This is the airline’s third route linking Vietnam and Japan, contributing to the development of tourism, trade and cultural exchanges.

The Hanoi-Tokyo route operates daily return flights with a flight time of around six hours per leg on a new and modern aircraft.

Vietjet also has direct Hanoi-Osaka and Ho Chi Minh City-Osaka flights in cooperation with Japan Airlines. Their code-share service is also applied to Vietjet’s domestic routes, including Hanoi-HCMC, Hanoi-Da Nang and HCMC-Da Nang.

“We are delighted to launch a third direct route from Vietnam to Japan,” says Vietjet vice president Do Xuan Quang.

“This new route brings a new option for people and travellers from Tokyo and the Kanto region in general, to Hanoi, the capital of Vietnam, from where they have easy access to many more of world-famous destinations such as Sapa, Ha Long Bay, Trang An and Son Doong cave.

“The two countries’ people and other nationalities can also effortlessly transit to other Southeast Asian countries or destinations across the North Asia region with Vietjet’s constantly expanding flight network.

“I believe that, with outstanding service quality, a new fleet, dedicated and friendly cabin crew, delicious and hot in-flight meals, together with amazing ticket fares and exciting in-flight entertainment, Vietjet offers its passengers wonderful flying experiences.”

With a network of 39 domestic routes and 66 international routes, Vietjet operates safe flights with a technical reliability rate of 99.66 per cent, the highest rate in Asia-Pacific.

Vietjet operates 60 A320 and A321 aircraft, with more than 385 flights daily, carrying more than 65 million passengers to date, with 104 routes covering Vietnam, Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, mainland China, Thailand, Myanmar, Malaysia and Cambodia.

Book online at http://www.VietjetAir.com.

Despite its distance from Seoul – about 120 kilometres to the northeast, on the North Korean border – the 23day ice festival draws big crowds.

Continuing this year until January 27, it’s expecting 14,000 foreign tourists each weekend.

The county, whose population is just 27,000, earned 479 million won (US$428,000) in revenues during the first two days, up 17.4 per cent from the same period last year. And this was despite a cold wave that sent the mercury to minus10 Celsius.

Clad in thick winter clothes, families and foreign tourists flock to Hwacheon Stream to fish for sancheoneo, a species of trout that lives only in very clean fresh water and grows the length of a human forearm.

The festival also features outdoor activities including barehanded fishing, a sledding contest and meetings with Santa Claus. Some 27,000 lanterns light up Seondeung Street.

To encourage more tourists to stay overnight, the organiser offers diverse night programmes such as night fishing.

Launched in 2003, the event was chosen as the nation’s best festival by the Culture Ministry in 2010 and has developed into one of the world’s four major winter festivals.

The special dessert is a fresh mixture of fruity blueberry and creamy and delicious cream crumble flavours that will be also available at Guss Damn Good shop from March.

This year, travellers from Thailand can enjoy greater flexibility with 81 weekly flights that depart from its four Thailand gateways. The airline currently operates 49 weekly flights to Bangkok, 18 weekly flights to Phuket, and daily to Krabi and Chiang Mai.

Travellers booking a flight for travel between now and May 20 can enjoy attractive Economy Class fares starting from Bt24,189 to Vienna, Bt24,739 to Zurich and Bt25,219 to London.

Business Class seats start from Bt98,329 for Amsterdam, Bt99,929 for Munich, and Bt102,019 for Venice. Passengers will also receive 50 per cent bonus Qmiles and Qpoints in Economy Class and double Qmiles and Qpoints in Business and First Class.

With more spacious sanctuary options in the sky, passengers from Bangkok to Doha on QR831 will be also able to experience the Qsuite, the industry’s first-ever double bed available in Business Class.

The unique and patented seat features private cabins for up to four people with privacy panels that stow away, allowing passengers in adjoining seats to create their own private room, a first of its kind in the industry. Adjustable panels and movable TV monitors on the centre four seats allow colleagues, friends or families travelling together to transform their space into a private suite, allowing them to work, dine and socialise together.

