ArcaMax

A. This is a great question, as travel can be expensive and time-consuming. Luckily, we're living in a time where the internet has expanded our ability to access different cultures and geographic locations. If you're a writer who wants to write about a place you've never been, do your research. Connect with people from that place or who have lived during that period of time. Interview them. It's also helpful to look at photographs and videos. What do the homes, buildings and natural landscapes look like? What are people wearing? When I wrote about 1950s Korea, I studied a lot of photographs and films to help me write sensory details, which would make this time and place come alive for the reader.

Q. What untapped destination should people know about?

A. Cassis, France. Cassis is a small fishing town in the south of France, about 40 minutes outside of Marseille. I lived there for a month while doing a writer's residency, and I fell in love. It's a quiet town where you can lay out on stone beaches, eat plenty of pastries and hike the majestic calanques, which are these breathtaking limestone valleys along the Mediterranean coast.

Q. When you go away, what are some of your must-have items?

A. Eye mask, face serums and lotions, multiple books (fiction, nonfiction and poetry), and a camera.

Q. What is your guilty pleasure when you're on the road?

A. Candy on long flights -- the gummy kind that rots your teeth. I always try the local alcoholic specialties too, of course.

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(Jae-Ha Kim is a New York Times bestselling author and travel writer. You can respond to this column by visiting her website at www.jaehakim.com. You may also follow "Go Away With..." on Twitter at @GoAwayWithJae where Jae-Ha Kim welcomes your questions and comments.)

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