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Welcome to the third issue of Travel &
Leisure News. Judging by the feedback it seems
many of you are enjoying our fresh approach and
unique layout. So please keep writing - we love to
hear your views, not just our
own!
Australia's tourism industry will
undergo a dramatic transformation in the next
decade, with China set to surpass the UK as our
principal source of international visitors. Large
numbers of tourists are now arriving in Australia
from China, India and Indonesia, while traditional
markets like the UK and the US are set to slow.
China is already our fastest-growing source, with
a record 251,000 PRC visitors arriving last year -
up 43 per cent in 12 months! According to the
Tourism Forecasting Committee, the number of
Chinese coming to our shores will top 1.2 million
within a decade and they are expected to spend
$5.9 billion annually. To demonstrate the point,
companies such as Helen Wong's Tours are now
offering not only outbound tourism services from
Australia but also inbound tours from
China.
Australians are also certainly
discovering the joys of visiting China with many
airlines, including lesser know China Southern,
offering competitively priced daily flights
ex-Australia to Guangzhou then on to Europe. I
recently visited Shanghai which is often described
as the metropolis of the 21st century, the New
York of Asia and the mega city of the new
millennium. Whatever the description, Shanghai is
a phenomenon of massive economic growth, and is
the financial centre of the country that is
creating a marked shift in the world
economy.
 Wandering the chaotic
streets around Nanjing Road and the Bund, and
through their smaller back lanes, I was pleased to
note that there still survive small pockets of
"old Shanghai." These rather dilapidated
thoroughfares are fascinating to explore, with
their herbal shops, butchers, bird and flower
vendors hidden in half-darkened alleyways. One
wonders how long they will survive in a city that
can build a major highway in less than a year?
(And don't forget they got the Shanghai Formula
One GP up and running in less than two years.) I
recommend a 4-5 day exploration of this
prosperous, cosmopolitan city that boasts 36
palaces, 23 museums, the Shanghai Grand Theatre
and a choice of 16,000 restaurants. There are
night and day markets, while a night cruise on the
Huangpu River is a must.
Enough of my
travails. In this issue, our footloose
Editor-at-Large, John Borthwick gives us his slant
on the spa fad that is taking over most 4-5 star
hotels worldwide. In his customary wry way John
reminds us there is more to India than those
maddening 'call centres' - which is good news, as
India's calm political situation now makes this an
extremely attractive destination to visit. We have
also introduced a new cartoon from up-and-coming
talent, Shaun McKinnon - hope you like it. Oh, and
keep reading right to the end: you may win a
wonderful voyage for two to the
Mediterranean!
Happy
Travelling!
Derek
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 Hawaiian Airlines are offering a smart holiday
option via their Honolulu-Las Vegas service, giving
Australian travellers easy access to one of our
favourite US destinations, Las Vegas. The new, daily
service to Vegas will be use Hawaiian's Boeing 767-300
twin-jets, the same type of aircraft used on the
Sydney-Honolulu sector. Hawaii is certainly back in
vogue since Hawaiian Airlines recommenced their flights
from Sydney a year ago - and this new combination of
destinations is sure to tempt more that a few
punters!
 Annually, around 12 million foreign
tourists, including a quarter of a million Australians,
visit China, with an increasing number keen to venture
beyond the major cities. Travelling in China can be a
curious enlightenment - part nostalgia, part futurology.
Here are a few tips:
1. Visa: Don't leave home
without one. Apply at your nearest Chinese consulate
well before departure. If you make an urgent visa
application, you'll pay an extra $50 on top of the basic
$30. Be prepared to queue and wait, then return to do it
again. Don't expect too much courtesy.
2. Don't's
and Do's. Do take a mix of travellers cheques,
Australian and US cash, and credit cards (but don't rely
on ATMs in outer regions). Do take various power
adapters, including the round two-pin type.
3.
Seasons. It can be devilishly hot or fiendishly cold
depending upon the season, altitude and latitude, so
check the average temperature charts for your specific
cities. Generally, the hottest time is August; the
coldest, December-January.
4. Must-dos. See an
acrobatics show. Have a traditional foot massage - a
half-hour of zone-therapy agony that is bliss once it
stops.
5. No agent in Australia even comes close
to the China expertise of Helen Wong's Tours, now in
their 18th year of getting us there - from Xiamen to
Xinjiang, from the Silk Route to Yangtze Cruises - and
back. Helen notes that "In the past few years china has
become a sophisticated destination offering world class
accommodation, services and cuisine." It's
true.
