The wider group is now Peru's second-biggest retailer and runs the country's largest chain of multiplex cinemas and a fast-growing hotel chain as well as some smaller businesses.

ECONOMIST: Efficiency drive

In West Bay, pull up at the new St Regis Doha, the most spectacular five-star hotel in an area filling up fast with other big-name hotel brands.

BBC: Going global in Doha

Ctrip also backs HanTing, another fast-growing Chinese budgetary hotel chain whose parent company, China Lodging Group, went public on NASDAQ just this March.

FORBES: The Rise of China's Budget Hotels

Hotel rates are not rising as fast as airfares so smart travellers can still score deals, even during peak season.

BBC: Deals to be found in May and beyond

Mr al-Bukhary, a close friend of the prime minister's, has built an extraordinary empire in a the five years since the crisis, including Malaysia's fast-growing new container port at Tanjung Pelepas, a hotel and property group, Pernas, mining companies, power companies, palm-oil companies and much else, including a controlling stake in the Bakun dam on the island of Borneo.

ECONOMIST: The big clean-up

From here it is an 18km road journey to the tiny settlement of Batang Duri where the road ends, and then onto a traditional longboat for the final 30-minute ride along the fast-flowing Temburong River to the Ulu Ulu Temburong Resort, the closest hotel to the canopy trail.

BBC: Brunei��s wild riches