Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:17):
Guten morg Unville Koleman the travel show. I'm Larry Gelwicks
that get Away Guru, and I am in Zurich, Switzerland today.
We have completed an incredible Rhine River cruise and we
started off in London for a few days, made our
way to Amsterdam and then a one week Rhine River
(00:40):
cruise through the Netherlands, France, Germany, and then disembarked here
in Switzerland and Basel. Last night we were in Lucerne
and tonight we're in Zurich, coming home tomorrow. It has
been a wonderful show. I sure hope that you'll join
me on one of my travel adventures. You know what
(01:02):
I usually do is, you know, I talk about a
lot of travel, but I will say, hey, I'm going here.
Who wants to go? Zurich is really a fascinating, fascinating town.
You know, the architecture is really quite impressive. I suppose
(01:22):
the number one thing I tell people to say in
Zurich are the twin towers of the gross Munster. It's
really Zurich's most prominent landmark. You can climb up to
it and take a breathtaking view of the city, but
you've got world class innovation and economy, modern architecture, old architecture.
(01:45):
But let's talk about something really important. What do people
eat here? Well, they eat everything, of course, I've been
having brats wherever I go. But I suppose a quintessential
local dish in Zurich is a Zurich style sliced veal
in gravy, roasty, which is shredded fried potatoes. Think of
(02:08):
going to Denny's and get a hash brown something like that,
and burley, which is a crusty bread roll. It makes
for an absolutely popular, wonderful visit. You know. I think
throughout Switzerland maybe cheese fondue might be the number one
(02:29):
most popular Swiss It's followed by roasty and musulli. Yeah,
and it's a clean country. The streets are clean, it's
absent of a lot of graffiti. Everything about it is fantastic. Now.
One of the things I'm hearing all the time now
is people want to travel. Some are calling it revenge travel.
(02:51):
You know, we were cooped up for a couple of
years and now we want to be back and seeing
the world. And people want something out of the ordinary,
perfectly safe. They want experiences, not just a typical you know,
twelve countries in four days in Europe or something like that.
(03:14):
They're looking for experiences, mixing with the locals. Well, the
big thing I always hear is I want to be safe.
You know so many good choices. Why be nervous? Why
be anxious about going to a destination that perhaps is
a bit sketchy. Well, according to research, cruise ships are
(03:38):
statistically the safest form of travel. Catch this per billion passengers,
not million per billion passenger miles. The fatality or deaths
per one billion passenger miles on a cruise ship is
(03:59):
point zero eight. Now, to put that in perspective rail
for rail travel, it's eleven point nine for cars three
point three trucks also three point three and point eight
for commercial air travel. What was cruising? Point zero eight?
(04:22):
So cruise travel is ten times safer than air travel
and off the charts compared to rail. Now, of course
accidents do happen, as do death and injuries, but the
numbers are very very few. So you have cruising is
ten times safer than air travel, forty times safer than
(04:44):
riding in a car or truck, and one hundred and
thirty times safer than rail travel. Yeah, I really love cruising.
It's you know what I like about it is that
all my meals and entertainment are in. Now people ask
me what's your favorite cruise line? Well, first of all,
are we talking ocean cruises or river cruises? I love
(05:09):
river cruising. In fact, my wife Kathy, she much prefers
the river cruises, but she still loves the big ocean liners.
Here's the categories. I put in what I call first class,
and your experience will differ on this ship or that
ship within the same company. But I like Princess and
Royal Caribbean and Norwegian Cruise Line. Each one of them
(05:32):
has something special. I call that first class. Now, if
you want to get into the premium that would certainly
include Holland America and Celebrity in my view. You know,
Holland America has smaller ships, usually about twenty five hundred.
Some of the big cruise ships now hold six thousand
guests plus several thousand crew members. Just like a small
(05:54):
city that's floating, Every ship on its size has advantage
and some drawback. If you want to get into the
luxury line, you're talking Regent seven C's Seaborn Crystal. I
absolutely love Crystal Cruises, but of course the price tag
is going to be a bit better with that. So
(06:17):
here's what you want to look for. Look for the deal.
And I always say, look at the target audience. Now,
every product, every service in the world has a target audience. Now,
they'll take anybody, but who are they really going after. Well,
(06:40):
how do you determine that with cruises? Look at the
photos on their website and in their brochure. Let me
give you an example. If you were to look at a
Crystal Cruise Ultra Deluxe, you're going to see a relaxed
country club, elegant, casual, nothing stuffy. But you're going to see,
(07:00):
you know, fifty five and up in a relaxed country club.
Atmosphere beautiful and by the way, they kill it, just
kill it in the dining room. It's so good. Now,
if you look at a Disney cruise, what are you
going to see? You're going to see kids, families. Now,
will Crystal take children, yes, but you just don't see them.
(07:23):
Will Disney take grandma and grandpa by themselves without family, Well,
of course they will, but that's not their target audience.
I remember a caller on the Travel show, Oh this
couple of years ago, a young man called and he said,
I'm getting married. We're engaged, and we want to go
on a cruise for our honeymoon. Which cruise line would
(07:46):
you recommend? And I said how old are you? And
he said twenty three? I said first marriage, yeah. Are
you both in good health? Yeah? And you want a
cruise yeah? And I said I recommend Disney Cruise Line.
And there was this silence on the phone. This was
live on the radio show. And he said, Disney, aren't
(08:06):
there like this is our honeymoon. Aren't there like thousands
of kids running around? And I said, exactly, It'll be
the best form of birth control you could possibly imagine
on your honeymoon. I do love cruising. Now. One of
the things that if you're traveling overseas in most countries,
you're gonna need not all, but most countries, you are
(08:29):
going to need foreign currency exchange. I'm gonna tell you
how to get the best rate with that. Now. Some countries,
like I go to Cambodia, it's US dollars, Vietnam it's
US dollars, Thailand it's thy bot, the UK it's the
British pound. Most of Western Europe is the euro and
so forth and so on. Mexico. You never need to
(08:51):
change money to pay, so let's just use US dollars.
