Hallowe'en in Hong Kong
holidays, while World Expeditions (0208 870 2600) Will take you further off the beaten track With a range of treks and cycling tours.
BACKGROUND INFO
The web can be a valuable source of info, especially roughguides.com and lonelyplanet.com. Other sites worth a Visit are the fact-filled chinatour.com and chinavista.com which can be slow to load but features Virtual tours, lanqiiaqe tips and even reopes.
SPECIAL EVENTS
If you’re planning on travelling next year, there are various festivals you might want to c0incide with. Hong Kong Arts Festival (7 Feb 1 1 Mar) features China National Ballet, RSC and Los Angeles Opera as well as traditional artists. The Lantern Festival (8 Feb) in Xi'an sees hundreds of lanterns used to decorate the ancient city walls. Zengzhou Shaolin Martial Arts Festival (Sep) celebrates kunq fu, while Confucius' Birthday (28 Sep) is Celebrated With a festival in his home town, Qufu, centred on the Confucius Temple.
I For further details contact the Chinese Tourist Promotion Offices, 4 Glentwortn Street, London, NW], 0207 935 9787.
travel@list.co.uk
; CEREMONY o AGING (62 winners:
Phil in real life tie
scorpions. I wonder if it is easy to spot a duff scorpion. They don‘t have them at Spar or Mace.
Most fabulously I end up at the opening of a Belgian packaging factory. I stand next to the Belgian or Flanders minister of finance and shake hands with people in my first real-life tie in thirteen years.
They all come from here. and there are four lanes of traffic everywhere. well not really lattes more of a guiding. suggestive framework for you to experiment around in route creations. And it is fantastic and free and flowing and un-Chinese. Everyone has got together and agreed not to be able to upset another driver and always be on the look out for every move everyone else makes and pedestrians. You don‘t cross the road. you enter the river of the machine. The people see you. they stop and everyone else stops. buses. lorries. you just trust them and they feed off your decision. your definite nature. Zebra crossings are a tiny strip of this. Imagine it is all zebra.
I shall never forget my day at the Park of Space Flight Wonders. the wooden Space Shuttle replica and those missiles are the best I have ever seen. or the dentists that open onto the street. or the VIP Massage. the world’s biggest Buddha or the evening on the island of Cheng Chao eating lobster and fresh fish and watching Bruce Lee fight Chuck Norris in a movie with the waitress and laughing at his animal squeals.
Excess baggage
Festivals, flights and fabulous fares
THOSE OF YOU who were pleased to read last issue that easyJet will soon be flying direct from Edinburgh to Amsterdam, Belfast and Nice will be disappointed to learn that we weren't strictly accurate. The Amsterdam service does kick off on 5 January, but the Belfast and Nice routes are direct from Amsterdam, not Edinburgh. Sorry, folks. Full details of all real flights are on www.easyjet.co.uk
IF YOU’RE TRAVFLI INC) to Australia, Southern Africa or Thailand, Vietnam, laos and Cambodia, your Vital companion Will be Lonely Planet's new Road Atlases Each atlas has been cross- referenced With its gtiidebooks and features spec ial interest maps of towns, national parks and so on, as well as at-a-qlance route distance and climate charts. {899, available from December.
GLASGOW IS GETTING ever more tourist- friendly as, hot on the
TRAVEL
heels of Lang's Hotel, is a development at the other end of the market, the Glasgow Euro Hostel. Situated at the corner of Clyde Street and Jamaica Street, the hotel is aimed at travellers on a tight budget, with 8&8 available at £13.75 per person. Rooms vary from two to four-bedded and dorms. For info call 0141 222 2829, or check out www.eurohostels.com (though it was still under construction last time we checked).
SEE THE SPF( TACULAR Northern lights With a special offer from STA Travel It's teamed up With ScaiidiiiaViari Airlines to offer a {93 return law from lonclon to Stockholm, valid until 30 June and must
inc lude a Saturday lll()lII stay Details on wwwstatravel com or call 020 7.361 614‘)
LATIN AMERICA COULD be within your reach if you're a student or aged under 26. Usit Campus Travel is currently offering discount return fares including Mexico from £369 inc tax to Rio from £337 inc tax. Further details of offers on www.usitcampus.co.uk or call 0870 240 1010.
TRAVEL NON—FICTION
Craig Nelson
Let's Get Lost (Headline £6.99) t air it
From the list of destinations Nelson has
visited you would expect
him to be some young, super-fit backpacking type, but by his own admission, he is just an average over-weight middle-aged American. And what a list of destinations it is, taking
in everywhere from China, travelling in the only foreign tour group in the whole country after the events of Tiananmen Square, to his own favourite; a face to face meeting with wild
gorillas in Uganda.
The stories are generally humorous, but in places also poignant as he relates them with real empathy and wonder. The man has seen some amazing sights but perhaps he's seen too many for a book of this length. At times, it feels like just a list of events without any real insight.
That said, when you put this down you certainly feel inspired to get off your backside and get out there yourself, because if a fat, balding heavy smoker can survive the Amazon, surely we all can. (Henry Northmore)
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