Lithuania 2018: Plokstine Cold War Museum

Some days it just all goes wrong. This was one of them. I'd been working in Chennai on a secondment and was coming to the end of my time there, where I'd have a couple of weeks to myself. This was the first place I visited, and promptly began feeling sick about 10 minutes after arriving. It was a scorching day, and I'd arrived with the sun at it's highest. I dragged myself around the complex for a single lap stopping as many times to throw up as I did to take a photo, before collapsing into the rear seat of the hotel car for the long ride home.

First trip away in a long, long time. A couple of days in London and a photowalk in some inclement weather along the Thames.

We only had a brief stop in this beautiful medieval town, 24KM from Geneva, but it certainly left an impression.

I went to Macau for a day trip during a longer trip to Hong Kong. An insanely crowded and densely packed place with as many contrasts as buildings. Colonial buildings jostle with temples. Apartment blocks with mega casinos. A single day was not enough to even begin to scratch the surface.

A late afternoon walk around the Estonian city of Tartu.

Another of those places where it felt surreal to walk the pathways of a place I'd seen in everything from Asterix graphic novels as a kid, to movies via many history books. Every footstep, a connection to the past. I visited on a bright but changeable February morning and the queues were still deep. I cannot imagine how busy it must be at the height of summer.

The Terracotta Army Museum in Xi'an is home to one of the wolds greatest archaeological discoveries.

A night in luxury aboard the RMS Queen Mary. A once proud jewel of the oceans reduced to a floating hotel. She may have been grubby and crumbling in places, but the charm and beauty remained.

I wonder how much Beijing has changed since I was there. There had been rapid development which made parts unrecognisable from the scenes in '80 Days Around the World' what would have been filmed around 20 years before I visited. Coming up on 15 years since then, how different is it now?