The Seventh Continent - Day Five

“I say: 'The sun rises and falls with you,' and various things about love, then a rising violence in me cuts all my circuits off.”

Nick Cave, More News From Nowhere, 2008

When I was younger, my grandfather – to protect our innocence and his own sanity – would only tell us greatly sanitised versions of his war stories. I've mentioned it once before. At that age, perhaps his most terrifying tale was about a hellish night on the Russian Convoys. The image that stuck clearest in my mind was his warning about grabbing metal railings in the freezing cold; if it was severe enough and you were unlucky, the freeze could rip the palm of your hand clear off. You'd walk away; your hand print would stay forever.

And stupidly, it's this image that I can't shake from my head as I disembark from our old Chilean naval vessel and onto the Zodiac that will take us to Antarctica proper. Quickly, though, I realise that there was no need to worry because it's actually all quite mild – warm almost. The rails aren't frozen, the four layers I have on are definitely too much, hell I can barely even see my breath any more.

Before all that, though, breakfast is abuzz with people talking about the previous night. A rag-tag gaggle of insomniacs had stayed up late and the light, they say, was fantastic. We are so far south that sunset and sun rise became the same thing, and this translated as four hours of the most serene light imaginable as it bounced off colossal icebergs in shades of pink and peach and orange and some brand new colours never seen before by man. Unfortunately, they have some pretty breathtaking pictures as proof.

There's also news of another defeat: we were supposed to push into the Weddell Sea, but were turned back by ice and furious wind. This is a disappointment for a lot of people, especially as we're now to dock at another research station, this time in Hope Bay.

The Esperanza Station is one site of the amazing 1903 Nordenskiold expedition and one of dozens of places where humankind's relentless ability to survive makes the small inconveniences of modern life seem truly pathetic.

Since then, folk have done a better job of living here. In fact, Esperanza is one of the biggest bases on the continent, with 10 families living here, complete with a school and – improbably – even a casino. Weans have even been spawned here for the past 30 years.

Still, none of this seems to interest most folk, who are instead content with taking pictures of penguins going about their business, just on the fringes of the settlement.

Back on board the Antarctic Dream, we have a quick lunch before heading further into the Antarctic Sound. We are en route to Paulet Island, which sounds quite pedestrian compared to its neighbours the Danger Islands and the Terror Gulf. (I'm aware that these little link paragraphs are quite boring, really I'm just wasting space to break up the photos. See.)

Photo: Wee Mo

The journey there, though, is one of the most bizarre, unsettling and cold of my entire life. We are pushing into territory that the Antarctic Dream rarely ventures: here impossibly large tabular icebergs have snapped off and litter the channel like so much polystyrene.

No two of these masses look the same, and with the low cloud pressing down on us, the whole scene feels vaguely sinister. Every now and then we'll pass a bored-looking seal on a smaller iceberg, or a gaggle of tottering penguins weighing up whether or not we warrant plunging into the deathly-cold ocean.

Photo: Wee Mo

Somehow, I find myself on the bow alone, the wind biting at my face as we glide through what feels like a drug-induced dream. The captain and his crew are expert at steering us through the ice field, but after a while, he sets a course directly for one of the smaller chunks. Thankfully, our reinforced hull is strong enough to plough through it. Others haven't been so measured in the past. 

Soon after that, we're bunting and crushing ice all over the place, and as we do, more and more people arrive on deck to nervously watch our progress.

Three hours of this later, we arrive at Paulet Island, which looks not unlike the Ailsa Craig from afar, and like a mountain of shit up close. This is because it is home to a colony of over 200,000 penguins, mostly the “mad men of the Antarctic”, the Adelie. 

Photo: Wee Mo

Photo: Wee Mo

Wee Mo gets off adventuring first, getting out on a Zodiac while I faff around with my camera equipment. I barely catch up, then get distracted by penguins and end up missing out on a trek, over a ridge and back down to the ocean, a path which was modified because of a group of non-compliant Weddell seals. 

