Chapter 4:
Planning your vacation

• Weather
• Africa
• Asia and The Pacific
  • Japan

• China
• India
• Tibet
• Indonesia
• Iran/Iraq

• Central and South America
• Europe
• North America
• Russia and neighbouring countries

"The onset of the holiday season and the continuation of bad economic conditions in Nigeria increase the incidence of automobile checkpoints by persons wearing police or military uniforms. Many of these checkpoints are not sanctioned by the government, but are improvised, usually in darkness, by bands of police, soldiers, or bandits posing as or operating with police or soldiers. The purpose of these unauthorized checkpoints generally is to extort cash. The best defense against unauthorized checkpoint shakedowns is to avoid night travel, and act cautiously at all times. Checkpoint personnel should be considered armed and could be dangerous."

Compare with reports from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in London to balance off the U.S. viewpoints.
The Central Intelligence Agency-produced World Factbook provides facts on geography, people, government, economy, communications and defense of countries around the world. You may also want to consult http://www.state.gov/www/background_notes/index.html.
If you feel like making plans in real detail, why not start with subway trips? The Subway Navigator lets you find a route in subway networks in several cities around the world. The choices include Vienna, Montreal, Santiago de Chile, Prague Helsinki, Paris, Berlin, Frankfurt, Athens, Hong Kong, Calcutta, Budapest, Milano, Tokyo, Mexico City, Amsterdam, Madrid, Barcelona, Stockholm, Kiev, London, New York City, Miami, San Francisco, Washington D.C., and many more.
The Internet Atlas and Timezone Server lets you search for a destination city anywhere in the world to find the current time and date there. Compare with your local time to find the difference, and tell relatives left behind. The Time Zone Page gives the local time in a city, or a lists of cities around the world.
Have you ever arrived home feeling as though you had been on a whirlwind tour of too-touristy sites? A tour bus approach may be the only way to get it "all in" during a couple of day's time, but who said you had to see it all anyway?
The best way to learn about the place you want to visit is to have a local guide or a fellow traveler familiar with the territory. Someone who can direct you to the sights that bus passes and tourbooks overlook. Therefore, check out the online conferences and their file libraries also.
If you want information about indigenous, native, or aboriginal people, culture, and issues throughout the world, check out The Center For World Indigenous Studies and The Fourth World Documentation Project.
Don't forget the Travel health site, and do check live cameras around the world for some fun. There, you can travel to Antarctica, Rio de Janeiro or Hawaii without leaving your airmchair.

Detailed planning

Trip.com lets you effortlessly check flights and costs for your flight from say Kristiansand in Norway to Stockholm in Sweden, or anywhere else. No registration required. It also offers FlightTracker, which will help you check on the estimated time of arrival of flights.
Eaasy SABRE - the American Airlines reservation system - provides air fares, hotel accommodations, car rental rates in your local currency. You can make reservations, and purchase tickets online.
TravelWeb links the reservation systems of twenty of the largest hotel chains with those of the world's airlines.
For distances between cities around the world, their populations, elevation, latitude/longitude, try http://www.indo.com/distance/. Learn that a bird flying from Lima, Peru to Oslo, Norway must travel over 11,024 kilometers (6850 miles), unless it has a pretty good built-in compass. ;-)
Finally, before going there, don't forget to adjust your clock. Check Verdensuret for local time around the world just now.

Weather

My current favorite is The Weatherhub. It even gives weather in my small town, Arendal in Norway. CNN provides four day weather forecast for over 3.600 cities worldwide .
If you want to check up the weather on the British Isles, or plan to travel around, check http://www.uktravel.com/. Today's weather map is at http://src.doc.ic.ac.uk/public/weather/images/uk/.
More links:

• European weather forecasts
• INTELLiCast
• aAccuWeather
• The Weather Channel

Africa

Africanet covers all 56 countries of the African continent with information on such subjects as visa requirements, climate, airlines, transport, currency.
The African Studies Program) at the University of Pennsylvania (USA) is a particularly rich offering of African news and information.
EGYPT-NET has Egypt related discussion boards in several languages. Egypt's Regional Information & Communication Network offers country profiles for Algeria, Egypt, Morocco, Syria, and Tunisia, and information about economy, geography, communication, research, government, people. While visiting, take a look at Collection of Arabic and Islamic manuscripts, Treasures of the Egyptian Museum, and Tut the King.
For information on Ethiopia, check the soc.culture.ethiopia.misc and soc.culture.ethiopia.moderated newsgroups.
Nigeria On the Net caters to the Nigerian community and her friends, and brings Nigerian affairs from a Nigerian perspective.
If you plan a safari in Zimbabwe, Zambia, Botswana, Namibia, Malawi, Tanzania, Uganda, and Kenya, check out these South African offerings:

http://www.exinet.co.za/travel/travel.html
http://www.africa.com/~venture/

The NYASANET mailing list is for Malawians and others interested in things Malawian.
The Cape Town page is at http://www.aztec.co.za/aztec/capetown.html, and for more South African tourism information, check out this Web address: http://www.africa.com/captour/.
The African National Congress (ANC) gopher has information about South African history, policy documents, and press statements. A summary of South African demographics by region is on http://www.exinet.co.za/sa_regn.html.

