On a more positive note, contrary to popular belief, US citizens are allowed to visit Libya! This is good news as the Beetle is trying to persuade one to join her on a potential trip to Libya!

And on the flip side, just two days after the US government eased its warnings to US citizens not to travel to Pakistan, following the abduction of a US Wall Street journalist, the warnings are back in place.

Forget the romantic notion of Captain Hook and Cap'n Kidd – piracy is alive and well in the modern world!

Just last week, coastguards in Falmouth, in the south west of England picked up an SOS call almost 4,000 miles away from the Princess Sarah, a Greek owned ship off the Horn of Africa. The British alerted the French army based in Djibouti and Somalia who had a warship in the area. The French ship, Floreal, sent a helicopter to assist the Princess Sarah and scared the pirates off.

Incredibly, this is the second time that the Princess Sarah has been helped by the same coastguards, only a month earlier whilst off the coast of Somalia.

An alert, bought to the attention of the Beetle by Frank, in the US, about a female traveller in India who was bitten by a monkey at Agra Fort. Frank saw a report in a Lonely Planet bulletin: the report says that the traveller was not carrying food, was not feeding the monkeys or trying to gain their attention, when she received a nasty bite on the leg, quite out of the blue.

She went on to say that the “friendly” monkeys, as described in various guide books are far from it: they have become aggressive and are prone to attacking visitors. She then had to spend large amounts of time (and money, and worry) ensuring that she received all of the immunisations against diseases that the monkeys can carry -these include rabies and a virus which can lead to encephalitis.

Travellers – you have been warned! Animals like this are still wild and should be treated with caution.