A tour-de-force of a travelogue (Full Circle: A Pacific Journey with Michael Palin - Michael Palin)

Member Name: gooeyuk

Product:	Full Circle: A Pacific Journey with Michael Palin - Michael Palin
Date:	31/05/09 (10 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Diversity of people and places, Palin's gentle humour and Britishness

Disadvantages: Very long

Full Circle is my favourite of Michael Palin's travel books and films. It is also his longest and, probably, his most diverse.

In this voyage Michael and his film crew take 10 months to go right the way around the Pacific Rim, a journey of almost 50,000 miles. He starts in the far north, on the Bering Straight where Alaska almost meets Russia.

He then travels dow the east coast of Asia, travelling through Russia, Japan, South Korea*, China, Vietnam, Philippines, Malaysia, and Indonesia. He then skips along to the southern part of the pacific visiting Australia and New Zealand before heading to the Americas in Chile. He then veers off towards the Atlantic for a while going through Bolivia, Peru and Colombia before returning to the Pacific and going north through Mexico, the United States, Canada and finally ending up back where he started off the coast of Alaska.

* The team were unable to visit North Korea for fairly obvious reasons.

The journey is full of memorable highlights. My personal favourites are the wonky Russian helicopter, the Banaue Rice Terraces in the Phillipines (which you don't actually get to see) and the great Amazon canoe journey. Then there are the people he meets; the Kodo drummers in Japan, native people in the Amazon and in the jungles of Borneo, and would-be immgrants trying to illegally cross from Mexico to the Unites States.

Add to this Palin's gentle humour, his well-chosen words (in the book) and the beatifully shot film then you have one of the great travelogues.

This journey is available new on a set of three DVDs for around £9 and in a paperback book for around £6. Hardback book and VHS copies are also available second-hand as these formats are no longer being produced. The running time on the DVDs is over 9 hours so that's £1 per hour - great value!

Summary: The best (in my opinion) of Palin's voyages and that's saying something!