If you are considering a future budget adventure, one way to pick up information is to take advantage of the free newsletters from travel guidebook publishers. The newsletters are a forum to promote their books, but within their format you can find helpful information, learn about destinations that you may not have considered, including ones on your itinerary, and get tips from other independent travelers.
RoughNews, the eight-page newsletter of the Rough Guides travel series, is published three times a year. RoughNews makes a special effort to include opinion pieces on tourism and travel. For example, recent editions have included articles on rain forest tourism and the debate called “Overlanders: Should they just truck off?” The next edition will include authors’ reports from Johannesburg, the southwest USA and Jamaica, plus an article titled “Western Drugs? Just Say No!,” music and Web site reviews and travelers’ tips from Mexico to Goa.
One of the most interesting areas of the newsletter is the section in which other travelers have passed along warnings and recommendations. Some are so new that they’re not included in the editions presently being sold.
For example, in the summer 1997 edition an Australian visitor suggested: “Byron Bay is a small but expanding town that is on most backpackers’ itineraries, and a superb new youth hostel, J’s Bay Hostel, 7 Carlyle St., has opened there since your last edition. The staff (is) very helpful and the twice-weekly BBQ/pool nights should become legendary. And for less than $60, people can experience the thrill of tandem hang gliding on to one of Byron’s golden beaches.”
To receive RoughNews by mail, send your name and address to Rough Guides/RoughNews, 375 Hudson St., New York, N.Y. 10014, e-mail them at rough@panix.com or call 212-366-2348. The newsletter is also posted on the Rough Guides Internet site: www.roughguides.com.
Starting in September, Travel Matters, the 24-page newsletter published by Moon Travel Handbooks, will no longer be available through the mail. It will be distributed completely on-line. You’ll be able to read it at the Moon Internet site: www.moon.com.
Travel Matters includes information from Moon guidebook authors and travelers who have used the handbooks. Recent articles have ranged from the art of avoiding bear hugs in Alaska to a firsthand account of the experiences of a black traveler in Indonesia.
September’s on-line edition will include information from new Moon Handbooks for Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Pacific Mexico, Singapore and the Virgin Islands. Question-and-answer columns by Dirk Schroeder, the author of Moon’s “Staying Healthy in Asia, Africa and Latin America,” and travel agent Edward Hasbrock will also continue, along with monthly contests.
Lonely Planet publishes a 16-page free quarterly newsletter called Planet Talk. The most recent issue includes a brief review by publisher/author Tony Wheeler of the five-day walk on the famous Milford Trail in New Zealand; an article by LP author Rob van Driesum examining drug tolerance in Amsterdam coffee shops; an overview on courier air travel by Steve Lantos, publisher of a monthly courier travel newsletter, Travel Unlimited (this article includes telephone numbers); and information on Costa Rica by LP author Rob Rachowiecki.
Planet Talk has the largest travelers’ letters section, and it’s filled with lots of helpful insights and information.
For example, one traveler wrote from Indonesia to warn others to watch for bank tellers who say they need a photocopy of your credit card when you cash a traveler’s check. “They give you some story about your passport and driver’s licence (sic) signature not matching well enough, but your Visa signature being just great. Who knows what they might do with a copy of your credit card?”
Two other travelers reported difficulties when using invitations from the HI St. Petersburg Hostel at the Russian Embassy in Ukraine. It’s suggested that you check with the Russian Embassy before paying for an invitation.
On a more positive note, one traveler wrote to say he found a comfortable place at the airport to wait till morning when he arrived in Lima, Peru, on a very late flight. His suggestion was to head for “VIP do Sol” behind the Continental Airlines counter (you have to pass through security into the domestic departure lounge), where you can stay for $10. It’s open 24 hours and drinks are free. Another passed along the information that there is now a commercial e-mail service at 293 Pham Ngu Lao St. in Saigon that travelers can use to send or receive messages.
To be added to the Planet Talk mailing list, write to Newsletter/Booklist, 155 Filbert St., Suite 251, Oakland, Calif. 94607. You can also sign up for the newsletter on the Lonely Planet Internet site at www.lonelyplanet.com, or you can e-mail them at info@
lonelyplanet.com. They are currently developing a system to deliver the newsletter by e-mail.
The popular student-researched travel guide series Let’s Go will introduce a free newsletter in December that will be published three times a year. Let’s Go can be found on the Internet at www.letsgo.com.
