International Women’s Day is upon us and several hotels and resorts are offering special promotions for women, either on March 8th or during the month of March: Soaking It Up on Koh Samui – Spa First, Cocktails After Banyan Tree Samui’s award-winning spa is the ideal oasis for unwinding and rejuvenating. Featuring a choice of Thai and oil massages, holistic beauty treatments, and a unique set of hydrotherapeutic baths named The Rainforest, female visitors will also be offered a free 30-minute express facial treatment any time they order a 90-minute body massage during the month of March. And, on International Women’s Day, ladies at the resort will be invited to raise a glass to themselves at any of the luxury hotel’s bars and restaurants, where a Buy One, Get One Free promotion will carry through till 5pm. Meanwhile, at Banyan Tree’s sister resort on the Andaman Sea, Banyan Tree Krabi, ladies will receive a 20 percent discount of all spa treatments on 8th March. For more information, email samui@banyantree.com or telephone +66 077 915 333. A Special Afternoon Tea in Siem Reap With Proceeds Benefitting Local Women Raffles Grand Hotel d’Angkor has introduced an exclusive Afternoon Tea experience to mark International Women’s Month that will be served throughout March. The hotel in partnership with MANAVA, which supports local artisans by providing education and empowerment training to women in Siem Reap, will serve the special Afternoon Tea set on local rattan products made by MANAVA. A portion of the proceeds will be donated to the women of Krobay Riel Village. The Afternoon Tea experience can be enjoyed daily in the wonderfully languid atmosphere of The Conservatory, overlooking the hotel swimming pool and garden, in a timelessly elegant setting. Vietnam’s Top Wellness-Inspired Hotel Group Celebrates International Women’s Day From unique, hand-crafted “lady cocktails” to special dining experiences, spa treatments and more, Fusion Hotel Group is rolling out the red carpet to mark International Women’s Day on March 8. Fusion Original Saigon Centre’s Miss Thu Restaurant is offering a delectable 4-course dining experience featuring Angus beef tenderloin, prawn wonton soup and more, priced at VND 880,000++ (with soft drinks) or VND 1,200,000+ (with signature cocktails). Across town in Ho Chi Minh City, Fusion Suites Saigon is offering a 15% discount for female guests on all treatments at Maia Spa, while also sending ladies home with a special present. Meanwhile, Fusion Resort Cam Ranh has created an exclusive menu of hand-crafted “lady cocktails” to mark the occasion. Fusion Suites Vung Tau will open a special 20th floor cinema under the stars, along with an outdoor spa with exclusive offers and a variety of stalls offering beauty and healthcare products. And Alba Wellness Valley by Fusion has rolled out a stay package including a Deluxe room, breakfast anytime/anywhere, a dinner set menu, Japanese onsen bath, spa treatment, zipline and highwire adventure, and more, priced at VND 1,755,000 per guest per night. For more details please visit fusionhotelgroup.com. Sensory Soirée in Bali highlights Inspiring Indonesian Women Inspired by International Women’s Day, Tanah Gajah, a Resort by Hadiprana is hosting ‘Bird Lounge Beats & Oriental Treats’ on March 16th. Part of their Sensory Soirée initiative, the special event is a collaboration between craft cocktail bar Moonsipper Club, Tanah Gajah, and artisan noodle shop Kedai Hou Ah, all of which are run by women. Tanah Gajah’s general manager Deasy Swandarini was born and raised on the island. Sherrine Budiman is behind the cocktail bar (and several other successful ventures in Indonesia) and lifelong friends Nydia Orlatta and Regina Nalasetya are the founders of the noodle restaurant. The sunset event will run from 5-8pm and includes oriental-inspired cocktails, noodle dishes, and culinary items from The Tempayan, along with a live jazz performance. The Bird Lounge, a creative gathering space near The Tempayan, will be transformed for the evening and picnic-style seating will allow guests to spread out and enjoy the surrounding green space. For more event information follow https://www.instagram.com/tanahgajahubud/ or visit https://tanahgajahubud.com/en Dining and Spa The Order of the Day for Women in Mui Ne The Anam Mui Ne, an Indochine-era inspired resort which debuted in Vietnam’s popular beach town Mui Ne in January 2023, is marking International Women’s Day with discounts for women on all dining and spa experiences on March 8. Women will receive a 15% discount on food and beverages at