Monty Halls's holiday heaven and hell My dog, Reuben. He's the perfect holiday companion as he makes me roar with laughter at least once a day and he needs exercising, so it's incumbent on me to get out and explore. There's something very elemental about being with a dog in big wide open spaces and exploring new places. Travelodges take dogs and I use Alastair Sawday's guide to dog-friendly breaks in Britain. In the early days of our travelling together I did a lot of camping and I remember one time in Scotland we both got really cold and I could hear his teeth chattering in the darkness. Eventually we curled up together to stay warm. I read a lot and I'm not snobbish about what I read. I remember going on a rugby tour of Belgium and sitting down on the coach and opening my book and realising that the coach had gone deadly silent and all these hairy rugby players were looking at me because I was reading Bridget Jones's Diary. Never trust a man with a beard or anyone under the age of 35 who smokes a pipe. There's an island off Costa Rica called Cocos Island and it's meant to be the best place in the world to go diving with sharks. We went to Bimini because it's near one of the best places in the world, the Little Bahama Bank, to film spotted dolphins. The guy who was supposed to take us, however, turned out to be a complete rip-off artist. He took $25,000 off us as a group and the boat never left the quay. I went on a package holiday to Turkey with my then girlfriend and all the activities were included in the price, so I was windsurfing, diving, playing touch rugby on the beach and we got to know loads of people. It was brilliant. But after a few days a bug swept through the camp. I remember crawling into the shower and hauling myself upright only to throw up and pass out. I packed a lampshade when drunk. My girlfriend and I went to Falmouth on a mini-break and the hotel touted itself as the ultimate environment in which to kick back and relax. We arrived and I was expecting big fluffy white dressing gowns and visions of loveliness bringing me pots of earl grey tea. Instead we walked in and the first bloke I saw was a guy in overalls carrying a power drill. The backing track to our stay was hammering, drilling and chaos. Talking to people on planes. At the start of a 10-hour flight, if you engage the person next to you in more than the most basic of human exchanges, you are playing Russian roulette with the rest of those 10 hours. I hate ignorance - ignorance of other people's lives and cultures. Other than that, I love the whole process of travelling and the delicious anticipation of coming home. Sometimes you've got to go away to appreciate how nice it is to come back. Monty Halls's Great Escapes DVD box set is on sale now, priced £28.99