Frugal Traveler Blog: Using TripAdvisor? Some Advice

In October, on assignment to find the cheapest way to spend a few days on a Caribbean beach, I dug up a very budget-friendly package to the all-inclusive Viva Wyndham Dominicus Beach resort in the Dominican Republic. Four days, three nights, $561.86 — airfare and airport transfer included. I wondered what was wrong with the place. Surly service? Terrible food? Dirty rooms?

So, I did what any modern traveler would do: I looked it up on TripAdvisor.com. Soon, I was staring down over 1,000 user reviews. Among them were some that substantiated my worst fears: "Very rude staff"; "all-inclusive gruel"; "room filled with mold." Others were far more positive. I went ahead and booked.

Knowing how to navigate the popular site is as necessary a modern travel skill as packing efficiently or decoding European train schedules. TripAdvisor's sites attracted an average of 53 million unique visitors a month in 2012 through November, according to comScore, an online analytics firm, to its user-generated reviews of over two million hotels, restaurants and attractions.

It has spawned competitors, like Yelp and Google Places, and most of the globe is now "reviewed" in some form. Trying to decide between two rival satay stands in a remote Indonesian village? Check your smartphone, and you could very well find an online debate raging over which is better.

I travel about 180 days a year, so I think about TripAdvisor a lot. When I'm not using it, the guy next to me on the bus is. And here's my conclusion: I love TripAdvisor. I hate TripAdvisor. It amazes me. It terrifies me. It has made travel infinitely better. It has ruined travel forever.

But love it or hate it, you'd better use it right. Here are the questions and answers most essential to the TripAdvisor experience.

What's the best way to navigate all the opinions?

I posed this to Adam Medros, a TripAdvisor vice president. "One of the things that, over the last 12 or 15 years, people have learned how to do online is look at the good and look at the bad and then try to find threads of consistency among the comments," he said.

That's what happened to me as I looked at the resort reviews. The negative ones were the ones that first caught my attention, perhaps by chance. But a lot of the complainers seemed, frankly, like unpleasant travelers. A majority liked the resort, and many positive reviewers chided the negative Nellies for expecting luxury accommodations at bargain prices, a sentiment I related to. And everyone praised the beach, which was my main purpose for going.

Still, once I arrived, I had trouble shaking those critical reviews. Though I found no mold in my room, I couldn't get over the feeling that it must have been there. And though the staff I met was perfectly friendly, I wondered if I had gotten lucky.

Mr. Medros also helped me understand how I could have done it even better. I've since learned the benefits of the site's filtering functions — just reading reviews by solo travelers, for example — and of other options, like signing into TripAdvisor through Facebook, which enables the site to prioritize reviews written by your Facebook friends and friends of friends.

Do fake reviews affect the site's reliability?

Mr. Medros said the company employs more than 100 people who speak 21 languages, have "backgrounds in credit-card fraud and military intelligence" and work to weed out fraudulent reviews and catch cheating companies. That's great, but I still encounter lots of dubious reviews.

Just last month I spent a night at the Clarion Resort and Waterpark in Kissimmee, Fla., where a sign at the reception desk offered a gift from something called a "Positive Holiday Tree" to guests who "share your positive experience" on TripAdvisor. (It doesn't seem to be helping much; two reviews posted in December were negative.) And I recently stayed at a motel whose owner said she had friends write raves after a client left a nasty review.

Both of these are clear violations of TripAdvisor's fraud policy. But there are also gray areas, as when I praised a cafe owner on the décor and she begged me to share my thoughts online.

What is the site good for beyond reviews?

The site has made itself invaluable in other ways, adding features it has created, borrowed or bought from others, turning itself into a trip-planning juggernaut. Travelers can look for apartment rentals, browse user-submitted photos, and print three-day itineraries curated by (paid!) locals.

You can create a to-do list by clicking on "Save to Trip." Most impressive is its new City Guides app, which lets you download full TripAdvisor content for 60 cities onto your smartphone or tablet and then use it without a data connection. That's scary competition for guidebook companies.