So you want to find out that first, is US
dollars widely accepted? But if not, here's what you want
to do. You want to find out the true exchange rate.
It's called a BBR banker's buying rate, or different names
they call it. Find out what the true exchange rate is.
(09:15):
You won't get it because the money changers you thought
were driven out of Jerusalem two thousand years ago have
resettled at foreign currency exchange booths all over the world.
But you find out, for example, right now, one US
dollar is ninety two euro cents or one euro is
(09:35):
ninety two US cents, So excuse me. One euro costs
a dollar eight usd and one US dollar is ninety
two cents. The British pound. One British pound will cost
you a dollar twenty nine for that. So my rule
(09:56):
of thumb is try to never lose more than five percent.
I'd like to get down there about two percent, two
and a half percent. If you change at the airport,
you're always going to lose ten to twelve percent. That's
just too much for me. But you want to have
some money in your pocket. So what the best thing
(10:19):
to do is take a one hundred dollars bill, hold
it up to the money changer and say how much
am I going to get? So if I held up
one hundred dollars, I should get ninety two euro. Well,
I was in Florence and some guy was offering tourists
seventy five euro. He was killing of it twenty five
percent clip, and they just assumed that's the way it is,
(10:42):
So just say how much am I going to get
for my one hundred dollars. Hey, when you're traveling, always
learn some helpful phrases overseas here on the Travel Show,
(11:10):
Welcome back to the Travel Show. Thank you for joining
us here every weekend. I just love having you here,
and you know, back home, half a dozen times every
week someone will say I recognize that voice or I
recognize you from television, And if you see me out
in public, please say hello. I always like to stop
(11:31):
and chat and get a little bit of your life
story and background. But to me, I am so grateful
to have you join me here on the Travel Show.
You know, this is my thirty third year as host
of the travel show, Hey, just to finish up exchange rates,
as I said, you want to lose no more than
(11:52):
five percent. You won't get it at the airport. Most
hotels will just kill you on the exchange rate. Always
check it out. But you see a lot of advertisement
that say no fee, no commission. That is a hoax,
that is that is just nothing. Because the money changer
sets the exchange rate. They make their money and fair
(12:13):
enough on the exchange rate. So ignore no fee, ignore
no commission. Nobody charges that. They say I'll change it
at this rate. So this story in Florence, there was
a money changer there right by the Trevy fountain and
he was changing euro and for one hundred dollars you
should get ninety two euro. He just had a sign
(12:35):
and it was seventy five cents to the euro. People
would give him one hundred bucks and they just assumed
this must be what the exchange rate is. They had
no idea he was picking their pocket, he was robbing them.
So always always always know the true exchange rate. And
like I said, when you're looking at a money changer
(12:56):
and it's this, it's this, and you can't figure out,
just say it's a fifty dollars bill or one hundred
dollar bill. I like to use a hundred because it's
easy to calculate. Just say how many euro how many
British pounds, how many Japanese yen do I get for
my hundred, and then you can figure out what you're
giving up.
Speaker 2 (13:16):
You know.
Speaker 1 (13:17):
One of the things I like to do in travel
is always learn a few local phrases. You know, the
locals love it when you are trying. You don't have
to be fluent. But for example, in Japan where I
by the way, I'll be taking a group to Japan.
We'll spend three days in Tokyo in early May and
(13:39):
then board a Princess Cruise ship for eleven days sailing
round trip from Tokyo, and we will see Japan in
South Korea in Busan, and you know the Japanese Alps,
Mount Fuji, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Cochin, Toba, Tokyo, Yokohama. The cruise
(14:02):
itself is May sixth to the sixteenth. And you know,
Japan is expensive, but this is a way to see
it at a very reasonable cost. Because all of our
meals you pack and unpack with everything's included on the cruise.
Then we do our own shore excursions there in Japan.
But anyway, what I'd like to do is learn a
(14:26):
few phrases, like where is it in Japanese? Is Dokodeska,
So I might say eki wa dokodeska. Eki is train station.
That's a very important people people people people always use
the trains. In fact, the shinkanson is the bullet train,
(14:50):
and so you might just say eki wa do Kodeska. Well,
this one time I was in Japan, I was twenty
twenty five years and hadn't I was single, hadn't married yet.
I grabbed my sixteen year old brother again. We lived
in San Francisco, So I grabbed my sixteen year old
brother and said, let's go to Japan and Korea for
(15:14):
the summer. I had a friend living in Tokyo, an
American guy buddy of mine, who was teaching English over there,
and we kind of used his house as a base
and we'd stay a couple of days with him and
then take off for a week. Ago we're there, you know,
a month or more, traveling like bohemians, bedouins, sleeping in
(15:36):
you know, youth hostels and everything. We're twenty five years
old and sixteen years old anyway, and yes, I you know,
we did everything, We saw everything. So I had to
get a youth hostile pass in Tokyo. And one of
the crazy things they do in Japan is this, by
(15:58):
the way, they do this in your the same street.
I'm going to make up a name and call it
Jones Street. That's not a Japanese name, but you'll understand,
and it'll go down for block block block. Then the
very same street will change to Smith Street. It's crazy,
and the numbering system can be twelve, fourteen, sixteen, twenty four,
(16:19):
twenty two, twenty eight as you go down the street.
It's absolutely crazy. So I had to find this youth hostel,
and this was back nineteen seventy five, but I knew
that Dolkhodesca is where is this? So I would walk
up Sumi Mussen, which is excuse me, and they're taken
(16:39):
back that some white guy was speaking Japanese to them.
