For information on Ontario meetings, please contact Svatka Hermanek: shermanek@schulich.yorku.ca or Bruce Weber: tel. 416-203-0911 or Paul Webb: tel. 416-694-8259.
Meetings are held on the third Friday of January, March, May, September and November. Usually at the Woodsworth Co-op, Penthouse, 133, Wilton Street in downtown Toronto at 8.00 p.m.
JUNE 5th, Amy Gissen talked about Cambodia and Thailand. There will be no New York Meetings in July and August, but we are planning a new format for the Fall, so stay tuned!
For details of forthcoming meetings email newyork@globetrotters.co.uk or register for email updates, click here at our website.
New York meetings are held at The Wings Theatre, 154 Christopher Street (btw Greenwich St and Washington St ), to the right of Crunch Fitness, in the Archive on the first Saturday of each month at 4 pm. Admission: $8.00 for members and $10.00 for non-members.
Meeting News from London
Liam D’Arcy Brown talked about his 11,000 mile journey literally the far corners of China North, South, East & West, and his talk was a riveting account of how he got there and the people he met on the way.
From the Southern most tip of Hainan Island, to the island of Zhoushan, Liam traveled on buses, trains and motorbikes wherever he went. Mixing with the locals, for better and for worse. Generally looked after by the locals, he was however robbed and spent few soul-searching days in his hotel feeling sorry for himself after being drugged on a train. Beware locals bearing free booze!
Liams book “Green Dragon, Sombre Warrior” has been described as the best autobiographical China travel book so far this year.
After the break, John Malathronas gave a digital slide show and talk about Brazil based on his book “Brazil, Life, Blood and Soul”.
John’s odyssey took us through the adrenaline-fuelled, chaotic city bars, the extravagant carnival, the lush rainforest and the destitute shanty towns of Brazil revealing the throbbing heartbeat of the country. John’s book “Brazil: Life, Blood and Soul” is published by Summersdale.
Next month, on Saturday 3rd July is open house, an opportunity for UK Globetrotters and visitors to show their own slides (traditional or digital images form scanned prints or digital pictures) and each make a short ten minute presentation. Contact london@globetrotters.co.uk if you are interested in making a presentation.
London meetings are held at The Church of Scotland, Crown Court, behind the Fortune Theatre in Covent Garden at 2.30pm the first Saturday of each month. There is no London meeting in August, but we will be back in September. For more information, you can contact the Globetrotters Info line on +44 (0) 20 8674 6229, or visit the website: https://globetrotters.co.uk/local-meetings/london-meetings.html Admission: Members £2.00 Non-members £4.00
Meeting news from our branches around the world.
Answers to: So You Think You’re Well Travelled?
0 out of 5 – you need to get out more!
1-3 – not bad
4 – very good! You are a Globetrotter!
5 – are you sure you didn’t sneak a look?
The winner of last month's Trailblazer Guidebook on Tibet is: Gavin Fernandez congratulations, Gavin!
This month, win a Rough Guide guidebook on Peru. See http://www.roughguides.com for travel info.
Some people have said the quiz is difficult, we say do some research: try google.com or Ask Jeeves, if you need help with the answers.
If you have a travellers tale that your aching to tell. Then why not visit the “Travel Sized Bites” section of the Website and share it with the world. Travel Sized Bites
Here’s a little Beetle quiz based on capital cities. See how many you get right! Go on, have a guess!
What is the capital city of the following countries:
For the answers, see at the end of the e-newsletter.
This is my first request to your excellent newsletter. I'd like to know if anyone knows of anywhere in Tibet where a young (23) year old guy could go to learn overtone chanting. Have you any ideas/sources/reports of young people. I'd love to know, and I can then pass the message on: di.hinds@ntlworld.com
Need help? Want a travelling buddy or advice about a place or country – want to share something with us – why not visit our Mutual Aid Forum section of the Website: Mutual Aid
Need to convert currency?
Take a look at The Globetrotters Currency Converter – get the exchange rates for 164 currencies The Globetrotters Currency Cheat Sheet – create and print a currency converter table for your next trip.
