Time Best of Asia

Time comes out with a Best of Asia series every year. Last year they featured Bollywood as the “Best Place To Dream Of Stardom”. This year they have featured Indian Budget Carriers as the Best Place to experience the Indian Boom.

If you suspect that India's economic boom is only benefiting the country's rich, then book yourself on a flight on one of India's budget airlines. Pick someplace nice—Goa, for instance—and once you're aboard, take a look at your fellow passengers. There's a high likelihood some of them are flying for the first time in their lives. Chances are many are visiting Goa for the first time as well.

Another interest place to note is the Best Place for Cynicism:

Should you ever doubt that there's a fundamentally benign order to the universe, talk to Mikako Kato. The Tokyo magazine editor has lost her navy-blue Loewe wallet five times in the last 14 years—and it has always been returned to her, complete with credit cards, identification cards and, most remarkably, a good deal of cash. "It's just so incredible," says Kato, "or this must be a very unattractive wallet." It had nothing to do with the wallet's appearance—Japan has an amazingly high return rate when it comes to lost property. Of the 255,844 wallets reported mislaid in Tokyo last year, a heart-warming 194,139 were handed in to authorities, according to the Tokyo Metropolitan Police's Lost and Found Center. About 95,000 of the 100,247 cell phones reported lost were also brought in.