the Indochine Restaurant, Lang Viet Restaurant & Bar, and the new Saigon Bar. The Anam Spa will also offer a 15% discount for women on all spa treatments, including body massages, reflexology, hot stone therapy, facials, body scrubs, milk baths, manicures, pedicures, and more. The spa’s therapists will pamper women with non-clinical treatments that follow a ‘high-touch, low-tech’ approach, infusing ancient techniques from the East with Western healing practices. For more information, visit theanam.com/mui-ne, call +84 252 628 4868 or email info.mn@theanam.com Renowned Vietnam Golf Club Tees Up Special Celebrations For Ladies Celebrate International Women’s Day in style at Laguna Golf Lang Co—the golf element of the expansive integrated project Laguna Lang Co — where they’re rolling out the red carpet for the ladies with a range of fantastic offers and promotions. On March 7th, guests can enjoy a magical evening under the stars with a romantic cinema evening on the golf course, complete with complimentary popcorn for in-house guests at Laguna Parkside Residences. On March 7th and 8th, it’s Ladies Day on the golf course. Ladies can partake of a credit voucher of VND200,000, a refreshing glass of fresh fruit smoothie at the Golf Café, and a generous 15% discount on purchases at the Proshop and room rates at Laguna Parkside Residences. As a bonus, ladies can rent a club set for free (subject to availability) ensuring an unforgettable golfing experience. Pampering is the order of the day over at Laguna Lang Co’s award-winning resorts, Banyan Tree Lang Co and Angsana Lang Co. Banyan Tree Lang Co will host free beauty workshops at its Yoga Pavilion where guests will have the opportunity to...

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Fairy tale times, or perhaps time for a fairy tale. Yes, because walking here and there among the stands at the Rainforest World Music Festival in the Malaysian Borneo, at the concerts and meetings with the most varied and fascinating people, there is always a story to hear, a life story that ignites your imagination or unleashes a river of emotions. Real life stories or legends, or real facts that have been handed down for generations. Fairy tales in the truest sense of the term: those short narrations in which both men and animals, plants or other inanimate beings can be the protagonists. These are generally symbols or representations of typically human aspects of life that have the purpose to make a moral truth easily understood. I leave the moral truth hidden in the story that follows to those who want to get to the bottom of it. I limit myself to relating it as it has been told to me, hoping that in defining it a ‘fairy tale’ I do not enrage the various Aesops, Phaedrus, La Fontaine, Trilussa and all those ‘real’ writers whose fairy tales we have listened to since we were children, and with whom we grew up. “Domine non sum dignus”… I’m just a little short of a storyteller. Still, fairy tales they are, tales where animals perhaps play a fundamental role but where the real protagonist is always the ‘orang’: the person. Fiona is an artist from the Melanau tribe. We meet her at the ‘Borneo Boat Lute Revival’, an interactive exhibition aimed at keeping alive in the new generations, and at making foreigners familiar with the art of the various forms of the Malaysian lute. Instinctively nice and sociable, Fiona is eager to talk, and to tell: “My family and I cannot eat deer meat”. This is apparently because of an agreement, a kind of contract signed hundreds of years earlier between an ancestor of hers and… a deer of course. Nothing in writing, of course, much less a notarial stipulation but, not for this reason, a less binding and significant agreement. She learned this story the hard way when, at the age of nine, after accidentally eating venison, she developed a severe rash. Although Fiona is a young woman, I imagine that perhaps when she was a child there were no specialist doctors nearby to consult. So it was that an aunt, one of her father’s sisters, suggested a cure to follow: she had to take fragments of deer antlers, but without killing the animal. She had to collect the splinters that fell when the deer ‘sharpened’ the antlers on the trees, mix them with essences, burn them and get her body ‘smoked’ for three consecutive nights. Naturally Fiona recovered. Sure, we could easily dismiss the incident as a banal allergy to deer meat. But here we are not in a dreamless and cold American metropolis; we are in Sarawak, where there is still room for fairy tales and legends. At the time, Fiona