Michael Rakower, an attorney in New York with long-standing wanderlust gave a talk on November 1st about his latest trip in which he and his wife (also a lawyer) left the comfortable confines of law jobs in exchange for a one-way ticket to Cape Town in March 2002. They bought a car, some camping equipment…

For information on Ontario meetings, please contact Svatka Hermanek: shermanek@schulich.yorku.ca or Bruce Weber: tel. 416-203-0911 or Paul Webb: tel. 416-694-8259. Meetings are held on the third Friday of January, March, May, September and November. Usually at the Woodsworth Co-op, Penthouse, 133, Wilton Street in downtown Toronto at 8.00 p.m.

Globetrotters meeting on Saturday November 8th. If you like independent, adventuresome, fun, daring, exciting, “off the beaten path” travel, this club is for you. Our meeting begins at 2 P.M. Come early so you won’t be late! Enjoy handouts, travel talk time, and door prizes! Date of future meetings: Saturday January 10th 2004 Mark your…

A big thank you for all your comments and thoughts sent to the Beetle. We had two votes for visiting Burma and one against visiting. What do you think? London based Globetrotters member Steve wrote in to ask people not to go to Burma and this is why: Dear Beetle, I totally concur with Daw…

Busby tells us some brief travel facts about Phnom Penh, Siem Reap and Cambodia in general from her recent trip there. She says: “Phnom Penh is not a very safe place after the sunset. The staple diet of rice, chicken and the greens is a bit of a joke. The ‘green bits’ are often boiled…

Richard Mowll is a civil engineer from Croydon, who travelled to Western Uzbekistan in January 2002 with MSF to rehabilitate a 600 patient TB dispensary. He then went on to prepare a 100 bed facility for multi-drug resistant (MDR-TB) patients, where he was Project Co-ordinator of the 16 Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) staff programme. “The…

Becky is a volunteer worker for Trade Aid and is working in Mikindani, Southern Tanzania. This story is a true account of how she experienced a narrow escape and could have been seriously injured in a bus accident travelling from Dar-es-Salaam to Mtwara in southern Tanzania – be warned! The bus looked typically African; old,…

Rank Country Area (square kilometers) Russia (17,075,400) Canada (9,976,140) United States (9,629,091) China (9,596,960) Brazil (8,511,965) Australia (7,686,850) India (3,287,590) Argentina (2,776,890) Kazakhstan (2,717,306) Sudan (2,505,810)

The Globetrotters e-newsletter has been following the case of Amina Lawal, the Nigerian woman who was convicted and sentenced to death by stoning in March 2002 after giving birth to a baby girl more than nine months after divorcing. We are pleased to say that she has had her death sentenced reversed. The 31-year-old, has…

Dear Reader Please let me introduce my country, Indonesia to you. I am a native born Indonesian and have lived here all my life. My life is very simple: I live in the suburbs, in a small village, Makassar, in South Sulawesi. I am working in tourism. My parents work as subsistence farmers. I would…