THE Holiday Inn Macau is offering an overnight package from January 1. At weekends, accommodation plus buffet breakfast for two, shuttle bus, 10-per-cent discount on food and beverages and late check-out, will be $880. The package will be $580 on weekdays. Five stays will entitle you to one night free.
WE have ways to make you gawk. For the most jaded of travellers, for those who have feasted to excess on the Pantheon and the Pyramids, Germany has come up with a new diversion - a disused steelworks. And not just any steelworks. The custodians of the Volklingen Hutte like to compare its towering blast furnaces to the spires of a Gothic cathedral.
In its glory days from its founding in 1873 to its closing in 1986, the plant belched forth the steel for 90 per cent of German army helmets in World War I and yielded armour that powered Hitler's war effort. Indeed, the plant's erstwhile owner, Hermann Rochling, became head of all Nazi smelting during World War II and subsequently served five years in jail for crimes against humanity. Yet Unesco has decreed that the Volklingen plant be declared a part of humanity's cultural heritage, joining a list of 440 other places including the Eiffel Tower and the Taj Mahal.
WE had quite a chuckle at some of the offerings from an off-beat web-site for hardy travellers.
It's author, intrepid back-packer Peter Moore, was caught in a police raid at Mirador Mansion, and includes this in his Best of the Worst experiences.
'Hong Kong Chinese have a totally different understanding of the meaning of the word Mansion. To them a 'Mansion' is a crumbling tower block with lifts that never work, stairwells that double as a garbage tip and as many people as is inhumanely possible crammed in . . . the police raided the joint at 4 am looking for illegal immigrants. The cops' demand of 'don't move' struck me as being a little superfluous.' Some of Moore's pages offer interesting advice for the more adventurous among us, at: THE 'World's Greatest Snow Castle,' co-sponsored by Unicef and the northernmost Finnish harbour city of Kemi, will officially open on February 17.