Kosmos

Exploring Indonesia, Mexico or France can take years. If you’re strapped for time why not try a cultural theme park instead?

Island hopping

At the Taman Mini park near Jakarta, you’ll find Indonesia’s over 17 500 islands in miniature format plus architecture, dances, crafts and culinary specialties from across the archipelago.

tamanmini.com

Mexico Express

Enjoy dance and music shows, watch traditional potters and smiths at work, stroll the ruins of a real Maya settlement – all at Xcaret, the Mexican culture park near Cancún.

xcaret.com

Showtime

Puy du Fou in Vendée, France, has been named the world’s best theme park multiple times. Its spectacular shows spotlight French historical and ­mythol­ogical heroes.

puydufou.com

Anyone can spray walls, but Swiss graffiti artist Guillaume Legros aka Saype uses areas of turf the size of soccer fields as the canvas for his airbrush art, most of it human portraits. A pioneer of this genre between land and street art, Saype uses biodegradable paints he developed himself.

saype-artiste.com

In northeastern Brazil, an estimated 200 million tightly packed earthen mounds cover an area about the size of Great Britain, with a vast tunnel system stretching beneath it. Here, generations of termites have labored for 4000 years – and their descendants are carrying on the good work.

Working in places where others vacation is appealing in the winter. These new hotspots for digital nomads aren’t quite full yet …

British photographer Reuben Wu isn’t interested in realist images; he wants to photograph landscapes as though they were unexplored territory. To do so, he attaches spotlights to a drone and uses a long exposure to create surreal effects.

reubenwu.com