Under 24? 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!!
The last Ontario/Toronto GT meeting was held on Friday, May 24th; members Ray & Inge Bates spoke on “Six Months in Asia Following 911” and Dan Ramrose spoke about “Five Months' South American Adventure” and Paul Webb gave a talk on “Eight Weeks in Ghana”.
We are planning our annual GT picnic this summer. Proposed dates include one weekend in July or the beginning of August. The location could be at Meaford (on Georgian Bay,) at Vera Blowers' place or Toronto Island. To be advised when arranged, so stay tuned – we just hope the weather improves a little bit.
Bruce Weber has just left for a month-long trip to Vietnam and the Philippines and he is planning to tell us all about it in September.
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.
To search this and past issues of our E-newsletter, just enter a word or phrase below, select the search options and click the search button.
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This web site provides links to a very wide range of information – everything you might need to plan a trip: links to the latest travel warnings for British, American, Australian and Canadian citizens, lists of travel agents in each of these countries and Pacific Asia, info on cruise lines around the world, national parks, internet cafes, embassies around the world, world time zones, restaurants, exchange rates – you name it!
The next Texas meeting will be completely open: please come and talk about your favourite place, travels, anecdote or listen to others!
Congratulations to Christina, Chair of the Texas branch of Globetrotters on her new job on the San Antonio Riverwalk. Because of this, please note that Texas meetings will start one hour earlier, at 2pm and not 3pm.
Meetings are held at 2pm at the New Braunfels Public Library, 700 E. Common Street in New Braunfels, Texas. The meeting ends at 5 p.m. If you would like to continue travel talk on a more informal basis, we plan to adjourn to the Hoity-Toit, a local New Braunfels establishment. If anybody would like to enquire about meetings or help Christina, please contact her on: texas@globetrotters.co.uk
You may have read recently about one of Buddha’s fingers being brought from Thailand to Taipei in Taiwan. This got the Beetle wondering about other parts of Buddha and where you can see them. It is possible to see the casket containing the left incisor of the Buddha in the sacred temple in Kandy, Sri Lanka. The Beetle queued up for some time to walk past this sacred relic – it was certainly an experience! It seems that there are three of Buddha’s teeth in existence: one in Sri Lanka, one in China and one in Thailand.
Buddhists in Sri Lanka celebrate “Buddha Tooth Festival” which begins on 1st of August every year and lasts for twelve days. Every night during the festival, grand parades can be seen starting from 8:00pm until 11:00pm. The Chinese tooth was found by a monk in 475AD and hidden in what is today Nanking, in China. In times of war, it was taken to Beijing and placed in a stupa. In 1900 when Beijing was invaded, the stupa was destroyed, and monks found the tooth in the rubble. In 1964, the stupa was rebuilt and the tooth placed in the pagoda of Beijing. The third tooth is alleged to have passed into Tibet and transferred to India during the Cultural Revolution before its final resting place in Thailand.
Things to take on your Travels – Padmassana’s rules
As well as the usual Lonely Planet guide and phrasebook here are a few other essentials.
1. Half the luggage you originally put out to take!
2. A sense of humour for when you just miss that boat, plane or train.
3. A sixth sense to keep you safe.
4. A rucksack cover gives an extra level of security and stops straps being mangled on airport luggage conveyor belts.
5. Combination padlocks, saves carrying/losing keys.
6. A good compass and map, particularly for places (Japan, China etc) where you cannot read the local alphabet and where there are a definite lack of street names and building numbers.
7. A bite Zapper, tiny almost weightless electric pulse to relieve those nasty bites and stings, worth it’s weight in gold!
8. Little presents to repay good turns, like postcards of home.
9. And when it’s time to go home be a responsible tourist, leave nothing but footprints and take nothing but photographs.
Got any travel tips for the Beetle? Then e-mail them to: the Beetle!
Due to technical hosting problems, we are going to run last month’s travel quiz again for those who did not receive last month’s Globetrotter e-newsletter.
Win a copy of a map and guide of Scotland, courtesy of Harper Collins who make this excellent series of map/guides.
1.The Cairngorms includes some of Scotland’s highest peaks. What stone are they made from?
2.Which Scottish city, on the northeast coast of Scotland is connected with the oil industry?
3. What is the name of Scotland’s oldest University – and the current place of learning of Prince William?
4.In which county is Balmoral Castle?
5.Which polar explorer had a ship called the R.R.S. Discovery?
YourName:
Your e-mail address:
May 6th 2002, the United States has added Cuba, Libya and Syria to its “axis of evil” – nations it claims are deliberately seeking to obtain chemical or biological weapons. In a speech entitled “Beyond the Axis of Evil”, US Under Secretary of State, John Bolton said that the three nations could be grouped with other so-called “rogue states” – Iraq, Iran and North Korea – in actively attempting to develop weapons of mass destruction.
Source: Reuters
Plans for the first new bus service in central London for over a decade have been unveiled. The route to be known as Riverside 1 (RVS1) will link together more than 40 arts and tourist attractions, five underground stations, three national rail stations and five river piers. It will go from the Tate Modern and the London Eye to the Tower of London and Covent Garden. The Beetle can vouch for the fact that this service has started.