Sooner or later, that time of year
comes around again - your travel insurance needs to be
renewed. Many travel professionals go for a year-round,
multi-trip, worldwide Business Travel policy, rather
than trip-by-trip policies. At around $215 a year (or
$350 for a family policy), this seems pretty simple.
However, there are other policies which offer greater
coverage (for hijack, loss of income, disability, stolen
cash, accidental death, funeral expenses, etc), although
at a far higher cost, depending upon the excess you
nominate and the continents you travels in (the Americas
and Africa being the most expensive).
At renewal
time it is worth thinking about the generally
over-looked limits on travel insurance claims. For
instance, you probably don't  have a "replacement" policy. In which
case the claim limit on lost/damages/stolen individual
items, such as your camera, video recorder or laptop,
will be only $500, unless you have specified the item
and paid a higher premium. (Try replacing a quality, new
laptop for $500 - that's only another $2500 that you'll
need to come up with.) The duration of coverage, even
with a 365-day policy, is for individual trips of no
longer than 90 days. If you're away longer than that,
you coverage lapses. With medical issues, keep in mind
that travel insurance cuts out as soon as you return to
Australia; at which point you fall back to the tender
mercies of either Medicare or your private insurance, if
you have any.
With trip-by-trip (as opposed to
year-round) insurance, read the fine print to see if you
are covered for, say, terrorism, sports injuries or
helicopter evacuation (if trekking, for instance), not
to mention loss of income, disability, stolen cash, etc.
Having read the fine print on a general policy, you
might decide to travel no farther than the corner store,
carrying nothing more valuable than a five-dollar bill -
and to never leave home without a photocopy of the
policy on your person at all times.
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Don't let the call centres put you
off. Perhaps you've always wanted to visit India but
after your last tussle with an offshore call centre,
you're not so sure? You know the scenario: you are put
through to a so-called "service centre" on a phone
connection that sounds like two tin cans plus a string
stretching from here to Bangalore. You swap mutually
baffling utterances with a smart young person whose high
speed, hi-tech Hindglish, not to mention distance (in
every sense) from solving your problem, defeats the
whole exercise. Tip: don't judge the country by its call
centres - although do judge the company.
 There is more to Mother India than
"don't-call centres" on one hand and, on the other, her
very familiar attractions like the Taj Mahal and Bombay.
(Bombay rebadged is still as mad as Bollywood - that is,
as Mumbai it is as mad as Mollywood.) Instead, try some
of India's more remote areas.
Rajasthan, India's
western desert, state is rich with Mughal culture and
grandiose Maharajah's palaces that have been turned into
fine hotels. Think red turbans, handlebar moustaches,
grumpy old camels, brilliant saris and more palaces.
Meanwhile, north of Mumbai, Maharashtra State has two
incredible archaeological sites near Aurangabad. Imagine
a rock carving so huge that it took 7000 labourers
working in continuous shifts some 150 years to complete.
Such is the awesome engineering of the Kailas Temple at
Ellora. Ellora and it sister temple "caves" at Ajanta
are both are World Heritage-listed. These ancient
Buddhist, Hindu and Jain religious complexes aren't
actual caves but (officially speaking) "rock-cut
monumental sculptures" - 2000-year old cities of the
gods. The central attraction of Ellora is the grand
Kailas Temple. Chiselled from one massive rock, Kailas
is probably the largest monolith ever sculpted: 20
million tons of stone were excavated, by hand, leaving a
central monolith 52 metres long, 32 metres wide and 30
metres high.
 Sikkim,
India's handkerchief-sized eastern Himalayan state is,
in a sense, "the new Nepal" - although it's vistas and
range of treks may never rival those of glorious but
troubled Nepal. This time warp Ruritania of only 7100 sq
km has been part of India for only 30 years. Gangtok,
Sikkim's 1677-metre altitude capital, is still not much
more than a large village by Indian standards but is
proud of its cleanliness and civility. Trekking the
mountain trails of Sikkim with a company like World
Expeditions means someone does all the hard work, except
the walking, for you. You wind up sunny paths that lead
in and out of oak and rhododendron forests, past
rattling cascades and up, ever up towards, well, to 8598
metre Mt Kangchendzonga, if you're in the mood for real
extremes.
