Travelers' Intercom

The June ’09 “Departure Lounge” mentioned Magellan’s Retriever Tags. My husband and I have used them on our luggage for years. Fortunately, we have never had to put them to the test. On the other hand, we have taken advantage of the excellent service of Magellan’s (800/962-4943, www.magellans.com).

In 2007 one of our tags got chewed up by an airport conveyor belt. I called Magellan’s to reorder a pair of tags, and when I explained why I was reordering they offered to replace the tags free of charge, saying I was a good and loyal customer. Their catalog does mention their 100%...

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I went on a birding trip to China called “Birds and Culture,” April 16-May 1, 2011, with Victor Emanuel Nature Tours, or VENT (Austin, TX; 800/328-8368). The land price was $7,175 per person, all inclusive.

Our tour included the crane migration at Xianghai Nature Reserve in Baicheng, Inner Mongolia, as well as reserves at Tumuge (wetlands) and Momoge (grasslands).

During our visit to Baicheng, April 26-29, I was very impressed with our birding guide, Li Xiao Ping. He is an excellent birder and knew where to find the cranes (hundreds of them!) and the great bustard.

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On a September trip to Australia, we went on two tours from Tangalooma Island Resort (Box 1102, Eagle Farm, QLD 4009, Australia; phone +61 7 3637 2118, fax 3268 6299, www.tangalooma.com), on Moreton Island off of Brisbane.

I wish I would have planned for additional days to relax in this peaceful place. The resort had many restaurants plus kids’ programs and many activities for adults, such as sand tobogganing, ATV tours, beach cricket, bird-watching tours, surf skiing, jet ski tours, parasailing, helicopter rides, a dugong cruise, snorkeling the wrecks, scuba diving and much more...

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I read with interest the subscriber’s article “Cruising Ukraine’s Dnieper River” (May ’11, pg. 48), regarding her experience with Viking River Cruises. My now-deceased wife, Lois, and I cruised the Dnieper in May ’09 aboard Unique World Cruises’ M/V Dnieper Star.

The passengers on our ship were mostly German and Russian. The ship was great, we saw and experienced most of what was described in the article, and the stops were as good as the writer described, but I felt obliged to expand on a single, rather understated comment: “This was the first time we began to understand that in...

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My wife, Arlene, and I went to Frankfurt, Germany, for the Christmas markets and were surprised to find a paucity of hotels in Old Town.

• After searching the Internet, we found the small, family-owned Hotel am Dom (Kannengiessergasse 3, 60311 Frankfurt am Main; phone 0 69 138203 0), which we can recommend.

It’s adjacent to the Dom Saint Bartholomew cathedral, in the heart of Old Town, within five to 10 minutes’ walk of the three Christmas markets at the Römerburg, Paulsplatz and Mainkai. It’s also near the Zeil (Frankfurt’s famous shopping street), various museums and the...

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On a visit to Paris, Sept. 21-29, 2010, several times my wife and I had problems getting Métro tickets at the smaller stations that had only one agent, who seemed only to supply information and did not dispense tickets anymore.

He’d tell us to use the automated machine, which only took chip-and-PIN cards or coinage. Some machines did take paper money, but it was hard to tell which were which.

We always tried to get a carnet of 10 tickets at a time to avoid having to repeatedly depend on the machines.

Using our debit card in an ATM machine to get cash was never a...

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New Zealand’s South Island has it all: alps, glaciers, rainforests, sandy beaches and swinging bridges, just to mention a few. And an excellent way to see it all is with Jan King’s New Zealand Travellers (169 Cable Bay Road, RD1, Nelson 7071, N.Z.; phone [64] 3 545 2546), an advertiser in ITN.

I had done this itinerary in ’97 with the previous owner of New Zealand Travellers and was so taken by the experience that I decided to do it one more time while this 72-year-body could still get around reasonably well. So on Jan. 5, 2011, I boarded Holland America Line...

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I spent three weeks with a group in Hanoi, Vietnam, starting Nov. 3, 2008. Some of us frequently took a cab between our hotel and the Old Town shopping center. Usually the cab cost around 45,000 dong (near $2.50).

One time we took a cab back to the hotel and the meter showed 91,000 dong ($5). Obviously, a crooked meter! We refused to pay, settling for, I think, 50,000 dong.

Be aware!

VAUGHAN PARKER

Santa Barbara, CA