Qatar Airways currently operates a modern fleet of more than 200 aircraft via its hub, Hamad International Airport (HIA) to more than 160 destinations worldwide. Earlier this year, Qatar Airways revealed a host of forthcoming global destinations in line with its expedited expansion plans, including Tallinn, Estonia; Valletta, Malta; Langkawi, Malaysia; and Da Nang, Vietnam.

Qatar Airways was named “World’s Best Business Class” by the 2018 World Airline Awards, managed by international air transport rating organisation Skytrax. It was also named “Best Business Class Seat”, “Best Airline in the Middle East” and the “World’s Best First Class Airline Lounge”

Online booking can be made at QatarAirways.com.

ALONG WITH foie gras and truffles Caviar is one of the world’s top three luxury foods, and is typically known as an imported product from Russia. Japanese people love the idea of putting plenty of the salted sturgeon roe on a bowl of rice and bolting it down.

I’d heard rumours that this delicious dish was available at Okuhida hot spring resort in Takayama, Gifu Prefecture, Located at the foot of Mt. Yake, an active volcano in the Northern Alps, the resort boasts one of the largest quantities of hot spring water in Japan. Here, you can eat caviar chazuke-style, in which hot liquid is poured over rice.

Okuhida caviar is served on top of rice at the Okuhida Garden Hotel Yakedake in Takayama, Gifu Prefecture, as a sturgeon swims in an aquarium in the background. Photo/Japan NewsYomiruri

I put some caviar on cooked rice before pouring hot dashi broth and tea over it. Combined with the aroma of bonito, the modest salty and savoury flavor of the high-end delicacy went well with the rice in the broth. The dish costs 5,000 (Bt1,460) before tax, which sounds very expensive for a chazuke dish. However, the price would double if commercially available caviar was used.

Named Okuhida caviar, the delicacy is offered at the Okuhida Garden Hotel Yakedake. Rather than the texture of regular caviar, which bursts when eaten, this Takayama variety has a smooth texture that melts in the mouth.

“This is because the caviar is fresh, which is different from imported ones as they have been pasteurised,” says Seiichi Ishida, 66, president of the hotel.

Hiromi Oki holds up a sturgeon at a breeding facility. Photo/Japan NewsYomiuri

The hotel also offers the caviar with a savoury naan prepared by an Indian chef, as well as sturgeon sashimi. The fish itself was also delicious as it had a rich flavour with a firm texture similar to that of sea bream.

The caviar produced in the Okuhida region is designed to go well with washoku Japanese cuisine as its salt concentration is set at 3.5 per cent, less than half that of imported products. Okuhida caviar is now used in a long-established restaurant in Kyoto and a popular Japanese restaurant overseas.

But why on earth is caviar offered at a hot spring resort deep in these mountains in the first place?

“We raise sturgeon for caviar using underground water from the Northern Alps,” Ishida explains.

Okuhida caviar served with naan, foreground, and sturgeon sashimi. Photo/Japan NewsYomiuri

Although sturgeon look like an ocean shark, the fish lives in freshwater rivers and lakes in the Northern Hemisphere. While the famous Hida brand of beef can also be enjoyed in Tokyo, Ishida wondered if there were any other high-end delicacies that could be appreciated only at his hot spring resort in Okuhida.

While searching for such a delicacy and raising suppon Chinese softshell turtles using hot spring water, Ishida received 600 sturgeons from a construction company after it gave up on farming the fish. He decided to give it a try and started farming it in 2006.

When I visited a farming facility, sturgeon were slowly swimming around in pools. “It takes at least 10 years for their eggs to develop. It’s a long-term job,” explains Hiromi Oki, 69, who’s in charge of breeding. In sections for pregnant female sturgeon that have grown about two metres long, the light is blocked out so that algae will not grow in the water and it will stay clean. Sturgeon raised in water that flows from underground do not develop diseases, so it is not necessary to use medical agents, Oki says.

The Okuhida hot spring resort has now become one of the nation’s largest caviar production areas – along with Miyazaki and Kagawa prefectures –cultivating about 12,000 sturgeon and shipping nearly 100 kilograms of caviar a year. The shining “black diamond” is definitely a gift from the mountains.