Adventure Travel in Thailand

If adrenaline is your thing then Thailand is a place where you can get your fix of adventure in graduated doses. Some would say that negotiating the Bangkok traffic on the way from the airport is adventure enough in itself, but if you want to put your experiences on a more organized footing there is no shortage of opportunity.

Most developed resort areas on the coast offer bungee jumping, para-gliding, Jet skiing and water skiing. So flinging yourself from great heights or being blasted in to the air or across water at great speed can be easily achieved.

Thailand also remains a veritable paradise for those who enjoy the world underwater, whether that's diving, snorkeling or even submarining in Phuket.

It is also a country rich in wilderness areas of mountains, forests and waterfalls which makes trekking big business in the north of the country. The best season for trekking is between November and February when the weather is cool and the air is clear. Many operators in Chiang Mai, Chiang Rai, Mae Hong Son and Pai offer trekking tours.

Often these will be run from guest houses and it's worth asking around to find one that suits you. A trek usually lasts between three and five days and you will need good boots and a proper pack since the walking can be quite hard especially in the heat.

The guide will usually take you through ethnic villages of Lisu, Karen, Meo, Akha and Paduang. All these tribes are different in dress, language and culture and most migrated to the mountainous areas of Thailand, Laos and Vietnam within the last century from China. Also included in a trek will be some rafting and maybe some elephant riding. If the gentle rafting on a trek is not adventurous enough for you, many operators offer the white water variety. Pai is the best place to go for this and the tours are run from mid June to January when the rainy season raises the height of the water levels.

When it comes to two wheeled travel Thailand offers some of the best touring and off road motorcycling in the world. The roads are excellent and pass through mountain scenery of breathtaking beauty. Infrastructure is good with plenty of guest houses and places to eat en route. You can either go on a tour or hire bikes on your own, Chiang Mai having by far the greatest variety on offer. It is important to be an experienced driver and this is doubly true for trail riding. Many operators run tours and to get the best from off-roading, or simply finding obscure routes, it is often better to go with a guide who knows the area.

For those who spurn engines then mountain biking is now really popular and there are many operators who run trips. Whether on the lakes and rivers of the north or the Andaman Sea in the south Kayaking is available in most tourist friendly places where there is water. Tours are even run down the Mekong River. In the south Krabi and Phang Nga provinces offer spectacular scenery with luminous seas dotted with soaring limestone outcrops.

For those who want to get airborne there are a number of ways you can do it. Ballooning is offered both in Chiang Mai and Pattaya between October and March. The views in the North are better than on the coast. Perhaps, whether it's the sea, the mountains or the jungle, it is the wealth of natural beauty available in the national parks all over Thailand that make it so attractive to the outdoor enthusiast. From the heights of Doi Inthanon in the north to the maritime depths of Surin in the south there are 103 protected areas where you can enjoy an amazing variety of scenery and wildlife. Where ever you are in Thailand there is a wilderness of some sort near by.

chicago at night

What Chicago Looks Like at Night?

Budget hotels in USA

To land up hotels of their choice is the interest of every traveler and tourists. Your holiday enjoyment is doubled if you get a nice place like budget hotels in USA for accommodation. Your complete traveling experience will be exceptional if you happen to find a place of your interest in a foreign island. Every tourist's destination takes optimum care of their guests. USA is a main country who takes full care of the proper accommodation services for the visitors. USA is a country that takes care of all the requirements of the travelers. You will find budget hotels in USA at very affordable prices. The hotel's where you reside there main endeavor is to give judicious service to their guests so that the memories of USA will remain forever young and enchanting in their minds.

You will find all kinds of hotels and resorts as America is home to many diverse kind of climate, landscapes and people. So there are diverse variety of hotels and restaurants

You will find hotels and resorts that range from luxurious to simple ones in every corner of this country. All major cities feature accommodations of world famous chain of hotels. Some of them are the best example of modern architectural excellence. Cities like New York, Los Angels, Las Vegas and many others will never make you search hard for the hotels of your interest and favorite location.

Travelers who are on the tour of USA cities find no lack of affordable hotels with lot of modern amenities. Whatever is the type of location, you will find accommodation of type that suits the place and to your liking as well as affordability. For instance, a beach attraction possesses several magnificent beach resorts and waterfront hotels. The fabulous accommodations right in the center of the cities make your travel even easier. All the hotels are splendid in terms of rooms, premises, locations, size and architecture.