Do all these reviews really improve travel?

Before there were online reviews, travelers like me could still arrive in strange places and manage just fine thanks to a combination of curiosity, instinct and local advice. It took a bit more courage, but was more fun and satisfying.

I asked Barbara Messing, chief marketing officer for TripAdvisor, if she thought this sprawling documentation of the world has inhibited exploration and discovery. Not surprisingly, she instead claimed the opposite: TripAdvisor, she said, helps travelers connect with independent, sometimes out-of-the-way hotels and other business they wouldn't know of otherwise. "The TripAdvisor community thrives in finding gems," she said.

I'll grant her that. In fact, scrolling to the bottom of TripAdvisor's "Things to do" suggestions is part of my bag of tricks for finding lesser-known attractions in a city. And perhaps the larger point is that it democratizes travel, in part by allowing smaller businesses to shine and by providing a meaningful way for travelers to dole out praise and criticism that will actually be heard.

Still, I'm not convinced. Why have my most exhilarating trips of the last few years been to those rare places TripAdvisor and the rest of the Review-Industrial Complex have not yet documented? There was that week spent in San Juan Teitipac, a little town outside Oaxaca, Mexico, that I chose on the advice of a bus driver. (Still not listed on TripAdvisor as of late December: a marvelous 16th-century church that still packs in worshipers every Sunday.) Or that 40-mile hike along an obscure stretch of Brazilian coastline that I made using nothing more than a Google satellite map. It was my lack of knowledge and planning that forced human interactions, ultimately paying off in cheap beds, free coconuts and indelible memories.

Of course, not everyone's ideal vacation involves such risks, especially if you've got only two weeks off a year or have a partner you are trying to impress. But I believe everyone should use the vast online database of the travel world with moderation. Save a day or two for spontaneity: seek advice from a stranger on the Seoul subway; take a day to explore an Italian town just because you stopped there for gas; trust your instinct to find a Parisian bistro to call your own. Maybe you'll find out later that its croque-madame has been praised 717 times on TripAdvisor. Who cares? You discovered it yourself.

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In Transit Blog: Visa Requirements Lifted For Short Stays in China

In an effort to encourage stopovers, the Chinese government has lifted its visa requirement for residents of the United States and 44 other nations staying in Beijing and Shanghai for up to 72 hours.

The change, which was scheduled to take effect today, is valid for travelers using Beijing Capital International Airport or Shanghai's two international airports, Hangquiao and Pudong. Travelers must show proof that their trip will continue, which includes plane tickets and a visa if the final destination requires one. Regular tourist visas issued by the Chinese embassy cost $130 and take four business days, though expedited same-day service is available for an additional $30.

Travel agents are cautiously optimistic about the new program, given the potential for red tape in such a bureaucratic country.

"I wouldn't send anyone without a visa yet until I see how it really works," said Karin Hansen, a China specialist at Frosch travel agency in Deerfield, Ill. "It's a small price to pay versus getting stuck there."

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Heads Up: Michelin Stars Fall on Berlin

Gordon Welters for The New York Times

Horvath, in the Kreuzberg section of Berlin, won a Michelin star last year.

THE pungent scent of foie gras and pork belly mingled with the strong odor of mustard greens one chilly winter evening in the dining room of a restaurant basking in its Michelin star. The menu was worthy of an upscale Parisian bistro but the restaurant, Horvath, was actually a few train stops away, in Berlin. The city now has 13 restaurants with Michelin stars, the most of any city in Germany. The stars, many bestowed in the last few years, are a signal that the country's culinary landscape has shifted from Munich and Hamburg.

"Ten years ago, no one would have imagined Berlin would have Michelin-starred restaurants," Christian Tanzler, spokesman for Visit Berlin, Berlin's leading tourism agency, said. "After the wall fell, however, the city changed dramatically, and its progressive cosmopolitan flavor attracted artists, writers, but also chefs. The German cuisine, in particular the Berlin cuisine, began to slowly change."

