If you are planning to travel to Saudi Arabia in the coming months, then good news for getting around. Saudi Arabia's first low-cost airline Sama plans to start flights within months. Sama will begin serving Riyadh, Dammam and Jeddah, carrying frequent travellers and pilgrims. Another Saudi firm, National Air Services (NAS), said last year it would launch a low-cost airline and was negotiating with European plane maker Airbus to buy four A320s. NAS says it will also set up a USD$100 million luxury airline, Al Khayala, to fly between the capital Riyadh and the Red Sea city of Jeddah, but has not said when either airline will start.

A travel tip from Stanley in the US via Mac: it is a good idea to only take new dollar bills etc and then iron them (make sure iron is not too hot) so they will not be too winkled. Some countries will not take old or tattered bills. To my surprise I ran into this in Northern Thailand out in the boon docks.

Travel Facts

• Kazakhstan is the world's largest landlocked country.
• Sri Lanka has lowest divorce rate in the world – and the highest rate of female suicide.
• Australians have a huge 380,000 sq m of land per person – and yet 91% live in urban areas.
• Nearly a quarter of people in Monaco are over 65.
• Americans have the world's highest marriage rates, divorce rates, teenage pregnancies and one person households.
• There are three persons living per room in Pakistan.
• Elderly Dutch and Swedish are the most likely to live in old-age homes. Elderly Japanese are the most likely to live with their children.
• Andorra has no unemployment, which is just as well because they have no broadcast TV channels either.
• China has the most workers, so it's a good thing they've also got the most TV's.
• Indians go out to the movies 3 billion times a year.

Source: http://www.nationmaster.com

According to the Transportation Security Administration Air travellers in the United States will soon be allowed to carry small scissors and tools on planes, but will face more random security searches that focus more on detecting explosives at airports as part of an effort to thwart potential terrorists.

The new focus on random searches will include more additional screenings of passengers and their bags at security checkpoints. While in the past passengers have been selected for extra or “secondary” screening when they check in for their flight, that will be expanded to checkpoints as well. The secondary checks will be based on behaviour patterns and a random pattern selected by the screeners.

TSA screeners will also use a different pat-down procedure, to improve their ability to detect nonmetal weapons and explosive devices that may be carried on the body. Pat-down searches will now include the arms and legs. But oh, none of this is supposed to cause any major delays.

If you were thinking of going to work in Saudi, be aware of a “Saudi-isation” program that is edging foreign workers out of the country in favour of local people.

According to press reports late last year, the Saudi Labour Ministry has banned the renewal of work licenses of expatriate workers who reached 60 years of age and also banned the recruitment of foreigners aged over 60 years.

A belated entry to the e-newsletter; this was passed to me by Padmassana whilst the Beetle was working away in SE Asia.

Padmassana heard on the radio that a Thomsonfly a stewardess said she needed “eight fat people” to sit nearer the front because the captain of a half-full London-bound Thomsonfly flight was unhappy about the weight distribution and therefore the handling of his plane. Passenger Peter Harrison, who weighs 24-stone, said the request for people to move was made as the plane taxied to take off from Tenerife to Gatwick last Saturday. Mr Harrison added: The stewardess said there were too many passengers on the back of the plane and she needed eight fat people sat in rows 31 to 42 to sit near the front. Mr Harrison, a postman, was not in those rows but felt awkward. He said: “In the end eight people got up and shuffled forward before we took off.

Visitors to Asia and the Pacific should look out for the new SkyTeam Asia Pass that gives access to 61 cities in 21 countries through three major gateways: Guam, Seoul and Tokyo, on flights with Air France, Continental Airlines, KLM, Korean Air or Northwest Airlines. You need to buy 3 coupons, or a maximum of 8, in conjunction with an intercontinental round-trip ticket to the region on any SkyTeam of the 9 SkyTeam member airlines, at www. skyteam. com. Someone arriving from Europe, America or Africa could choose to visit Beijing, Seoul, Tokyo, Osaka, Taipei, Bangkok and Saigon for $2,310 (8 coupons), saving at least $4,000 on regular air fares.

Bear in mind, before you read this, that this news is reported by the China Travel Service.

“China is the main engine driving Asia-Pacific travel; and by 2020, China is expected to be the world’s No. 1 travel destination with an estimated 100 million tourists visiting every year. ”

A recent report in “Holiday Which?”, published by the British Consumers’ Association, found that the number of people who take “independent holidays” has now overtaken those booking the traditional package, predicting that 55 percent of overseas holidays in 2005 will have been arranged independently. Travellers are searching the internet and booking flights, cars and hotels on-line. In the travel industry, this is called “dynamic packaging”: travellers who build their own itineraries, or vacation packages.

Unsurprisingly, tour operators recognise this trend and have responded. For example, Flexibletrips. com, part of Thomas Cook, allows you to build exactly the sort of holiday you want by “bundling” flights, hotels, car rental and extras such as tours and transfers. British Airways plans to introduce a “shopping basket” feature on BA. com allowing travellers to book hotels, and other travel products, alongside flights.

The disadvantage to dynamic packaging is that you may not have financial protection if something goes wrong – (pay with a credit card, not a debit card) and it can be hard to compare like with like e. g. some packaged breaks may include airport transfers and a room upgrade, and of course, all this internet searching takes time.

