Ray Charles travel tips

Strands of chartreuse, gold and sapphire lights reflect off of the dark, rolling currents of the Mississippi River as Lauryn Hill takes the stage. Trading bar for bar with fellow Fugee Wyclef Jean at the forefront of a 10-piece band, the reunited hip-hop act electrifies a swarm of smartphone lights and the occasional cigarette lighter burning into the swampy, southern air.

Like its iconic gumbo, New Orleans is a fascinating cultural stew. No city in the world can lay claim to all the Big Easy offers: French-Creole cuisine, the spiritual home of jazz, one of the world’s longest (and most well-known) Mardi Gras celebrations, over 130 annual festivals and an abiding laissez les bon temps rouler (“let the good times roll”) local vibe.

When the calendar flips to September this weekend, Orbit ArtSpace in Fruita, Colorado, will celebrate its one-year anniversary.

It's not often that I'm treated with a stay at a five-star hotel. It's even less often that I can stay at a hotel that's been ranked even higher than five stars — in fact, it's only happened once, earlier this month.

Kampot, a river town in southwest Cambodia, is where my book took root. It’s around a three-hour drive from Cambodia’s capital, Phnom Penh, and it’s close to a mountain where my 10-year quest for answers ended in 2012. Here, in an abandoned casino at the mountain’s peak, I stumbled upon the voice of Cambodia’s most famous mid-century crooner-pop star. Alone, but for a stereo, a stranger and me, the singer’s mellifluous voice took flight in the Cambodian language, Khmer. Bouncing off the empty walls, his vocals entwined with a Farfisa organ, its keys squeezing out the melody of Procol Harum’s A Whiter Shade of Pale. His voice seemed to permeate every cell in my body. I felt as if I was soaring and immediately wanted to know everything about the mystery singer. I discovered later that his name was Sinn Sisamouth. Some call him ‘the Master’, others call him ‘the Golden Voice Emperor’, and many still call him the ‘Elvis of Cambodia’. Some say he recorded as many as 4,000 songs during his 20-year career.