I've heard of many cruisers offering trips to the Antarctic, but this is the first time I hear of a flight that takes you over the continent in 12 hours. The Boeing 747-400 covers five main spots on the continent's east coast.

Organized by Croyden Travel, you can board one of these flights from Sydney or Melbourne, and cost between $999(economy)-$5699(first class). The plane doesn't land, you don't require your passport to travel, and you get to change seats once on the flight. Meals and drinks are provided too.

The next flight is new year's eve 2008; if you take this flight you will be the first to see the Sun of 2009!

Although it sounds great and I'm sure the aerial view of the glaciers is mind-blowing, I'm not sure I'd want to pay that much for a trip where I'm couped up for 12 hours. I'd take a week long cruise instead.

When writing my blog about the recent violence in Chicago last night, I stumbled upon the Forbes list of the world's most dangerous destinations for 2008.

Here they are:

• Somalia
• Iraq
• Afghanistan
• Haiti
• Pakistan
• Sudan
• Democratic Republic of Congo
• Lebanon
• Zimbabwe
• Palestine

Although some of these might not exactly be tourist destinations, it is interesting how that list has changed over the years.

Forbes writes that "in the 1970s, a traveler's worst nightmare might have been a hijacked plane or hostage crisis. Today, the threats are equally perilous but reflect the changing times. Now, a tourist or business traveler might worry more about terrorist attacks on mass transit, getting caught in a spontaneous uprising or a bombing of a nightclub or hotel."

Giant star fish, hydroids (see photo: urrr...mop-like sea animals?), sea-squirts (that really just look like a squirt of gelatin), sea-spiders, daggertooths and sea-pigs, are just a few of the 30,000 rare sea creatures found by a team of researchers on a large-scale survey of Antarctica.

Over 35 days they traveled about 2000-miles collecting specimens on the surface and from the sea-bed as part of the International Polar Year and Census of Antarctic Marine Life programs, which study the diversity of Antarctic marine life. Using advanced video imagine, the researchers also managed to photograph the seafloor to a depth of 2.1 miles.

Published recently in National Geographic, you can see an incredible, jaw-scrunching photo slide-show that gives a taste of these marine species, on their website here.

As I was searching for an internet cafe in London this week, I thought it would be really helpful to have a site that lists them all and allows you to search based on your location. And guess what. Of course, that exact site already exists.

Cybercafes.com contains a database of over 4000 internet cafes in 141 countries. So, if you, like me are staying in the Embankment area of London and are looking for a place to log in, you will find there is easyInternetcafe at Strand 54. Which is, incidentally, where I am right now.

I must say, though, at £2 ($4) an hour, it is a little overpriced. You can find places nearby that charge only £.5 per hour, although arguable not as easy to use and consistent as easyInternet.

Happy Valentines day, everyone, wherever in the world you happen to be.

Not that I really care for this holiday, but any day is a good day to learn to say I Love you in Swahili: Nakupenda!

Here is a start of the long list:

1. Arabic	Ana Behibak (To A Male)
2. Arabic	Ana Behibek (To A Female)
3. Assamese	Moi Tomak Bhal Pau
4. Bengali	Ami Tomay Bhalo bashi
5. Bolivian	Quechua Qanta Munani
6. Bulgarian	Obicham Te
7. Burmese	Chit Pa De
8. Cambodian	Bon Sro Lanh Oon
9. Canadian	Sh'teme
10. Catalan	T'estim Molt (I Love You A Lot)

Migration Information Source (migrationinformation.org) was started as a hobby by its an American-born editor, Kirin Kalia, 32, who describes herself to the NY Times as "half Dutch, half Indian, 100 percent American and total migration geek."

The Source covers a wide range of migration topics: from giving advice to asylum seekers through listing the top migration issues facing the world today to focusing on Tajik construction workers in Russia, Latvian mushrooms pickers in Ireland, farmhands from Burkina Faso who pick Ghanaian crops and the Peruvians who take jobs left behind by Ecuadorean workers who have migrated to Spain.

There are about 200 million migrants in the world (probably a record in both relative and absolute terms) and more than 80 percent live outside the United States. I can't wait 'til we live in a world where everybody is a migrant. It seems like it would eliminate a lot of issues. Go migrants!

Since Eric Weiner's book, The Geography of Bliss tops all kinds of bestseller lists, the concept of happiness--and the concept of measuring it--seems to be high priority. Why we are so obsessed with happiness is certainly interesting, but even more interesting, I think, is that--contrary to the spiritual teachings out there--money apparently does buy happiness.

As reported by the Holland Herald, using data from the World Database of Happiness, the top 5 happiest countries are also some of the wealthiest countries in the world, despite their lack of sunshine:

1. Denmark
2. Switzerland
3. Austria
4. Iceland
5. Finland

On the flip side, the bottom 5 are some of the poorest:

• Tanzania
• Zimbabwe
• Moldova
• Ukraine
• Armenia

The interesting part is that most people experience a happiness dip between the ages of 30 and 50. Those are generally not the happiest years in a person's life. Those are also, paradoxically, the wealthiest years or a person's life. Hmmm.

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The happiest fliers in the world are the ones riding on the new Singapore Airlines A380:

Antarctica is one of the most difficult places on this planet to visit for the simple reason that planes do not fly there.

Well, that was the truth until last week when the first ever airline touched down on the frozen Arctic surface just four hours after leaving Australia. A beautiful video capturing the historic occasion can be seen here.

So what does this mean for tourism?

Not much, unfortunately. Currently the flights are only used to ferry scientists and gear to the Casey research station. The problem with allowing tourists to tag along is that there is nowhere for them to stay. The Antarctic Treaty would prohibit the building of resorts and hotels. Furthermore, the mere presence of tourists in such an environmentally sensitive area would require studies to measure the impact and the results just might reveal that the Antarctic cannot sustain too many overweight gawkers sporting Gortex and earmuffs.

Yesterday's NY Times travel section depicted the 53 "it" destinations of 2008.

Laos made number 1, as the new Vietnam and Cambodia of Indochina. The photo, by Tanja Geis for the NY Times, is of stupas on the grounds of Pha That Luang in Vientiane, Laos.

My home town, Prague, made number 14, apparently because Prague is still the new Prague. Other than that, I have only been to about one third of these. So many places, so little time!

Here is the top 10:

1. Laos
2. Lisbon
3. Tunisia
4. Mauritius
5. Mid-Beach Miami
6. South Beach, Miami
7. Maldives
8. Death Valley
9. Courchevel, France
10. Libya

The complete list is here.

In today's over-traveled world, I've always just assumed that tour operators can take clients to every corner of the globe.

Apparently the South Pole, however, has always been an exception--until now, that is.

The news out of London is that a British travel outfitter will be the first company to take tourists all the way to the South Pole. According to the Telegraph, Discover the World already takes visitors--mostly scientists and wealthy eccentrics--to Patriot Hills, a base camp in Antarctica. In the upcoming year, however, they will be expanding their business to take 44 lucky tourists all the way to the South Pole.

It won't be cheap, however. Expect to pay almost $36,000 for the experience which will include only four hours at the pole itself. Wow, for just $164,000 more, I can fly actually fly to outer space with Virgin Galactic. Hmm... decisions, decisions...