Town, positioned within the shadow of the Jade Dragon Snow Mountain, is a compact arrangement of cobbled streets lined with ancient storefronts around a gushing stream, resembling an open-air museum.
Lijiang can be the traditional capital of the Naxi people, whose nomadic ancestors probably got here here from Tibet. The traditional costume of Naxi women, still a standard sight on the streets of Lijiang, is a cloak product of nine discs of material embroidered in seven colours of the rainbow.
NAN, THAILAND
Situated in a river valley near the border with Laos, Nan is a sleepy, provincial town with strong influences from the Lanna kingdom, which once dominated northern Thailand.
The city and surrounding villages within the Nan River Valley are home to many significant Buddhist temples dating back to the 14th century. Among them is Wat Phumin, known for its beautiful murals. The nearby Doi Phu Kha National Park is the most important in Thailand and residential to lesser-known ethnic minority Thai hill tribes.
AND INDIA
Deep within the Indus River Valley, surrounded by peaks rising to six,000 meters, Leh is the capital of Ladakh, in India’s far northwest.
At its heart, a good knot of hotels, cafes, guesthouses and curio shops beneath the impressive Leh Palace involves life for the short tourist season from June to September.
Ladakh is the perfect place to experience the intact Tibetan Buddhist culture. Bell-shaped Buddhist chortens line the roadsides, and the hilltops are topped with monasteries whose architecture and practices draw on the good monasteries of Tibet, which lies simply to the east.
GEORGETOWN, MALAYSIA
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George Town, town of lazy fascinations, is practically an open-air museum, a world cultural heritage zone with the scent of Little India and a time-warped Chinatown, where storefronts are transformed into boutique hotels and stylish cafes and restaurants, now present in interior design warehouses. It is the house of laksa assam, rice noodles with fiery fish soup with coconut milk, and the food stalls of George Town are the place to sample Chinese, Malay, Indian and Nonya, the food of the Straits-born Chinese.
VIGAN, PHILIPPINES
Vigan, the best-preserved example of a Spanish colonial settlement in Asia, is a UNESCO World Heritage city positioned within the Abra River Delta on the northwestern coast of Luzon.
Along the pedestrianized Crisologo Street, horse-drawn carriages, stucco facades and wrought ironwork with fanciful patterns evoke memories of the times when the Philippines was a Spanish colony.
The street approaching Plaza Burgos cuts through the Mestizo district, where the once elegant residences of town’s merchants have distinct Chinese accents and a few have now been converted into guesthouses and museums.
BATTAMBANG, CAMBODIA
Slightly frayed around the perimeters, this former French colonial city captivates with memories of Cambodia from the heady years under the Khmer Rouge.
Its setting on the banks of the Sankae River gives it a lazy atmosphere, and Battambang has a penchant for the avant-garde, evidenced by its artsy boutique hotel and stylish café scene.
The city is surrounded by rice fields that spread like a carpet beneath the hill temples and verdant villages besieged by lush green forest. Rent a motorbike and ride the crazy but exciting bamboo railway.
SUZHUO, CHINA
Northwest of Shanghai, Suzhou is town of water. Marco Polo called it the “Venice of the East”, and Suzhou became wealthy because of its strategic location on the Grand Canal.
Its wealthy merchant families built gardens with strategically placed rocks, hills, and waterscapes that created the template of the Chinese garden.
Some 19 gardens are open to public viewing, each with ponds and streams that ripple, cascade and reflect light, adding their very own music and providing garden designers with opportunities to erect humpback whale bridges.
Source : http://www.traveller.com.au/asias-10-best-secret-cities-to-visit-h0x0ho
