After our usual gap of one month, London Globetrotters meetings are back at 2.30pm on Saturday 6^th September.

John Gimilette will talk about Paraguay – The Island surrounded by Land. Award-winning writer, John, takes us round a country that has emerged from centuries of isolation. As one of the most beguiling and eccentric places there is, we visit a vast lost ocean, the battlefields of the bloodiest war man has known, picked Victorian warships, cannibals, a highland ball and plenty more. John's book “At the Tomb of the inflatable Pig.”

Richard Snailham, Globetrotters Vice President will give a talk: On Reed Boats down rivers in Bolivia and Paraguay. Following a hunch that cocaine and nicotine might have reached the Old World from the New in very early times, John Blashford-Snell had three reed boats built on Lake Titicaca and tested them out on the Desaquadero river and subsequently reaching Buenos Aires and Belem in similar craft.

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: www.globetrotters.co.uk

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.

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.

Globetrotters meeting on Saturday 13th September at 2pm

The Texas Branch of the Globetrotters Club will meet Saturday Sept 13^th, 2003, 2pm at the New Braunfels Public Library 700 E. Common Street, New Braunfels, Texas 830-620-5482

The September meeting will Feature a speaker from “Friendship Force International” for more information, see their website: http://www.friendshipforce.org/

If you like independent, adventuresome, fun, daring, exciting, “off the beaten path” travel, this club is for you. Our meeting begins at 2 P.M. Come early so you won't be late! Enjoy handouts, travel talk time, and door prizes!

Dates of future meetings: October 11^th, November 8^th – Mark your calendars.

For more information about the Texas Branch or help Christina, please contact her by texas@globetrotters.co.uk or register for email updates at our website (click here) or call Christina at 830-620-5482

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

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

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