Hotels form the most important component of any travel plan. Nowadays, when traveling is no longer restricted to holiday seasons, it is always a wiser idea to reserve a room for you in a hotel that suits your budget and requirement. Holidays are an expensive affair but it is also an activity where one wants to be deliberately extravagant. You want the best facilities and luxuries for your family but it all comes at a price. Sometimes it might not be possible to pay it and hence, at such times it is advisable to look for good but cheaper options. Discount hotels are available in discounted prices according to the season.

Looking for cheap or budget hotels was a difficult task till about a decade ago. Today, it is as simple as typing the same. Just key in 'cheap hotels' in any of the search engines like Google or Yahoo! and watch the magic unfold! An untiring list of sites dealing with cheap or budget hotels will appear before you. Launch a search. Always make it a point to go in for good and well reputed sites and merchants. Don't get carried away by the false claims of a plethora of cash back and comparison sites that have cropped up only recently. Verify the authenticity of such sites before booking a room in a budget hotel for yourself and before making a payment.

About Author:
Author is an associate editor of http://www.stayresusa.com. The website offers exclusive information of online reservation of Hotel in USA . We also provide information about Lithuania holiday, budget hotels in USA

Egypt to Copyright the Pyramids and Antiquities

Egypt is planning to pass a law that would exact royalty payments from anyone found making copies of the country's ancient monuments or museum pieces, including the pyramids.

Zahi Hawass, head of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, said his country wanted to own the copyright to its historic monuments and would use any money raised to pay for the upkeep of its most prestigious sites.

Hawass, an outspoken figure in the usually cautious world of antiquities, said the law had been agreed by a ministerial committee and would go before parliament, where it was expected to be passed easily. It would then apply anywhere in the world, he said.

Hawass gave no explanation as to how Cairo would begin the fraught task of tackling any copyright infringements.

He said the law would apply to full-scale, precise copies of any museum objects or "commercial use" of ancient monuments, including the pyramids or the sphinx. "Even if it is for private use, they must have permission from the Egyptian government," he told the BBC.

His comments came only a few days after an Egyptian opposition newspaper, Al-Wafd, published a report complaining that many more tourists each year traveled to the pyramid-shaped Luxor hotel in Las Vegas than to Luxor itself. The newspaper proposed that the US hotel should pay some of its profits to Luxor city.

The Luxor hotel and casino boasts its own King Tut museum, which it says includes "authentic reproductions from what has been called the greatest archaeological find in the history of the world". Among the exhibits in the Las Vegas resort are reproductions of King Tutankhamun's sarcophagus as well as several statues, vases, beds, baskets and pieces of pottery from the tomb that was discovered in 1922.


However, Hawass said he did not regard the Luxor hotel as a copy of an Egyptian pyramid - the hotel's interior bore little relation to the inside of a genuine Egyptian pyramid.

He also said the law would not prevent artists from drawing images of the monuments or historic sites, as long as the images were not exact copies.

Hawass is a high-profile, self-promoting and successful fund raising emissary of his country's vast ancient heritage. He won an Emmy for broadcasting on archaeology in the US and has his own website, which shows him standing before the pyramids sporting an Indiana Jones-style hat and includes details of his "official" fan club.

In 2003 he demanded the permanent return of the Rosetta Stone from the British Museum. This year he said announced a tour of Tutankhamun artifacts, which have been to the US and Britain, would bring in $140m (£70.6m) for conservation work in Egypt.

Background: Egypt, Vegas-style

The success of the Egyptian-themed Luxor hotel and casino on the Las Vegas strip may be behind the new effort in Egypt to copyright the country's ancient archaeological wealth.

The pyramid-shaped Luxor hotel stands 350 feet (107 meters) high with 4,400 rooms. As well as a casino, cinema, restaurants, shopping hall and shows, the hotel boasts its own King Tut Museum. However, the Egyptian lure seems to be fading even for Vegas - the Luxor announced in July that it was to get a new, non-Egyptian look. "The pyramid always created a sense of wow and wonder, but the inside never delivered on that promise," Luxor president Felix Rappaport said.

