The Republic of the Marshall Islands is a collection of 29 atolls and five islands scattered across the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Home to around 60,000 people, the islands have been inhabited for over four millennia, despite its comparatively recent naming after John Marshall, first European visitor in 1788.
Between 1946 and 1958 the USA detonated 66 nuclear weapons on and around these islands including the largest ever device, Castle Bravo. While the Republic’s rather compelling lawsuit against the USA is being argued, the good news is that today scientists estimate that you are exposed to more radiation watching TV in your home than spending time on the islands. More pressing concerns are the prolonged drought, high cost of energy, and lack of employment opportunities.

'Land of a Thousand Hills' (Pays de Mille Collines) as it is popularly known, Rwanda is a small, verdant country in central Africa, the beautiful rolling landscape dotted with tea plantations, rugged mountains and towering volcanoes, with the shimmering Lake Kivu in the west.

Madrid may be lacking in architectural beauty compared with other major Spanish cities, but it makes up for this with its boundless energy, blue skies, art, culture and some of the most exhilarating and exhausting nightlife in Europe. The city is compact and easy to navigate on foot - most of the sights of interest are found in the downtown area between the Royal Palace and Parque del Retiro.

North Carolina's capital, Raleigh, makes up the southeastern corner of the famous Research Triangle, with Durham and Chapel Hill at the other two points. The state's second-largest city is a vital centre of high-tech business and education. Unlike many cities that grew up around ports or stations, Raleigh was planned specifically to be the capital.

At its centre stands the beautiful North Carolina Capitol building, a fine Greek Revival-style landmark, from which wide, oak-lined streets radiate. This careful geometry makes exploring Raleigh quite straightforward, although the city lacks the charming scenes that often develop with more haphazard growth, such as shops on crooked alleyways and old homes on narrow, hidden lanes. Nonetheless, Raleigh remains a pleasant city, with a unique mix of Southern heritage and down-home manners; elite academia and boisterous university life and athletics; and the fast-paced, sleek sophistication of Triangle professionals.

The Buenavista Island is an exclusive four hectare first class white sand private resort in Samal, Davao, Philippines, thriving with lush tropical vegetation and numerous palm trees. Buenavista Island is most renowned as a first class, private island resort, locally called "Ligid Island". A small island of Buenavista, part of the cluster islands of Samal, Davao del Norte, accents the blue sky and water of Davao Gulf area.

The bustling seaport of Aberdeen is Scotland's third biggest city, and has been dubbed the Oil Capital of Europe. This alone is not likely to entice visitors to the city, other than those on business trips, but the fact that Aberdeen boasts a fascinating and bloody history, historic granite buildings, beautiful churches, attractive green spaces and plenty of Scotch whisky, just might.

Whether you arrive in London via the underground or inside one of the city's ubiquitous black taxicabs, you will immediately be greeted by a deep sense of history and met with the unique vibrancy of this incredible destination. In its dark and troubled past, the city of London has survived Roman occupancy, sackings from the Celts, Romans, Vikings and Saxons, a Norman invasion, two great fires, the bubonic plague, Nazi bombings, the Spice Girls and Damien Hirst.

Lyon is a city synonymous with the silk industry, the French Resistance and a reputation as the 'gastronomic capital of the world', and is located between the Rhone and the Saône rivers in the south west of France. Lyon is home to some of the finest restaurants and chefs in the country and forms the second largest metropolitan area in France after Paris. This gastronomic wonder's culinary history came about in the first half of the 20th century when many bourgeois families fired their in-house cooks. These women went on to revolutionise Lyon's cuisine by setting up their own restaurants and cooking for some of the finest French dignitaries of their time.

Despite its modest size the sultanate of Brunei Darussalam is enormously wealthy in both natural resources and worthwhile attractions. Few people consider this tiny nation at the top of Borneo to be a destination in its own right but those that do are rewarded by the safest, most environmentally pristine country in Asia. The majority of visitors, however, experience Brunei either as a passenger en route elsewhere or a business traveller taking advantage of its burgeoning role as regional economic hub.

New Mexico's largest city has been described as having one foot in the past, one in the present, and its eyes firmly set on the future. This certainly sums up this multi-cultural city, spread across the desert plains beside the Rio Grande, known for its high-tech research facilities, sentimentally proud of its historic Old Town, and offering a mix of museums, galleries, spicy restaurants and great shopping centres to satisfy the appetite of every kind of visitor. Albuquerque has an ultra-relaxed attitude, with shorts and t-shirts the unofficial uniform and locals cracking jokes about living in a 'dusty hick town'. But the city's numerous attractions are on-hand to prove them wrong.