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 We are drowning in spas. There seem to
be few hotels in the Asia-Pacific region that haven't
added "and Spa" to their name plaque. The standards vary
enormously, as do the prices and, to be frank, the
pretensions.
Not all the hot air in a spa comes
from the steam room. One needs to penetrate the
quasi-medical, quasi-mystical vapour sometimes employed
to describe spa treatments and products - scrubs, wraps,
Reiki, aroma, reflexology, body masks, hot stones,
crystal healing and so on.
In fact, the massage
is just the medium used by spas to deliver a slew of
additional products. You want a shoulder rub and instead
are offered so-called heart chakra healing, followed by
a seaweed body scub and a three-course spa cuisine feed.
And the food isn't confined to the restaurant. Some
exotic treatments seem to feature so many edible
elements - yoghurt, herbs, honey and coffee scrubs, for
instance - that they sound more like the breakfast menu
than a massage. Choosing from among all the esoteric
offerings has become a new source of stress for the poor
punter who simply wants a massage.
The fact is
that many "therapists," as fragrant as they may be, have
had only relatively brief training at a "spa academy."
They deliver treatments that, while agreeable and
flattering, ought not to be marketed as "therapy." (In
Australia, a treatment may not be advertised as therapy
unless administered by a properly certified
practitioner.) Don't be afraid to ask for a "firm" or
"strong" massage, requesting plenty of attention for
deep tissue and pressure points. (Yes, it might hurt -
some gain will involve some pain.) You can hardly blame
a masseur or masseuse, particularly in the developing
world, for not exerting particular effort unless you
request "firm" or "strong" - she may be paid less for
her full week's work than you are paying for your
one-hour treatment.
As the Latin origin of the
term suggests, Europe has a long tradition of spa
treatments. Even in a spa the Irish can't stay too
serious for too long - and certainly don't proffer the
sort of the New Age nonsense heard in, for instance some
Balinese spas. Thalassotherapy involves "health through
waters", specifically, through seawaters. In modern
times this might be a large spa pool with high-pressure
jets of warmed water for do-it-yourself massage - like a
giant, salt water jacuzzi. At the Thalassotherapy Spa at
Inchydoney
Island Lodge in Cork, a masseuse was
skilfully prodding and stretching her client with a
combination of "Thai, Swedish and Hawaiian" techniques.
When asked if there was any local tradition of massage
before modern spas came to Ireland, her answer was a
refreshing, "Oh, probably a whack on the head with a
club."
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Bali is back - and
so are we. International visitor numbers to Bail are up
by 40 per cent on last year's figures. Over 420,000
Australians travelled to Indonesia last year, the vast
majority going to Bali. This year half a million
Australians are expected to obey, in our rather
anti-authoritarian manner, the DFAT Travel Advisory that
still tells us to "defer non-essential travel to
Indonesia." It seems we heed the message by declaring
that a week's relaxation in Bail is indeed
essential.
The good news is that the Balinese
people are again living beyond the shadow of the
bankruptcies cast by the Kuta bombings. The bad news is
that all the old Jalan Legian traffic gridlocks are
back; there are more bent, albeit  "authorised" money changers than ever before;
and you can't walk 20 metres in places like Legian
without five touts shouting "Transpor! Taxi!" at
you.
Kuta will always be Kuta - surf
slum-cum-shoppers' circus extraordinaire. Legian is a
seamless extension of the same thing, while trendy
Seminyak has filled in its rice fields with restaurants,
spas and houses for bule (foreign) lifestylers who
simply can't call spell "house" - imperiously insisting
their particular pile is a "v-i-l-l-a."
Escape
hints? Two hours drive north-west from Seminyak along
the southern coast brings you to the quiet coastal
village of Medewi where there is modest accommodation, a
good left-hand point surf and plenty of authentic
Balinese rural life still evident. In the other
direction, east coast spots like Candi Desar, while long
developed for tourism, still offer tranquillity with
air-conditioning. Further east and north there is
excellent diving and snorkelling around Tulamben and
Cemuluk. On the far northwest coast, divers (and
romantics) love Bali Barat National Park Menjangan
Island, home of the Waka Shorea resort.
