Category Archives: archive

Free London Museums: Theatre Museum

Five galleries illustrate the history of the performing arts in the UK. The collection includes displays on theatre, ballet, dance, circus, puppetry, opera, musicals, rock and pop. There's usually a daily workshop on performing arts subjects, such as pantomime and making a play.

The museum is found in Russell Street, Covent Garden.
Open: Tue-Sun, 10:00-18:00.
Tube: Covent Garden
Enquiries: 020 7943 4700
Entrance: FREE admission for individuals.


Berlin National Holocaust Memorial

Building work on a national Holocaust memorial in the German capital, Berlin, has begun. The memorial is being built in the centre of the city, close to the Brandenburg Gate and near the bunker where Adolf Hitler committed suicide in 1945. The monument should be completed by May 2005 – in time for the 60th anniversary of the end of the World War Two.


Write for the Globetrotters monthly e-newsletter

If you enjoy writing, enjoy travelling, why not write for the free monthly Globetrotters e-newsletter! The Beetle would love to hear from you: your travel stories, anecdotes, jokes, questions, hints and tips, or your hometown or somewhere of special interest to you. Over 7,500 people subscribe to the Globetrotters e-news.

To see your story in cyber print, e-mail the Beetle with your travel experiences, hints and tips or questions up to 750 words, together with a couple of sentences about yourself and a contact e-mail address to Beetle@globetrotters.co.uk


Say No to Flying Fox

The Pacific island of Guam is known for very high rates of a degenerative disease that looks like motor neuron, Parkinson's and dementia, but cannot be firmly identified as any of them. Researchers believe that this higher than average incidence could be due to eating a bat, also known as a flying fox. The flying foxes feed on seed containing a chemical highly toxic to human brain cells. When humans eat the animals, high levels of the chemical, which had accumulated in the bat tissues, was passed on. Flying fox is a delicacy in many parts of the Pacific, including Tonga, Vanuatu, New Caledonia.


Laos Snippet by Busby

I went on my two month long trip of Indochina. I skulked a bit in Qatar eyeing up the tablecloth-clad gentlemen and in turn being the recipient of their roving eye. Thought maybe not. From Bangkok Railway Station there was a direct train. This leaves every night at 8:00pm or 8:20pm. You can book a sleeper berth complete with curtains to the Friendship Bridge at the Laotian border. Crossing the border is easy – the usual stuff – $20 and a British Passport and you are there. Vientiane is the next stop. One needs to speak a little French to admire Alleys, les baguettes, Les Arch de Triomphe. I walked everywhere – the whole place is less than three square miles.

If you happen to skip the French breakfast, the French colonial attitude and the temperature, go to Luang Prabang. It’s a beautiful place – until they get funding to finish the long runway.

If you happen to be female, make sure you are wearing the right underwear: the Buddhist monks on the top of the hill happen to be very observant

Then there was a little problem. Up the Mekong down the Mekong. Make sure you are fit rather than panting your lungs away along the waterfalls like I did.

After having had such a lovely time, it all went a bit sour: three days after flying back from Cambodia, I spent 40 minutes on the internet in Ko Chang (Eastern Thailand) Internet café. A local man asked me if I wanted to buy drugs. I politely refused. What happened next? The guy kicked me in the face and broke my nose, leaving me in a lot of pain, and bleeding all over the place. A Kiwi traveller called the police who arrived pretty quickly. After 4 hours of investigations and searching my possessions, they decided to find the offender. The court case took on the spot. By 2 a.m. the police and the translator were around and so was my attacker; very professional, except me bleeding all over trying to fix my broken nose. I identified my attacker and then I was taken to hospital where the costs of fixing up my poor nose were paid for. I flew back home to avoid the rest of the nonsense.

If you'd like to contact Busby, please e-mail her on: me@krystyna.com


Overland West Africa

If you a planning an overland trip in west Africa, then please note that the Nigerian Government has announced that it is closing its borders with the Benin Republic with immediate effect due to an increase in cross-border crime such as smuggling and human trafficking. The main border crossing into Benin is not far from Nigeria's commercial capital Lagos and it normally carries travellers and traders from Benin, Togo, Ghana and beyond.


Woman killed by Shark

A woman was killed by a great white shark while swimming with sea lions at Avala Beach, between Los Angeles and San Francisco in California. This is the first attack in almost ten years. Four lifeguards tried to save her life, but the 50-year-old was declared dead upon reaching the shore. The shark had bitten her left leg, severing her femoral artery. The area is known to be populated by sharks but they usually only attack humans if confused, said a shark specialist interviewed by the San Francisco Chronicle. 'If you are wearing a wetsuit and fins and you are swimming with sea lions you are doing a clumsy job of imitating shark food,' he said.