Among the newest acclaimed arrivals is Horvath (Paul-Lincke-Ufer 44A; 49-030-6128-9992; restaurant-horvath.de), whose wood-paneled walls and dim lighting reminiscent of an Alpine ski lodge belie its ambitious cuisine. It overlooks the Landwehr Canal in Kreuzberg, a neighborhood that has in recent years transformed itself from a rundown area into a home to boutiques, ateliers and cafes. "My restaurant does not look like a Michelin star place — at all — we do not have the money yet for decorating," Sebastian Frank, an Austrian who is the head chef at Horvath, said on a quiet weekday afternoon. "Right now, we care more about the quality of food and the wine." It won a star last year.

Lorenz Adlon Esszimmer (Unter den Linden 77; 49-030-2261-1960; kempinski.com/de) in the elegant Hotel Adlon Kempinski next to Brandenburg Gate has a location that suggests old Berlin. The restaurant's motto, however, is "Tradition eats modern." It is reflected in Hendrik Otto's beautifully devised dishes, like cod drizzled with basil mustard sauce, which are drawn from local ingredients but were inspired by a tropical vacation during which the chef ate plain grilled fish doused in mustard. These sorts of unusual dishes garnered it a second Michelin star last year.

A few blocks away in Mitte is Reinstoff (Schlegelstrasse 26c, Edison-Höfe; 49-30-3088-1214; reinstoff. eu), a much-lauded restaurant that also received two Michelin stars last year. Its courses are organized according to sensory taste. During a visit last year, that meant an amuse-bouche of goose liver on top of a corn waffle and a scaly wood mushroom salad intended to "wake up the senses," according to our server, followed by a montage of miniature mains: Norway king crab, gamy fawn, venison tataki with ginger, quince and licorice and a perfectly braised Charolais beef drizzled in garlic cream to "pamper our senses." Reinstoff's unusual approach may not seem typical of Berlin, but the head chef, Daniel Achilles, again, blends local produce with international flavors.

That restaurants in Berlin, a city where reinvention is the norm, has rethought German cuisine should be no surprise. The attention that they are receiving for doing so is an unintended side effect. It is an exciting time for food here, and Michelin knows it.

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Bites : Restaurant Report: Unagi Kabuto in Tokyo

Edward Schneider

The restaurant Unagi Kabuto, in Tokyo.

For the culinary-minded traveler, any visit to Tokyo should include a dinner of unagi — tender, unctuous grilled freshwater eel. There are genteel eel specialists, like the memorable Yama-no Chaya, which opened in the early 20th century on the leafy grounds of Hie-Jinja Shrine. By contrast, there's Unagi Kabuto, at 35 a relative newcomer: a friendly, charcoal-smoke-scented storefront in Tokyo's Ikebukuro neighborhood, whose lively streets are peopled more by touts in skinny suits than by elegant women in kimonos.

Two decades ago at Yama-no Chaya, my wife and I had our very own tatami room. At Kabuto, we shimmied onto two of the 11 chairs at the counter, the pair at the end, with no space for our knees (the others are somewhat roomier). There are also two small tables, but that counter is the place to be: you'll want to watch the chef and owner, Kazuo Iwai, haul live eels out of a basin, spike them to his cutting board and speedily fillet them just before skewering and grilling. He's mesmerizingly deft.

Dinner started with a salted cabbage appetizer, then kushiyaki hitotoori, a sequence of skewered grilled eel parts, including delicate silky-textured livers and lightly crunchy heads. At some point each customer was offered the minuscule still-beating heart of a just-dispatched eel, perhaps as a good-natured challenge. Even following instructions and not chewing, and even with a quick beer chaser, these left a bitter taste in the mouth. But for the intrepid eater, it was a challenge not to be declined.

The main course options include the familiar sweet-savory glazed eel (okabayaki) and something you don't see as often: unglazed eel (shirayaki), simply grilled over charcoal and served with salt on the side. Each is offered in small, medium and large portions (medium — toku — was just right). The grilling is done with keen attention, and the result is as impeccable as the surroundings are informal; the shirayaki, in particular, was a revelation in its clarity of flavor. Rice, homemade pickles and a clear soup with eel liver end the meal.