I'd say sumimus Sin. I would point to a piece
of paper with the address on and say Dokadeska and
they would start rattling off in Japanese, speaking to me
in Japanese. But what I noticed is they always would point.
(17:02):
People do that around the world. Well where's this, Where's that?
People will tell you in their native language and point
to it. So I'd go another block, subi ma sen
dokodeska and point to this, and they tell me in
Japanese and point, and they kept pointing one direction. I
was going down. The names of the street change, and
then all of a sudden, when I said, subi ma
(17:22):
sen dokodeska, they pointed back the other way. I ended
up finding the youth hostel. It was on a side
street on the third floor of a building, simply by
people pointing, pointing, pointing with that. You know you speak Spanish,
I mean something like quanto, which is how much, or
that's the mask in quanta the feminine. They'll tell you
(17:43):
how much and what you want to next, remember is
mui caro, which is too expensive. You start your negotiation now.
One of the most important phrases in Spanish is this
one untaco, ma, give me one more taco please. So
in your traveling local signs words the local laws, just
(18:06):
get familiar with them. A few basically learn how to
say thank you. You know, kab kunkah in Thailand is
thank you, and they just smile when you're trying to
say something with them. Hey, Well, when we come back
here on the Travel Show, my good friend back in
(18:26):
Provo Utah, Dan Hohne, will be joining us. I consider
him the smartest man I've ever known in all things
Middle East. Got his graduate degree from Israeli university. All
that and more, what's going on in Israel and the
Holy Land when we come back. You're listening to the
(19:02):
Travel Show, I'm Larry Gelwicks to get Away Guru, and
yes I did get away. I've been telling you. Last week.
We're in Dusseldorf and Clone, Germany, and today we're in Zurich, Switzerland.
We fly home tomorrow. Looking forward to getting back home.
But what a marvelous trip we've had. You know, we're
(19:23):
going to turn our attention to the Middle East and
like to welcome back to the show my dear dear friend,
Dan Hohne, who I consider the smartest man I've ever
known on all things Middle East. Dan, welcome back to
the Travel Show.
Speaker 2 (19:38):
Thank you, Mary. It's good to be back.
Speaker 1 (19:40):
It is, it is, it is. Indeed, you got your
graduate degree in from an Israeli university. You live there
for some ten years founding member of the Center for
Near Eastern Studies or the BYU Jerusalem Center. You travel
there often, and you know that what good degree you got,
(20:01):
as I recall, and Dan and I've been best friends
for fifty years. We used to sit next to each
other in university classes was but your graduate degree, as
I recall, was in biblical history and geography. Dan is
a walking google. I always embarrass him. He tells me
(20:21):
not to do it, but I don't listen to him.
So anyway, Dan Net and Yahoo spoke what a couple
of weeks ago almost what is going on in the
Middle East? As just the problems they got there? When
(20:41):
can you think we can look and feel good about
going back as visitors? So, first of all, what's going
on over there?
Speaker 2 (20:51):
Well, of course, right now the Hamas situation has died
down quite a bit, and you need to understand over
there that the area of Gaza is only twenty five
miles long and our twenty yeah, twenty five miles long,
and it's only about oh anywhere from seven and a
(21:15):
half miles at its widest point down to three and
a half miles. Basically, it's about half the width of Utah.
Lake for those that live in Utah and the same lakes.
So it's not a very large area. It's far away
from where most tourists ever go, and so this tourism
(21:35):
could go on just flying there that the media and
other things have kind of shared it away and Europe, Asia,
africair tourists are going there, but Americans seem to be
a little more hesitant.
Speaker 1 (21:50):
You know, I don't know of any tourists that go
to Gaza. And as I recall, Israel took you might say,
took possession of that area and along with the Sinai
after the sixty seven war, and then was it two
(22:11):
thousand and five signed a peace accord and as a result,
there were I believe ten thousand Jews in the Gaza.
They all had to move. I think they even took
the graves out of Gaza and the local people, the Palestinians,
And I don't want to get political here. I'm just
(22:33):
recounting history, and tell me if I've got it right.
The Palestinians elected Hamas as their government and billions of
dollars were given to Gaza, much of it was not
used for aid for the people. Is that a safe.
Speaker 2 (22:50):
That's a safe way to say it, and not all people.
Of course, the Gaza agreed with the Hamas coming in.
There was a little bit of a strong arm getting
them in. Realized that Israel and removing those people had
to use their own military to remove Israelis from the
area of Gauza. I'd stayed in Gaza number of times
(23:10):
when it was much smaller area. But Hamas wasn't the
one elected at first. It was a Palestinian authority and
they didn't see eye tie. It's interesting that they reached
recent agreements during the two of them. I don't know
if it will really last very much because they don't
see ideologically very similar things. But at any rate, Hamas
(23:36):
took over and the result was is by twenty twelve
they began to you know, start sending rockets, missiles, some
of those things. They got to support from Iran. Iran
is really the one supporting all of the.
Speaker 1 (23:56):
Bank Romo. It's a difficult situation. I know you talk
to friends and colleagues and contacts in the Middle East
and in Israel all the time. So my question is
what are you hearing about the progress for the Holy
Land Israel to become a safe place although tourists are
(24:19):
returning there now, well where are we with them?
Speaker 2 (24:22):
Yeah, well, I feel really pretty comfortable. I have a
group to go with Morris Columbus the end of October,
and then a private family group of ten to go
right after them. I'm still feeling very comfortable with that.
And we will see so much of the country between
(24:44):
the two groups there. And yet I don't feel any
of the places would be unsafe to visit. And the
places are opened up again. A couple of places in
the North they're a little bit concerned, but not anything
that we would look at in danger, just saying that
things are properly opened and that we can see everything.
