Issue 1
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COMET - MARCH 1998 - ISSUE 1 For people who like their travel news down loaded, not loaded down. Brought to you by Lonely Planet (http://www.lonelyplanet.com) Welcome to the first issue of Comet, Lonely Planet's new email newsletter. Whether you're sipping coffee in an internet cafe in Istanbul, or tied to a desk in New York City pretending to look busy while you plan your next trip, there's something in here for you. In this issue you'll find a scoop of travel news, a spot of TB, a smattering of scams and smidge of travellers' talk. If these tasty morsels merely whet your appetite, hit the links provided to hook yourself up to the LP website, where you'll find more colourful stories and gorgeous graphics than you could possibly need. Comet is your newsletter, so feel free to bombard us with your comments, criticisms and contributions. Send us a travel-related Top 5 that gives us a cheap laugh you could earn yourself a free book. IN THIS ISSUE The Scoop - Travel News From Around the Globe In the Spotlight - Tuberculosis Stages a Comeback Compass - Name Our Mystery Location For a Chance to Win LP Books Top Five - The World's Greatest Scams The Grill - Sean Condon Unplugged on the Art of Travel Soapbox - Fast Food and Comparative Linguistics Q & A - In Love and in Limbo You Said It - Top Travellers' Tales What's New on the LP Web Site Talk 2 Us How to Subscribe & Unsubscribe *** THE SCOOP Who and what's hitting headlines around the globe Taiwan Passengers travelling on Taiwan's airlines face a possible life sentence if they are caught using mobile phones or other electronic equipment during flights. The Taiwan Civil Aeronautics Administration announced the tough new measures in a move designed to prevent a fatal accident caused by electronic equipment interfering with aerial communications systems. Peru Heavy rains over the past month have caused floods and mud slides and made overland travel difficult owing to bridge and road closures. The US State Department recently issued a warning to travellers about an increase in cholera, malaria and dysentery in many of the flooded regions. The latest mud slide buried the power plant near the famous Machu Picchu Inca ruins and covered the railway tracks to Quillabamba, leaving most of the towns and villages in the area without power. South Africa Construction has begun on a new US$500 million road between Maputo, Mozambique and Johannesburg, South Africa. The new road will follow the route of the existing N4 through South Africa, with a significant detour through some of Mpumalanga's most scenic countryside. Find out what else is happening on your planet: http://www.lonelyplanet.com/news/news.htm *** IN THE SPOTLIGHT Conspicuous Consumption 'Consumption' brings to mind images of pale and sickly youths getting packed off to sanatoria in Switzerland during the 19th century, or of coal miners coughing up their lungs in small Welsh or Appalachian villages. But wasn't tuberculosis (the modern name for the disease) supposedly wiped out early in the 20th century? Think again. Read on at: http://www.lonelyplanet.com/news/mar11.htm *** COMPASS Think your internal compass is pretty reliable? We'll see about that. If you can name the place we describe below, we'll put you in the draw for 20 Lonely Planet prize packs, each containing the new Cairo guide, as well as our Arabic (Egyptian) phrase book and Egypt travel atlas. You arise early to experience the serenity of this sacred place before the coach tours arrive. The building, believed to date back to the 4th century, is built on top of the Water Gate of Roman Babylon. A flight of stairs leads you into an interior courtyard festooned with icons. You walk past vendors selling cassettes and videos of Coptic sermons and into a barrel-vaulted interior. Behind ivory inlaid screens are three altar areas, and in front are 13 slender pillars representing Christ and his disciples. In the baptistry to your right you peer through a hole in the floor, and through the gloom you can just make out the Water Gate below. If you can name this place and the city it is in, email us at: comet@lonelyplanet.com.au *** TOP FIVE This month - five classic scams that continue to separate travellers from their cash: 1. Shit on the shoe. This one's popular in the streets of New Delhi: shoe-shine boys surreptitiously fling a piece of animal pooh onto a passerby's foot then offer to clean it off at a hugely inflated price. 2. Do you come here often? Istanbul's likely lads are known to pick up men on the street and invite them to come to a nightclub for a drink. Sitting the unwitting fellow down next to a group of girls, they tell him the girls' drinks are on his bill. If he won't pay he's taken out the back and the money is forcibly removed from his wallet. 