If you don't speak Japanese, you'll need help making a reservation. We did it through our hotel, the Park Hyatt, whose concierge also printed out a local map and previewed the menu. But once you're there, the welcome is warm; one staff member speaks some English, and the goal is to make sure that everyone has a good time. We certainly did.

Unagi Kabuto, 2-53-2 Ikebukuro, Toshima-ku, Tokyo; (81-3) 3983-8608. Dinner for two without drinks (tipping is not customary) is 9,500 yen, or $115, at 83 yen to the dollar. Cash only.

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Inside Disney’s New Fantasyland

Edward Linsmier for The New York Times

A new light show paints Cinderella's Castle at Walt Disney World in Orlando, Fla. Nearby, New Fantasyland doubles the Fantasyland area. More Photos »

"YOU have a great gig," I said to the mermaid as I sat down beside her in the giant clamshell. "You don't have to schlep around."

We pressed our heads together and smiled for a photograph as she replied, "But I wish I had legs."

So goes small talk in Fantasyland. Correction: New Fantasyland, where old-guard princesses like Snow White and Cinderella are suddenly neighbors with the next generation of Disney box office royalty: Ariel of "The Little Mermaid" and Belle of "Beauty and the Beast." The kingdom, you see, has undergone some changes.

It was Dec. 5, the night before the grand opening of New Fantasyland — the largest expansion in the 41-year history of the Magic Kingdom at Walt Disney World Resort in Orlando, Fla. — and the birth date of its founder. I was there to suss out the new additions, including Ariel's Grotto (where, like me, visitors can have their picture taken with the Little Mermaid); Bonjour! Village Gifts where aspiring princesses can snap up $64.95 Belle costumes; and the Be Our Guest Restaurant where, in defiance of Florida weather, soft, romantic snow perpetually falls outside the windows.

Having been to this park more than two dozen times, beginning with family vacations when I was 3, I figured I was qualified to review an expansion. I remember gingerly wrapping my arms around Pluto. I remember walking into the Haunted Mansion, fear rising in me like the ghosts that would soon materialize. I remember being surprised, as I peeked over the edge of my boat in It's a Small World, to spy hundreds of pennies shimmering in the water. I wondered how many of those wishes would come true.

So of course, I longed to see how Fantasyland had changed. At the same time, I was apprehensive. Might the old magic be eclipsed by slick, new attractions? Would Disney be able to strike a delicate balance between nostalgia and innovation?

I came to find out.

Fantasyland is the most popular land in the most popular Disney park in the world (the company has 11 theme parks in the United States, Europe and Asia). Still, Disney had a problem. It had successfully minted a new generation of princesses in movie theaters— but it had nowhere to put them in the park. Millions of little girls and boys grew up in the 1990s with "The Little Mermaid" and "Beauty and the Beast." Yet Ariel and Belle had neither ride nor realm in the Magic Kingdom.

If Disney were the White Rabbit, it might have been muttering to itself, "I'm late! I'm late! I'm late!" It was time to catch up. And so about five years ago the company's Imagineers — who have expertise in 140 different disciplines like electrical engineering, landscape architecture and graphic design — began dreaming up ways to literally put visitors into their favorite new fairy tales, from eating croque monsieur in the Beast's castle upon a hill, to riding through the Little Mermaid's grotto under the sea. They devised methods to make meeting the characters from those tales more intimate (perhaps a bit too intimate in the case of the Little Mermaid, who poses with fans in a bandeau top) and more orderly than the street encounters that I grew up with, which could be chaotic. And while they were at it, they looked for ways to make waiting in line entertaining.

To make all this fantasy a reality, Disney more than doubled the size of Fantasyland, to 21 acres from 10 acres. Along the way, there were casualties, like Snow White's Scary Adventures, a ride that had been in the park since it opened in 1971. Purists grumble when a classic ride like that is shuttered. Yet evolution is as much a part of Disney's DNA as mouse ears. The parks are always changing. Disney's Animal Kingdom Theme Park didn't exist when I was little. Another year, I arrived to find beaches in a spot where I didn't recall so much as a grain of sand. A few weeks ago, I zoomed along on the newly re-engineered Test Track Presented by Chevrolet at Epcot. As new Magic Kingdom attractions pop up, old favorites disappear, be it Mr. Toad's Wild Ride or 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.