Las Vegas receives about 35 million visitors a year, many times more than the Egyptian city of Luxor, scene of some of the country's key archaeological sites.

Maxim Gambles on a Lads Mag Hotel in Las Vegas

A theme hotel built around the brand of a lads mag might strike the more refined traveller as somehow tacky. But context is everything: the new Maxim Hotel and Casino, costing $1.2bn (£638m), will open in Las Vegas, where no hotel worthy of the name does not boast a replica of the Great Temple of Ramses, a half-sized Eiffel Tower, animated model dinosaurs, sequin-studded lion tamers or an artificial volcano.

In such a setting, the latest venture by Felix Dennis, the maverick British publisher, may end up looking positively restrained. Even so, it will take the trend for "brand extension" into relatively uncharted territory - an effort to turn Maxim's self-declared ethos of "girls, entertainment, sports and stupid jokes" into a commercially viable 2,300-room hotel.

Scheduled to open in 2010, the hotel would be "upscale, aspirational but at the same time accessible", with a "kickass pool area" and a vast casino, said Barry Pincus, the publishing firm's director of brand development.

Under Maxim's licensing arrangement with the developers, Concord Wilshire, Dennis Publishing will receive an undisclosed sum of several million dollars, along with an annual fee and a percentage of the income from the hotel, but not the casino.

"Vegas is part-Disneyworld, which we're not. In our vision this will be a home away from home," he said - featuring celebrity chefs, luxury spas and rooms presumably furnished with the Maxim-branded sheets and duvet covers already for sale at the Macy's department store chain. That line of bedding, with names such as Hollywood, Wall Street, Houston and Rex, has proved commercially successful, but Maxim's earlier brand-extension efforts have encountered mixed results. A licensing deal with the cosmetics manufacturers Combe, offering hair frostings with names such as Beach Blond and Red Rum, was recently terminated. It was named the second-worst example of brand extension in a survey by the New York consultants Tipping Sprung.

The worst example, according to that survey, was the ailing charter company Hooters Air, which sought to bring the ethos of Hooters restaurants - essentially, men in their 20s and 30s getting drunk and leering at waitresses - to the rather more serious business of flying aeroplanes. A Jeep-branded buggy was declared the winner. "Extensions can go too far, raising the eyebrows of consumers or even weakening the core brand," the consultants wrote.

Lads mags, a British import to the United States, have come to dominate the market in magazines aimed at men. After its American launch in 1998, Maxim quickly became the best-selling title in its category, with a circulation of 1.3m, outstripping its rival FHM, which has predominated in the UK. The US market is discernably more restrained than in Britain, and much-criticised titles such as Zoo and Nuts, featuring partial nudity, have no close equivalent. None the less, Maxim is considered too controversial to appear amid the hunting rifles and ammunition on the shelves of Wal-Mart.

Magazines face a particular challenge in launching brand extension efforts since they rely on income from advertisers who may offer similar products and services. Mr Pincus said this explained the absence of Maxim-branded clothing or alcohol.

Viva excess


The Luxor Features a life-size replica of the Great Temple of Ramses II and of King Tut's tomb. Many of the 4,400 rooms are contained within a giant hollow pyramid topped by a spotlight that is said to emit the brightest beam in the world

The Paris A half-scale Eiffel Tower and a two-thirds scale Arc de Triomphe adorn the facade, while inside, restaurants and shops line replica French streets

The Bellagio Renowned for its 32,000 sq metre lake, modelled on Lake Como in Italy, the Bellagio was the most expensive hotel ever built when it opened in 1998, costing more than $1.5bn

The Stratosphere Guests are whisked to the top of the 1,149ft-high Stratosphere Tower in elevators travelling three floors a second

Hooters Casino Hotel Waitresses at the hotel are asked to sign an agreement accepting that "the [Hooters] work environment is one in which joking and sexual innuendo based on female sex appeal is commonplace"

Top 10 Most Bizarre Las Vegas Attractions

A wealth of unique curiosities can be discovered throughout Sin City for those travelers who like to stray off the beaten path. Below are 10 of the most offbeat attractions in Las Vegas:

ATOMIC TESTING MUSEUM
755 East Flamingo Road
The 8,000-square-foot Atomic Testing Museum traces the role the state played in the development of the United States’ atomic energy program at the Nevada Test Site. View a wealth of artifacts in the exhibition hall, check out the "Ground Zero Theater" and view vintage atomic testing film clips.

