Holidaymakers and locals alike keen to get away from it all can now enjoy a safari experience, in the heart of London. Virgin Holidays has created a 35-foot high luxury South African treehouse on the Southbank, complete with a private balcony, sweeping views of the Thames and St Paul's and a personal chef. The installation is open for one week only and visitors can win a stay.

The bizarre move has been made by Thai Smile Airways to treat dolls, Luk Thep or Child Angels as they have become known in Southeast Asia, to a similar experience as human passengers. Owners of the dolls claim they have 'supernatural powers,' and now the airline has moved to acknowledge the craze.

A boutique winter igloo , built in Brooklyn, New York, popped up on Airbnb this weekend for $200 (£140) a night. The joke listing has since been taking down by the rental sharing website.

The Duffle Suitcase design, which was created by New York-based, Wool & Oak, has dedicated space for clothing as well as integrated shoe bags, a laptop pocket and even a detachable section for toiletries. The new bag is available to buy on the Kickstarter website starting at £200.

BA cabin crew go through six weeks of training before getting their wings. They learn to stop choking, evacuate a plane and control tough passengers. MailOnline sent a travel reporter down to have a go at BA's new state-of-the-art Global Learning Academy in Heathrow. Pictured from top left: Caroline McGuire talks to the pilot during evacuation, trying out the emergency slide and learning CPR.

By Venice tradition, elaborately costumed Carnival-goers stroll through the canal-laced city showing off their finery, finished with hand-painted masks - and this year is set to be no different. Thousands of people attended the grand opening in St. Mark's Square of the Venice Carnival - but under heightened security. This follows the sexual assaults on New Year's Eve in Cologne and the ongoing terror threat in Europe. Authorities have increased surveillance throughout the city, including the number of officers on patrol, both under-cover and in uniform.

Not content with merely watching the terrifying predator prowling the underwater environment, the three scuba divers decide they want to get up close and personal off the coast of Mexico. One member of the group decides the only way to attract the shark's attention is by teasing it with some bait. And so some food is floated out of the cage to attract attention. The Great White swims up to the cage, and it is this moment where the diver leans his body between two rungs, and reaching out his hand, pats the beast on the nose.

Set on 350 acres on rugged Lough Corrib, Ireland's stunning Ashford Castle (top left) is a mix of refined luxury and old-world charm, with lavish interiors and sprawling grounds. The most stunning public areas include the Oak Room (top right), where guests can relax and admire the lake views, and the Connaught Room (bottom left), where afternoon tea has been a tradition since 1868. The hotel boasts cavernous guest rooms decorated with antiques (bottom right), and Ireland's oldest falconry school, where MailOnline's Chris Kitching learned how to fly a Harris's hawk named Inca (inset).

With the Academy Awards just round the corner, there is a lot of hype around those nominated for Best Picture. Now you can experience the world of this year's stunning hopefuls, by checking into these Oscar-worthy properties. For example, see the Plaza Hotel's Oak Room bar which was used for a scene in Carol, starring Cate Blanchett (top left). Alternatively stay at the Press Hotel in Portland, Maine. The hotel's bar, The Inkwell, once housed the newspaper's busy city room, which movie goers will recall from this year's film Spotlight featuring Michael Keaton (top right). Fans of The Martian, where Matt Damon takes centre stage, will love the futuristic Silken Puerta America, Madrid (bottom left) while those who enjoyed Brooklyn should head to Wilton Castle in Enniscorthy, Ireland, which is located in the town where the film's love-torn protagonist (played by Saoirse Ronan) hails (bottom right).

Since its launch last year, the number of properties in the National Geographic's Unique Lodges Of The World has nearly doubled - from 24 to 45 and the latest seven additions include offerings in the Seychelles and Canada. Whether you're keen to explore diverse coral reefs in the Bahamas or see beluga whales up close, these lodges are as diverse as they are picturesque. They include Fregate Island Private, Seychelles (left), Aristi Mountain Resort and Villas, Greece (top right) and Churchill Wild - Seal River Heritage Lodge, Canada (bottom right).

For the last year, the seven-year-old beagle has been snowboarding at her local slopes in Kopaonik and Old Mountain, Serbia. Avid boarders Uros and Katarina Visekruna adopted Eli as a pup and couldn't bear to leave her alone while they hit the slopes.

