Travel Briefs

With the service chinaONEcall, travelers in China trying to understand someone who speaks only Chinese (a taxi driver, for instance) now can call a translator to interpret over the phone. The company is based in the U.K., and service is available 24/7 through mobile phones.

Prepaid packages of minutes are available starting at £39 (near $77) for 60 minutes. You can add more minutes in 30-minute segments while on the road. For info, in the U.S. call 877/660-2838 or visit www....

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Available at Tourism Ireland offices, the brochure “Ireland’s Cultural Explorer” features information on the country’s 130 castles, museums, monuments, parks, distilleries and gardens. At www.irelandvisitordiscounts.com, you can print out a pass that gives you savings on all 130 venues.

Contact Heritage Island (Marina House, 11-13 Clarence St., Dun Laoghaire, Co. Dublin, Ireland; phone 353 1 236 6890, fax 236 6895, www.heritageisland.com).

Panama City’s Metropolitan Park, the only protected rainforest in a city, is home to sloths, monkeys, 42 other mammal species, iguanas and more than 250 kinds of birds. London-based Cox & Kings now offers, either on a group tour or custom itinerary, the chance to get an up-close view of wildlife in the rainforest canopy by riding in a wire-screen-enclosed gondola manipulated by a construction crane.

During the 45-minute ride, passengers are lifted up to 112 feet. The accompanying...

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In a joint operation by INTERPOL, the World Health Organization and Oxford University’s Southeast Asian Tropical Medicine Research Programme, samples of the antimalarial drug artesunate were purchased throughout Southeast Asia and subjected to analysis. The findings were printed in the February 2008 Public Library of Science journal (http://journals.plos.org).

More than half of the samples collected contained either no artesunate or only a trace amount that could have no prophylactic...

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In Singapore, Changi Airport’s new Terminal 3 opened in January 2008. The 7-story building (three below ground and four above) has a roof with 900 skylights, and there is a 5-story-high vertical garden with four waterfalls. Along with an intra-airport train system connecting the three terminals, there are shopping and eating areas and a new hotel.

Butterfield & Robinson (Toronto, Ont.; 800/678-1147, www. butterfield.com) is offering a 9-day/8-night cruise of the Turquoise Coast aboard a 100-foot gulet. 

After a hotel night in Istanbul, sail to the Greek island of Kos followed by visits to Nisyros, Knidos, Datca and more, ending in Goçek, Turkey. See Roman and Greek tombs, settlements and ruins.

Prices run $10,495-$11,495 per person, double ($5,245 single suppl.), with departures May 16 and Oct. 17, 2008.

London’s British Museum (phone +44 [0] 20 7323 8000 or 8299, www.britishmuseum.org) is hosting the exhibition “Hadrian: Empire and Conflict,” July 24-Oct. 26, 2008, bringing together, for the first time, objects from 35 museums and recent excavations.

Open daily 10-5:30 (last entry 4:20) or on Thursdays and Fridays 10-8:30 (last entry 7:20). £12 (near $24) adult, £10 senior, or two adults with three children, £25. 

Publius Aelius Traianus Hadrian, who ruled A.D. 117-138, is...

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The new Jewel River Cruise Line (401 East Las Olas Blvd., Ste. 2270, Ft Lauderdale, FL 33301; 866/342-7607, www.jewelrivercruises.com) will launch its first ship on May 15, 2008, offering 7- and 10-day cruises along the Seine between Paris and Rouen until Nov. 20. The 80-passenger, 45-suite Jewel Imperial Blue will have undergone a $3.5-million redesign. Prices start at $5,129 per person.