This is what the Foreign and Commonwealth office of the UK says about visits to Thailand.

There is a general threat to British and other Western targets from terrorism in South East Asia including Thailand. You should be particularly vigilant in public places, including tourist resorts. Following a resurgence of violence in the far southern provinces the Government has implemented new security measures in Narathiwat, Yala and Pattani.

There was an explosion on 27 March 2004, outside a bar in the Thai-Malaysian border town of Sungai Kolok in Narathiwat Province in which 30 people were injured, some seriously.

Watch out for crimes of opportunity. Theft of passports and credit cards is a problem. Possession of even small quantities of drugs can lead to imprisonment or in serious cases the death penalty. The vast majority of visits are trouble-free.

The Beetle spent a few happy days in Bangkok in January of this year, and she thought it was a wonderful place, but as always, all travellers and tourists should be careful wherever they are.

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Researchers have discovered that a key chemical found in sweat is what attracts the mosquito that spreads malaria in Africa to bite its human victims. With this knowledge, scientists believe that they can develop a range of new anti-mosquito sprays and traps. Only the female mosquito bites people, and can identify a human victim largely using its sense of smell even up to hundreds of metres away. There are at least 300 million acute cases of malaria each year globally, resulting in more than a million deaths. Around 90% of these deaths occur in Africa, mostly in young children.

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If you had to guess: where and what do you think is the US’ second oldest tourist attraction after the Niagara Falls?

Answer, Mammoth Cave in Kentucky. It is not only a world heritage site, but the longest cave in the world with more than 360 miles (580 kilometres) of connected tunnels.

Guided tours have run here since 1816 and 4,000 year old mummies have been found in the cave, and you can still see petroglyphs of snakes and humans on the walls.

The cave was discovered at the end of the 18th century when a man shot and wounded a bear then followed it into the entrance that is still used today. The mummies became travelling shows. Today, you can take a Violet City Lantern Tour, a three-hour, 3-mile (4.8-kilometre) hike without electric lights. Hikers use kerosene lamps to light the cave’s steep, dark paths, just as visitors did 150 years ago.

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Azores Express has announced expanded Spring and Summer service from Boston Logan Airport to Portugal beginning in June 2004. Azores Express will offer direct flights to São Miguel, the main island in the Azores archipelago, on Wednesdays (starts June 23rd), Tuesdays, and Fridays. A Saturday flight is offered from Providence, Rhode Island starting June 12, 2004.

The Azores Islands, an autonomous region of Portugal, are the closest point in Europe to the United States, just four hours east by plane from Boston.

Situated 2,000 nautical miles from New England, the archipelago of the Azores was discovered during the first half of the 15th-century by Portuguese navigators. Today, gothic churches and majestic baroque manor homes mingle with sapphire blue and emerald green lakes, rolling prairies, volcanic cones and craters, and colourful hydrangeas and azaleas to enchant visitors. This inviting land enjoys year-round mild temperatures (between 57°F and 71°F).

A direct service from Boston to the historic island of Terceira will be offered on Sundays starting June 13th with a return flight every Tuesday. Non-stop flights to Portugal’s capital of Lisbon will be available every Thursday (starts June 24) and Sunday (starts June 6). Connecting flights to Madeira, Lisbon and Porto are also available from São Miguel. Inter-island flights are offered to each of the nine islands in the Azores. Roundtrip airfares start at just $579. Upgrades to business-class are just $150 each way to the Azores, and $200 each way to Lisbon. For more information and reservations, contact your travel agent, or Azores Express at 800-762-9995, www.Azores-Express.com.

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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 Bretislav in the Czech Republic, this is from the Canadian National Post: “A spelling error on several hundred government envelopes mailed from Nunavut’s capital last week added an extra ‘u’ to the spelling of Iqaluit, changing the meaning of the word from “the place of many fish” to “dirty bum.”.

”About 200 envelopes containing T4 income tax slips were marked with a stamp that mistakenly referred to Iqaluit as Iqualuit. [A linguist], who consulted with a fluent Inuktitut speaker … said whoever made the stamp appears to have used a prefix meaning faeces adhering to the anus. Seventy-one percent of Nunavut’s population speak Inuktitut… yet the public service does its work primarily in English because bureaucrats from outside the territory hold key positions in government. Government translators trying to turn English documents into Inuktitut reports, posters and street signs are overworked and the final products are often rife with spelling errors and literal translations that make no sense to the Inuit majority…”

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Take a look at Globetrotter Tom Freemantle’s website. He is a regular speaker at the London Globetrotters Club and has been on British TV talking about his recent exploits crossing the US to Mexico by mule.

His latest book, The Moonshine Mule, focuses on the 2,700 mile walk from Mexico to New York with Browny, a cynical but heroic pack-mule. He lives in Oxford, where he still rides a bicycle, but never a mule.

This site outlines Tom Fremantle’s’ extensive journey though West Africa, through bleak, pale deserts with scrub to lush, meandering swampland where monkeys screech from behind mangroves: from bustling, urban casbahs to tiny, mud-brick villages on the banks of the River Niger.

Tom hopes the expedition will raise £30,000 for Hope and Homes for Children, a charity which provides homes for orphans and abandoned children, particularly in war torn areas, including parts of West Africa. The journey will also raise money for The Ark Charity in Milton Keynes, which helps homeless teenagers to find lodgings and employment.

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