Boarding Pass

Dear Globetrotter:

Welcome to the 392nd issue of your monthly overseas travel magazine, the magazine largely written by its readers. Including you.

If you were to take your last trip over again, what’s the one thing you would do differently? Got it? Now write it down and send it to ITN, 2116 28th St., Sacramento, CA 95818, or e-mail editor@intltravelnews.com. Share your travel tip or suggestion with your fellow subscribers. Use your knowledge to help make someone else’s trip a little better.

Meanwhile, here’s some travel news you might want to know about.

Scammers have been distributing e-mails that look like air ticket invoices but which, when the attachment is opened, infect the computer with a virus. So reports Delta, Hawaiian, Midwest, Northwest and Sun Country airlines.

The e-mail states that a ticket has been purchased and references a credit card charge and an attached “receipt.” If the attachment is opened, the virus steals information and transmits it to a server in Russia. At press time, the virus affected only computers running Windows, but all PC users should be cautious.

Northwest advised that its own itineraries contain specific information, so if an e-mail does not show NWA flight numbers, itinerary dates, etc., delete it immediately. Northwest also noted that the phony e-mails contain bad grammar and spelling errors.

If you have purchased a ticket and receive a suspicious e-mail, call the airline directly before proceeding. Also, check with your credit card company about any erroneous charges.

On a trial basis from Oct. 1 to the end of this year, United Airlines is charging economy-class passengers for their meals on flights between Washington Dulles International Airport and cities in Europe ($9 for “fresh food” or $6 for a “snack box”). It is the first U.S. carrier to stop serving free meals on overseas flights.

First- and business-class passengers will still be fed without paying extra. Also, coach passengers traveling from Dulles to Kuwait will still get free meals because the flight takes 12 hours instead of the eight or nine hours it takes to get to Europe.

On longer flights within North America, most U.S. carriers charge for meals and even snacks in coach class.

United states on its website, “While United offers Buy on Board meal service for flights more than three hours, no meal service is available on flights lasting fewer than three hours. Customers are always welcome to bring food onboard any of our flights.”

In Guatemala City, the U.S. Embassy “strongly endorses” that U.S. citizens not travel to the area around Tajumulco Volcano in the Western Highlands because of rumors that foreigners are stealing children.

Especially in rural areas, close contact with children, including taking photographs, may provoke locals to panic and violence (Aug. ’06, pg. 22). No foreigners have been attacked lately, but in the past several Guatemalans were lynched and an American woman severely beaten when locals became suspicious.

The rumors may not be unfounded. Recently, a Guatemalan mother tracked down her stolen daughter through the state adoption system and was reunited with her when DNA tests proved the child was hers. In May, the government suspended all adoptions.

In the French Alps, several hikers were injured this summer when attacked by Pyrenean mountain dogs, or Great Pyrenees. Guides have stopped taking clients to certain areas.

About 1,000 of the aggressive, protective dogs were brought in to protect sheep after a small number of wolves migrated from Italy in 1992 and recolonized the mountains. The wolves are protected by EU law and now number about 150 in France.

The EU has subsidized, for shepherds, the cost of fencing and the guard dogs, reducing sheep killings by a third (down to 2,500 in 2006).

To thwart street crime, on Aug. 4 Italy sent about 3,000 soldiers to a number of major cities to patrol public places, giving police more time to focus on particular problems. The troops will remain for six months, at which time the deployment can be renewed for another six months.

The Samoan government has mandated that as of Sept. 7, 2009, motorists will switch from driving on the right side of the road (as in neighboring American Samoa) to driving on the left.

Lawmakers on the Southwest Central Pacific island felt that there should be conformity with left-side-driving Australia and New Zealand, to which many Samoans have migrated. Some relocated Samoans ship cars to their parents back home, for instance.

Opposition is so great that a political party has formed called People Against Switching Sides. Members point out that 17,000 cars in Samoa having steering wheels positioned for right-hand-side driving as opposed to only 2,000 for left-hand-side and that the dangers of switching are obvious.

In Egypt, a 12-mile chain-link fence now encloses the plateau on which the Giza pyramids stand. It is equipped with a security system that includes motion sensors and alarms plus a couple hundred closed-circuit cameras. Tourists will enter through a building with metal detectors and x-ray machines.

At press time, hawkers, vendors, camel riders and would-be guides had been evacuated from the enclosure and were unsure of their fate. If not allowed reentry, it was assumed they would congregate near the parking area and entrance.

Plans for the pyramid site include a special footpath for tourists, who also will be driven around in golf carts. A new visitor center will include a bookshop and a cafeteria. Eventually, there will be bazaars and a stable, with an area designated for horse and camel rides that is outside the archaeological area but within sight of the pyramids.

The reerection of what is now the second-largest obelisk in the northern Ethiopian town of Axum (Aksum) was celebrated with an inauguration on Sept. 4.

The 1,700-year-old obelisk was taken to Rome in 1937 by Mussolini’s troops and was returned (on planes after being cut into thirds) by the Italian government in 2005. It is 24 meters high and weighs 150 tons.

The monoliths at Axum, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, were funerary markers for the elite.

Keep sending in your Airport “Queue” Ratings (page 94). We’ll work up a picture of hurry-up-and-wait times at airports worldwide.

Any reports you send in will be appreciated. R. Casey Hasey of Cathedral City, California, wrote, “I subscribe to far too many magazines, so I decided to drop half of them. Notice that I have just renewed ITN. I read everything in it as soon as I get it. My curiosity continues from cover to cover.

“I then rip out all the articles I consider worthy, from my point of view, and file them by country or subject. The two top drawers in my filing cabinets are where my relatives, friends and neighbors check whenever they are planning a trip somewhere overseas.”

ITN staff just constructs the magazine; you folks provide the building materials. — D.T.