(25:05):
But we'll see ninety ninety ninety nine percent of any
everything that we'd normally like to see there. So it's
and that's in the North area, I pretty much hundred
percent of everywhere else, you.
Speaker 1 (25:19):
Know, one of the how do I say it's a
nice thing because the conflict is horrendous, But it's not
crowded there right now. There's no crowds out there. Are
there any of the traditional pilgrimage site for Christian pilgrims
Christian visitors that are not open to tourists if we
(25:45):
went in the next couple of months.
Speaker 2 (25:49):
No, No, they're all open. As far as the Christian
sites go, they're all open again. The northern border is
the question. We hope that the kind of agreement that's
tenantally made between hits Blaan Azrob Hold. We'll see what
happens at that time that. Nonetheless, everything else there's nothing
(26:13):
you ad miss and they've gone back to their regular
schedules pretty much by this point, so now I'm not
concerned very much about missing anything. There'd be when I
talked about the northern border. We're talking right on the border,
you know, the conflict, even though there's been a few
missiles from NSBLA that have gone farther south. The conflicts
(26:36):
within three miles on either side of the border, which
are not miles, I mean three kilometers. That's basically a
mile and a half if you want, but something, and
that's what we're talking about. I mean where I live,
I'm three miles from Uvu and three miles from Byu,
(26:56):
and about two and a half miles away from the
arm Temple. I'm right in the middle of things, and
all of those are farther away. Yeah, you know, the distance.
Speaker 1 (27:08):
So Dan, everyone talks about a holy land being a
life changing experience, and for me it is. I've been
there so many times, you have lived there. But what
what can people do when they do take that Holy
Land experience? What can they do to best prepare themselves
(27:29):
for it?
Speaker 2 (27:31):
Well, you know, we do a few seminars and things.
I have things on a website that I have as well,
but we send out a lot of materials before they go.
We have a couple of zoom sessions and things, and
we actually give them some reading lists, some good books
to read and so forth before they go. Sides, locations, experiences.
(27:52):
For those that are going for the scriptures, you know,
I'd recommend that they read, for instance, the Gospels before
Gospels again and for Latter day Saints, if they can
get to Joseph Smith translation that shows both. It would
be a good idea because it brings so many good insights.
But you know, even the Catholic groups I planned to
(28:14):
go there and everything, I would recommend going through the
four Gospels and the New Testament. Then if they want
to know about the contemporary affairs, there's a number of books,
even recent ones that are out and I'd be a
little leary on some of the information unless you get
a broad perspective on the current events through the media,
(28:36):
because you get so many different sides and all, and
you have to keep that in balance.
Speaker 1 (28:41):
Yeah, you know, I think of the times I've gone
to Gettysburg where Abraham Lincoln stood and delivered the Gettysburg addressed,
or pickets charge up that hill and everything changes. As
(29:01):
a latter day Saint going into the Sacred Grove, the
story is never the same. Catholics who visit the Vatican,
you can never feel the same about your Catholic faith
when you've been to the Vatican and you've been to
the Sistine Chaplain. So what I found is when we
(29:25):
actually visit these historical places, it does something to us
and the stories of the Bible. You know, you and
I've talked about the most frequent comment that we get.
And by the way, Dan leads tours there, and Dan
and I combined lead tours there. We each bring a
different perspective. My graduate studies included Hebrew and Coptic, Coptic
(29:49):
being one of the Egyptian languages and religions, and so
we both bring something very different. I do a lot
of the takeaways, don't I Dan, like you know, it's
interesting what happened, But how does this affect my life?
How do I like it? Unto myself? But once you've
been there, the story in the life and ministry of
(30:12):
the Savior is never the same of The most common
remark we get at the end of a tour is Dan, Larry,
I can't wait to read the four Gospels again.
Speaker 2 (30:24):
Oh, that's right, and you will. It's that type of
an experience, you know, there's no way to compare, even
though we talk about all these special experiences throughout the world.
You can go in many, many locations, but when you
think of going where basically Jesus walked and lived, spent
his more mortal life, performed the atonement, and to be
(30:47):
in actual locations or within a stone's throw of the
very spot he stood, and you know, places like Magdala
are new openings there. If you've been to the Holy
Land before, you need to go back and see some
of these new things that have been found archaeologically. In fact,
they're over about thirty items in twenty twenty three that
(31:08):
were significant archaeological finds there. But standing and being there
reading the scriptures hearing these takeaways that you give and
I try and do a little bit of that too,
and you just can't compare the experience. You know, for
students too, I've got a new program that I'm working
on that I expect to go next year next May, June,
(31:30):
part of July. For non BYU students. The current YU
program that goes there, you must be a BYU student
for two.
Speaker 1 (31:39):
Hey, Dan, we're coming to a break. Stay on the
line and I want to hear about your new program
and we come back on the Travel Show. Welcome back
(32:01):
to the Travel Show. I'm Larry Gelwicks, the getaway Guru,
and we've been talking to Dan Hone, who is a
Middle East and holy Land specialist and dear dear friend
of mine. Dan, I gotta tell you that I love
hosting holy Land tours with you. I learned so much
from you, and you know, we're a pretty good team.
(32:25):
If you want to look at any of the Morris
Columbus holy Land tours, and by the way, we have
a lot of wonderful guides, including Dan, really good and
just go to Morriscolumbus dot com Moorriscolumbus dot com and
scroll down to Morris Murdoch Escorted Tours. That's the group
(32:47):
department has the tagline of Morris Murdoch and then click
on Holylands and you can see what's out there. We're
going to keep a regular up date on the Holy Land.
And what I tell people is you got to feel
comfortable going. You know, if you're going to be a
(33:10):
nervous nelly and just so distracted, you're going to miss
the experience. So yeah, you want to do that. Now.