A Chinese HR company has announced it would like its new staff to include plenty of “dogs”. To reflect this, in its recruitment ad, they invited only people born in the Year of the Dog to apply. The reason? A personnel manager for the company said, “We believe that people born in dog years are born with some good characteristics such as loyalty and honesty. ”

According to the Chinese zodiac, 2006 is the Year of the Dog. Were you born in the Year of the Dog? Those born in 1922, 1934, 1946, 1958, 1970, 1982 and 1994 were all born to this astrological sign.

Saturday 4th March 2006, 10. 30am – 4. 00pm at the newsroom The Guardian

60 Farringdon Rd

London EC1R 3GA

Cost: £89. 99 (inc VAT)

A day of two intensive workshops:

Travel Writing – How To Do It, and How Not To with Dea Birkett, Guardian columnist and author of Serpent in Paradise and Off the Beaten Track.

Fact, Fiction and Creating a Traveller’s Tale with Rory Maclean, author of Falling for Icarus and Stalin’s Nose.

The workshops include practical writing sessions. Participants should bring pen and paper – they will be expected to write! The emphasis is – whether you are a beginner or already have some writing experience – on developing skills which can be applied to both articles and books. Our aim is that, by the end of the day, each of you will have the tools to produce a publishable piece of travel writing.

Already done some travel writing? Contact travelworkshops@deabirkett. com for details of the Travel Writing Masterclass on Saturday March 18th 2006. Or book the Workshop and Masterclass together and save over £20.

To ensure UK travellers are fully prepared for your travels moving into 2006 please be aware that from 1st January 2006, UK residents travelling in Europe will require a European Health Insurance Card (EHIC). This will allow you to benefit from free or reduced-cost medical care when travelling in an EEA country or Switzerland.

The EHIC replaces the E111 and is free of charge. For further information on the introduction of the EHIC and on how to apply for an EHIC, see: www. dh. gov. uk/travellers

A tip from Mac’s friend, world traveller Stanley Sagara who travels around the world giving used glasses to the poor of the world (his next trip is to Ethiopia) gave me this travel tip: photocopy your travellers cheques as well as first page of your passport, drivers license, all your important papers. (This tip would be good even if not travelling. ) He suggests looking at back of papers to see if there is important information there as to how to get items replaced etc. and photocopy that side too so you know who issued cheques as well as who to notify in the event of loss or theft.

If you have a travellers tale that your aching to tell. Then why not visit the “Travel Sized Bites” section of the Website and share it with the world.

Travel Sized Bites

Thinking of visiting the Horn of Africa? You along with millions of others may go hungry.

The United Nations food agency (FAO) has warned that millions of people could face starvation in the Horn of Africa, which includes Kenya, Somalia, Ethiopia and Djibouti. The FAO say around 11 million need food aid.

Need help? Want a travelling buddy or advice about a place or country – want to share something with us – why not visit our Mutual Aid section of the Website:

Mutual Aid

Need to convert currency?

Take a look at The Globetrotters Currency Converter – get the exchange rates for 164 currencies The Globetrotters Currency Cheat Sheet – create and print a currency converter table for your next trip.

The Beetle read a touching account from the BBC News on-line about women in Afghanistan having freedoms but not being free to enjoy these. This is what it said: Girls can go to school, at least in the big cities like Herat and Kabul, and a fragile peace now exists in a war-torn country that has known only brutality and chaos since 1979. But some things, it seems, have not really changed at all.

Mamozai’s Ladies’ and Gentlemen’s Driving School was one of the first driving schools in Afghanistan to allow women to enrol. The Taleban thought the idea of teaching women how to drive was “satanic”, but Mr Mamozai’s school now has more than 200 female graduates.

Even so, the women are often told to “sit up like a man” by their male instructors as they navigate the precarious back-roads of Kabul, and to “stop driving like a woman. ”

But then that is hardly surprising. Most of the instructors are ex-Taleban and they do not really think women should drive at all. They certainly would not allow their own wives to drive

Kew Palace in south-west London once a royal palace that was once home to “mad” King George III is to open to the public after being shut for 10 years. The king used Kew as a place to convalesce during his bouts of mental illness, which are believed to have been caused by the hereditary disease porphyria.

From May 2006, visitors will be able to tour the palace, which is in the grounds of Kew’s famous Royal Botanic Gardens. The palace was a royal residence from 1728 to 1818, and in the early 19th Century was the home of King George III and Queen Charlotte.

The newly opened palace will show an exhibition of Georgian life, including literature, music, horticulture, architecture and astronomy. The second floor of the palace has never been seen before by the public, and has been hardly altered since it was decorated for the Georgian princesses in the early 19th Century.

After a series of quarrels with his wife, an Indian man left his home to live in a tree and has been there for the past 15 years. Kapila Pradhan, 45, a resident of Nagajhara village in the eastern Indian state of Orissa, now lives in a tree-house 7. 6m (25 feet) above the ground. “Sometimes the villagers feed him during festive occasions,” says a local resident Sukanta Dakua. Cyclones, rain and wild elephants and monkeys forced him to move to a tree closer to the edge of the forest, near a village.