If
you have time and the wandering urge, then offshore, to
the east of Bali is Lombok (and its little satellites,
the Gili Islands) where the Moslem culture and the
terrain are both very different to Bali. Or, for
somewhere really extraordinary, fly further east to
Sumba, a large and fertile island with a strong animist
culture that is home to the incomparable Nihiwatu
Resort. Here you can combine luxury bungalow
accommodation and Sumbanese culture with a perfect,
uncrowded left-hand reef surf right in front of the
resort.
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 It's good to be back in urban "hell", home from
tropical paradise. Let me explain. There is an irony in
the way we sometimes think of cities like Sydney or
Melbourne as urban hells - you know the charge sheet:
traffic jams, junkies, decibel overdose, core-liar
politicians, ranting talkback jocks, and so on. I've
recently returned from southern Bali where almost every
waking moment is charged with traffic din, intense
humidity, roaring music, desperate commerce and "Mistah!
mistah! you want taxi, T-shirt, boardshort, massage,
watch, manicure ..." ad infinitum. Now, I enjoy many of
these Bali interactions but upon returning to Sydney aka
Hell, I was struck by the tranquility of the city
streets, the orderliness of the traffic a general lack
of chaos when compared to the riotous onslaught of Bali
aka Paradise.
That said, I still love the Island
of the Gods and Sods. Where else might someone ask you,
"Why do Australian airplanes [that is, Qantas] have a
big red rat on the tail?" And where else could the new
Paddys Bar - a short distance from the one that was
infamously bombed in 2002 - re-launch itself under the
dubious name of Paddys Reloaded?
 Bali was my jumping off point for Sumba, a
large, "primitive" island in eastern Indonesia. (If you
don't know where Sumba is, that's no problem - most
Balinese don't know, either.) It is a wild and beautiful
island, relatively poor (though rich with horses and
wonderful ikat weavings), a place and time in transit
between the ages of blood sacrifice and the satellite
dish. The Sumbanese struck me as open and friendly
people - they are not Moslem, Hindu or Buddhist but
deeply animist (nature and ancestor worship) with a
layer of Christianity on top. There is almost no tourism
there yet, and just one luxury resort.
But what a
resort it is. Beyond its beautiful bungalows, good food
and stunning location (400 acres of absolute Indian
Ocean beachfront), Nihiwatu Resort boasts a world-class
surf break on its front doorstep, a fast, 100 metre,
left-hand reef break. It's a thrill to reach this
advanced age (mine!) and to surf perhaps the hollowest
waves of my life. Nihiwatu's genial host, American-born
Claude Graves (a sort of Lord Jim of the surf) has also
established an impressive charity body, the Sumba
Foundation that runs a very effective anti-malaria
campaign and village clinics, as well as refurbishing
local schools. A good example of responsible tourism
that has gone way beyond the platitudes of pale green
eco-tourism.
At the risk of going further
"troppo," I also had a recent trip to Fiji - land of
angel-hair Afros, rattling palms, afternoon downpours
and, oddly, almost no fresh orange juice in the resorts.
(Why is it so?) Fijians are as friendly as their
reputation - although every city taxi driver told me how
the rate of robbery and mugging has grown greatly in
recent years. I checked out three luxury island resorts
(all from the Select Resorts portfolio), Nukubati,
Toberua and  Royal Davui, each one very different in
location and style from the other.
More irony: a
travel writer usually road-tests these glorious
seraglios in the least fitting mode - that is, solo. On
trips like this I tell the lovebirds and couples I meet
that I'm on the Honeymoon For One tour. Single, couple
or family, as anyone who has been farewelled from a Fiji
resort knows, when the Fijians start singing "Isa Lei"
to you on the beach, it's hard to keep a tear from
welling in your eye.
Back in Sydney I had an
excellent dinner at the venerable Oh Calcutta! in
Darlinghurst. Pakistan-born Basil Daniel (another genial
host) serves fine north Indian food that is nothing like
the same-ol'-same-ol' photocopy tastes of some other
Sydney Indian restaurants. He is also a fun guy - as is
an irrepressible waitress he employs, Tracy, originally
from Newfoundland, Canada. Her sharp wit confounds the
notion that Newfoundlanders ("Newfies") are meant to be,
well, about as bright as a Bush. At a moment of
mock-exasperation Tracy kicked herself (and cracked up
the clientele) with the Non-PC Quote of the Week, "Aiee,
Basil! Only a Newfie would work for a Paki!"
Like
I said, it's good to be home.
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