Now we've talked about tours, but you were one of
the founding members of the BYU Jerusalem Center and you're
putting together a program as I understand that the BYU
(33:31):
Jerusalem Center, which is an excellent program, only takes BYU
students and you must have had at least two semesters.
And is that only BYU Provo or any of the campuses.
Speaker 2 (33:44):
Any of the BYU campuses, whether it be Idaho or
the other campus in Hawaii. So it's three campuses and
they take one hundred students each time. They have a
wait list, so you want to sign up early for
those if you can go. I had a lot of
students who are non YU students that used to be
the program was open to any student who met the
(34:08):
minimum requirements academically and physically and stuff. But I had
a lot of parents, these former students parents are now
parents of kids old enough to go too, and they said,
you know, we want our kids to attend it, but
they can't because they're not BYU students, and they can't
(34:30):
transfer if they've got to spend three semesters away from
their campuses. So I've put together a program and the
Kabu thing give up in the Galilee has agreed to
build a campus there if we can get the funding
for it. They've got funding, but they're willing to reserve
it just for a program to begin up there for students,
and I'm going to do the first program without the
(34:52):
campus being built up there right now. This is where
the YU students stay when they go to Galilee. We're
going to spend an extended time and Goalie do the field.
Chance have the courses. You can get information on it
by going to a website I have. It's called Travel
Studies Institute dot org. Travel Studies Institute dot org, and.
Speaker 1 (35:14):
That's studies that studies, not study.
Speaker 2 (35:19):
That's correct.
Speaker 1 (35:19):
Travel Studies Institute dot org. We're speaking with Dan Hone,
who I've already given you his credentials. So any any
last comments before I say goodbye?
Speaker 2 (35:32):
Uh, just Tom next year in Rusalem, so to speak,
but let's do it this year in Jerusalem. Very very good.
Speaker 1 (35:41):
We've been speaking to Dan Hone, uh tour host, expert,
college instructor on all things Middle East and the whole end. Dan,
thank you very much for joining us here on the
travel show. All right, thank you, Safe travel, safe travels.
What a good guy. You know, he and I have
been the best of friends for fifty years and I
(36:05):
just have so much love and appreciation for him. If
you you know, we talked about that experience in Japan.
You remember I said, Dolkodeska, where is it? And you
know Benjola Dolkodeska. That's an important one of where is
the restroom? And uh so much of my travels I've
(36:28):
been in Japan, probably twenty times more. I love everything
about it. You don't love about Japan particularly is the cleanliness.
It is clean. You don't see the graffiti. Now you
do see some jaywalking, but not by the Japanese. It's
the tourists go jaywalking. They and you know one thing
(36:48):
that's really interesting is an absence of trash bins around
the city because in their custom, you take your trash home,
you dispose of it, you don't leave it around the city.
And it's just marvelous. You know. When we did this
Japan tour three days in Tokyo and then eleven day
(37:10):
cruise last year in twenty twenty three, I found this
little hole in the wall Ramen shops only sat seventeen people.
And I love ramen. So I'm walking down this alleyway
of restaurants and shops and I see a line out
this small hole in the wall. It only seats seventeen people.
(37:30):
With the lines at this place, is got to be good.
Absolutely the best food I've ever had in my life.
I went back every night for ramen. But think of
teraiaki and Susi Shasheemi tempura, all of these things. I
will be hosting a tour of Japan, the Empire of
Japan and Korea May sixteen, excuse me, May six to
(37:52):
sixteen next year. We sail round trip from Tokyo Yokohama.
We go to South Korea to Shimi Zoo, Mount Fuji
in the Japanese outs Hiroshima Nagasaki, Toba coach. I mean
it goes you see Japan. We will offer as an
option a four day, three night pre cruise that will
(38:14):
see all things in Tokyo. Otherwise you don't see Tokyo,
you sail and fly into it. Love to have you
join me May six to sixteen. Of course the Tokyo
be earlier in that. Get all the details at morriscolumbus
dot com. Scroll down to Morris murdoch Escorted Tours and
click on Asia more when we come back. Welcome to
(38:56):
our number two of the Travel Show, the Best two
Hours in Radio. I'm Larry Gelwick's to get Away Guru,
and as I told you earlier, I have gotten away.
I'm in Zurich, Switzerland. Today. We've had a wonderful travel
show listeners group in London, in Amsterdam, we sailed the
Rhine River, Netherlands, France, Germany and Switzerland. Yesterday we're in Lucerne.
(39:21):
Today we're in Zurich. Tomorrow we're at the airport and yeah,
we'll be home tomorrow. It's gonna be a lot of fun.
Here is one of my favorite quotes, favorite statements from
Robert Louis Stephenson I often ask myself the question, as
a preamble to this statement of Robert Louis Stephenson, what
(39:44):
is it about Polynesia, the South Sea Islands, the South
Pacific that is so magical, so captivating, so romantic to us?
What is the draw that pulls us again and again
and again. You know, there you think about it, there's
a romantic adventure to it. Warm tropical weather, the sunrises
(40:09):
in the sunsets, very friendly local people who love to sing, dance,
play with fire, and the scenery that absolutely explodes the senses.
What I always tell people when we head to the
South Pacific is you will take photos, even with your
HD camera, and you'll take these photos home and people say, oh,
(40:32):
how beautiful you're going. No, no, you don't get it.
The photos don't capture the beauty, the depth of the
blues and the greens, the hues of color. No way
does it do it. You have uncrowded, unspoiled beaches and
are really a world set apart where for me time
(40:54):
stands still. And I've spent a lot of my life
in the South Pacific. Here's what Robert Lewis did, Evenson,
you know, the Scottish author wrote July twenty eighth, eighteen
eighty eight, Whilst in the South Seas, he said, quote,
few men who come to the islands leave them. They
(41:15):
grow gray where they alighted the palm shades, and the
trade winds fan them till they die, perhaps cherishing to
the very last. The fancy of a visit home, which
is rarely made, more rarely enjoyed, and yet even more
rarely repeated. No part of the world exerts the same
(41:40):
attractive power upon the visitor. With some sense of its seduction.