On Usenet, check out

soc.culture.african	Discussions about Africa & things African.
soc.culture.maghreb	North African society and culture.
soc.culture.nigeria	About Nigeria
soc.culture.arabic	Technological & cultural issues, *not* politics.
soc.culture.somalia	News from Somalia.
soc.culture.berber

There are many South African newsgroups under the za hierarchy, like:

za.culture.xhosa	For discussions of Xhosa language and culture. (Ingxoxo ngolwini, amasiko nezithete zakwaXhosa.)
za.events	Conferences, events and happenings nationally
za.misc	General chat, comments, announcements etc
za.net.misc	Miscellaneous ramblings on networking in ZA
za.sport	Finer points of jukskei or the Comrades marathon

The za hierarchy is also distributed outside South Africa.
You may also find things of interest in soc.culture.misc (discussion about other cultures), and soc.culture.native (Aboriginal people around the world.) Also, it may useful to search or monitor Usenet more broadly for African country specific information using Reference.COM (see Chapter 11).

Asia and The Pacific

The Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA) provides destination and travel info about 41 member nations through links to their tourist offices.
The soc.culture hierarchy on Usenet has area codes like afghanistan, asian, arabic, asean, australian, bangladesh, china, filipino, hongkong, indonesia, israel, iranian, jewish, korean, laos, lebanon, malaysia, nepal, new-zealand, pakistan, singapore, sri-lanka, taiwan, thai, turkish, and vietnamese. The alt.taiwan.republic is a variant of soc.culture.taiwan, only different.
The Arab Countries' Sites page is also worth a visit. It offers information on Dubai, United Arab Emirates, Middle Eastern and African countries, Islam, and Arabic newspapers. The Saudi Arabian Information Resource page provides news, issues, and country information and links from the country's Ministry of Information, and arab.net offers links to Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Morocco, Oman, Qatar, Saudi, Arabia Syria, Tunisia, UAE, and Yemen.
For information about Singapore, check the Singapore Online Guide, and the Singapore Info-Map.
Heading for Australia? Why not check the Australian Back Packers Guide? For information about Phuket, Thailand, try http://www.phuket.net/. DooDeeDee - "The search engine just for Thailand" - and Kanachanapisek are also worth a visit.
The South Pacific Organizer offers information on American Samoa, Cook Islands, Fiji, New Caledonia, Niue, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tahiti-Polynesia, Tonga, Tuvalu, and Vanuatu.
For links and information on exciting Papua New Guinea, visit http://coombs.anu.edu.au/SpecialProj/PNG/WWWVL-PNG.html, and don't forget Mongolia. It's an interesting place to visit for horse riding, swimming, trekking, birdwatching, climbing, rafting, and more.
For an online journal for the study and exhibition of the arts of Asia, visit http://www.asianart.com.

Japan

Sushi, geishas, green tea, bullet trains, and sumo wrestlers. If this is your first visit to Japan, consider learning about the territory through TWICS in Tokyo. It used to present itself like this:

"Japan is an island nation, full of communities in villages, towns, and cities squeezed in between the mountains and the sea, with ports of various sizes and shapes through which communication flows between communities.
Our own online community is organized in the same terms, an island community "BEEJIMA" (Bee Island), with our village ("MURA"), a port ("MINATO"), and our very own volcanic mountain ("YAMA").
In the village, there is a village office ("YAKUBA"), a community meeting place ("YORIAI"), a high-tech corner ("AKIHABARA") named after the famous electronics district in Tokyo, a health center ("EMEDICA"), a place to hang around and read things ("HON YA"), a school ("GAKKOU"), and a market ("ICHIBA"). The port has holding areas and leads to other parts of Japan ("NIPPON") and the world ("SEKAI"). The mountain has a hot springs ("ONSEN") recreational area, and a lively outdoor bath ("IN THE OFURO") which has become the social center of our island.