STEPHANIE ROSENBLOOM writes the Getaway column for the Travel section.

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Destination: Wellness

Jim Wilson/The New York Times; Sam Hodgson for The New York Times

Clockwise from top left: Pacific views at the Esalen Institute, reflexology path at La Costa Resort and Spa, yoga and pool at Rancho La Puerta. More Photos »

SO I'm sitting in a hotel in upstate New York with my feet in a bucket of warm water charged with electricity when it suddenly hits me that maybe "getting well" wasn't going to be as much fun as I thought it was going to be.

The procedure I was receiving was an "ionic detox foot bath," one of dozens of allegedly medicinal services offered during a Health and Wellness Weekend held in November at the Edge Hotel, a woodsy establishment in Lyons Falls, N.Y. In this case, the bath involved placing my feet in a small bucket of salt water charged with a small current for half an hour — a process that was meant to draw out the "yucky stuff" in my body by osmosis according to its practitioner, a frizzy-haired former chain smoker named Brenda, who assured me the bath was perfectly safe.

"But," she added with a laugh, "I don't know anything about ampage."

Oh boy. At first glance, this mission had seemed like a breeze: a search for "wellness" — that seemingly unimpeachable state that has become as common a come-on in travel circles as "eco-friendly." There are wellness retreats, wellness diets, wellness beauty treatments, wellness classes, wellness resorts, wellness hotels, wellness weekends and, of course, wellness experts.

"Wellness is this feeling of confidence, this feeling of vitality, this feeling of "You got this,' " said Dr. Jim Nicolai, the medical director of the Andrew Weil integrative wellness program at Miraval Resort and Spa, in Tucson, Ariz. "Wellness is a verb just as much as an adjective."

And, often, a very lucrative verb, dressing up everything from alternative medicines to anti-aging products. A week at Miraval, for example, can set you back $475 a night. And it's not just for scenic spots either: the MGM Grand in Las Vegas has added special wellness rooms and suites; Canyon Ranch's SpaClub in Vegas also employs "wellness professionals." In October, the InterContinental Hotels Group, which owns Holiday Inn, announced plans for its Even Hotels — with an "intrinsic focus on wellness in terms of food, work, exercise and rest" — at dozens of locations across the country. So-called wellness tourism is estimated to be a $106 billion chunk of the trillion-dollar worldwide "wellness cluster," a market that includes travel as well as things like medical tourism, nutrition and fitness, according to a 2010 study prepared for the Global Spa and Wellness Summit by SRI International, an independent, nonprofit research firm.

But what exactly is wellness? I thought I'd find out. And so, saddled with a sore Achilles' tendon, an ever-present threat of heartburn and all manner of life stressors, I embarked on a cross-country search. I was left, on various occasions, body-weary, sleep-deprived and incredibly waterlogged. Along the way I meditated and hyperventilated, and was plyometric-ed, watsu-ed and ceremonially "crowned." I hiked and ran, floated and swam. I had my chakras read — my aura looks like a giant pistachio — and ate more quinoa than I can remember. And at the Esalen Institute, perched on the California coast and seemingly on the edge of the world, I got naked with a bunch of strangers and watched the sunset.

ACCORDING to SRI, the wellness movement is "a proactive and holistic approach" meant to address "the root causes of our personal and societal ills." The term wellness, though, has old roots and myriad modern meanings. Dr. Halbert Dunn, author of the 1961 book "High-Level Wellness," described it as something that included self-knowledge, creative expression and good health. Since then, that definition has evolved to the broader one we have today, which includes sleek, strictly regimented operations like the Ranch at Live Oak, a $5,600-a-week "endurance, wellness and nutrition program" in Malibu, Calif.