BUGSY SIEGEL MEMORIAL
Flamingo Las Vegas, 3555 Las Vegas Boulevard South
A bronze plaque memorial to legendary gangster Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel can be found in the garden at the Flamingo Las Vegas. Siegel, who founded the original Flamingo Hotel in 1946, was "whacked" in his Beverly Hills mansion in 1947.

CRAZY GIRLS SCULPTURE
Riviera Hotel & Casino, 2901 Las Vegas Boulevard South
The award-winning, "cast-from-life" bronze Crazy Girls sculpture at the entrance to the Riviera Hotel & Casino showcases the best "assets" of the talented performers who make up "Las Vegas' Sexiest Topless Revue." The Crazy Girls sculpture has evolved over the years into one of the most popular photo ops in Las Vegas.

KING TUT'S TOMB
Luxor Las Vegas, 3900 South Las Vegas Boulevard
Within the luxurious Luxor Las Vegas lies an exact replica of King Tutankhamun's tomb, which was discovered by British archaeologist Howard Carter in 1922. Numerous Egyptian artifacts also can be viewed during the 15-minute self-guided walking tour.

LIBERACE MUSEUM
1775 East Tropicana Avenue
Founded in 1979, the Liberace Museum celebrates the life and music of the late, flamboyant entertainer (full name: Wladziu Valentino Liberace), who was known as "Mr. Showmanship." View Liberace’s pianos, jewelry, costumes, custom car collection (including a hand-painted, red, white and blue Rolls-Royce convertible!), awards, antiques and more.

NEON MUSEUM
425 Fremont Street
Many of the legendary neon signs that once lined the Las Vegas Strip are on display at this fascinating outdoor museum, which lies adjacent to the Fremont Street Experience in downtown Las Vegas.

PINBALL HALL OF FAME
3330 East Tropicana Avenue
Operated by members of the Las Vegas Pinball Collectors Club, the Pinball Hall of Fame houses one of the world's largest pinball collections. All pinball machines, which range from the 1960s to the present, are available to play (bring your quarters).

STAR TREK: THE EXPERIENCE
Las Vegas Hilton, 3000 Paradise Road
Trekkies, Klingon impersonators and thrill seekers alike will want to check out the interactive Star Trek: The Experience, which includes two lively attractions, BORG Invasion 4D and Klingon Encounter, as well as the History of the Future Museum, Quark’s Bar & Restaurant and a specialty store full of tons of collectibles and memorabilia.

WORLD'S LARGEST GAMBLING SUPERSTORE
800 South Main Street
Take home a unique souvenir of your trip to Las Vegas with a visit to the 8,000-square-foot Gamblers General Store, which features personalized poker chips, roulette wheels, blackjack tables, pai gow sets, dice, playing cards, used slot machines and much more.

WORLD'S LARGEST GIFT SHOP
2440 Las Vegas Boulevard South
Just about every type of souvenir can be found at Bonanza Gifts, which bills itself as the "World's Largest Gift Shop" (since Guinness World Records does not have such a category, we'll just have to take their word for it!). Whether you're looking for tacky T-shirts, Rat Pack postcards, Minnetonka moccasins, dice bracelets or classic dealer's visors, you'll find it here. Celebrities who have shopped at Bonanza Gifts include Nicholas Cage, Angelina Jolie, Michael Jackson and Carrot Top.

A Quick Tour Of Italy - Verona

I love touring Italy so much that I am doing a series on both the well known and the rarely visited tourist attractions of Italy's twenty regions. This short article explores sights in the Shakespearean city of Verona in the Veneto region of northern Italy including some history, local food, and Veneto wine. Please join me on this quick tour. If you are looking for a European tourist destination, consider the Veneto region of northern Italy on the Gulf of Venice. Venice, its best-known city, is one of the world’s most popular tourist destinations. Excellent tourist attractions abound elsewhere in Veneto, and the crowds are much smaller. This article examines the Shakespearean town of Verona, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Read our companion articles on northern Veneto, southern Veneto, and the university city of Padua.

