Lavishly illustrated with period photos and antique maps, The Romance of the Grand Tour – 100 Years of Travel in South East Asia (Talisman Publishing) is a nostalgic exploration of the region’s legendary port cities during the colonial era. A director at Singapore’s National Heritage Board, author Kennie Ting retraces the steps of an East of the Suez Grand Tour that takes in old-world Rangoon and Singapore through to the Dutch East Indies cities of Batavia and Surabaya. If the Merchant Ivory team had ever written a travel guide, it would probably have looked a lot like this. —Daven Wu

This article originally appeared in the April/May print issue of DestinAsian magazine (“Tour De Force”)