3. A gem of an idea. Bangkok's con men prey on the gullible and the greedy - after a friendly chat in the street you'll be asked if you'd like to drop by a gem shop. The owner, who has friends in your country, offers you gems at a huge discount. He'll mail them to your home address and you can sell them at a profit when you get back. Of course, the gems turn out to be worth a fraction of what you paid, (if they turn up at all). 4. The inadvertent tip. Many restaurants in Central and Eastern Europe are notorious for overcharging. Common ploys in Prague, for example, include one menu for Czechs, one (more expensive) menu for everyone else; menus without prices; little extras you never asked for that you might have thought were included in the meal, such as salads, potato dishes, pickles, even mustard and ketchup; 'secret' cover charges (often hidden away on the menu as a 'couvert'); and bad adding up. Prices for fish will be per 100g, so if you order a fish that weighs 400g you'll pay more. Budapest is also becoming notorious for restaurant rip-offs. Check the price of everything before you eat it. 5. 'That hotel has been bombed, sir'. India's favourite is the taxi driver's 'they just got off the plane and they're bound to be confused' scam. No matter what hotel you ask for, it will be full, closed or a terrorist target. Instead you will be taken to an expensive, nasty place a long way from anywhere, but where the driver gets paid a commission. Don't believe a word of it - demand to be taken to the hotel of your choice. Send us your Top 5 on anything, from the most amazing meals you've scoffed on your travels to the greatest surf beaches on earth, and we may publish it in an up-coming issue of Comet. The best ones will earn a free Lonely Planet guide. Email us at: comet@lonelyplanet.com.au *** THE GRILL This month we grill pop culture junkie Sean Condon, author of Sean & David's Long Drive and the up-coming Drive Thru America (published in April by Lonely Planet's travel literature series, Journeys) about the art of travel. COMET: What's the least useful foreign phrase you know? SEAN: 'Would you like to have sex with me?' said in any language to any woman (including my wife). COMET: What's the first thing you think of when you hear the words 'customs official'? SEAN: 'Why do you bastards always pull me aside and search every piece of my person and my luggage every time I come back to Australia? I am not some pot-smoking long-hair dressed in tie-dye and sandals returning from South-East Asia, or a swarthy type laden with heavy gold jewellery and a smirk. I am a nice, suburban boy who was not sweating a drop until you pointed your fat finger at me and told me to unzip my soul for your pathetic amusement.' COMET: If you were stuck overnight in a train station, what three things would you most want to have with you? SEAN: Cigarettes, some booze and a Sony Play station with Doom 2 in it. COMET: Which cliche about travel is true? SEAN: That it broadens the mind. It really does. However, I wish it were not the case. Before I left, I was always quite happy at home in Melbourne - now, I never can be again. Read an excerpt from Sean's last ripping yarn, 'Sean and David's Long Drive', at: http://www.lonelyplanet.com/journeys/rock/rock.htm *** SOAPBOX Travellers love a good argument almost us much as a great bargain. One of the hottest debates raging this month on the Thorn Tree, LP's on-line travellers' bulletin board, began inauspiciously enough with a post from Mary, which even she admitted later was 'lame', asking if it was possible to use an American coupon for a fast food chain in Europe. One week and 34 posts later, the discussion had meandered around McDonald's profitability in Spain, miniature villages in Orlando, the sumptuousness of cevapcici, fried dough delicacies from Hungary, regional dishes from the Canary Islands, Weiner Schnitzel von Trapp, The Third Man, conversing with plumbers, driving to Budapest, sailing down the Danube, the chances of finding vegetarian food in Poland, the benefits of being a librarian, Serbo-Croatian plurals and the impact of Muslim government on contemporary comparative linguistics. What will happen next? Find out at: http://www.lonelyplanet.com/thorntree/eur/aftt.htm *** Q&A We get some curly questions from travellers from time to time. Here's the pick of the bunch for this month. As the song says, 'I've left my heart in San Francisco', and a lot of travellers do. But they also leave them in Hong Kong, La Paz and Casablanca for that matter. Recently travellers who have left theirs in the land of the cherry blossom have posted these queries on the Thorn Tree: Joeri of Belgium writes: I'm going to Japan to visit my Japanese girlfriend. We are planning on staying together, but we don't know where yet (Japan or Belgium). It depends on the immigration rules and the working situation. Does anyone have information about marriage with a Japanese civilian? Is it easy to do, what's the paperwork like, can I find a job easily? I also want to know if it is hard to get a permanent visa