Photo: Wee Mo

Photo: Wee Mo

Photo: Wee Mo

Meanwhile, I spent time trying to take picture of skua fighting kelp gull. The skuas are essentially the mafia of the rookery: they guard their own bit of territory fiercely, and subsequently all the penguins in it. As tax, they occasionally steal an egg from lackadaisical parents. The gulls aren't so bold – they just scavenge the left overs. Anyway, after half an hour of sitting in guano, I get nothing more than a couple of wing tips and feet. Thus wildlife photography: a bastard.

By the time people got back to start dinner it's after nine, which helps everyone who feels like they missed out on this mysterious light (i.e. us) stay awake. The fact that it never comes close to being dark and that it's also the French film-maker's birthday eases the passing of time as well, the free wine being extended long past dinner time.

Hours pass and I find myself alone at the bow again, edging closed to death by exposure by the minute, but unable to be bored as we venture ever-south. Ahead lies Snow Hill Island, the site of one of the continent's famous colonies of emperor penguins. They're the reason we've been so intent on heading down the east coast, so rare is it for a ship like to have the opportunity to sail this far south. On the horizon, neighbouring Seymour Island looks like a volcano bodged onto the side of a dramatic cliff.

I, then, am not the only one crushed by disappointment when we make a 90 degree turn away from our target. I look up to the bridge; gloomy faces look past me to the thickening ice ahead. I head up and the captain looks solemn: we can go no further. Bunting icebergs around in open sea is one thing, bunting them into each other is flat out dangerous, especially as we aren't technically in an icebreaker. The captain orders the boat to patrol the shelf, checking and re-checking that progress isn't possible. No one is happy with his eventual decision*, but it seems the only option.

Wee Mo and I find each other as we always seem to do and head out onto the deck. We might never head further south in our lives, but then the sky turns gold, and once more the end of the world is full of splendour.

Photo: Wee Mo

*The following morning, I stumble across this quote from Shackleton, during one of his nearly-but-not-quite expeditions. It sums up the captain's dilemma perfectly: “I must look at the matter sensibly and consider the lives of those who are with me. I feel that if we go on too far it will be impossible to get back... and then all results will be lost to the world... Man can only do his best, and we have arrayed against the strongest forces of nature.”

The Seventh Continent - Day Four

“I mean, do you remember how the air used to smell? How humans used to smell? How they used to taste?”

Russell Egerton, 3000-year-old vampire – True Blood, 2010

I have no idea how the world used to be, but for all the piss and shit animals leave around the joint, I'm damn sure it must have been a lot cleaner before we turned up. Today, with every major city seemingly overpopulated, industrial nations laughing in the face of climate change, and our endless need to construct and develop, the world is a goddamn midden.

We've not been to a country yet that hasn't, in its own way, been disgusting. The deserts of the UAE and Oman may be inhospitable to man, but he's done a good job of showing he's a pretty dreadful housemate too; Nepal, in the foothills of the Himalayas, is one of the most filthy countries we've ever been to; the air in China's cities leaves you so clogged with crap, your nose soon looks likes you've been banging lines of coal dust...

Run, hide – you can't escape the fact that human beings are manky crap bastards who don't give an eco-friendly fuck about the world. But now, now finally I think we've found somewhere where you can get an insight into how things might be when we inevitably blink out of existence. And it only took travelling to the absolute ends of the Earth to see it.

Photo: Wee Mo

We awake to our first day in the Antarctic continent, on King George Island in the South Shetland Islands. This, though, wasn't our intended target – we were supposed to push past this to the Peninsula, but were turned back by a storm, into which our plucky little boat could only sail five knots.

Instead we took refuge further north, at the Argentinian Jubany Research Base and, after putting on half a dozen layers of clothing, we head to shore to meet the locals.

Photo: Wee Mo

The chief has lived here for 12 years – his face tells the tale. Suitably weathered and gruff, his fixed jaw only softens when talking to three largely infuriating children that have travelled with one fraught, largely incompetent guardian.

