Nepal is famous for Everest and trekking but deep in its mountains lies something far stranger mad honey. This is not your usual sweet honey but a powerful natural hallucinogen harvested by locals risking their lives hanging off cliffs to collect it If …

You do not stumble across the Aeta. You go looking for them. Up the spine of Luzon through ash and jungle past wrecked trucks and army checkpoints is where you start to see them. The hair is coiled the skin is darker than most Filipinos the eyes sharpe …

You have probably heard the idea that humans might have come from the ocean and that some of us might still be built for it. Most of that is science fiction. But the Bajau people of Southeast Asia make it look real. While most of us gasp for breath aft …

The Sundarbans is not only the biggest mangrove forrest in the world (by far), but also one of the most intense and off the beaten track places that you can visit pretty much on the planet. This is not some pretty jungle. It is a swamp that kills peopl …

Asia is full of buzzing cities, fast trains, and street food so good it ruins you. But hidden behind the chaos are isolated places so remote that even Google Maps throws in the towel. These are the dead zones of the continent, the places where roads di …

There are remote beaches. There are quiet towns. And then there are isolated places. The real ones. The kind where the post takes months, the people all have the same last name, and your phone becomes a useless brick. If you’re the type who hears “no s …

Ever wondered how international dialing codes work, as in how they are distributed rather than how to make an international call? For example why is the US +1 and the UK +44 even though it was a Scot who invented the telephone? Well, it turns out that …

While known as a devoutly Royalist land of smiles there is a real dark side to Thai politics and character as evidenced by the Thai Communist insurgency that rocked the country. Said rebellion lasted for decades saw many killed and was very much intert …

Ghana cocoa changed the fate of this West African country, turning it into one of the world’s largest cocoa producers and a backbone of the global chocolate industry. It all started with a single act of defiance and a pocketful of seeds. This is the st …