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This website is excellent: a guide to low-cost flying in Europe that includes every budget airline route, with maps and associated information. It also has a news feed of low-cost airline news for European travellers – the only such feed to focus on budget news!
This 1091-page travel guide describes and maps Tahiti and French Polynesia, Pitcairn, Easter Island, the Cook Islands, Niue, Tonga, the Samoas, Tokelau, Wallis and Futuna, Tuvalu, Fiji, New Caledonia, Vanuatu, and the Solomon Islands.
The 119 town plans and island maps are carefully labelled, without the confusing numbered map keys found in other guidebooks. For ease of reference, all internet and email addresses are now embedded in the listings.
There are sections on scuba diving, snorkelling, surfing, windsurfing, kayaking, yachting, cruising, hiking, fishing, and golf. Beaches, sightseeing, transportation, and places to stay and eat are thoroughly covered, as are the histories, economies, environments, cultures, and peoples of the Pacific region.
Author David Stanley has been writing about the South Pacific for over 25 years. Paul Theroux called his handbook “the most user-friendly travel guide to the South Pacific,” and it remains the leading guidebook to the Pacific islands.
For more information, visit southpacific.org
Singapore's Changi Airport has introduced immigration kiosks that read fingerprints and facial features and double as automated check-in counters, in a bid to cut flight check-in times. The project, known as Fully Automated Seamless Travel or FAST, cuts the time needed for passengers to register for flights and check passports on arrival to from 15 minutes or longer, two minutes.
The system, which began trials in November 2004 at Changi, Asia's sixth-busiest airport, requires users to lodge facial details and thumb prints as biometric data on an identification card the size of a credit card. Passengers insert a card into a kiosk and then look into a camera and press their thumb onto a plate to check their details.
You got used to catching the Eurostar from London Waterloo to Paris or Brussels? Well, in 2007, all cross channel trains will no longer use Waterloo station, which was opened in 1993 at a cost of £130 million. (Note, Waterloo was the scene of one of France’s greatest military defeats in 1825!) Instead the Eurostar will start from St. Pancras station in north London and a depot near Stratford, east London, that has yet to be built. The decision was made because Eurostar believes the cost of running two London bases would be too much.
On landing, the Stewardess said, “Please be sure to take all of your belongings. If you're going to leave anything, please make sure it's something we'd like to have.”.
There may be 50 ways to leave your lover, but there are only 4 ways out of this airplane”.
”Thank you for flying Delta Business Express. We hope you enjoyed giving us the business as much as we enjoyed taking you for a ride.”.
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.
Here’s a little Beetle quiz based on capital cities. See how many you get right! Go on, have a guess!
What is the capital city of the following countries:
For the answers, see at the end of the e-newsletter.
The winner of last month's Moon Guide on the ArcadiaNational Park is Traechsel, congratulations! And the winner of our Peru quiz was Jane Thomas, again, well done!
This month, win a Moon guidebook on Western Canada. See http://www.moon.com/ for info on this excellent series.
Some people have said the quiz is difficult, we say do some research: try google.com or Ask Jeeves, if you need help with the answers.
As the Beetle was planning a little diving trip to the Philippines, she thought she’d check out the FCO’s travel advice for the area.
The UK’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office advises against all travel to central, southern and Western Mindanao, to Basilan, Tawi-Tawi and the Sulu archipelago, where military and police operations against terrorist and rebel groups are continuing and where kidnappings and bombings have taken place.
There is a high threat from terrorism and kidnapping throughout the Philippines. There continues to be threats against Western interests and there is a danger of collateral damage from terrorist attacks targeted at others.
You should also be alert to the risk of street crime.
Penalties for illegal drug importation and use are severe and can include the death penalty.
We strongly recommend that you obtain comprehensive travel and medical insurance before travelling.
A 31 year old Canadian man recently tried to buy a one-way ticket on a Qantas flight from LAX to Sydney, but was turned down because he could not supply a valid credit card. Later, he managed to climb over an airport fence, topped by three strands of barbed wire, without injury and was spotted by an airport worker “running, naked, full-speed” toward the plane. He climbed into the wheel well of a moving Qantas 747. Pilots of the Qantas Airways flight stopped the plane. The man was coaxed out of the wheel well and arrested for trespass. An airport spokesperson said: “
”.his was an extremely dangerous thing for him to do. If he had continued to cling in there with the aircraft taking off at over 200 miles (320 kph) per hour, he might have fallen out and could have been sucked up by an engine.”
”.f he had survived that and was in the wheel well when the landing gear was retracted, he could have been crushed by the mechanism. And if not he very likely would have frozen to death during the 15 1/2 hour flight at 30,000 feet (9,150 metres) while wearing no clothes.”.