It's interesting to see how things work on the base, how humans can survive, and thrive, down here against considerable odds. Hell, they've even got a bar, a cinema and an internet connection. It's not quite the hardships of the Golden Era of Antarctic Exploration any more.

Hot from being inside, we leave to take a walk along the beach, meeting our first penguin and seal along the way. People crowd the bamboozled bird, desperate to take pictures, seemingly unable to hear the guarantee of seeing many more thousand over the next few days.

Far more impressive – for me, anyway – are Los Tres Hermanos (The Three Brothers), a towering tri-horned mountain; the beautifully, crisp bay in which our ship is anchored; and another jagged peak that looks like it should be imposing, but for the huge snow dress which billows down from its neck. It's all so clean.

The passing of time is a funny business in Antarctica, and this first morning flies. We get back to the boat, have too much lunch, download the first of what will become several thousand pictures and have short nap.

Awake again, we discover ourselves at the head of a vast, dramatic inlet, surrounded on all sides by fascinating hills, slopes and massifs. We're here for a Zodiac (motorised dinghy) cruise around the bay, but Wee Mo and I have been relegated to the second group.

This, as it turns out, is a blessing as we spend the hour waiting on deck, watching small avalanches crash into the bay and gawping at 360 degrees of stupendous sights. The air is beautifully clear, invigorating... We can see for miles. There's so much information to process, so much to try and photograph, that our eyes can scarcely cope. Although we've not made landfall, for the first time Antarctica feels like an actual continent, full of life and variety, vast with personality and no small amount of magic.

When we do get out into the bay, we are fortunate enough to see each of the three types of brush-tailed penguins (chinstrap, gentoo and Adelie) and one particularly contented Weddell seal. 

Photo: Wee Mo

Photo: Wee Mo

Photo: Wee Mo

All this while floating around in water that looks like a blue mojito. And you can see as deep as the sunlight lasts in the water, and it's so pure that we haul in a chunk of glacier ice for behind the bar. Then, to prove how far away we are from manky, crap humanity, we turn the engine off and we listen to nothing - silence, almost overwhelming.

We're ushered back on board with numb faces, and before too long are being rushed into dinner again. As Wee Mo showers, I'm upstairs first to hear about what the plan will be for our second day on the Seventh Continent. Then the cry of “whale!” goes up, people crowd the port-side window, the boat lists slightly and sure enough an enormous humpback briefly bobs past the window.

“OK, retrieve the inflatable whales,” jokes the expedition leader. “I can't - the remote is broken!” replies the ornithologist. It's funny enough to get a laugh across the room. But not from me – I have to tell Wee Mo she's missed the chance to see a humpback, a species she's been fruitlessly trying to get a glimpse of for over a decade.

Photo: Wee Mo

The Seventh Continent - Days One, Two and Three

“Some years ago – never mind how long precisely – having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world.”

Ishmael – Moby Dick, H. Melville.

It is not, to the best of my knowledge, possible to teleport to Antarctica. For some people, this is a great pity, especially for those who must traverse the notorious Drake's Passage without having acquired the sea legs to do so.

At the time of writing, I am not sure if we are still on your map or not, but Drake's Passage – so named after alleged bowling enthusiast and sometime Dragon of the British Empire, Sir Francis Drake – is an unforgiving place for greenhorns whose bellies are prone to sickness of the churning sea.

The passage is that stretch that lies between the languid, Sistine efforts of South America and the Antarctic Peninsula to meet. Between them, unimpeded by any significant landmass, winds that hurtle around the White Continent are funnelled and amplified. The result is the fury of Drake's Passage, which is constantly choppy, occasionally deadly, and always causes a great number of folk – predominantly, though not exclusively, women – to become very unwell indeed.

However, through a combination of drugs and our steely determination to think well, we have not yet succumbed to Neptune's nausea. As I have mentioned, others were not so lucky; some barely lasted a few hours in the open ocean before they were emptying themselves around the place. A bum deal, especially as the conditions are considered to be excellent (though by no means calm) and that, even with the favourable winds, the crossing takes more than 48 hours.

