A recent ruling by Iran’s football federation banning players from sporting “unusual” and “foreign” styles is sparking debate in Iran’s football community. The Federation also said professional players should refrain from curling their hair or wearing ponytails, and from sporting necklaces, earrings, or rings and that players should not wear tight clothes, grow strange-looking beards, or copy foreign styles.

The ruling has upset football players like Ali Mansourian who shaves all his hair off, while some of his fellow athletes on Iran’s Esteqlal team have grown their hair long. “In my opinion, the appearance of a player is his own business,” Mansourian says. “If you look at Islam, for example, the Prophet Mohammad’s hair was long. He was very handsome.”

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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.

The Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall will travel to the US next month on their first official overseas royal tour. The tour will include engagements in New York, Washington DC, and San Francisco. The couple will meet UN Secretary General Kofi Annan and have a lunch and a dinner with President George W Bush and his wife at the White House. The BBC royal correspondent Peter Hunt said the visit to a country where Diana, Princess of Wales is still held in high esteem – was a “bold move”, representing the latest stage in the development of Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall as a senior royal.

If you are sailing around the world, you’d be advised to avoid Somalian water. Somali pirates have hijacked (another) ship with 10 crew on its way to the Somali port of El-Maan. The MV Torgelow was carrying fuel and food to a UN-chartered vessel freed last week by gunmen who had held it and its cargo of food aid for three months. The International Maritime Board says there have been at least 20 attacks on ships in Somali waters since March. It urges ships in the area to stay as far away as possible from the shore.

Tube and bus fares in London paid for with cash are set to increase January 1st 2006. A single Tube journey in zone one will cost £3 instead of £2 while a single bus journey will rise from £1.20 to £1.50, said Mayor Ken Livingstone. Fares will fall for holders of the Oyster pre-pay smartcards. With Oyster, a zone one Tube ride will be cut from £1.70 to £1.50 – half the cash fare. Mr Livingstone said the aim was for fewer people to pay with cash. Mr Livingstone said the increased fares to be introduced from January would raise about £80m but conceded the new single Tube fare of £3 would probably be the most expensive in the world.

NEW FARES FOR 2006

• Tube zone 1: £3 cash (£2 currently)
• Tube zone 1: £1.50 Oyster (£1.70)
• Tube zones 2-6: £3 cash (£2.10)
• Tube zones 2-6: £1 Oyster (£1.80)
• Bus (all zones): £1.50 cash (£1.20)
• Bus (all zones): 80p Oyster (£1)

The motto is – either don’t visit London or buy an Oyster card to use London’s public transport.

You don't have to go far to encounter trouble!  New research from the UK's Direct Line Travel Insurance indicates that over one in 10 Britons has been robbed while on holiday and a further 27 percent know someone who has. Spain is the country with the highest number of thefts with 38 percent of those who have experienced robberies claiming it happened there.  France is next on the list with 14 percent, Italy seven per cent and Greece five percent.

Money is the most frequently stolen possession (41 percent), followed by purses, wallets, cameras and jewellery.

Delta Air Lines and Northwest Airlines, the third and fourth-largest US air carriers, both declared bankruptcy in September citing rising oil prices and low-cost competition among their reasons.

British health officials are concerned that UK citizens are not taking E111 forms with them when they jump on a plane to EU countries.  Form E111 covers medical treatment at public health centres at the 25 EU countries, plus Switzerland. The forms are currently being replaced by European Health Insurance Cards – the same system under a different name, with neater credit card-sized identification. The Department of Health website (www.dh.gov.uk) has information on the changeover, and how to apply for the new cards.

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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!!

On Wednesday, 29th March 2006, the shadow of the Moon will sweep a band starting from Brazil, through Atlantic Ocean, Gold Coast of Africa, Saharan Desert, Mediterranean Sea, Turkey, Black Sea, Georgia, Russian Federation, northern shores of Caspian Sea, Kazakhstan; ending in Mongolia. The duration of totality will be less than 2 minutes near the sunrise and sunset limits, but will be as long as 4 minutes and 7 seconds in Libya, at the moment of greatest eclipse.  The partial phases will be witnessed by all of Europe. All Asia west of Yakutsk, Mongolia, central China and Myanmar, and north of the line joining Bombay and Calcutta will see some of the Moon in front of the Sun. Also, only the south eastern parts of Africa will miss the partial eclipse.

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.

Ever worried about being able to access your cash whilst overseas?  These two websites allow you to locate Visa and Mastercard ATMs.

In some parts of Nepal, particularly the western parts of the country, there is a tradition of keeping women in cow sheds during their menstrual cycle.  Nepal's Supreme Court has ordered the government to declare the practice as evil and have given one month to stop the practice.  Women's rights activists have said that this is a positive move but a change in the law alone is not enough, that people need to be educated against such a scourge of society.

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 section of the Website: Mutual Aid

A restaurant in north east China was closed down for listing stir fried tiger meat with peppers for US $98 or a kilo of tiger meat for US $ 863.  Maybe it was the fact that the sale of tiger meat is outlawed in China or that the restaurant was less than a mile away from a Siberian Tiger Park that attracted the attention of local authorities.  Police raided the restaurant to find that actually the tiger meat was donkey marinated in tiger urine – to give it “a special flavour”.  Hhhmm, nice.

The latest in a series of setbacks for the $1.8bn (£1bn) Hong Kong Disneyland occurred after Health Inspectors were called in after three cases of food poisoning.  The two health officials were asked to take off their uniforms to avoid scaring clients.  Hong Kong officials, angered that food inspectors were asked to remove their uniforms told Disney it is “not above the law”.  Disney has apologised and has promised to comply with local laws.

An editorial in the Ming Pao Daily News says Hong Kong residents suspect Disney “wants to engineer special rights and turn the theme park into an independent kingdom that Hong Kong laws can't reach”.

The park faced criticism from animal welfare groups in July, after reports local officials had been called in to destroy at least 40 dogs roaming the site.  A month earlier, it withdrew shark fin soup from planned banquet menus after campaigners condemned the dish, a local luxury, as cruel and ecologically destructive.

Kofi Anan says that substantial increases in illegal fishing, tourism, bio-prospecting, climate change and depletion of the ozone continue to pose major challenges to the Antarctic, and governments should continue to make major efforts to secure the area as a natural reserve devoted to peace and science.  Illegal, unregulated and unreported fishing for toothfish in the Southern Ocean still exceeds reported catches despite major efforts to address such activities.  Other major areas of concern are the increase in tourism over the last 10 years.  There is an increase by 308% in ship-borne tourists to the Antarctic Peninsula since 1993, up to 27,324 in 2004-5, from 6,704 in 1992-3.  An increase in high-risk, adventure tourism has also wrought havoc on the region, creating the need for new search and rescue missions and country liability assessments. 

Singapore is following London's lead and plans to build a giant Ferris wheel.  Designers estimate that it will be 142 feet taller than the London Eye and say that visitors will be able to enjoy views of neighbouring Malaysia and Indonesia from the 587ft-high wheel when it is completed in early 2008.

The Great Express, a luxury overnight train for rich Russians and foreign tourists is now running between Moscow and St. Petersburg.  The cost ranges from 3,150 roubles, or $110, for the nine-hour overnight trip in a first-class seat to 12,500 roubles for a luxury compartment with a bed and bathroom.  All compartments are fitted with flat-screen televisions showing satellite channels and have wireless Internet connections.

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