I had chosen the two day ride up-river for three reasons: It was cheap; its slow boat smacked of relaxation; and it would take me directly to Thailand.
On August 24th 79AD Vesuvius erupted. Pompeii, which by then had been an established town for well over 600 years, bore the full force of not lava, but pyroclastic flows.
Some places have to be seen to be believed. During my second month in South America I drove south from La Paz towards the town of Uyuni in southern Bolivia: A base for the world’s largest, and highest salt lake.
This week, UNESCO added 24 new sites to its ever-growing list of places worth protecting on this planet. The UK’s notable offering was the Forth Bridge in Scotland, a masterpiece of Victorian engineering, which I was lucky enough to see first hand last summer.