Even without the sickness, I'm hard pushed to say that it's particularly pleasant to be rocking around in endless sea for two and a half days. There's a novelty of trying not to accidentally glass someone when collecting orange juice in the restaurant in the morning; similarly it can be fun to walk up stairs and feel your self gain/lose half your body weight in pressure, depending on what way the boat is a-rocking. But all wears off before too long – simple things become difficult and anything involving dexterity is on a complete hiatus.

All of this, though, seemed like a far-off impossibility on leaving Ushuaia. The passage through the Beagle Channel had been positively serene, with the most tumultuous liquid being the copious amount of wine splashing quickly in and out of glasses as the great, the successful and the lucky proposed toasts to themselves over an excellent dinner.

At around 4am, many of them – myself included – were introduced with a jolt to Drake's Passage and since then, things have been a great deal more subdued.

Photo: Wee Mo

As we had expected, those on board are an astonishingly eclectic mix. Each dinner time brings a slightly awkward school dance mentality, where people are afraid to pick a table of strangers, and shy, and worried about if the boys fancy them, or if the girls have noticed their preposterously-gelled hair, before they take a deep breath, sip some wine, and begin to distil their lives into a neat series of anecdotes. The international pot pourri has so far included a Thai banker who speaks the plummiest of plummy English, an obscenely self-confident French film maker, an Italian chemist (which may or may not mean more than just that), an affable Canadian mechanic, a Swiss couple who spent 42 days on a boat with their camper van as they exported it to Argentina, allowing them to drive it around the continent for six months, and a wee Buddy fae Paisley who arrived via 40 years in Toronto. We've not started looking for interviewees yet, but it seems unlikely we'll be short of candidates.

Photo: Wee Mo

Away from these meals – three courses for lunch, three for dinner and my own gluttony to cope with at breakfast – there are lectures from likeable, knowledgeable staff who teach us about penguins and seals and pelagic sea birds and whales and all the other critters we might bump into in the following week. They give us a stern, sombre talk about how to behave on the continent too.

Unexpectedly, the sea bird lecture is particularly excellent, partly because it teaches us the most about a subject that we knew the least, and because we could then immediately get out onto the deck and attempt the ungainly process of trying to capture the beasts on film. It's not an easy business – like clay pigeon shooting with frozen hands on a moving platform, where the pigeon can change direction at a whim.

Photo: Wee Mo

Photo: Wee Mo

The lecture was also good in part because of the lecturer, Rodrigo 1 (there is a Rodrigo 2, and possibly a 3, but I didn't meet him), who whether he means it or not, is prone to profundity and has a wonderful turn of phrase. For example:

“One of the images of Antarctica that first comes to mind, as well as the cold, the sheer isolation, is that of the penguin.”

And when talking about the blue flash behind the eye of the Adelie penguin: “They look like mad men, staring at you intently, trying to warn you about some mortal danger.”

And on spotting a solitary king penguin far out of its territory last winter: “It speaks about life's ability to survive and endure, this the only black speck in miles of white vastness.”

Listening to him, watching him pace the lecture hall stirs in me a desire to start learning again. Full time I mean, perhaps reading history or biology, or even re-doing my English degree... But then the ship rolls, I reach for a handrail and begin to think about something else – survival probably.

Ride For Ruin, And The World's Ending

As a kid, to me Argentina always seemed faintly villainous. It most likely had something to do with the Falklands War and Maradona (who for many years I thought was also Madonna) and his genius/scandalous cheating. In truth, this feeling stayed with me well into my teenage years – Argentina bad, Brazil good. This was no doubt something to do with football too.

It's only been in recent years, talking to people who know better and watching some eye-opening movies, that my opinion has started to change. Brazil, it seems, is the real shithole; Argentina, meanwhile, is a lot of people's favourite country in all of South America.