Add soc.culture.japan on Usenet.
If this is your first visit, see http://www.gol.com/jguide/jinfo.html before you go. Then, visit gopher://gan.ncc.go.jp/11/JAPAN for information on Japan's culture, diplomacy, economy, events, food, geography, government, history, cultural history, society, and more.
If very determined, try sci.lang.japan, a forum for discussion of the Japanese language.
Japan's Sumo Association home page offers video images of matches from the six grand sumo tournaments held each year, wrestler profiles and interviews, a database of previous matches, and information about how to buy tickets.
The world famous Kyoto National Museum offers comprehensive images of works. Opera Japonica is about opera in Japan, and contains performance calendar, reviews, interviews, performance histories and international reports.

China

There is a map of China at http://www.cnd.org:8014/Other/china.jpg, and regional information at http://www.ihep.ac.cn/tour/china_tour.html with details about Anhui, Beijing, Fujian, Gansu, Guangdong, Guangxi, Guizhou, Hainan, Hebei, Heilongjiang, Hubei, Henan, Hunan, Inner Mongolia (Nei Monggu), Jiangsu, Jiangxi, Jilin, Liaoning, Ningxia, Qinghai, Shandong, Shanghai, Shan1xi1, Shan3xi1, Sichuan, Tianjin, Tibet (Xizang), Xinjiang, Yunnan, and Zhejiang.
The CND InfoBase offers many high-resolution scenery pictures of China. The Chinese Community Information Center claims the world largest collection of Chinese magazines and newsletters in computer file form, as well as Chinese texts, ranging from Confucius classics to Wang Shuo's fictions.

India

Traveller Sergio Paoli in Argentina maintains what is possibly the largest collection of links to India related information on the Internet .
The India Network and Research Foundation (USA) offers detailed information about India, such as tourism (including customs & baggage rules, clickable map, and images), major news headlines, culture and fine arts, film music, recipes, sports which include hockey, cricket and tennis.
It has links to Embassy of India in Washington, DC (USA) resources, other Research Resources on India, and several digests (on News, News and Discussion, Personal Network, Telugu, Faculty).
India Online has information about travel related services and places of interest . Their travel guide has tips, things to do, places to visit, means to travel etc. It also has information about Indian food, including listings of Indian Restaurants around the world, recipes, etc.
A travel agent survey is posted monthly on many Indian related soc.culture groups.
There are many India-related newsgroups, including:

alt.culture.karnataka	Culture and language of the Indian state   of Karnataka.
alt.culture.kerala
misc.news.southasia	News from Bangladesh, India, Nepal, etc
rec.music.indian.classical	Hindustani and Carnatic Indian classical music.
rec.music.indian.misc	Discussing Indian music in general.
rec.travel.asia	Traveling in Asia.
soc.culture.indian	Group for discussion about India & things Indian.
soc.culture.indian.info	Info group for soc.culture.indian, etc.
soc.culture.indian.telugu	The culture of the Telugu people of India.
soc.culture.tamil
soc.culture.punjab
soc.culture.indian.kerala
soc.culture.bengali
soc.culture.indian.marathi

There are several mailing lists, including:

INDIA-D	Discussion on the affairs of the Indian subcontinent, and issues facing Indians living abroad.
FROI-L	Friends of India.

Tibet

The TIBET-L mailing list is about Tibet and the Tibetan people. The Tibet Information Network provides background information on Tibet including a glossary of Tibetan and Chinese terms, population statistics, administrative terms and a bibliography.

Indonesia

The Indoz-net (INdonesia-OZtralia-NETwork) mailing list deals with anything about Indonesia . For Bali, check http://www.bali-paradise.com/.

Iran/Iraq

The Tehran Archive distributes materials related to Iran and to Persian culture. Also, check out FarsiNet for links to interesting Persian Web sites. Arabnet's page of Iraq also has links to other Iraq-oriented web pages.

Central and South America

If you understand Spanish and are intrigued by the old Maya indians, try El Mundo de la Cultura Maya. For Buenos Aires, tango, and Argentina, visit Liveargentina.com.

On Usenet, check out

soc.culture.latin-america	Topics about Latin-America.
soc.culture.argentina	All about life in Argentina.
soc.culture.brazil	Talking about the people and country of Brazil.
soc.culture.chile	All about Chile and its people.
soc.culture.mexican	Discussion of Mexico's society.
soc.culture.peru	All about the people of Peru.
soc.culture.uruguay	Discussions of Uruguay for those at home and abroad.
soc.culture.venezuela	Discussion of topics related to Venezuela.

