The first Thai kingdomโs capital: lotus ponds and walking Buddhas in a historical park best seen by bicycle.
The Hwaseong fortress walls to walk in a loop, and the fried chicken street below them.
Subtropical Black Sea beaches and the 2014 Winter Olympics venues in the Caucasus above.
The Bridge on the River Kwai, the Death Railway to Hellfire Pass and the Erawan waterfalls.
The French Quarter of yellow villas and bougainvillea, the Aurobindo ashram and Auroville next door.
The largest city north of the Arctic Circle, the nuclear icebreaker Lenin and forty days of polar night.
The blue city under the Mehrangarh fort, the biggest and most dramatic in Rajasthan.
The Savitsky museum, a hidden collection of banned Soviet avant-garde art in the Karakalpak desert.
The summer capital in the pine-covered Cordillera, a night market and strawberry farms.
The city of trees in Tohoku, Date Masamune's castle hill, the Tanabata festival and gyutan beef tongue.
The eight-kilometre underground river through a cave and the capital of Palawan.
The illuminated Maharaja palace, the Dasara festival and the sandalwood and silk of the old bazaars.
The Hunza valley capital under Rakaposhi, the Baltit fort and apricot orchards on the Karakoram Highway.
A Naxi old town of canals and stone bridges under the Jade Dragon Snow Mountain.
'Little England' at 1,900 metres: tea estates, a golf course and a post office from 1894.
The city of saints: blue-tiled Sufi shrines and the hottest summers in the subcontinent.
Karst peaks along the Li River, the landscape on the 20-yuan note, and a bamboo raft to Yangshuo.
Bali's cultural heart: the Monkey Forest, the Tegallalang rice terraces and dance every night.
The floating markets of the Mekong Delta at dawn, boats selling fruit under a pole that shows what they sell.
The car-free island of Gulangyu with its colonial villas and pianos, and the Fujian tea houses.
A golden sandstone fort still lived in, and camel safaris into the Thar desert dunes.
The base for the Bolaven Plateau coffee farms, Wat Phou Khmer temple and the 4,000 Islands of the Mekong.
The end of the Trans-Siberian, a hilly Pacific port with cable-stayed bridges and Korean-Russian food.
Carved wooden houses of the Siberian merchants and Decembrist exiles, an hour from Lake Baikal.
A Bai walled town between Erhai lake and the Cangshan mountains, the backpacker capital of Yunnan.
A French hill station of pine forests, flower farms and a Crazy House, cool all year in the Central Highlands.
Chinese fishing nets, a Portuguese church, a Jewish quarter and Kathakali dance in the port of Kerala.
A Tibetan Buddhist town at 3,500 metres in Ladakh, monasteries on rocks and the road to Pangong lake.
The medieval Newar city of potters and pagodas, the best-preserved of the three Kathmandu valley kingdoms.
Where bubble tea was invented, the Rainbow Village and the National Taichung Theater.
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