Matthew Wakem is a Bay Area-based Lifestyle and Travel Photographer. His work has appeared in numerous magazines including Condé Nast Traveler, Men's Journal, Outside, Islands, Spa, Geo, Vanity Fair Germany, Vogue Japan, Elle Canada, and Luxury Spa Finder. Most recently, he collaborated with his wife Maria on a personal project on luxury spas and resorts throughout Asia. Wakem has also worked on projects for clients such as Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts, Six Senses Resorts and Spas, Orient-Express, Ford, Turner Broadcasting, Helen Keller Worldwide, and Cambodia Living Arts.

"Tea is quiet and our thirst for tea is never far from our craving for beauty."

~ James Norwood Pratt

Tea plantation of China

"I have always loved the desert. One sits down on a desert sand dune, sees nothing, hears nothing. Yet through the silence something throbs, and gleams..."

~ Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

For almost 30 centuries—from its unification around 3100 B.C. to its conquest by Alexander the Great in 332 B.C.—ancient Egypt was the preeminent civilization in the Mediterranean world. From the great pyramids of the Old Kingdom through the military conquests of the New Kingdom, Egypt's majesty has long entranced archaeologists and historians and created a vibrant field of study all its own: Egyptology. The main sources of information about ancient Egypt are the many monuments, objects and artifacts that have been recovered from archaeological sites, covered with hieroglyphs that have only recently been deciphered. The picture that emerges is of a culture with few equals in the beauty of its art, the accomplishment of its architecture or the richness of its religious traditions.

The Giza Sphinx by Line Tubiana

"When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford."

~ Samuel Johnson

Click to enlarge

Dolphin Girl by vulture labs

"Don't walk behind me; I may not lead. Don't walk in front of me; I may not follow. Just walk beside me and be my friend."

~ Albert Camus

Basiliani Resort Hotel & Spa is located in Otranto, a famous tourist resort in the far eastern edge of the Italian peninsula named Salento (Puglia). The city, thanks to its geographical location, is a natural gateway between Western and Eastern civilizations, and represented, since antiquity, the point of connection and integration of socio-cultural and artistic experiences for ethnic groups from different backgrounds.