or work if you are not married. And John writes: I will be getting married to a Japanese national in Japan next year while on a tourist visa. Can anyone tell me what happens next in terms changing my visa status and all the associated complications and headaches with immigration? Love sick travellers chasing information on visas for Japan should try the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs Visa Page: http://www.mofa.go.jp/visa/index.html. If you're single it takes several years of working at a stable job to get a permanent visa (ei-juu ken) - teaching at an English school for three months just won't cut the wasabe. Even with the visa, you'll need a special stamp from Japanese immigration if you plan to leave and re-enter the country. The spouse visais much easier to obtain, but the paperwork may still take several months to process. Got a question for your fellow travellers? http://www.lonelyplanet.com/thorn/thorn.htm *** YOU SAID IT Some of the latest UNVERIFIED reports from Lonely Planet travellers: Ghana Our recommendation to travellers is to frequent chop bars and dig into some banku or omo tuo - you'll meet more people and end up doing things you had not previously planned. Hey, where else would you get the opportunity to dig into fish head and earthworm soup? Carpe diem. (Laura Fairly and Mathius Kom, January 98) New Zealand My friend and I joined a two-day Llama Safari. We met at Harwood's Hole to be formally introduced to our llamas before trekking to Marble Mountain for a tranquil and enchanting five-hour walk through the bush. Our guide, Ora, regaled us with her knowledge, experience and stories about llamas while we 'bonded' with our chosen escorts. The llamas had very distinct, endearing personalities and proved to be gentle, serene creatures. Dalai Llama was the most imposing and dignified, with doe eyes and a nature to match. Pepy was attentive and dependable, with eyes like a tequila drinker and a habit of humming gently in your ear. (Humming is a trait of llamas, and sounds like the underwater sounds of whales.) (Alex C Cole, February 98) United States When in Washington DC, stop by the Traveller's Circle. It's a free travel story telling group that meets every Wednesday from 6.30 pm to around 10.30 pm (although you can show up or leave whenever you like). We meet at the Kabab House, opposite the Washington Hostel on K Street, between 11th and 12th Sts. It's the closest thing you'll find in DC to a Spalding Gray monologue. (www.killyourtv.com/travelcircle) (Mark, February 98) Take me to your reader. For more travel tips and stories from LP travellers: http://www.lonelyplanet.com/postcards.htm *** WHAT'S NEW ON THE LP WEB SITE Pour yourself a pina colada, pull up a banana lounge and let the sand run through your toes at our new Caribbean destinations, Martinique: http://www.lonelyplanet.com/dest/car/mar.htm and St Vincent & the Grenadines: http://www.lonelyplanet.com/dest/car/stv.htm Jeff Greenwald's hankering for the spiritual takes him to the bazaars of Kathmandu in Shopping for Buddhas: http://www.lonelyplanet.com/journeys/buddhas/buddha.htm Chew the fat in Central Asia or stamp your feet to the Goa beat. Find out which LP books are hot off the press this month: http://www.lonelyplanet.com/prop/newlist.htm#out Take a sneak peek at our up-coming guidebook releases: http://www.lonelyplanet.com/prop/newlist.htm#soon Lonely Planet products are available from bookshops around the world, or use our secure Web server to order on-line: http://www.lonelyplanet.com/prop/order.htm You can find Lonely Planet: On the web at: http://www.lonelyplanet.com On AOL (keyword: lp) And on Minitel (3615 lonelyplanet) *** TALK 2 US This is the first issue of Comet. Is it the greatest thing to happen to travellers since a broke Swiss soldier decided to hock his knife, or about as useful as a backpack full of wet matches? Let us know how we're doing: talk2us@lonelyplanet.com.au *** SUBSCRIBE & UNSUBSCRIBE Subscribing and unsubscribing to Comet is dead easy. Do it all from your desktop. To subscribe: http://www.lonelyplanet.com/comet To unsubscribe: http://www.lonelyplanet.com/comet/uncomet.htm Don't have web access? Send us an email at comet@lonelyplanet.com.au and we'll do it for you. Would you prefer us to send you all the latest travel news and features via your desktop once a month or your letterbox four times a year? If you're currently on the mailing list for Lonely Planet's quarterly printed newsletter, Planet Talk, but would prefer to receive Comet instead, let us know: comet@lonelyplanet.com.au COPYRIGHT All material in Planet Talk is copyright (c) 1998 Lonely Planet Publications. All rights reserved. Although we have tried to make the information in Comet as accurate as possible, the authors and publishers accept no responsibility for any loss, injury or inconvenience sustained by any person using this newsletter.
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