But there are still places where you can go to experience something more along the lines of what Dr. Dunn was talking about. Though Esalen does not drape itself in wellness terminology, the 50-year-old institute is still advertising its goal of "pioneering deep change in self and society," and thus seemed like a pretty good place to explore the roots of what wellness might be. For me, Esalen long had a reputation as a mystical hideaway on the California coast, but unexpected guests have not traditionally simply dropped in. Most are there to attend one of the institute's hundreds of workshops, which can range from tantric sex to Gestalt theory. (Not at the same time, of course.)

Over the years, Esalen started allowing for so-called "personal retreats," which you can book after donating at least $50 to the Institute. I did exactly that, and booked a $650-a-night "point house" in mid-November.

Mind you, just getting to Esalen had involved flying across the country and then driving three hours south from San Francisco, a long day that had left me with an empty belly and soft brain.

But when I finally arrived, my first impression was simple: wow.

Situated on a nugget of land thrust into the Pacific, Esalen has commanding views of the California coastline, with its cliffs tapering into the ocean, and a campus that is both rustic and seemingly in harmony with Mother Nature. Vines creep along cobwebbed and rust-flecked fences that line the edge of a central glade where groups do HoopYogini, which combines yoga with a hula hoop. Monarch butterflies and green hummingbirds flit about the institute's central garden — organic, naturally — while a stream burbles down a canyon to the surf below. At one point I looked down during a walk and saw the words "Thank you" and "Love" in small stone and twigs arranged on the ground.

Well, I thought, that was easy. I feel better already.

JESSE McKINLEY is a features reporter at The New York Times.

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In Transit Blog: Walkabout - 12/31: Vermont Ski Resort Doles Out Green Cards; 2012 Safest Year in Airplane Travel

Walkabout

Our weekly look at what our writers and editors are reading.

Ski for Green Cards Developers with big plans for Jay Peak, a ski resort in Vermont, and the nearby town Newport have got millions in financing under a program that gives foreigners a green card in exchange for a $500,000 investment. (New York Times)

Endangered Safaris In Kenya, people are so eager to protect their wildlife — and the tourism dollars that safaris bring — that civilians are risking their lives to confront poaching gangs. (New York Times)

Fancy Wheels The best new service luxury hotels offered this year? A vote in favor of high-end cars to transport guests. (Hotel Chatter)

Exercise Caution On Friday, the State Department updated a travel warning for Haiti, telling "U.S. citizens to exercise caution when visiting Haiti." The wording of the warning is stronger than a previous one, issued in June. (Travel.State.Gov)

Caution Exercised Some good news for fliers: 2012 was the safest year in flying since the early 1960s. There hasn't been a fatal accident on a United States-based carrier since 2009. (Wall Street Journal)

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Journeys: Sichuan’s Tibetan Corner, Outside of Time

Jeffrey Lau for The New York Times

A monk prepares a simple meal after worship.

HIGH on the Tibetan plateau, a few dozen red-robed monks of the Lhagang Monastery sat facing one another, rocking back and forth as they chanted with faces turned upward, to the heavens.

In the flickering candlelight of the monastery's dim main chamber, they then built small pyramids of incense to place throughout the building, adorned with golden Buddhas, and at the center of Tagong.

Outside, under the harsh noon sun, the monks mingled with the mainly Buddhist and ethnically Tibetan residents of the frontierlike town, population 8,000, which despite its makeup is in Sichuan Province, China.

"We are all Tibetan," said Ba Ding, a local shopkeeper. "We do get a few Han Chinese tourists passing through, and we are friendly enough with them," he added unconvincingly.

I had been in Tagong just an hour, after arriving in a small, dusty van that had bounced along rutted roads for the three-hour journey from the nearby city of Kangding, its engine whining as we ascended and descended steep mountain passes.

After checking into one of the colorful guesthouses across the central square from the monastery, I had simply followed the brightly dressed monks into the main hall to witness one of their several daily worship sessions.

