I took a group of my college students on the 9-day/7-night “Braveheart” tour of Scotland with Passports Educational Travel Institute (389 Main St., Spencer, MA 01562-1908; phone 508/885-4600), visiting Edinburgh, the Highlands and Glasgow. The $2,300 price (May ’04) included airfare on USAir from Denver, 3-star hotel accommodations, daily breakfast and dinner, transfers, tour and admission fees and travel insurance.
by Michael Kasum; Gulfport, FL
The Immigration official handed our passports back to my wife, Pat, and me with the visas for the Lao People’s Democratic Republic, issued on arrival, pasted inside.
I spent two weeks in Burkina Faso, Benin and Togo, Jan. 1-18, 2012, on a trip arranged by Fulani Travel, a British company with an office in New York City. There was one other tour member besides me.
I first contacted Fulani Travel in January 2011. At a price of €2,775 (near $3,439), single occupancy, the trip included transport, hotels, breakfasts, services of a guide and driver, tips to local guides, road tolls and entrance fees.
I made airline reservations with Expedia.com in December 2011 to visit family in Belarus. The flight itinerary I chose had me departing Dec. 20 on Delta Air Lines from Cincinnati for New York (JFK Airport), where I was to connect with Aeroflot and continue to Minsk, Belarus, via Moscow, Russia. The reverse trip would be made on Dec. 28.
Going through passport control and Customs when reentering the United States can involve long lines — not our favorite way to end a wonderful trip. Recently, my husband and I eliminated the need to stand in those long lines. Interested?
Dear Globetrotter:
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.
On Jan. 21, 2004, Burma (Myanmar) began offering online visas, one of the few countries in the world to do so. Visit www.visa.gov.mm. There are instructions in English. Most applications are approved and returned via e-mail within 24 hours. Travelers show a printout and pay the fee once they reach Burma.
I visited the US Consulate in Buenos Aires in May ’12 to get additional pages for my US passport, but I was told that no more pages could be added, as this would be the third time and pages can be added only twice.
My passport doesn’t expire until mid February 2015. My options were to get a shiny new passport for a mere $110 or an emergency passport, good for 12 months, for $100. Additional pages would have cost only $82.
I asked, “Why should I have to toss a passport 33 months before it expires? It contains visas that expire when the passport expires.”
The visa fee for American citizens wishing to travel to Turkey was reduced on April 1, 2004, to $20, down 80% from its previous cost of $100.