Time will tell whether I agree with that opinion or not, but after a week I can say without doubt that Argentina is infinitely superior to France. For a start, there are no French. Secondly, you can go into a restaurant, absolutely mangle a sentence in Spanish and the waiter will smile, coach you, encourage you and get your order. Yes, they may take an almost laughable amount of time doing so, but by-Christ, they're helpful.

Unfortunately, it seems as though the average Argentinian restaurant has been designed specifically with weight-gain in mind. The choices essentially: pasta, pizza, sandwiches, and meat, all with enough cheese to cause cardiac issues for a diplodocus.

Because we were tired after a ridiculously circuitous route that involved 36 hours of flying, and because we'll be back there at the end of January, we decided to spend our first two days in zombified isolation in Buenos Aires filling ourselves with cheese, before flying three and a half hours south, to the end of the world.

Photo: Wee Mo

Ushuaia, the planet's southernmost city, was originally populated by an indigenous population that, like most others, has been steadily eradicated by the White Man. The Spanish set up a brutal penal colony here that makes Alcatraz sound like a loveable play park, but today it is a booming tourist town.

When we land, it really does look like the end of all things. The sky is low, the wind is violent, and the precipitation spikey; the jagged tail of the Andes lie behind the city, while across the perennially tumultuous Beagle Channel, Chile's Isla Navarino looks similarly discontented. Perhaps it doesn't look so much like the end of the world, but like a planet being born.

Photo: Wee Mo

Being so far from anything, things are predictably quite expensive in Ushuaia (and the menus are similarly stodgy). There's the world's southernmost train, which seems like a total rip off, or helicopter rides which sound terrifying given how furious the wind is.

Thankfully, walking falls within our budget. Setting off from our beautiful, free, digs it takes an hour and a half to reach the bottom of the mountains. From here, we think, it takes two hours to get to the top of the Marital glacier. This seems quite reasonable, until we realise that actually it's two hours from the end of the ski lift, which is out of order for one thing, and a 90 minute walk straight up a hill for another.

Photo: Wee Mo

Still, we aren't complaining, or if we are it's the sort of silly whining that just helps fill the brilliant mountain air. And it feels so good to be out of Asia and its oppressive heat and its open idiocy and its endless, Gollum-esque hunger for our money. Just to breathe the free air in the mountains of Tierra del Fuego, is to make your life better, and so any grumbling from our legs is quickly extinguished by sites like these:

Photo: Wee Mo

Photo: Wee Mo

At the bottom of the dysfunctional ski-lift, we have some pretty excellent coffee, regroup and begin going up yet again. Now, with the wind avalanching from the mountains and our out-of-shape legs failing, things do cease to be such a romantic stroll and become more of an old-fashioned slog. Still, we've had worse.

Eventually, we leave the path altogether and head into the snow. The ground is surprisingly colourful, with almost exotic moss, and weird woody textures hiding in the rocks.

Finally, after six hours of hiking, we reach a stand-still, unable and unwilling to go much further and with no real point in going further. There isn't a grand plateau here, or a dramatic basin, as I had kind of expected, just more ice and more mountain.

Photo: Wee Mo

As always seems to be the case, it's the getting down that is the really tricky part and as we approach the nine hour mark, our feet are in extraordinary pain. But it's been great to be out taking pictures. Again, when I was much younger, I used to have dreams in which I'd shrink to a tiny size and see ordinary things at an entirely different perspective (this had nothing to do with football, though was possibly influenced by reruns of The Land Of Giants on Channel 4). Now we have a macro lens, I can actually do it, and it's fun... A lot of fun.

When we finally get back to town, we're glad of the heavy food, having both walked to near exhaustion. It was a good day, a grand day, and now we're about to set off for Antarctica.

Asia Digested

China

Unimaginably vast, squalid and confusing, China is about the only place to go in South East Asia to really feel like you've come close to leaving the influence of the West. Utterly unapologetic for doing things precisely as it means to, being in China often feels like being at the mercy of an enormous spastic sadistic child. Go to a market and look at how the livestock is treated to get an idea of what I mean.