Europe

Usenet has

alt.culture.austrian	You'll find more Austrians in soc.culture.austria.
soc.culture.austria	Austria and its people.
soc.culture.french	French culture, history, and related discussions.
soc.culture.netherlands	People from the Netherlands and Belgium. (The newsgroup's FAQ file is interesting.)
soc.culture.portuguese	Discussion of the people of Portugal.
soc.culture.spain	Spain and the Spanish.
alt.comedy.british	Discussion of British comedy in a variety of media.
alt.fan.british-accent	"Oooh, he just sounds soooo cool! *Giggle*"
alt.politics.british	Politics and a real Queen, too.

The soc.culture hierarchy has area codes like british, celtic, europe, german, greek, italian, magyar, nordic, polish, soviet, and yugoslavia.
The United Hostels of Europe page has a selection of youth hostels for the budget traveller . Europrail International sells European Rail passes, like Eurailpass, Europass, Eurostar, BritRail pass, and individual country passes.
The UK Theatre Web lists amateur and professional theatre, opera and dance throughout England. OfficialLondonTheatre claims to be "The most complete and up to date guide available to what's on where in the West End, compiled by the Society of London Theatre." The British Tourist Authority", AboutBritain, and The UK travel and tourist guide may also give you interesting leads.
The UK Mapping Service lets you get a detailed map of an area just by entering the name of a British city, town or village, street name or postcode. Zoom in on any part of the map, print, and go! Laterooms lists last-minute discounts on hotel accommodation, covering both chain and individual properties ranging from two- to five-star hotels.
Servicom is a gateway into Spain's culture and offerings, and in particular if you can read Spanish or Catalan.
French jazz is about jazz festivals, jazz TV and radio programs, jazz music awards, jazz magazines, jazz clubs and concerts throughout France. Information in English and French. Also, check The French Foreign Office' advice to travellers. For a virtual visit to Paris, try http://www.cnam.fr/louvre/paris/.
There are links to Copenhagen, Helsinki, Stockholm, Oslo, Aalborg, Gothenburg, and other Scandinavian cities at http://www.it-kompetens.com/nordic/.
Finland's Virtual Embassy is at http://virtual.finland.fi/. If you are intrigued by northern lights, browse the Northern Lights Planetarium (Norway),or check the Northern Lights page .
Timetables of German railway stations and other European cities are at http://www.mcs.net/~dsdawdy/cyberoad.html.
To practice your French over the Internet, try Branchez-vous!
Windows on Italy offers information about cities and regions, daily news by ANSA (National Agency of Associated Press), cultural tidbits, tourist information, and more. The famous Opera theatre Teatro alla Scala of Milano is at http://lascala.milano.it/.
The THRACE mailing list is a forum for discussions of Greek West Thracian (A Province in Greece) Turkish Minority issues. For a virtual tour of Athen's Acropolis, try WebAcropol. When starting detailed planning, check http://www.vacation.forthnet.gr/.
BALT-L is focusing on the Baltic states.

Some other links to investigate:

• Czech Travel Guide
• Europe by Eurail
• Gibraltar
• Rijksmuseum, the Netherlands (Rembrandt!)
• Scotland Travels and Business Exchange
• Zagreb

North America

The soc.culture hierarchy on Usenet has many interesting newsgroups, including soc.culture.canada. For a North American music events calendar, check http://concerts.calendar.com/. You will find an abundance of information on travels in the United States on most major networks.

Russia and neighbours

The Russia Tourism Pages is a comprehensive English language travel and tourism link site for Russia, Moscow and St. Petersburg. Also, do visit Russophilia !
REESweb offers a comprehensive list of links to WWW Servers in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, the Baltic countries, Armenia, Georgia, Albania, Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, Bosnia, Chechnya, Croatia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Kazakhstan, Moldavia, and more.
Sources are grouped under broad subject areas, such as Language, Literature, Music, Art, Culture, Government and Public Affairs, Science, Technology, Engineering, Computers, Business, Communications, Economics, Law, History, Geography, Sociology.
The Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts is one of the major art collections in Russia, exhibiting foreign works of arts ranging from ancient times to the present. For Russian Museums, try the multilingual site at http://www.museum.ru/. The State Academic Bolshoi Theatre is at http://www.bolshoi.ru/eng/frame.html, and Russian zoos at http://www.zoo.ru/ .
Relcom's Window-to-Russia page has information about almost everything, from finances to securities.

Usenet has

soc.culture.bulgaria	Discussing Bulgarian society.
soc.culture.bosna-herzgvna	The independent state of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
soc.culture.croatia	The lives of people of Croatia.
soc.culture.romanian	Discussion of Romanian and Moldavian people.
soc.culture.yugoslavia	Discussions of  former Yugoslavia and its people.
soc.culture.czecho-slovak	Bohemian, Slovak, Moravian and Silesian life.
soc.culture.soviet	Topics on Russian or "Soviet" culture.