International Travel News

Columns

October 2005 issue | Appears on page 0

What to use overseas: cash, travelers’ checks or credit cards?

by Mary Beltran, Assistant Editor, ITN

Paying for purchases overseas has gotten complicated.

If you exchange your U.S. cash for currency overseas, you may lose some value depending on the exchange rate, and you may also pay a fee for the transaction.

If you take travelers’ checks, you may be able to use them at hotels and sometimes in shops, but small shops or restaurants often don’t accept them. That means you’ll need to cash the checks into the local currency, paying...

October 2005 issue | Appears on page 0

John Poh of Crystal Symphony

By Lew Toulmin

As the head chef at the famous Asian restaurant, Jade Garden, aboard the 5-star cruise ship Crystal Symphony, John Poh has reached the pinnacle of cruise cuisine. He owes his success to talent, hard work, a passion for food, and experience in over 100 kitchens around the world. I spoke to Mr. Poh while on a voyage from Lisbon to Rome in the summer of 2005.

Chef of 100 kitchens

John Poh was born in Singapore and raised in a “food family.” His father was the head chef to the...

October 2005 issue | Appears on page 0

Flash ’em!

by Janet Denninger

Whether we travel to take pictures or just take pictures as we travel, we all want to come home with images which tell the story of our adventure and we are proud to share with friends and family. Each issue, this column will suggest simple techniques anyone can use, with any camera, to achieve a more dynamic picture.

Light up a smile

Almost every modern camera comes equipped with a flash. Whether yours is the automatic, pop-up variety or requires...

October 2005 issue | Appears on page 0

Settling your debts abroad

By Philip Wagenaar

by Philip Wagenaar

(First of two parts)

Olpe, Germany, May 9, 2005. . .

With disbelief, I stared at the notice on the wall next to the ATM in the Volksbank’s small foyer.

No, I was not mistaken. It clearly said, both in German and in English, that cash withdrawals were subject to a 1% fee if you used a card other than the bank’s or one of its affiliates’.

This was the first time that I ever had to pay a fee at an ATM abroad.

I checked the Sparkasse,...

October 2005 issue | Appears on page 0

The Kurdish village of Egil, Turkey

Moreen and I consider ourselves fortunate to have visited the Middle East often. Friends say perhaps we have tempted fate, though we disagree. We don’t speak Arabic, Turkish or other languages in this Muslim and Arab world, but we do respect carefully its many cultures. We believe personal travel articles, similar to those presented in ITN, permit readers to see behind national media reports. This preface leads us into this month’s travel for the adventuresome.

Diyarbakir

...

October 2005 issue | Appears on page 0

The case of the lost room

By Randy Keck

Most seasoned travelers at one time or another have arrived at a hotel with a reservation in hand only to be informed that the type of room they thought they had reserved was not available. In this edition of “Under the Microscope,” I will examine strategies for finding acceptable solutions for such situations and also measures for trying to prevent such occurrences in future travels.

Questions

In the situation described above, several things must be determined....

September 2005 issue | Appears on page 0

Boarding Pass

By David Tykol

Dear Globetrotter: Welcome to the 355th issue of your monthly overseas travel magazine.

U.S. citizens and foreign nationals who until now have been able to cross borders between the U.S. and certain destinations without passports soon will need passports to do so, due to requirements of the new Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative.

As of Dec. 31, 2005, passports will be required of all people traveling between the United States and the Caribbean, Bermuda or Central or South...

September 2005 issue | Appears on page 0

The sun and skin

by Larry G. Barratta, M.D., Ph.D.

Traveling to any exotic destination where sun, surf and beach activities are involved and where there are concerns of being overexposed by the sun can be the beginning of more than just a bad case of sunburn. Skin cancer is a serious health condition that comes in several forms, melanoma being the most aggressive and a potentially deadly type. Other skin cancers include basal and squamous cell carcinoma.

Nearly 50,000 cases of melanoma are...