Naturally, in a country of over 1.3 billion people, there are some sincerely decent people too, but as we were unable to communicate with 99% of them, China often felt very cold and very xenophobic.

Almost certain to be the next global superpower, I recommend that every one go at least once, in the same way I recommend that everyone watch video footage of a person shooting themselves in the head. It's not uplifting, it's certainly not pleasant and yet somehow, by being exposed to it, you feel as though your understanding of the cosmos has slightly improved.

Photo: Wee Mo

The enduring image: A toddler chasing a cockroach around a train station while gnawing on a chicken's foot.

Vietnam

Of the many criticisms people level at Vietnam, the fact that it is quite boring features surprisingly rarely. Given the unimaginable trauma brought here by the Americans, I have few problems with the lack of dignity with which most people carry themselves in modern Vietnam, driven by desperation, hunger and perhaps a modicum of revenge.

While there are excuses for that, towns like Nha Trang and Hoi An have a lot more to answer for. The former is heralded as one of the best beach resorts in Asia. This is a lie – and the beach is pish. The latter, meanwhile, is lauded by the likes of the Lonely Planet as the place to have some fine threads personally tailored. While this is not an actual lie, someone neglected to mention that in 200 or so of these shops, the designs are all the same, largely of poor quality and frequently dull, too.

All this aside, it's still worth going to Vietnam for three reasons: the coffee, the spring rolls (both world class) and the war museum in Ho Chi Minh City, which will leave any right-minded person with serious misgivings about America's role in the world, past and present.

Photo: Wee Mo

The enduring image: The amused look on the face of a shopkeeper who skilfully diddled me when he worked out that I thought I was handing over a 50,000 dong note, when it was actually 500,000. The following day, when I unsuccessfully tried to correct the error, his amusement must have only grown.

Cambodia

A brilliant, plucky little country that is undoubtedly its own worst enemy. There's plenty of begging, but somehow people in Cambodia – perhaps because of their history – are easier to feel for than most. Lots of natural wonders, the idiotically low prices of everything and some surprisingly good food would make it worth a visit anyway, but it's also home to Temples of Angkor, easily one of the most phenomenal dollops of history anywhere in the known world. They make most other UNESCO sites look very small, silly and quite insignificant.

Photo: Wee Mo

The enduring image: Half a man begging at our lunch table, balancing on one leg, holding out one hand, looking at us with one eye.

Laos

A bizarre forgotten country that, to outsiders, has never achieved anything of note. Also little known to the foreigner is that Laos is quite possibly the most beautiful country in the region: it has all the geographic highlights of south west China, without having to travel thousands of miles or pay exorbitant entrance fees to enjoy them.

Laotians are said to be very laid back; in truth they just don't give as much of a ravenous fuck about money as their neighbours. Walk into a restaurant and you can expect the waiter to be so “laid back” that you have to get up and get your own menu. There's no reason they should jump up and down and send the weans out into the street to wave at the White Man; and of course if a Laotian found their way to the UK, it's unlikely they'd have people overcome with glee at their sheer presence. But, because folk are like that in Cambodia, Thailand and even in Vietnam, it's hard not to feel a little unliked. Which, naturally, is fair enough.

Photo: Wee Mo

The enduring image: The genuinely staggering limestone valleys that part and plateau on the way to Konglor cave, like some inexplicably unused set piece from Lord of the Rings.

Thailand

A once possibly OK country that has long since had large territories transformed into a student union for the University of Tiresome Arseholes. Some of the older alumni give back to the community by paying cash to mate with locals many generations their junior.

Despite this, people remain friendly and the food is generally outstanding. 

It is the only nearby country to never have had a colonial mandate, and therefore lacks many of the comparatively opulent sewage facilities of its neighbours. Despite this, as a US ally, Thailand has an economy – and road network – that puts Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam to shame. So whoopdy-fucking-do for that.

Photo: Wee Mo

The enduring image: The broken, haunted look in the eyes of countless sex workers that said far more than their diseased mouths ever could.