Seven people have died and hundreds have lost their homes in Fiji after severe storms hit the main island of Viti Levu in the South Pacific. Nine people are still missing. In one of the worst incidents, five people died when their bus was swept away by a landslide.
According to a recent poll, Brazilians appear to approve of measures to photograph and fingerprint US tourists entering the country, a move that sparked a diplomatic tiff between the nations. Of 2,000 people surveyed, 74.4 percent said they agreed with the immigration procedures, which were enacted at the start of the year in a tit-for-tat retaliation for similar security checks by the United States. The measures sparked a diplomatic row between the two countries and have been widely criticized by US travellers, including an American Airlines pilot and a retired US banker who showed their displeasure by giving their middle finger while being photographed. Although some Brazilians worried the measures would deter US visitors at the height of the tourist season, the system has revealed resentment among Brazilians over what they consider to be costly and humiliating procedures to get a US visa or enter the United States. Visitors from other countries need not worry, however, as only 3.2 percent of those polled thought the procedures should be extended to other foreigners entering Brazil.
Continental Airlines have announced that they plan to eliminate paper tickets by the end of 2004 in a bid to cut costs, theft and paperwork. 95 percent of its domestic customers and 88 percent system wide use electronic tickets. The move includes tickets for international travel and those that involve other carriers. Continental said it has terminated 50 interline ticketing and baggage agreements with carriers that do not have electronic ticketing capabilities. Customers will still be able to make reservations through travel agents or on the phone, as well as on the Internet, but they will not receive paper tickets. Instead, the reservations will be stored electronically. Passengers who check in either via their computers at home or at airport kiosks will still receive the paper boarding passes that allow them to board planes.
Singapore has announced that it will build a new terminal at Changi Airport to cater for low-cost airlines once the carriers agree on its design. Budget airlines are proliferating in Asia, challenging the dominance of full-service carriers such as Singapore Airlines and Malaysia Airlines. In the meantime, low-cost airlines may use Changi Airport's two existing terminals, though charges for no-frills airlines would not be lower than those imposed on their traditional competitors.
Singapore based Valuair has become the first budget carrier to get official approval to fly from Changi Airport. Valuair, set up mostly by former Singapore Airlines plans to start flying in May to Bangkok, Jakarta and Hong Kong.
Singapore Airlines, the world's second-largest airline by market value, has teamed up with the founder of Irish discount airline Ryanair, Europe's biggest carrier by value, to launch Tiger Airways. Tiger will compete with Singapore's Valuair, set up mainly by ex-Singapore Airlines staff, and is gearing up to launch in the second quarter of 2004. Both will also be pitted against Malaysia's Air Asia, which is setting up an airline joint venture in Singapore and has applied for an airline license.
Toronto Pearson Airport opened one of the world's most expensive airport terminal. The new CAD$3.6 billion (USD$2.7 billion) Terminal 1, whose price tag has enraged the airlines around the world that will have to help pay for it is the first stage of an overall redevelopment project for Toronto's Pearson International Airport. Terminal 1 will eventually expand to take over the functions of two existing terminals, which will be bulldozed. The capacity of the airport, which is currently 25 million passengers a year, is expected to double by 2015. Pearson is Air Canada's busiest hub, with 50,000 passengers flying to, from and through Toronto on its flights everyday. The new terminal's sophisticated technology is complete with automatic check-in counters, multiple baggage claim kiosks, and even a parking guidance system that points drivers to available spaces.
According to a survey of US airline quality, three of the top four performing airlines last year were low-cost carriers. The survey measures on-time performance, customer complaints, mishandled baggage rates, denied boardings and other criteria from the Transportation Department's monthly consumer reports. JetBlue was the top-rated airline for fewest denied boardings and was second for on-time performance and fewest customer complaints. Alaska Airlines ranked second, followed by Southwest Airlines, America West and US Airways, which is struggling in the face of low-cost competition. Bankrupt United Airlines ranked ninth, while the biggest carrier, American Airlines was 11th. Delta Air Lines ranked 12th.
State-owned Air Malta is setting up a base in Manchester, north-west England, to operate charter flights to Greece, Spain and other European destinations. The first flights will start in May 2004, just days after Malta joins the European Union on Saturday, May 1. Services will also operate between Catania in Sicily to London.
