THE ULTIMATE IN holiday oneupmanship is being offered by Concorde Travel in Central, but a couple would need a cool half million to take it, not to mention a wardrobe of winter woollies. The epic journey will be a 67-day circumnavigation of Antarctica, departing from New Zealand, aboard the ice-breaker Kapitan Khlebnikov, covering more than 20,000 kilometres. Cost: HK$272,650 per person. Concorde says Antarctica has only been circumnavigated about 10 times since Captain James Cook's voyage of discovery in 1773. If you are interested, contact Isabela Siqueira at Concorde, tel: 2526 3391. And there's a bit of time to save: the voyage begins in November next year. Other offbeat, and more affordable holidays offered by Concorde include 16 days across the Italian Alps in a 19th-century mail coach pulled by four horses, a 10-week Amazon Andean adventure and a paragliding course in Bavaria. THINK BANGLADESH and you'll probably envisage floods and poverty, but the country is trying to promote itself as a tourist destination. A Dhaka Travel Mart 2002 is planned for next February to promote the nation's attractions. Kazi Wahidul Alam, the Mart's chairman, says: 'Bangladesh is a treasure trove of eco-tourism projects, waiting to be discovered.' Among the attractions to be promoted will be Cox's Bazar, a 120km beach, said to be the world's longest, the World Heritage Sunderbans (the world's largest estuarine delta), with its mangrove forest and Royal Bengal tigers, St Martin coral island, Rangamati and Bandarban hill tribe areas, and the capital Dhaka, with its mosques, temples and museums. THE PENINSULA hotel has launched an academy 'a la carte' programme, which offers guests a variety of cultural classes, including tai chi, foot reflexology, Chinese brush-writing, astrology, fung shui and Chinese medicine. The hotel will run courses for groups of Hong Kong residents on request. Tel: 2315 3293; fax: 2311 7107; e-mail: academy@peninsula.com KING'S CROSS in London, which has long been associated with drugs and prostitution, is being given a #37.5 million (HK$412 million) facelift. It is hoped that new restaurants, shopping centres and walking trails will prove a magnet for tourists. Maps will be available for the trails, which include the area where Charles Dickens lived and the Water Rats on Gray's Inn Road, where the rock band Oasis were discovered. Check the Web site: www.kingscrosslondon.com