Malaysia

“Malaysia: Truly Asia!” Thus screams the ubiquitous advertising campaign, which, for once, is not really an exaggeration. Malaysia, the peninsula and Borneo, has all of the best and worst things you'll find on the continent. There are colours and creatures so beautiful you'll feel ashamed to look at them; there's also filth, religious tension and terrible food in abundance.

The real problem is that while there are lots of things to enjoy in Malaysia, they're mostly separated by large areas of mediocrity. Even Kuala Lumpur is a pretty boring capital, although less so than Vientiane and Bandar Seri Begawan, it should be noted.

Also, I couldn't quite get a feeling that something was always on the brink of going terribly wrong; something about the countenance of many Malaysians seems to carry a vague threat.

Photo: Wee Mo

The enduring image: A sausage and egg McMuffin, the morning reward for enduring nights spent sleeping on the floor of Kuala Lumpur's Low Cost City Terminal. Three times we roughed it, three times we got inaboot McDonalds. And it felt good. Really good.

Singapore

Make no mistake about it: assuming Dubai survives its sickly childhood, it wants to be Singapore when it grows up. Huge, bland and resolutely focussed on prosperity, it somehow simultaneously achieves so much and so little. It's the kind of place that would draw the ire of Arcade Fire: hotels, shops, celebrities. Whoop.

Photo: Wee Mo

The enduring image: Marina Bay Sands – a titanic, obscene building that I want to ridicule but can't help but admire.

Philippines

Dangerous, dirty and hilariously corrupt, I imagine it'd be quite easy to have a terrible time in the Philippines. However, if you pick your spots carefully and have a bit of money to spend (it is absolutely not a backpacker destination) there is a very good chance you could find yourself having the best holiday of your hitherto boring life.

There are over 7,000 islands to choose from – visit some and there's a very real chance you won't live to tell their tale – but it's hard to imagine going very far wrong in the Visayas where you can do an awful lot without having to try particularly hard. There are sights, sounds and experiences here that will sear onto your brain and never leave you.

Photo: Wee Mo

The enduring image: Literally hundreds of spinner dolphins treating us to the aquatic equivalent of a West End stage show.

Brunei

If this were a town in Scotland, it'd be Irvine: a place that no one really knows much about, and rarely bothers to explore. On doing so, they are unanimously disappointed. Absolutely no reason for anyone other than recovering alcoholics and/or junkies to visit. Avoid.

Photo: Wee Mo

The enduring image: Nothing springs to mind.

Indonesia

I can't really speak for Indonesia, but I can give a brief review of Bali, which I was warned beforehand was the Australian equivalent of Mallorca. This, then, would make it a normal person's equivalent of the fourth layer of hell. It's not that there's anything inherently wrong with Australians, it's just that they tend to be 110% of themselves i.e. if they have a sweet tooth, they will be gargantuan fat bastard; if they have a tolerance for booze, they will be raging alcoholics; if they are narcissistic, expect literally every conversation they ever have to be turned back to them and the fact that their experience was better than yours, you inferior worm. What this mean is, if Bali is where the Aussies go to drink and hump each other, then it is not unreasonable to expect it to be an endless, drunken shagfest.

Mercifully, 99% of Bali is nothing like that. In fact, despite it being entirely dependent on the White Man's dollar (and therefore home to some of the most relentless touts on the continent) it somehow has retained buckets of charm, character and even a sliver of class. Added to that, there are volcanoes, bugs that look like flying plums and the brilliant, almost overwhelming kecak.

The Australians, frankly, are lucky to have it.

Photo: Wee Mo

The enduring image: Smiles. Hundreds and thousands of smiles, ranging from gormless, to sincere, to anguished, to beautiful.

A final thought on Asia:

I'll leave that to Philip Larkin, who probably did not have had the hideous overpopulation of modern Asia in mind when he wrote:

Man hands misery onto man

It deepens like a coastal shelf

Get out early as you can

And don't have kids yourself.

Photo: Wee Mo