When I started writing up this trip, I envisaged three blogs, one on the trip south, one on the Ross Sea, and one on the trip north. If you’ve followed the last month’s scribblings in any detail (or simply kept an eye on the blogs’ titles), you’ll know this was a somewhat optimistic initial assessment. Everyone who has been before says it takes a surprisingly long time to absorb and to digest fully a trip to Antarctica. The intensity of experience in a short space of time in the context of the long, tough journeys there and back, however mild the weather conditions and conducive the company, is overwhelming. The afternoon we began our journey home from our furthest south the ship was unusually quiet, few people even on the bridge to say farewell to the ... read more

“Exploration is the physical expression of the intellectual passion. And I tell you, if you have the desire for knowledge and the power to give it physical expression, go out and explore…” (Apsley Cherry-Garrard) I celebrated the second anniversary of my leaving the rat-race of a City legal career by setting foot on the Antarctic continent for the first time. I woke that morning to see land outside the porthole for the first time in six days. The cliffs of Cape Adare drifted in and out of sight through the mist and falling snow. On ice floes between the ship and the shore were gaggles of black dots, Adélie penguins come to check out the new arrivals. After breakfast - porridge was in big demand that morning - we eagerly donned layer upon layer of warm ... read more

To set the scene… Our trusty vessel, the Marina Svetaeva, was an ice-strengthened 1989 Polish-built, Russian-registered 90-metre passenger ship, recently acquired (previously leased) by Aurora Expeditions. While not an icebreaker, she was, effectively, only half a grade away, and we can certainly now vouch for her ice-bashing capabilities in the careful hands of her skipper, Kapitan Gena, and his Russian crew. In addition to the forty-odd crew, there were about twenty mainly-Australian staff and lecturers to look after our gastronomic, intellectual and logistical needs, from cooking and running the bar, to manning the inflatable landing craft, Zodiacs, and co-ordinating helicopter flights, to educating us about the history and fauna of Antarctica, and other related issues. The experts on board were a delightful group. Variously British, Kiwi, Australian and Argentinean, th... read more

Photos of the slow boat trip from Luang Prabang to Houay Xai. For various reasons, these didn't make it into the main Laos blog, but I didn't want you to miss out...... read more

Amazingly, there is more to Siem Reap than simply its proximity to the Angkor ruins, although that fact is driving its extraordinary expansion. This town must have more brand new hotels per square inch, particularly (thankfully) on the outskirts, than anywhere else I've ever visited. To put this in context, there's a banner over the main road out of town towards the Angkor area thanking the two million tourists who visited Cambodia last year - i.e., the equivalent of 13% of the country's population - and I'm willing to bet that 99.99% of them came to Siem Reap. This also explains the town's great selection of bars - most notably, the iconic Angkor What? bar - as well as a profusion of coffee shops, restaurants and markets. Yet despite this mass catering to the tourist trade, ... read more