Travelling to Mikindani from Mozambique – Becky Stickland

Having allowed myself the luxury of a two-week break in Durban visiting a long lost friend I turned my thoughts towards the adventure that lay ahead. I have always wanted to visit Mozambique and I saw this as my opportunity to experience, or even just catch a glimpse of, the culture and lifestyles of the Mozambican people as I travelled from South Africa in search of Mikindani.

Arrival in Mocimboa seemed dreamlike as lack of sleep, the temperature rise as we headed north and the travel left me disorientated. I found accommodation in a nearby guesthouse and decided to explore the town. Mocimboa is a sleepy town with white sand lining the streets that lead to the beach at the end of the town. Being accosted by Lucia Juma, the local drunk, (the Beetle has also met this man too – not a nice experience!) set the scene for the rest of the day when I’d naively anticipated a peaceful evening. I played dominoes with the girls in the local restaurant, chatted with the men at the local bar and then a meal at the guesthouse where I chanced across Taiwanese Mr Wu and Abo his Mozambican friend. Mr Wu (no English), myself (no Portuguese) and Abo (a little of all languages) agreed that the local disco must be attended.

The electricity is cut at 10pm so the town is plunged into darkness and the only noises I heard as I walked under the stars to the disco were voices, laughter and crickets. The disco was my first taste of African nightlife and was assuredly colourful, and I danced with my new friends and many others until we left the activity to head for some sleep. My chance stalking by an ‘unpleasant man’ meant that I was escorted back across town by Mr Wu, local ladies and a number of others who clutched my arms the entire walk and yelled at each other in Portuguese; they insisted I stay in their guest house where they could take care of me, but a Muslim guest house, where two men bring back two women in the middle of the night I can assure is not a positive situation. I drifted to sleep and then the cock crowed two hours later as I arose early, once again, for the last part of my journey.

4am perched on the back of an open truck, wedged in between buckets, bicycles, yams and small children as I saw the sunrise. The group of ten of us bumped and rattled, spun and raced along sand filled tracks bound northwards for the Tanzanian border. Mozambique is certainly a beautiful country and it's hard to believe that only years earlier the lands I was fleeting across were littered with landmines. It seems so unlikely that fear and destruction could reign in such a place. It seemed appropriate that an hour from the border our vehicle should break down. A half hour stop as engines were tinkered with, bits of pipe bent and bashed, the lid shut down and once more we flew north. Somehow I imagined my AA card would be of little use in such parts. The Mozambican authorities inspected our vehicle two miles from the border, where an official in khaki and a sultry face indicated that an inspection of my luggage was in order. I began unloading each item out of my 70 litre rucksack and felt violated and indignant that anyone thought they had the right to rifle through my wash bag. (Same thing happened to the Beetle.) He quickly lost interest and although at first intimidated by his stature and official stance, as he mounted his motor-ped I smiled as I observed his right foot was protected by a steel top-capped boot and his left just a flip flop.

We continued by truck, wending our way down towards the Rovuma River. How better to embark in Tanzania than being carried across the shallow waters of the Rovuma to the sandy beach having crossed the mighty river by dhow. The scene was reminiscent of a biblical scene as I was carried like an injured hero returning from war. As I saw Jean and the Trade Aid Land rover waiting close by I breathed a sigh of relief, as I knew I had finally made it safely to Mikindani.

For more information on the work carried out by Trade Aid in Tanzania, see their website www.mikindani.com


Travel Photographer of the Year Competition

Travel Photographer of the Year is a new annual competition, supported by major names in the photographic and travel industries, that recognises and celebrates the very best travel photography.

Any photographer – amateur or professional – can enter TRAVEL PHOTOGRAPHER OF THE YEAR (TPOTY) by submitting a portfolio of four images in one, two or all three of the portfolio categories. There’s an Image of the Year category as well and even a special award for those aged 16 and under – the YOUNG TRAVEL PHOTOGRAPHER OF THE YEAR. Entries close on September 14th 2003.


So You Think You’re Well Travelled?

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:

  1. Angola
  2. Cyprus
  3. Laos
  4. Nepal
  5. South Korea

For the answers, see at the end of the e-newsletter.


Padmassana Travels To Japan – Part 3

Padmassana went travelling around Kyushu in June/July time. Here is the final of three extracts from his travel journal.