The former SAS officer embarked on a historic eight-day, 115-mile trek to the South Pole, following in the footsteps of Ernest Shackleton, 100 years on from his ill-fated Antarctic mission. But to complete it, he had to endure hardships that were tough even for someone with special forces training. He told MailOnline Travel: 'There were two days when the temperature dropped to -50C because of the wind chill factor. Just a slight gap in your head gear would result in a burn.'

'Alley of Leaders' museum was founded in 1992 at Cape Tarhankut by diver Vladimir Broumenskyy after the fall of the Soviet Union. It includes statues of Communist heroes inlcuding Lenin, Stalin and Felix Edmundovich Dzerzhinsky (bottom left), as well as the Eiffel Tower (top left) and the Greek god Neptune (right), among others.

Hotel guide Alastair Sawday's describes Edgar House in Chester, main picture, as a 'super cool bolthole with a position that's hard to beat, Chester's equivalent of the royal box.' Features include copper baths, bottom right, a mini-cinema serving popcorn and ice cream and an honesty bar inside a refurbished phone box while all seven of its bedrooms are individually designed, top right.

Turkey's Bayburt D915 Road is 66 miles long with 29 hairpin bends (pictured) and no railings to prevent cars plunging over edges. The road is listed as more risky than the infamous 'Death Road' in Bolivia. Parts of the road are routinely closed off to the public in wintertime due to snow blizzards and ice.

Megan Peabody, 28, flies with her pet pig from her home in the US Virgin Islands, taking Hamlet into the cabin as her comfort animal. The pair's most recent journey was from Logan International Airport in Boston on Christmas Day to San Juan, Puerto Rico and then on to the Virgin Islands. The 28-year-old took in Hamlet at eight-and-a-half weeks old, where she describes how he was so small he looked 'lost in a paper towel.' After more than a year of training and building up trust, the speckled pig was checked in as Miss Peabody's emotional support animal, travelling with her on JetBlue and American Airways flights.

Ross Paxton, from Whitby, North Yorkshire, photographed 25 different UK tour bus routes. The result is a collection of photographs from a typical British vacation, where holidaymakers frown out across grey landscapes. Pictured clockwise from left: Lake Windermere, Scarborough and Seaton, East Devon.

Covering 27,000 square feet, the icy cold maze (above) in Zakopane, Poland, which is being created beside the Great Krokiew ski jumping venue, is going to be made up of more than 60,000 snow cubes and installed manually. The man-made creation will be larger than ten tennis courts placed together when finished.

Dubai's ever evolving skyline looks like a futuristic backdrop to a sci-fi movie. And when better to capture its magnificence than at night, when it is ablaze with colour and life. Dutch photographer Albert Dros headed to the Arabian city last month and shot the metropolis from skyscraper rooftops to achieve the ultimate vantage point rather than using a drone.

Not mingling with strangers is of paramount importance to those who lead busy lives. These getaways including Domes of Elounda in Crete (top left), The Little Nell in Aspen (top right), Flitwick Manor Hotel in Bedfordshire (inset), Royal Mansour in Marrakech (bottom right) and D Resort Sibenik in Croatia (bottom left) offer the serenity and privacy discerning travellers are looking for.

The fascinating video, captured from the cockpit of a third plane below shows a Boeing 747 hurtling past another aircraft, a Boeing 737, over Baghdad, Iraq. To the untrained eye, the planes look like they are extremely close in proximity, but in fact they would have been around 2,000 feet apart.

Staff at Consensio's 12-strong fleet of sprawling chalets in the Alps have witnessed things that make scenes from Made in Chelsea look like child's play. The venues, dotted around the French Alps' swankiest resorts including Courchevel and Val d'isere, will set you back anything from £15,000 to £40,000 for a week in January. Price fluctuates depending on size and location. Some of the chalets are worth tens of millions of pounds.

The government of Tristan da Cunha, a UK Overseas Territory in the South Atlantic, is advertising for an adviser with farming experience in the UK to help develop livestock and agriculture. The remote island (pictured) has just one village - Edinburgh of the Seven Seas - and is home to 265 people who are keen to cut down their dependence on imported food. The website describes the island as 'far from the madding crowd,' and is 1,243 miles from its closest neighbour, St Helena.

In the 18 months since it opened for business, this three-bedroom guest house in the Cotswolds has been reviewed by more than 260 people. And every single one of them has given it five stars. This is a tough feat to pull off - especially for a bed and breakfast that looks, well, like so many others, so what makes it stand out?