Full Circle With Michael Palin

Storyline

Michael Palin, of the Monty Python British comedy troupe, travels to 18 countries and four continents around the rim of the Pacific Ocean. Palin travels 50,000 miles and experiences famous historical sites, local culture, food, local ritual, sporting events and explores the geography. The journey takes him 245 days (from August 1996 to August 1997) until he arrives back at the Bering Straight where he's unable to travel to return to his starting point, Little Diomede Island because of weather. During the journey, Palin travels by car, bus, train and boat, avoiding air travel whenever possible. On the Kamchatka Peninsula in Russia, he visits the Kronotsky Preserve. Near Magadan he visits the site of an old Soviet gulag and talks with one of the survivors. From Magadan to Vladivostok, he finds that the hotels do not have bath plugs and he can't find one in any store he visits. He sees the greatly-reduced Russian Pacific fleet in Vladivostok. In Japan he visits Sado Island, home to the famous Kodo drummers. At the Joint Security Area at the South/North Korea border, he takes a tour that allows him to cross the most heavily-guarded border in the world inside the negotiation room where delegates from both countries meet to discuss the peace talks, which have mostly been a failure. He realizes that he can't venture into the North without being arrested and laments the fact that the two Koreas aren't two countries but one country divided against itself for over 40 years. In China, Palin visits Shanghai and then travels by boat up the Yangtze River to the Three Gorges Dam project currently under construction. (The project was finished between 2009 and 2014.) From Chongqing he travels south to the border with Vietnam and explores that country mostly by train, stopping in Hanoi, Hue and Saigon. He travels by boat -- a difficult part of the journey due to weather conditions -- to Manila in the Philippines. In Indonesia he visits a tea plantation and then the Buddhist site of Borobudur. Finding it difficult to catch a boat from Surabaya to Darwin, Australia, he eventually makes it and visits a crocodile farm, works briefly with an Outback veterinarian, goes on a camel hunt, helping lasso one of the animals, and makes it to Adelaide for the dating event, the Desperate and Dateless Ball. In New Zealand he sees a Maori acceptance ceremony, sees bungee jumping and visits the University of Otago in Dunedin. The journey resumes at the southern tip of South America in Punta Arenas, Chile where he visits the statue of Ferdinand Magellan that he'd seen before in his Pole to Pole adventure. He travels north through the long country of Chile, driving through the Atacama Desert. A single-car train takes him to the capital of Bolivia, La Paz, though the journey is delayed several times, once when the train inexplicably derails. In Peru he visits Cuzco and Machu Picchu. He takes a boat down part of the Amazon River in Colombia. He sees a lucha libre match in Mexico City. At the border of Mexico and the United States near San Diego, he talks with a border agent who shows him how easy it is for people to cross under the fencing. He takes a ride in a news helicopter in Los Angeles and visits San Francisco's famous gay district, the Castro. He visits Alcatraz Island, crosses the Golden Gate Bridge and flies to Seattle to use a flight simulator at the Boeing factory. As he makes his way past Vancouver, British Columbia, he finds that his transportation options are thinning. Most coastal cities, villages and settlements are remote and require passage by boat and small airplane. Palin finally arrives at Wales Point, Alaska but is unable to continue to Little Diomede Island where he started 10 months before because of weather, even with the aid of the US and one of their powerful cutters. However, he still feels that he did complete the circle despite falling 25 miles short.