International Travel News

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May 2007 issue | Appears on page 0

Road signs in Japan

In the article “Traveling Solo in Tokyo” (Jan. ’07, pg. 46), the author states, “As you get farther outside of Tokyo, the signs all switch from Romaji to Japanese characters.”

I have skied in Japan every February for the last five years, renting a car and driving around back roads in Hokkaido, Niigata, Nagano and Iwate prefectures. I travel alone and can neither read nor speak Japanese. All of the road signs I have seen, even in very small towns, have been in Japanese and English. I...

May 2007 issue | Appears on page 0

Scouting out a flight Georgetown-Paramaribo

My wife and I have traveled to much of the world, but what stumped us was how to go by air from Georgetown, Guyana, to Paramaribo, Suriname. When we plugged the flight into the usual search engines, no answers appeared. Somehow we knew that an airline called META existed and flew, or once did fly, to that destination, but we couldn’t find it online.

We purchased BWIA tickets for a January ’07 round-trip flight, Miami-Trinidad-Georgetown, at a cost of $522 each. (On Jan. 1, 2007, BWIA...

May 2007 issue | Appears on page 0

‘Secret’ London gallery

One of my favorite London museums is the Guildhall Art Gallery (Gresham St., Guildhall Yard, London, EC2P 2EJ, U.K.; phone 020 7332 3700 or fax 020 7332 3342). This gallery is one of the best-kept secrets in London. I discovered the Guildhall while reading a newspaper article on the tube!

The original art gallery opened in 1885, but the modern building opened in 1999. The collection includes statues and busts of famous Britons, including a 2001 Neil Simmons statue of Margaret Thatcher...

May 2007 issue | Appears on page 0

Frequent-flyer-miles Catch 22

An impossible situation occurred in September ’06 while I was booking a February ’07 air trip. My wife, Tina, and I would fly Delta from New York to Amsterdam, then take KLM Royal Dutch Airlines to Hong Kong, take a cruise, then fly out of Bangkok to Amsterdam and back to New York.

After much difficulty, we were able to hold two business-class tickets through Delta’s SkyMile program using KLM. However, we were short 78,000 frequent-flyer miles, so we wished to transfer 78,000...

May 2007 issue | Appears on page 0

Needed more info than website had

With quality tour guides, land arrangements and itineraries plus value pricing and intensive mail solicitation, it comes as no surprise that Vantage Deluxe World Travel is enjoying popularity.

We took our second trip with Vantage, duplicating the 11-day tour of Iceland described by an ITN reader (June ’05, pg. 73) plus adding a 2-day Greenland extension and were impressed with the quality of our August ’06 tour. . . once we got there. We were much less impressed with their Customer...

May 2007 issue | Appears on page 0

Phone rates as posted

I purchased a Mobal Communications phone to use on a trip to the Middle East, March 11-April 17, 2006. We started in Jordan and went on a ship through the Red Sea, the Suez Canal and the Mediterranean.

When I got my bill, I noticed that some of the calls from the middle of the trip, around Egypt and the Mediterranean, cost over $5 a minute — the price we normally complain about when we call from hotel rooms overseas.

One of the calls actually appeared as having been made in...

May 2007 issue | Appears on page 0

Mobal ‘the best buy’

I was looking for an international cell phone to rent for my summer 2006 trip to Romania and the prices were outrageous. After a lot of research to find the best buy, I discovered Mobal Communications’ GSM world phone (New York, NY; 888/888-9162 or www.mobal.com).

There’s one flat fee of just $49, there are no monthly charges and you OWN the cell phone. You can keep it in your desk drawer until your next international trip, and you pay only for the actual time you spend on the phone...

May 2007 issue | Appears on page 0

Jungle adventures in Belize

I traveled to Belize in December of 2006 for an exciting 8-night “Jungle Safari Package” booked through Belize Jungle Dome (Mile 47, Western Highway, Banana Bank, Belmopan, Cayo District, Belize; phone +501 822-2124, fax +501 822-2155 or visit www.belizejungledome.com).

When making inquiries several months earlier, I received immediate e-mail responses from Karen Turner, the manager, whereas most other jungle lodges did not bother ever e-mailing me back.

The total cost of this...