08
Throughout Bangladesh in June, five days of the heaviest rains in years brought flash floods and landslides that left 100 people dead and 250,000 stranded. The monsoon rains are affecting regions northwest of the capital, Dhaka; the coastal city of Chittagong and surrounding areas, and areas bordering India and Myanmar.
Patricia Schultz, author of “1,000 Places to See Before You Die,” has created a great app based on and named after her best-selling book.
On a trip to Europe, I saw a traveler enter the date on a traveler’s check using the American system (writing the month first, followed by the date and year) instead of the European convention of date first, then month, then year. Nobody would accept it!
The best practice is to write the date and then the name of the month (not a number) and then the year, since this is acceptable under any system.
MARK SEGAL
Here’s some advice based on the experiences a friend and I had while traveling with a guide and driver in Burkina Faso, Benin and Togo, Jan. 1-18, 2012.
Of the three border crossings between Israel and Jordan, the southern crossing, located in the desert between Eilat, Israel, and Aqaba, Jordan, is generally regarded as the quickest and easiest. It’s known in Israel as the Yitzhak Rabin Terminal and in Jordan as the Wadi Araba (previously Arava) crossing.
If you are visiting both Israel and southern Jordan (e.g., Petra), it is highly recommended that you cross the border there instead of at the far busier and more daunting Allenby (Israeli name)/King Hussein Bridge (Jordanian name) crossing located between Jerusalem and Amman.
I wrote about amenities at Schiphol Amsterdam Airport (AMS) a few years ago (June ’08, pg. 61). In April-May 2012, I passed through Schiphol four times in the space of three weeks and each time found it more interesting.
AMS is well organized, and signs in English aid you in reaching your destination. It may take 20 minutes or more to reach your gate, even with the moving walkways, but that’s not unusual at a large airport.
by Regine Schumacher; Seal Beach, CA
REPORT ON NORTH KOREA
You don’t know till you go.
Dear Globetrotter:
Welcome to the 438th issue of your monthly foreign-travel magazine, the one you help write.
I’ve got lots to report this month.
Tanks for the memories.... When 19th-century Europeans began developing Invercargill, South Island, New Zealand, they faced the problem of supplying water to the new settlement. The area around Invercargill is very flat, so they couldn’t rely on a gravity-fed system. The solution is the subject of the June 2012 photo: the Invercargill Water Tower.