Tagong, whose altitude of about 12,000 feet makes it one of the highest towns in the world, offers an unfettered window onto the Tibetan people and culture. The region was part of Tibet until 1955, and its remoteness — to get there, you must take a single winding road several hours from the bustling provincial capital, Chengdu — has insulated it against significant change. The place has a closed-off feel, with a slow-placed existence that revolves around the major Tibetan monastery and its 60 or so resident monks. And it was easier than traveling to the Tibet Autonomous Region, which in addition to the visa and passport required to visit China, also requires a special entry permit that doesn't promise unrestricted travel.

That sort of unfettered access was my reason for going, and two hours into my stay it was clear that Tibetan culture and Buddhism remain at the heart of life in Tagong, albeit with slight tweaks to accommodate the few thousand foreign visitors who make the journey each year: a few guesthouses, yak-cheese pizza and arranged horse-trekking trips into the plains outside of town.

Tagong itself is just a blip on the map: a stretch of ornate buildings leading to the gates of the monastery, all surrounded by endless peaks and plains. A few minivans leave or arrive throughout the day, offering seats to destinations as far away as Chengdu for about 120 renminbi ($19.50 at 6 renminbi to the dollar), but the rest of the time a horse being ridden up the main street is as likely a sight as a passing car.

Once in the recesses of Lhagang Monastery you can see monks devoting themselves to their faith with a calm assurance; across a wide river that runs alongside the town young apprentice monks study Buddhism at a monastic school; and up on a nearby hill, a handful of hermit monks live in silent worship.

"We have over a hundred young novices studying Buddhism who will eventually join us in becoming monks," Dhondoup, a fresh-faced 25-year-old monk said to me in English as we stood on a shaded platform overlooking the courtyard of the monastery after the noon service.

In front of us, part of the monastery was undergoing construction to house these new recruits; a new two-story dormitory was being added. Bags of cement lay within the grounds, and amid the debris were dented 10-foot-high prayer wheels, their Tibetan text covered in dust.

There has been a monastery in Tagong since A.D. 652, when the Tibetan king Songtsen Gampo built the last of a series of 108 monasteries he had ordered constructed across his kingdom. (It is said to be where his Chinese bride had stopped on her way to their wedding in 640.) Over the next millennium and a half the monastery rose and fell in importance, changing allegiance several times to different Buddhist sects before its destruction during the Cultural Revolution (1966-76). In the 1980s work began on rebuilding the monastery, and today's temple is slowly returning to some of its former glory and size.

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Bites: Restaurant Report: Belcampo Meat Co. in Larkspur, Calif.

Joshua David Stein

Belcampo Meat Co., in Larkspur, Calif.

Though rich in dining options, San Francisco is not quite as besotted with all things meat as other major American cities. New York has the Spotted Pig and Swine; Los Angeles has Animal and Lazy Ox. But the Bay Area, perhaps still under the thrall of flower children grown gray, has yet to welcome a meat temple of its own. Belcampo Meat Co., a restaurant and butcher shop that opened in November in Larkspur, 30 minutes north of San Francisco, aims to change that.

One half of the large space contains a long, gleaming stainless-steel butcher counter, filled with hunks of bright red meat. The counter flows into a spacious informal restaurant that serves an extremely simple, extremely meaty and deeply satisfying menu.

All the meat in the shop and restaurant comes from Belcampo's 10,000-acre farm a few hours upstate, where the cows graze in the shadow of Mount Shasta, the chickens are slow-growing heritage animals, the pigs forage in wetland and skittish quail are left alone until, obviously, they aren't. They are then trucked 15 miles away to Belcampo's abattoir, a 20,000-square-foot state-of-the-art facility designed according to the principles of the activist Temple Grandin, that, as kindly as possible, turns pigs into pork, cows into beef and so forth. "The restaurant is only 10 percent of what we do," said Anya Fernald, the company's chief executive.

As for the menu, the chef, Ross Wollen, focuses on the bounty of the meat locker, which is visible behind the counter. Beef appears, only minimally transformed, as extraordinarily juicy burgers accompanied by Cheddar cheese on a homemade brioche or, at brunch, braised beef hash with a poached egg. The goats, having had their fill of the views, are here, too, in a milk-braised goat shoulder, which feeds four (there's also a goat rack for two on the brunch menu).

