In Muscat's Grand Mosque, there is a beautiful hand-loomed carpet; it was once the world's largest rug until Abu Dhabi's Grand Mosque, in the United Arab Emirates, pinched the record.
Egypt
In spite of political, financial and social turmoil, Egyptians remain proud and defiant and are as welcoming as ever to visitors to their land.
Abu Dhabi
With the oil predicted to run out sometime after 2100 AD, you’d forgive Abu Dhabi for wanting to just sit pretty and count the money.
Canada
Canada is more than its hulking-mountain, craggy-coast good looks: it also cooks extraordinary meals, rocks cool culture, and unfurls wild, moose-spotting road trips.
Costa Rica
All trails seem to lead to waterfalls, misty crater lakes or jungle-fringed, deserted beaches.
El Salvador
El Salvador is that little dynamo in Central America that past visitors just keep going on and on about it.
Singapore
Long dismissed as little more than a sterile stopover, Singapore has reinvented itself as one of the world's hotlist destinations.
Malaysia
Malaysia is like two countries in one, cleaved in half by the South China Sea.
China
Whether it’s your first visit or your twentieth, China is so big, so diverse and so fast-changing, it’s always an adventure.
Japan
Japan is a world apart – a cultural Galápagos where a unique civilisation blossomed, and today thrives in delicious contrasts of traditional and modern.