Malaysian low-fare carrier AirAsia said it would offer air tickets to Macau, known for its casinos, from Bangkok for as little as USD$25 from June 15. AirAsia is an aggressive player in Asia's budding no-frills market where competition is heating up with entrants such as Singapore-based Valuair and Tiger Airways, a venture between Singapore Airlines and the founder of Irish no-frills airline Ryanair.
A great resource that has travel stories, photos, accommodation reviews, travel book reviews and commissions travel writing.
From Mac: one of the users of Internet Cafes overseas suggests that you leave a list of e mail addresses with a relative or friend in your home town that has a computer and just write one e mail to that person and have that person forward to those on e mail addresses you gave them. The person who receives e-mail from you is glad that you are having a good time and this saves you time at the cybercafé.
Under 30? A member of Globetrotters Club? Interested in a £1,000 travel award?
Know someone who is? We have £1,000 to award each year for five years for the best submitted independent travel plan. Interested?
Then see our legacy page on our Website, where you can apply with your plans for a totally independent travel trip and we'll take a look at it. Get those plans in!!
Spotted by Mac who wrote in to say: I read in yesterday’s Travel section of the Washington Post that a couple taking the Queen Mary 2 had picked out cabin but a few days before sailing were notified that they had been upgraded to the Deluxe Deck 8. They found out the upgrade was really a down grade although four decks up. There was a 150 person lifeboat outside their window. They said “it was like a tractor trailer blocking their view.” They looked in brochure and noticed a tiny asterisk at bottom page of brochure that some cabins had obstructed views. They were not able to change back or change. They wrote that while the Queen Mary 2 does fulfil the promise of being the longest, tallest, grandest ocean liner ever most of the cabins on Deck 8 (deluxe deck) are behind lifeboats. While most of you wont be booking passage on the Queen Mary 2. I wonder if one when booking on a ship gets to see layout of cabin with obstructed views. The few times I was on ship I had not view but was out of cabin except for sleeping up on deck so it did not make much difference.
A foreign pilot who infuriated Singapore's Senior Minister Lee Kuan Yew by leading a rare union revolt has been told by the government he can no longer live in Singapore as a permanent resident. Captain Ryan Goh Yew Hock, a Malaysian citizen, was singled out by Lee as the main instigator in a November 2003 vote by pilots to sack their union leaders for caving into wage cuts and layoffs imposed by state-controlled Singapore Airlines.
The Immigration and Checkpoints Authority said Goh, who has lived in Singapore for 26 years, had been told that his entry and re-entry permits that are necessary for permanent residents would be cancelled.
The leaders of Singapore's government have said “confrontational industrial relations” are a threat in a country where the government, employers and unions traditionally co-operate closely and where industrial action is rare.
An airline passenger discovered the a frog perched on a slice of cucumber while on a Qantas flight from Melbourne to Wellington in February. “Naturally there was a bit of consternation by the passenger who called back the attendant,” Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry quarantine general manager Fergus Small said. The flight attendant removed the salad and the 4 cm (1.6 inch) whistling tree frog, which was killed by quarantine staff when the aircraft landed. Qantas was not immediately available for comment but a spokesman told The New Zealand Herald newspaper the airline had since changed its lettuce supplier and introduced “additional procedures into the salad supply process.”
More than a million British holidaymakers heading for the Costa Brava in north eastern Spain face an increase in prices due to a tourist tax.
The new tourism director-general of the Catalan region, Isabel Galobardes, said 'some sort of tax' was essential to improve infrastructure in the most popular areas.
ABTA, the Association of British Travel Agents and the Federation of Tour Operators have criticised this idea, fearing a repeat of the controversy surrounding the Balearic Islands' introduction of an eco-tax in May 2002.
A spokesman for ABTA said: 'This would be an extremely foolish move by the Catalan government. They would be shooting themselves in the foot, to say the least.'
Such a tax would affect resorts such as Lloret de Mar, Sitges, Salou and Blanes, along with city breaks to the Catalan capital Barcelona. When the £1-a-day eco-tax was introduced on the islands of Mallorca, Ibiza and Menorca, UK visitor numbers dropped by up to 4 per cent.