Though Ms. Fernald shies away from prime cuts on the menu — "we can sell them easily in the butcher case," she explained — there is steak. During a recent visit, a massive rib-eye, aged 21 days, came with a pat of whipped pig lardo.

Some might find eating in sight of a window, in which a pig's head hangs dolefully, off-putting. But "transparency is a key part of what we do," Ms. Fernald said. "The meat locker is my statement to anyone coming in to eat."

Belcampo Meat Co.; 2405 Larkspur Landing Circle, Larkspur, Calif.; (415) 448-5810; belcampomeatco.com. An average meal for two, without drinks or tip, is about $45.

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Q&A: Catching the Sights, Not the Bugs

Friends and family so often asked Dr. Charles E. Davis, a specialist in microbiology and infectious disease, how to avoid getting sick when they travel abroad, he decided to put all of his advice in one place. The result is "The International Traveler's Guide to Avoiding Infections," released this year by Johns Hopkins University Press. Below are edited excerpts with Dr. Davis in a discussion about precautions international travelers should take before and after trips to far-flung destinations.

Q. What steps should you take before you depart?

A. If you're going to a developing country, visit a travel clinic four to eight weeks before you travel to get any immunizations you may need. You can find one on the Web sites of the International Society of Travel Medicine or the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene. Make an appointment with your primary care physician for a physical examination and for any routine immunizations like a D.P.T. update, hepatitis A and B and influenza; insurance companies generally do not cover travel-related immunizations, so if you get these done at travel clinics, you run the risk of paying out of pocket. Pregnant women, children and those with compromised immune systems should definitely consult their physicians; recommendations for immunizations and antibiotics vary for them. And check out the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Web site for travel notices about current disease outbreaks.

Q. What happens at the travel clinic?

A. You'll be asked your medical history and a number of questions about your trip's itinerary, duration and purpose, which lets the physician determine which immunizations you need. Going on a business trip to a large city in a developing country, you're at much less risk of contracting an infection than, say, doing a safari trip or aid work in a rural region.

Q. Is travelers' insurance worth getting?

A. Depends on your destination, your age, your health, what you're doing and whether or not you're a gambler. A good travel insurance policy, which can run from a hundred to several hundred dollars, provides you with medical treatment, assistance from a physician-supported, 24-hour emergency call center and, if necessary, emergency medical evacuation. Some good ones I recommend are FrontierMEDEX; International SOS; and CSA Travel Protection. You can comparison shop at TravelGuard.com or InsureMyTrip.com.

Q. What should you pack?

A. For any overseas trip, I recommend taking along self-treatment for traveler's diarrhea — loperamide, known by the brand name Imodium here, and an antibiotic, the most common being ciprofloxacin.

If you're going to a malarial area, the travel clinic should prescribe you malaria prophylaxis, the most common of which is Malarone, to take during your trip and seven days after it. That will kill off any parasites in your bloodstream, but two milder forms of malaria can continue to multiply in the liver. If you develop an unexplained fever six months, even a year, after your return, go to your doctor.

Other things to pack: Band-Aids and topical antibiotics to treat minor wounds; water purification tablets like Potable Aquaor Coghlan's or portable filters; sunscreen; and insect repellent with 30 to 50 percent DEET. Hikers should bring a full suture kit. If you're staying in accommodations that do not have good screens, I recommend getting mosquito nets and clothes impregnated with pyrethrum, a natural insect repellent.

Q. While you're visiting a country, what should you keep in mind?

A. Avoid tap water and ice in developing countries as well as salads and buffets, which bacteria just love. A good rule to follow: boil it, peel it or forget it.

Q. And once you return?

A. If you were away longer than three months in a developing country, had done aid work or were exposed to needles or fresh water, or had been ill or had sex, I'd recommend doing a screen for various infections at a travel clinic. If you were healthy during a short trip, there's no need.

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