From Kagoshima I went on a day trip on a small bus to Chiran. The bus took about an hour and a half and cost about £10 return. Chiran is famous for Samurai houses and the Kamikaze museum – very interesting but little information in English, most interesting part is the now de classified documents relating to the USS Curtis which took a direct hit from a kamikaze plane. Kagoshima has plenty of things to see including a superb aquarium with giant crabs that live at 300m at the bottom of the sea and a good jellyfish exhibition and good English signs.

From Kagoshima I travelled north to Kumamoto, which took about three and a half hours. I stayed in a beautiful Ryokan with tatami room, even if I did have to get a postman to show me where it was! Kumamoto is easy to get round with trams and busses, though most of it is walkable. Went to the super castle and a wonderful Japanese garden.

Kumamoto is a very nice city, it has some Suizenn-ji gardens, which were built by a Shogun in the 16th century for him to have tea, as there is a spring there perfect for making good tea. Around this he built fabulous Japanese gardens complete with koi carp ponds. This is a very popular destination with Japanese tourists who go there to have their pictures taken with Mt Fuji in the background. Around the edge of the gardens are little stalls, which sell the locally famous “fish on wheels” and spinning tops, great souvenirs. Kumamoto-Jo or castle is largely new and inside apart from a bit of armour there's not much to see, outside is a little more interesting and again there are signs in English explaining what you are seeing.

From Kumamoto, I went to Mt Aso. To get to Mt Aso, you have to take a local train from Kumamoto, then a small bus up the side of the mountain and then take a cable car to see the inside of the volcano crater. But I was unable to do this, as it was active! A little while ago, the volcano started spewing poisonous gas and lumps of rock, and as a woman was killed so the authorities put a 1km exclusion zone round it. Went instead to the museum, which is not bad, although there was not much signage in English but it does have the feedback from 2 live video links from inside the crater. Today’s pictures were pretty good – a shame that there was no lava, although I suspect that the locals are relieved.

Next, I took the train from Kumamoto to Nagasaki, a nice city, it’s quite industrial, and obviously new. Went to the temples and went to the A-Bomb museum, the No. 1 tourist attraction, full of Japanese school children but also has a scenic river that has stone bridges that used to lead up to a stone temple but this is not there any more. There is another temple with a roof shaped like a tortoise, which is a really nice place to visit. Inside this, it has a Foucault’s pendulum that shows the earth’s rotation – one of only three in the world, the other 2 being in Paris and Leningrad. Nagasaki's “temple row” is quite interesting, many of the temples have started to produce little leaflets in English as the west’s interest in the east and Buddhism has grown in the last few years.

I went up the Nagasaki cable car to get a view over the city yesterday before getting the train back to Hakata/Fukuoka. The train took about 2 hours and was included in my two 5 day passes. The city has two names if you didn’t realise: the airport is called Fukuoka, but the train station is called Hakata. Was going to go up the Fukuoka tower but despite being 80 degrees it was very hot and sticky with low cloud, so did what the Beetle would have done and went shopping! Bought myself a little Japanese garden that you build yourself, saw one in a Ryokan and have been looking ever since, would you believe I found one in the basement shopping area of Hakata station at 7.30pm on my last night. And then ready to come home back to the UK.

A note on Japanese train passes: Japanese train passes are only available to foreigners and must be bought outside Japan. Once you start a pass you have to travel from that day onwards. Passes come in 5, 10, 14 and 21 days. This works out much cheaper than buying train passes as you go. Some ferries and buses are included in the passes.

If you would like to contact Padmassana to ask him about his time in Japan, he can be e-mailed on: padmassana@globetrotters.co.uk


Globetrotters Travel Award

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!!


Have you got a tale to tell?

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


New UN Heritage Sites

This is the third of three descriptions of the 24 sites of “outstanding universal value”, that have been designated world heritage sites by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).

These are as follows:

