In comparison to the anarchic, gun-filled streets of the Somali capital, Simon travels to the relative safety of the breakaway neighbor, Somaliland. Here he finds mass graves, a foreign minister who delivers babies and some of the oldest cave paintings in the world.

Simon Reeve travels to Moldova where he goes on a drunken fishing trip with the president, before meeting a village so poor that 32 men there sold their kidneys. He then crosses over to the breakaway state of Trans-Dniester to find a region where Lenin statues still take pride of place and "independence day" is celebrated with a show of force by thousands of troops. He also gets arrested for trying to film a secret Soviet base.

Despite its wealth, the United Nations still insist Taiwan is officially part of China. Simon meets the Taiwanese army preparing to defend itself against Chinese attack and is invited to a concert by Taiwan's equivalent of Take That, who sing patriotic pop songs. And finally on the agenda is a trip to the top of the tallest building in the world (although the Chinese have announced their plans to build an even taller one).

Simon Reeve has a disturbing time in two regions that have declared independence from former Soviet state Georgia. First he crosses the frontline past Russian tanks into South Ossetia - where he sees graveyards in a school and drinks with troops, before being chased out by the KGB. Then in Abkhazia, he finds an alarming legacy of Soviet times: a warehouse full of 30,000 shells, protected by a door kept closed with a piece of string.

Situated in south-western Azerbaijan, Nagorno-Karabakh is a richly fertile area of striking beauty scarred by its violent history. Soldiers still face each other in trenches only 100m apart. He goes out with a team of de-miners who fail to convince locals to take a detour around a minefield, before ending his journey at a local wedding.