The first experience can never be repeated. The first love,
the first sunrise, the first South Sea island are memories
apart and touched a sense of virginity close quote. I
(42:05):
just love that because that's what explains it to me.
You know, the South Pacific and Polynesia is very big.
You have, you know, what's considered part of the of
the South Seas and Polynesia. You have the Hawaiian Islands,
the most isolated land group land mass in the world,
(42:25):
and then you have all the islands of the South Pacific,
Australia and New Zealand. It's one of those things that
everybody wants to visit and go again and again. Well,
I will be headed there in February of next year.
Now that's what's that like, six seven months away. It'll
(42:48):
be a cruise. We'll have a three day, three night
option in Sydney. We'll see all of Sydney, then board
a cruise ship in Sydney, sail to Melbourne and down
to Tasmania. Yeah, we'll be looking for the Tasmania Devils.
And then across the Tasman Sea, which by the way
was named after Abel Tasman, the first European to venture
(43:11):
in here. He was a Dutch explorer. And we'll visit
both the North and the South island of New Zealand.
Auta Roa, the land of the Long White Cloud. We'll
visit Fjordland National Park on the south. Now this is
Lord of the Rings country, Dneed and christ Church in
(43:31):
christ Church, you think you're in England. The Tudor buildings,
the Tudor architecture. Up to the Bay of Islands Taranga.
I you know, Tronga is like the New Zealand equivalent
of Santa Cruz, Santa Monica, Newport Beach, it's a beach community.
And then into Auckland, where we'll also have a post
cruise option there in New Zealand, including a tour of
(43:56):
Auckland and down to Hobiton, Yes, where they film the
movie and all those homes and buildings that are built
into the mountain. Yeah, they're still there. Well the cruise
dates itself or February fifteenth to the twenty eighth. There's
not much space left. Love to have you join us.
And you know what you can do is I mean
(44:17):
there's many airlines that fly to New Zealand and home
from excuse me, fly into Sydney because that's where we
start a home from New Zealand. You can certainly fly NonStop,
but you also want to consider flying Fiji Airways. That
is a great airline, beautiful planes, good service. You make
a stop in Nandi, Fiji, both going and coming, and
(44:41):
in most airfares most it will allow a free stopover
in Fiji. Now, Fiji itself is three hundred and thirty
two islands and over five hundred islets. The islets are
very small islands. So you put those together, eight hundred
(45:01):
and thirty two islands and islets. Eighty percent of the
population is on two islands. It's a very small population.
The island of Viti Levu and the island of Vanua Levu.
It was under starting British rule in eighteen seventy four.
(45:21):
It has a very British influence there, but you know
who came over. The landowners brought folks from India and
there's an enormous Indian, as in India, Indian presence there.
There's three official languages, English, Fijian, and what's in Hindi
(45:45):
where they call Fiji Hindi. It's kind of like Spanglish,
but it's Hindi. And there are over two hundred dialects
spoken there, but everybody speaks English easy to get. It's
just you know what I love about Fiji is the people.
They are just the happiest, friendliest people anywhere in the world.
(46:11):
You know a question I'm often asked is, Larry, are
there really secret airfares? And the answer the answer to
that is yes. Let me tell you what a secret
airfare is. The actual legal term is a tour operator fair.
(46:31):
And you can get this to Hawaii, to Mexico to
just about anywhere. Vacation spots mostly, but airlines know how
many seats they're gonna sell, and so they will come
to a handful of license bonded insured tour operators and say, listen, guys,
we will give you an unbelievable discount on airfare. But
(46:57):
and the devil's always in the details. You can't sell
airfare alone because that upsets all the higher prices that
everybody else is paying. And so as a consequence, you
have to bundle it with something. And that bundling might
be a hotel, a car rental, something you don't even
(47:21):
have to get a car rental or hotel for your
entire state. I know people that go to Hawaii using
the secret airfares and they got to get a car
rental for two days, or got to get a hotel
for two days. You have to bundle. In some cases,
the bundled air and hotel or the bundled air and
car is less than airfare alone. Sometimes it's slightly more,
(47:47):
but it is always a better deal than buying your
air and your hotel separately. And on this show, I've
given you multiple examples when I've broken the prices down
well a secret airfare. If you're planning a vacation anywhere,
be sure to ask your experienced and professional travel advisor,
(48:09):
are there secret airfares and the secret airfare really is
a tour operator affairs. So simply ask for a combined
air and hotel package and I promise you that you're
going to save a lot of money. One of the
things when you're booking air and hotel package is you
want to be alert for or what I call the
(48:31):
evil resort or destination fees. Now President Biden said he's
going to get rid of these, hasn't done it yet,
but says he's going to do it, and I hope
before he leaves office, since he's announced he's not running again,
that he will do this. He calls them junk fees.
Airlines used to do this that have a base fair
(48:53):
and then all these mandatory add ons and the FED
system will say, give us one price for all mendatory
price items. I wish they'd do that with hotels. But
the resort fee can be anywhere from thirty to fifty
dollars or more a day, and you have to pay
that locally. So when you're booking your airand hotel, be
(49:15):
sure to ask so there's no surprises. What if any
resort fees are there when we come back, what are
you going to do if you're leaving overseas in a
few days and your dog eats your passport. Yeah, right
here on the Travel Show. I'm Larry Gelwicks, They get
(49:54):
Away Guru here on the Travel Show. And greetings to
you from Guten Nobbins from Zurich, Switzerland. Yeah, I'm here
with a wonderful group of travel show listeners, and I
wish you were here with me. I hope you'll join me.