Verona boasts many vestiges from Roman times. Its Roman amphitheater is the third largest in Italy and its interior is virtually intact. This edifice hosts fairs, theatre, opera and other public events, especially summers. The Roman arch bridge crossing the Adige River was partially destroyed in World War II and rebuilt using original materials.

The Twelfth Century Romanesque Basilica of San Zeno Maggiore sits on a Fourth Century shrine to the city’s patron saint, St. Zeno. Its splendid one hundred ten foot bell tower was mentioned in Dante’s Divine Comedy. The vaulted crypt contains the tomb of St. Zeno and tombs of several other saints.

Verona’s largest church is the Fifteenth Century Sant’Anastasia whose interior is an excellent example of Gothic architecture. Items of honor include frescoes and hunchback statues dispensing holy water.

The Fourteenth Century Castelvecchio on the banks of the Adige River probably sits on the site of a Roman fortress. Its art museum specializes in Venetian painters and sculptors. Verona’s squares include the Roman Herb Square that still maintains its medieval look and some produce stalls. The Gentlemen’s Square is Verona’s center of activities. Next door is the Scaglieri Palace, once home to the ruling family.

Don’t leave Verona without visiting those star-crossed lovers, Romeo and Juliet. The Twelfth Century Casi di Giulietta (Juliet’s House) long belonged to the Dal Cappello family and since Cappello sounds like Capulet perhaps… The house at Via Cappello, 23 with its courtyard probably isn’t for real, but crowds come to gawk and dream. This could be the place to propose.

Verona's cuisine features typical Po Valley dishes: mixed boiled meats, nervetti (calf’s foot and veal shank salad), and risotto, often cooked in Amarone wine. See our companion article I Love Touring Italy – Verona for a sample menu and more information on regional wines plus an in-depth examination of Verona’s tourist attractions. Valpolicella DOC is a world famous, often mediocre wine produced north of Verona. It can be transformed into fine wines including Valpolicella Ripasso and Amarone DOC.

Hawaii Photos

Some images selected to Hawaii

Alaska

Alaska is a state in the United States of America, in the northwest of the North American continent. It is the largest U.S. state by area (by a substantial margin), and one of the wealthiest (per capita) and most racially diverse.

The area that became Alaska was purchased from the Russian Empire on March 30, 1867. The land went through several administrative changes before becoming an organized territory on May 11, 1912 and the 49th state of the U.S. on January 3, 1959. The name "Alaska" is derived from the Aleut alaxsxaq, meaning "the mainland," or more literally, "the object towards which the action of the sea is directed." It is also known as Alyeska, the "great land", an Aleut word derived from the same root.

Alaska is one of two U.S. states not bordered by another state, Hawaii being the other. Alaska has more coastline than all the other U.S. states combined. It is the only non-contiguous U.S. state on continental North America; about 500 miles (800 km) of Canadian territory separate Alaska from Washington State. Alaska is thus an exclave of the United States, part of the continental U.S. but is not part of the contiguous U.S. Alaska's capital city, though located on the mainland of the North American continent, is inaccessible by land — no roads connect Juneau to the rest of the North American highway system.

The state is bordered by Yukon Territory and British Columbia, Canada, to the east, the Gulf of Alaska and the Pacific Ocean to the south, the Bering Sea, Bering Strait, and Chukchi Sea to the west and the Beaufort Sea and the Arctic Ocean to the north.

Alaska is the largest state in the United States in land area at 570,380 square miles (1,477,277 km²), more than twice as large as Texas, the next largest state. It is larger than all but 18 sovereign nations.

One scheme for describing the state's geography is by labeling the regions:

