U. S. Soldiers Home, Washington: during a century of travel (well 78 years!) both in and out of service I have travelled to over 150 countries (I count both North and South Dakota as countries) and for some reason have jotted signs and happenings that I thought funny at the time (and now wonder why). So here is the perfect opportunity to share some of my anecdotes.

When I was in Hong Kong a Sir Run Run Shaw (his actual name) had donated a wing to the Hong Kong Arts Centre (he had a dysentery problem)

The Jardine Center in Hong Kong has a tourist bureau in its basement. The buildings walls have thousands of round windows. The Chinese refer to it as the house of 1000 assholes.

Hong Kong Chunk King Mansions (anything but a mansion) (has hundreds of cheap budget accommodation.) In the Garden Hotel in it (anything but a garden) the Mama san told a married couple that asked for two towels “one room, one towel.” My towel and room had not been cleaned for a week. Each day she would say washee, washee tomorrow but tomorrow never came. Finally one of my visitors grabbed the towel and took it out in the lobby to show the other guests how dirty it was. The mama san did sleep outside my door each night. I don’t know if this was go guard me or to see that I did not escape.

At the Palace Casino (one of the gambling ships tied to the dock in Macao) when the dealer found out I was an American asked me if I thought the CIA had killed Indiri Ghandi in India.

We were not attacked by pirates on ship from Hong Kong to Macau and the trip was uneventful except while still tied to the dock the Chinese lady behind me got sick and vomited on me.

In Hong Kong Haw Paw Villa Dragon Amusement Park they have a sign “Students in uniform (the students wear uniforms) are not allowed to play video games. (Let’s not disgrace the uniform.)

In Hong Kong I went out to Stanley Military Cemetery. It was just outside the regular prison (still being used) where Japanese kept British and other allied prisoners during World War II. The view of the harbour etc from that site is so beautiful from the prison that it must have been an extra thorn in the side of the prisoners. The sign at their cemetery reads “Here lie men from many countries who gave their lives for freedom. Visitors are asked to behave quietly with respect for those buried here. In particular games may not be played or food cooked”. 69l are buried here including many women and children (98 interned civilians.) One grave reads Unknown Soldier Age 38 years. May he rest in peace. (I wonder how they then determined his age if unknown.)

I met a man in Hong Kong who had been travelling for twenty years. He sometimes takes a Holiday within a Holiday in which he does nothing but rest and then is on the road again. I met him in McDonalds that is behind the famous Peninsula Hotel in Hong Kong at five o clock in the morning. It is open 24 hours a day. He gave me tips on budget places to stay around the world. Some of the places: Lucky Hotel in Bangkok, Private Toilet. Malacca Malaysia: Robins Nest Hotel $4.80 a night. If you know a robin looking for a place to stay.

The abandon ship instructions on the ferryboat to Macao from Hong Kong instructed you to not take your umbrella with you if you have to abandon ship. What if it is raining?

And finally, the time when I was victim to a scam: I was on an organized trip and staying at Golden Gate Hotel in Hong Kong. We were told to have our luggage outside our door at six AM to have it transported for us to the airport. We then got a second call and were told to have out luggage out at five AM instead of six and it would be picked up. It was – con artists made the second call and we never saw our luggage again.

Next month, Mac discusses general travel tips.

If you would like to contact Mac, he can be e-mailed on: macsan400@yahoo.com

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

The World’s Top 5 Cleanest Countries

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

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

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

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

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