Europe – the same corner of Europe, actually – claims the first three spots in Mercer Consulting's annual Quality of Living Survey. Vienna, Austria and Zurich and Geneva in Switzerland lead the list, followed by Vancouver, Canada and Auckland, New Zealand in a tie for fourth.

Little has changed for the top half of the top 10. Last year, Zurich nabbed the top spot, and Vienna and Geneva shared the #2 spot. Vancouver is unchanged year-over-year, and Auckland's #5 finish last year is roughly the same as its tie for fourth in 2009.

Not only are the top places to live ostensibly enjoyable, you're more likely to be there for a while. Life expectancies in these cities start at 79 years. It's better than living a nice long life in a dump, I guess.

The United States doesn't appear until the bottom of the top 30, with Honolulu and San Francisco. From Asia, only Singapore picks up a spot in the world's 30 best places to live. South America and Africa are not represented at all. It's strange, I half-expected to see Mogadishu on this list.

Of the 215 places listed, Baghdad has the distinction of finishing last. Sometimes, common sense prevails.

When it comes to delicacies this rare soup is among the most coveted in Asia. Its appearance seems quite benign as the gelatinous mixture, a steamed bird's nest, rests in a light chicken broth but when you discover the true contents of this unique offering it might change your mind. The key ingredient is truly a bird's nest but not one made of twigs and leaves, the sparrow-sized swiftlet's nest is primarily composed of saliva. The complete structure is built within thirty-five days by the male swiftlet to accommodate one to two eggs and its shallow cup shape does not exceed the size of a human hand.

The nests are harvested three times a year and the swiftlets are typically given time to breed and raise their young in the nest before removal.

Chanel may have just pulled the plug (as we reported last month) on its Zaha Hadid-designed Mobile Art Pavilion, but Prada is going ahead with plans for an even more ambitious project. Despite the economy, the luxury Italian fashion house just began construction on the Prada Transformer, a tetrahedron-shaped "transformative building" designed by starchitect Rem Koolhaas (rendering above), on the grounds of Gyeonghui Palace in Seoul, Korea. Koolhaas, who won the Pritzker Prize in 2000 and also designed the Prada flagship store in Manhattan, describes the building as a "dynamic and living organism'' because it transforms itself into different structures to suit various events. The location of the project, the single largest communications platform for the Prada group worldwide in 2009, speaks to the importance of the Asian market in a depressed luxury goods environment.

Scheduled to open at the end of March, the Prada Transformer will stage a range of art, cinema, culture and fashion events though August. the 65-ft. high tetrahedron is composed of four different shapes, a hexagon, cross, rectangle and circle. "Once a month, cranes will lift and rotate the structure into a different facade and floor plate configuration," the Korea Times reports. "When rotated, each side will be the venue of a different cultural program." On the outside, the entire structure will be wrapped with an elastic translucent membrane. Prada partnered with LG Electronics (makers of the Prada cell phone) and the Hyundai Motor Company on the ambitious scheme, which if successful will probably travel to other cities as well.

In November, London-based auction house Christie's will hold their first wine auction in Asia since 2001, featuring a landmark collection of 140 years worth of Latour sourced directly from the Château cellars.

The first Château-sourced collection of the fabled Bordeaux ever to be sold in Asia will go on the block Nov. 29 in Hong Kong; the 150 Latour lots, including magnums and large format bottles from a wide range of vintages dating from 1865 - 2005, are expected to fetch over $1.5 million total.

One of the top prizes is a 1900 magnum estimated at $18,000 - $24,000. Christie's already has a strong showing in Hong Kong with art and antique auctions bringing in over $300 million in Spring 2008, the highest total ever achieved for an Asian season.

Wow, this story is hilarious. I love fruit but I'm not so sure I'm interested in trying Durian (a fruit growing ever more popular with Southeast Asians and Chinese) because not only does it cost upwards of $200 a piece but apparently it smells like gasoline. Or garbage. Or manure. Or stinky socks. Take your pick, none of the descriptors are good.

So why do people prize this fruit so much? I guess once you cut them open you can separate the stinky part from the edible part, which is reportedly very sweet, nutty, and almost custard-like, and it's quite tasty. $200 tasty.

The aptly named Remote Lands, Inc is now offering private jet journeys as a unique way to see the world. The first of these packages, called "Passionate Epicures and Insatiable Travelers," is available this year and will have room for a cozy 36 guests and is scheduled to travel to Thailand, Burma, Bhutan, India and China. Attractions include not only the locations themselves, but also best-selling authors, world-renowned chefs, and cultural experiences like attending a Thai wedding and visiting the home of a Bhutan dignitary.

Or if that sounds a little too generic for your taste, maybe a "bespoke travel package" is a better fit. Remote Lands will design an individualized Asian vacation just for you, basing it on your particular preferences and lifestyle, and offer choices including everything from bodyguards and massage therapists to audiences with Asian nobility.

It seems that we may have finally hit the price ceiling for expensive hotel suites. The highest priced hotel suite in Asia can be found at the Pingxi Royal Mansion just outside Beijing was advertised at 220,000 yuan ($28,100), which makes it even more expensive than the Bridge Suite at the Atlantis. Recently, though, the hotel dropped its price by 20% per night ($22,485) because of a lack of customers.

On second thought, we're not too worried about the possibility that this could indicate a drop in the demand for luxe suites, though. More likely than not, this is just a case of overpricing in the first place.

A new sales record for art sold in Asia was set when a woman at a Christie's Hong Kong auction paid $19.4 million (£10 million) for a small Qing dynasty bowl. Bizarrely, the woman's brother, who is known to have one of the world's best collections of Chinese art, offered the bowl at the auction. This brings up the question as to whether the woman and her brother planned for this to be the outcome of the auction, although why one would set out with the intent to set an auction bidding record remains to be seen. The woman said that she had not expected to buy the bowl; it was a "spur-of-the-moment decision" and that "[her] interest grew during the bidding process"

[Thanks, Lana!]

It seems almost like a late April's Fool's Day joke but it's true, Kazak authorities are pondering a gambling and entertainment complex near the city of Almaty. The BBC reports that President Nursultan Nazarbayev has said that he had long thought of building a version of Las Vegas on a steppe outside the city. A desert gambling oasis may help control gambling inside the major cities. Almaty alone has nearly 40 casinos. Nazarbayev wants to shift that action to the shores of Lake Kapchegai around 50 miles away (Vegas with a beach). While the article references the rise of gambling in Asian countries it doesn't mention that another aspirant to the Vegas throne, the Cotai Strip in Macau which already has attracted major hotel and retail interest and has massive Vegas-style hotels under construction.  Now if Steve Wynn shows up in Kazakhstan then we'll know it's really going somewhere.