You know what you can do. Go to morriscolumbus dot com.
Scroll down to Morris Murdoch Escorted Tours and look at
(50:17):
all of the wonderful cruises and tours. If it's a cruise,
click on cruise on the toolbar, or click on a
geographic area. We have wonderful tour guides throughout the company.
But I'd love to have you join me. In my face,
my picture will be on the groups that I am taking.
We apologize for the face. All right, here's what you're doing.
(50:40):
You're headed overseas to a wedding. What could possibly go wrong?
Nato Fratoli and his fiance. We're headed to Italy. Fratoli,
Now does that sound irish to you? No? Italian are
headed to Italy for a wedding. The dog, CHICKI, one
(51:02):
and a half year old Golden Retriever, jumps up and
her passport. His fiance's passport was on the table. That
dog grabs it and choose it to smither reens. What
possibly are you doing? The couple is freaking out. There
is no passport, no help, you know. And I got
(51:25):
to give kudos to some government employees because they reached
out explain their problem. And these people, Nato Fratteroli and
his fiance, they handwalked a replacement passport. But can you
imagine that first impression, that first thought when you see
(51:45):
your passport in Fido's excuse me, not Fido, it's Chicky
in Chicky's mouth. With that, you know, we talked several
weeks ago. For those of you in the Utah area,
there are some several passport places where you can apply
for a passport, but then your completed application is sent
(52:09):
out of state. The US State Department has announced that
a passport processing center that's the ones that print and
distribute it is going to be opened right here in
Salt Lake City. And I know that Senator Romney was
involved in helping get the FEDS to that They announced
six new passport processing offices, including Salt Lake City. Well,
(52:34):
this will allow you to walk in with an appointment.
If you want to walk into a passport office, you
have to have an appointment. And if you have emergency
travel which means you have to show your airline ticket,
explain why it's an emergency, they will process it in
(52:54):
as little as one day. So that's something we're really
looking forward. The State depart has not announced when they
will open this particular office. You know, as I've said
earlier in the show, and I've said many times, I
just love Thailand. It's the people, it's the culture, it's
(53:15):
the food. It's exotic, it's everything from tropical islands to
rice paddies. The northern Thailand is the foothills of the Himalayas,
and of course elephants are part of the culture there.
Do you like a massage. You can get a foot
massage for forty five minutes to an hour for six
(53:37):
seven dollars a regular merson. There's two basic types of
body massages. One it's called a taime massage. They will
give you like hospital scrubs and it's more acu pressure.
The other type of body massage is. They call it
an aroma therapy or oil massage. They use a aroma
(53:59):
scented massage oil and it's like a Swedish massage, you know.
And it is modest and nothing to worry about there.
But that can cost you if you get outside of
the resort fifteen dollars for an hour. So Kathy and
I have this joke, and we've never accomplished it. We
(54:19):
never will, but I get to tie on three or
four times a year. Kathy is with me on most
of these trips. We always say, Okay, this trip, we're
going to get a massage every day. We never have
and I said, we never will, but it's kind of
fun to do that. One of the places that intrigues
(54:41):
me is Wa Doussu Tep in Thailand. Now what means
temple For those who live in say Salt Lake City,
and there's a LS Salt Lake Temple, it would be
called Wat Salt Lake, the Temple of Salt Lake. I
guess the Vatican would be what Vatican City, the temple
(55:03):
or cathedral of Vatican City. Well up out of cheng Mai,
which is in northern Thailand, you're leading into the foothills
of the Himalayas su Tep, and we're gonna talking about
what that's temple Dou Sutep, remember those two words. Soutep
itself is a district of western cheng Mai. Now cheng
(55:23):
Mai is where they have the famous night bazaar. It
is just unbelievably cool. And uh so Soutep is a
district and also gets its name from the adjacent island
mountain Doi in Thai means mountain, So you have the
Wat Dou su Tep, the mountain in the Sutep district. Well,
(55:48):
in terms of an impressive temple, the construction of Whatduisutep
began ready for this thirteen eighty six, and according to
a popular legend, the temple was built to hold a
piece of bone from Lord Buddha's shoulder. Now, one of
those bones was mounted on a sacred white elephant, very
(56:10):
important symbol in Thailand. Who then climbed Dou Sutep mountain.
Remember Dou means mountain. Soutep is the district and the
king of this area with a piece a relic of
Lord Buddha, a piece of his shoulder, knew it had
to be placed in a temple, but he didn't know
(56:32):
where the temple should be, so they took the sacred
white elephant, tied the bone on its back, and turned
the elephant loose, and the elephant climbed the mountain dou
Sutep and stopped near the peak. After trumpeting three times,
the elephant laid down and gently passed away there in
(56:52):
the jungle. The king knew this must be the sacred
spot which is now the site of the Doi Sutep.
And it's the gold temple. And people say, oh, it's
got a little bit of gold, and I said, no,
you're not listening to me. It is a gold temple.
It's a functioning temple and it has been since the
fourteenth century, started in thirteen eighty six, refurbished, rebuilt. But
(57:15):
the priests are there and it's a wonderful experience to
get a blessing from one of the Buddhist priests. Hey,
we got more when we come back on the Travel Show.
(57:43):
Welcome back to the Travel Show. I'm Larry Gelwick's the
Getaway Guru, and as I've already told you, I've gotten away.
I'm in Zurich, Switzerland, head home tomorrow with a wonderful
group of travel show listeners, I hope in your plans
that you will join us on any of our Morris
Colors escorted tours, or go individually with the advice and
(58:04):
help of any of our great travel advisors. And I'd
especially love to have you join me on one of
my travel adventures. Let's play kind of a travel quiz game.