  • Franciscan Missions in the Sierra Gorda of Querétaro, Mexico: Built during the last phase of the conversion to Christianity of the interior of Mexico in the mid-18th Century. The richly decorated church façades are of special interest as they represent an example of the joint creative efforts of the missionaries and the Indios.
  • Wooden Churches of Southern Little Poland, Poland: The churches represent outstanding examples of the different aspects of medieval church-building traditions in Roman Catholic culture.
  • Citadel, Ancient City and Fortress Buildings of Derbent, Russian Federation: Part of the northern limits of the Sassanian Persian Empire, which extended east and west of the Caspian Sea. The town of Derbent has retained part of its medieval fabric.
  • Mapungubwe Cultural Landscape, South Africa: An open, expansive savannah landscape situated on the northern border of South Africa joining Zimbabwe and Botswana. Mapungubwe developed into the largest kingdom in the sub-continent before it was abandoned in the 14th Century. The almost untouched remains of the palace sites, a settlement area and two earlier capital sites survive.
  • Ubeda-Baeza: Urban duality, cultural unity, Spain: The urban morphology of the two small cities of Ubeda and Baeza in southern Spain dates back to the Moorish 9th Century and to the Reconquista in the 13th Century. In the 16th Century, the cities were renovated along the lines of the emerging Renaissance.
  • Gebel Barkal and the Sites of the Napatan Region, Sudan: Includes several archaeological sites, over more than 60 km (37 miles) in the Nile Valley, of the Napatan (900 to 270 BC) and Meroitic (270 BC to 350 AD) cultures, of the second kingdom of Kush. Tombs, with and without pyramids, temples, living complexes and palaces are also found on the site.
  • Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, United Kingdom: The historic landscape garden illustrates the art of gardens from the 18th to the 20th Centuries. The gardens house botanic collections (conserved plants, living plants and documents) that have been considerably enriched through the centuries.
  • Matobo Hills, Zimbabwe: Distinctive rock land forms associated with human occupation from the early Stone Age to early historical times, and intermittently since. They also feature an outstanding collection of rock paintings.
  • Central Amazon Conservation Complex, Brazil: Comprises the largest protected area in the Amazon Basin and one of the planet's richest regions in terms of biodiversity.
  • Imperial Tombs of the Ming and Qing Dynasties, China: These tombs were inscribed on the World Heritage List in 2000. The property inscribed this year as an extension consists of two distinct burial sites of the Ming Dynasty emperors. Xiaoling, the first emperor of that dynasty is buried there, as are 13 others.
  • Archaeological Site of Panama Viejo and the Historic District of Panama, Panama: Panama Viejo covers the location and ruins of the first European settlement on the American mainland and pre-Hispanic remains. It features impressive ruins. Moreover, older remains, dating to up to 1,000 years before the arrival of the Europeans, were excavated on this site.

Source: BBC News


Dubai Underwater Hotel Planned

We reported a while back about Dubai’s Palm, an ambitious hotel and resort development off the coast. Now, tourism and government authorities have gone one step further, or should we say under. A 220 suite hotel is planned to open in three years’ time off Dubai in the Persian Gulf. The Hydropolis Hotel will be made from strengthened plexiglass, concrete and steel able to withstand being placed at around 30 metres below the surface of the sea. The route to the hotel will be through a 1,700 ft transparent tunnel on a shuttle train.

This will be the world’s second under water hotel. The first, the Jules Verne Underwater Lodge can be found in Florida.


Travel Quiz August 2003

Win a Frommer’s guidebook on Amsterdam 2003. See www.frommers.com for info on Frommer’s guidebooks.

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.

The winner of last month's Moon Guide on Fiji is Eileen Hobson.

1. A beer has the same name as the river that gave its name to Amsterdam – what is it?

2. What is the currency used in Amsterdam?

3. What is the name of Amsterdam’s airport?

4. What is the first name of the young girl who hid from Nazis during WW2 and wrote a diary?

5. Which Dutch painter committed suicide in 1890 at the age of 37 and has a museum named after him in Amsterdam?

Your Name:

Your e-mail address:


Sahara Hostages Released

Fourteen of the European hostages, missing in the Sahara for over five months have been released by suspected Islamic extremist kidnappers. One woman hostage died whilst held captive in Mali. The tourists – nine Germans, four Swiss and a Dutchman are reported to be well, but exhausted. A political row has erupted over speculation that a ransom was paid. The German press has reported that the kidnappers wanted $5m for each hostage as well as security guarantees. The German press believe that the German government has paid a ransom, although others believe that Mali has put forward the money, and that Germany will then provide it with foreign aid. Also at issue is how far Germany – or indeed any country – should be responsible for its citizens when they knowingly travel to dangerous parts of the world.


Answers to: So You Think You’re Well Travelled?

1. Angola: Luanda

2. Cyprus: Nicosia

3. Laos: Vientiane

4. Nepal: Kathmandu

5. South Korea: Seoul

· 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 World’s Top 5 Cleanest Countries

The World’s Top 5 Cleanest Countries

  1. Finland
  2. Norway
  3. Canada
  4. Sweden
  5. Switzerland

New Zealand comes 6th, Australia 7th, the US 11th, the UK 16th.

Source: http://www.aneki.com/lists.html