• South Central Alaska is the southern coastal region and contains most of the state's population. Anchorage and many growing towns, such as Palmer, and Wasilla, lie within this area. Petroleum industrial plants, transportation, tourism, and two military bases form the core of the economy here.
• The Alaska Panhandle, also known as Southeast Alaska, is home to many of Alaska's larger towns including the state capital Juneau, tidewater glaciers and extensive forests. Tourism, fishing, forestry and state government anchor the economy.
• Southwest Alaska is largely coastal, bordered by both the Pacific Ocean and the Bering Sea. It is sparsely populated, and unconnected to the road system, but very important to the fishing industry. Half of all fish caught in the western U.S. come from the Bering Sea, and Bristol Bay has the world's largest sockeye salmon fishery. Southwest Alaska includes Katmai and Lake Clark national parks as well as numerous wildlife refuges. The region comprises western Cook Inlet, Bristol Bay and its watersheds, the Alaska Peninsula and the Aleutian Islands. It is known for wet and stormy weather, tundra landscapes, and large populations of salmon, brown bears, caribou, birds, and marine mammals.
• The Alaska Interior is home to Fairbanks. The geography is marked by large braided rivers, such as the Yukon River and the Kuskokwim River, as well as Arctic tundra lands and shorelines.
• The Alaskan Bush is the remote, less crowded part of the state, encompassing 380 native villages and small towns such as Nome, Bethel, Kotzebue and, most famously, Barrow, the northernmost town in the United States, as well as the northern most town on the contiguous North American continent (cities in Greenland, the Northwest Territories, and Nunavut that are farther north are on islands)^{[citation needed]}.

The northeast corner of Alaska is covered by the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, which covers 19,049,236 acres (77,090 km²). Much of the northwest is covered by the larger National Petroleum Reserve–Alaska, which covers around 23,000,000 acres (93,100 km²) million acres. The Arctic is Alaska's most remote wilderness. A location in the National Petroleum Reserve–Alaska is 120 miles (190 km) miles from any town or village, the geographic point most remote from permanent habitation in the USA.

With its numerous islands, Alaska has nearly 34,000 miles (54,720 km) of tidal shoreline. The island chain extending west from the southern tip of the Alaska Peninsula is called the Aleutian Islands. Many active volcanoes are found in the Aleutians. For example, Unimak Island is home to Mount Shishaldin, a moderately active volcano that rises to 9,980 feet (3,042 m) above sea level. The chain of volcanoes extends to Mount Spurr, west of Anchorage on the mainland.

One of North America's largest tides occurs in Turnagain Arm, just south of Anchorage - tidal differences can be more than 35 feet (10.7 m). (Many sources say Turnagain has the second-greatest tides in North America, but several areas in Canada have larger tides.^[8])

Alaska has 3.5 million lakes of 20 acres (8 ha) or larger.^[9] Marshlands and wetland permafrost cover 188,320 square miles (487,747 km²) (mostly in northern, western and southwest flatlands). Frozen water, in the form of glacier ice, covers some 16,000 square miles (41,440 km²) of land and 1,200 square miles (3,110 km²) of tidal zone. The Bering Glacier complex near the southeastern border with Yukon, Canada, covers 2,250 square miles (5,827 km²) alone.

The Aleutian Islands cross longitude 180°, so Alaska can be considered the easternmost state as well as the westernmost. Alaska, and especially the Aleutians, are one of the extreme points of the United States. The International Date Line jogs west of 180° to keep the whole state, and thus the entire continental United States, within the same legal day.

According to an October 1998 report by the United States Bureau of Land Management, approximately 65% of Alaska is owned and managed by the U.S. federal government as public lands, including a multitude of national forests, national parks, and national wildlife refuges. Of these, the Bureau of Land Management manages 87 million acres (350,000 km²), or 23.8% of the state. The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is managed by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service.

Of the remaining land area, the State of Alaska owns 24.5%; another 10% is managed by 13 regional and dozens of local Native corporations created under the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act. Various private interests own the remaining land, totaling less than 1%.

Alaska is administratively divided into "boroughs", as opposed to "counties." The function is the same, but whereas some states use a three-tiered system of decentralization — state/county/township — most of Alaska uses only two tiers — state/borough. Owing to the low population density, most of the land is located in the Unorganized Borough which, as the name implies, has no intermediate borough government of its own, but is administered directly by the state government. Currently (2000 census) 57.71% of Alaska's area has this status, with 13.05% of the population. For statistical purposes the United States Census Bureau divides this territory into census areas. Anchorage merged the city government with the Greater Anchorage Area Borough in 1971 to form the Municipality of Anchorage, containing the city proper and the bedroom communities of Eagle River, Chugiak, Peters Creek, Girdwood, Bird, and Indian. Fairbanks has a separate borough (the Fairbanks North Star Borough) and municipality (the City of Fairbanks).

Source:wikipedia