The Vice Guide to Travel

The desert may be one of the last places on Earth you'd expect to find a beauty pageant. But on Christmas Day, while you were busy testing the limits of your digestive system, VICE's Charlet Duboc was traipsing through sand dunes in Abu Dhabi's remote Western Region, all in the name of beauty.

In these difficult times, many Japanese are putting marriage and families on the back burner and seeking recreational love and affection as a cheap escape. We sent Ryan Duffy to investigate Tokyo's cuddle cafes and Yakuza-sponsored prostitution.

Last August, motorcyclists Joanne and Gareth Morgan embarked on their most ambitious journey yet: riding the Baekdudaegan, a mountain range that stretches the length of North and South Korea’s shared peninsula.

Tourists on India's Andaman Islands are taken by the busload to watch the Jarawa tribe go about their daily lives. The Jarawa are treated like animals in a safari park, with large signs urging visitors not to feed them or give them clothing.

Where Shamans and warriors worship holy sea worms.

We tried to find the best shawarma in Doha but ended up searching for robot camel jockeys (apparently this is a real thing) and drinking in very strange bars.

VICE founder Suroosh Alvi visits Pakistan's ultraviolent metropolis.

Takanakuy is a fighting ceremony with roots in the Andes’s pre–Spanish, pre–Incan history.

Indonesia's Muslim transvestites need a place to pray, too.

To commemorate 12 years without a major attempted genocide in the Balkans, we decided to rent a Yugo and take a road trip through the remnants of old Yugoslavia.

Vissarion's church of the last testament is the only reason to visit Siberia.

VICE co-founder Suroosh Alvi travels to Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan, accompanied by photographer Ariana Delawari. Together they witness the vicious impact left by the Taliban regime.

The Santos Malandros (the Holy Thugs) are an alternative set of saints whose common traits include sideways baseball hats, cigarettes, and guns.

Libya is the latest nation to experience the violent civil unrest that has plagued North Africa since December. But in August 2010 things were much different.

VBS travels to the vast epic-ness of Khovsgol Province in northern Mongolia to check in on the second annual Yak Festival.

VICE travels to the Indian city of Sangli to meet a group of bolshy sex workers selling their bodies in the name of the Hindu Goddess Yellamm.

Legend has it that the last remaining dinosaur lives inside the Congolese jungle

In El Alberto they offer tourists the chance to participate in a simulated illegal border crossing.

VICE travels to Casa Xochiquetzal, a residential facility in one of Mexico City's shadiest neighborhoods that caters exclusively to the area's elderly sex workers.

Heroin dens, teenage prostitution, cross-dressing cannibals... Welcome to the VICE Guide to Liberia. Things are about to get really hairy.

Last year Suroosh Alvi, VICE Founder, went with his family to Hajj in Mecca, Saudi Arabia. The world’s largest annual pilgrimage. He shot this footage with an old Handicam.

Vice Scandinavia correspondent Ivar Berglin travels to the front lines of the Vodka/Wodka Wars - and discovers that the tortured history of Russian-Polish relations can be saved in a bottle.

VBS travels to Virunga National Park in the Democratic Republic of Congo where the endangered mountain gorillas - 200 of the Earth's last 720 — are in a desperate fight for their survival.

VICE founder Shane Smith romps around the hermit kingdom.

Jeepnys are Filipino hotrods, and there’s no better way to get around Manila.

South America’s lost Aryan colony.

VBS tours the fetid garbage dump Bulgaria’s Gypsies are forced to live in.

Sampling some of Manila’s most questionable delicacies. First up: Soup No. 5.

Shane Smith hunts for mutant wolves in Chernobyl.

Having a gay old time in China’s capital of consumerism.

These kids are being trained to do whatever it takes, including turning their bodies into bombs.

VICE visits the arms markets of Darra, Pakistan, where the area's holy warriors come to stock up on guns handmade by men who live in caves.

Shane Smith and Eddy Moretti shop for dirty bombs in the Bulgarian black market.