Thailand's cultural and social roots are firmly set in the countryside, in fact, when Mahatma Gandhi said of his home country "... the real India is in the villages". He could just as easily have been referring to Thailand, a country whose political and cultural birth was in the "million rice fields" of the ancient Lanna Thai Kingdom.

An exceptional island-hopping adventure from one palm-fringed tropical island to another, culminating in Coron to snorkel or dive on a fleet of Japanese shipwrecks, and to kayak around spectacular, towering limestone islands.

The mountainous Northwest of Vietnam is not only dramatically beautiful, with towering peaks and dramatic tumbling rice terraces, it is also home to a plethora of colourful tribal minority groups that have largely retained their traditional ways of life. This a land for trekking and cultural discovery.

The mountainous provinces of the Cordillera, Northern Philippines, are perfect for trekking. This is the territory of former headhunting tribes who were also the master hydro engineers who constructed the world's first and most impressive rice terraces over 2000 years ago - considered by some to be the eighth Wonder of the World.