asked her grandmother about an explanation, and she told her a tale: one of her ancestor, a hunter, had been seriously injured in a leg while in the forest. The wound was slow to heal and the leg continued to lose blood; it almost seemed there was no way out and that the fate of the unfortunate hunter was to bleed to death. But some benevolent spirit had decided otherwise. A deer had arrived and had licked his wound until it healed completely, and the man was saved. The hunter, grateful to the animal, entered into a pact on the basis of which there should be no bloodshed between future generations of men and deers, binding the descendants of the man to the pact that they should never again eat the meat of the descendants of the deer. Fiona gladly accepted the explanation but a doubt remained: why had one of her brothers who lived in Kuala Lumpur eaten venison several times without suffering any consequences? But of course… the deal was with the Sarawak deers, not with those of Peninsular Malaysia. Fiona laughed at this explanation and pointed out that “something is not right”. Despite life’s injustices, to my question: “Did you ever think of going to eat venison in Kuala Lumpur with your brother?”, Fiona replied that she was so traumatised by that experience that she would never eat venison again anywhere in the world. Fairy tales almost always have a happy ending, and during our trips in Kuching and Miri we had the opportunity to listen to a few of them. They tell us about women in a type of society where they may find it difficult to emerge, but when they do emerge they are always almost disruptive personalities. Women who express a solid characters that has its own affirmation as its goal, while not turning its back on its religion, its traditions and the rules of the community. Women who perhaps try to get where they want with the help of some innocent subterfuge, but proving in the end that they were right thanks to their merits, in a world where no one gives you pink quotas.

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Bride Maldives have taken for the promotion and development of the Maldivian fashion industry that is overseeing a rapid growth in recent years. The BRIDE Maldives showcase, the BRIDE Maldives magazine as well as the Maldives fashion week is a true testament showcasing their efforts to make this industry become a significant contributor to the local economy. Furthermore, their efforts to provide more exposure with these enterprises for the local talent in the country ranging from the local designers, to the local models to the local photographers, to the local hair and make-up artists is opening up prospects for the industry in hopefully tapping into the global market in the near future. The wedding industry has always been under their lenses. After many years of silent reviews and evaluation, Shafy and Nazeeh finally decides to spread out their wings and take this new and vivacious fashion driven industry by storm. It is indeed a bitter sweet victory for these men who were never personally fashion business moguls themselves. The back and forth rivalry of fashion fusion gives us just what we need to consider when we are planning our events. BRIDE FAIR Bride fair will be held once a year, with awesome creative artists of fashion design industry showcasing their talents under one roof. Bride fair brings awesome and creative local artists of fashion design industry showcasing their talents under one roof. This event provides opportunities to display their individual and collective skills to potential customers and investors. Tentative date for Bride fair 2016 is the 29th August, stay tuned and check http://www.bridemaldives.com for news. BRIDE MAGAZINE Bride Maldives is currently the only magazine being published in the Maldives with a primary emphasis on fashion and weddings. Though still an infant publication, it has grown from its humble beginnings in 2010 to becoming a well sought after and widely read publication that is single-handedly revolutionising the fashion and wedding industry of the Maldives. We believe that marriage marks a divine and spiritual connection of two souls that needs to be celebrated to the fullest extent. It is an important milestone for a couple and by celebrating the occasion with friends and family in tow sets a solid foundation for the wonderful journey ahead. Check on their website http://www.bridemaldives.com for news and events, or contact them at info@bridemaldives.com Find out about Maldives BODU BERU music HERE!

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