I'm gonna ask you a few questions, and you can
just kind of say them out loud. Which ones do
you know? Which country does not allow chewing gum? That's Singapore. Now,
(58:29):
if you're a foreigner, they're not gonna stop you. If
you spit it on the ground and they see it, yeah,
you're gonna probably get a fine. If you wanted to
see polar bears in Canada, get a polar bar polar
bear tour, which there are some. What is the best
pro province for polar bears in Canada? British Columbia, Nova, Scotia, Alberta. No,
(58:56):
it's Manitoba. Uh. The movie Cast To with Tom Hanks
was filmed in which country? We just talked about it earlier.
That movie was filmed in Fiji. Okay. Where does the
Rocky Mountaineer train run from where to where? In the
(59:17):
US the Rocky Mountaineer train. That's a very scenic one.
Denver to salt Lake. Now you can take it salt
Lake to Denver or Denver to salt Lake. Denver to
salt Lake is the scenic because Salt Lake to Denver
is mostly during the night. Okay, Why was the Eiffel
Tower built? What was the event that was the World's Fair?
(59:41):
And which river in Italy has river cruises on it?
That's the Tiber River. Okay, just a few more. Let's
see here name the major ruins in Guatemala. You fly
to the city of Flores. It is tical. You know,
(01:00:04):
a favorite city of mine in Guatemala. I love Guatemala.
You know Guatemala City is It's okay, there's a wonderful
pre Columbian museum there, but it doesn't have a lot
of this, that or the other. You know, A short
drive in Guatemala city is Antigua. It's surrounded by volcanoes.
(01:00:25):
It is iconic colonial. You just think you've stepped back
in time with cobblestone streets, colonial architecture. And then down
to the market in Chichi Costinango. Now what's nice about that?
I think it's the best indigenous market in all of Guatemala,
Chichi Costinango. And here's what's cool. You know, when Christianity
(01:00:47):
came to the New World, the indigenous natives had their
own what we would call a pagan religion, and in
some respects, early Christianity and Catholicism married some of the
indigenous tribal beliefs and ceremonies with their Christianity, and some
(01:01:14):
of that extends today because there's a beautiful little Catholic
church there right there at Chichi Costannango, near the market,
and you can go in for mass in the front door.
You come out the back and there are the indigenous
native pagan priests and they all get along fine. You know,
just I guess, preserving your options just in case we're wrong.
(01:01:38):
We'll cover all, but the people will participate in the
Christian Catholic Church and participate with the indigenous natives. With that, okay,
let's see one more to visit the Great Barrier Reef,
which I've bought. I'm a diver, I've gone diving on
the Great Bearer Reef. What city would you fly in
(01:02:00):
to and what country? Well, the country's Australia and the
city would be cans spelled c n e S. One
of the stops we made on this particular cruise, the
Rhine River cruise that we just finished with Strasbourg. I
love Strasburg, France, and you know what's interesting is that
(01:02:23):
Strasburg has changed nationalities four times. It's German, it's French,
it's German, it's French. And you know, you're very close there,
Strasburg to Frankfurt. That's a good airport to fly into.
I mean, you can fly into Strasburg, but the rates
tend to be hired, the rental car rates or sky
(01:02:44):
high I like to drive or fly into Frankfurt, which
is just one hundred and forty miles away. You're a
little over two and a half. You don't have I
fifteen on it, so you're gonna take you about two
and a half hours or so. But along the way
you can stop in Heidelberg, which is just ninety miles.
It's kind of like Salt Lake to Logan. The Strasburg
(01:03:05):
Cathedral or the Cathedral of Our Lady of Strasbourg. Construction started.
Put your seat belt on for this one in the
year ten fifteen and it took over four hundred years
to build. Construction it finished in fourteen thirty nine. It
has a very Romanesque arch and Gothic architecture, four hundred
(01:03:28):
and twenty four years to build. And in that cathedral
there's five sets of stained glass We saw all this
just a few days ago, that depict nineteen emperors, the
stained glass windows of the Holy Roman Empire, and the
windows themselves date to the Middle Ages. These, these five
(01:03:49):
sets of stained glass windows in the Strasburg Cathedral date
to the twelfth and thirteenth century. Now earlier in the shit,
I just casually mentioned one of my favorite stops other
than the bakeries and the chocolate shop there chocolate shops
plural in Strasburg is La Petite Fonts. It's one of
(01:04:12):
the most picturesque areas of Strasburg, with winding cobblestone streets,
half timbered houses, cafes, canals, trees and flowers everywhere. So
you want to sit at a cafe and have a
leisurely drink diet coat, coffee, maybe a pastry, maybe a lunch,
(01:04:33):
a sandwich or I mean anything there and just watch
life go by, watch the people and don't be in
a rush. I just love Strasburg. One of the things
that is very significant, and I appreciate Secretary buddhistchev and
(01:04:54):
President Biden getting behind this is airlines now have to
compensate panthers excuse me, passengers almost instantly for delays and cancelations.
You know, when COVID started, we had to cancel a
Holy Land tour. And my brother Tom, he's one of
(01:05:17):
the finest men I know. I hope you meet him,
but I hope you never ever meet him professionally. Why
he's an emergency room doctor. If you're meeting him professionally,
that's not a good thing. Well, he was going to
fly to Israel with a tour that Dan Hone and
I were taking, and he was on Lao found a
(01:05:38):
great fair out of Seattle, and then of course COVID
canceled everything. It took him over a year to get
l Au to refund his ticket. Airlines all the time
they want to keep your money and say we'll give
you a credit, or they just ignore your phone call,
they just ignore your email, they ignore your letter. Well,
just this last April, a couple of months ago, the
(01:05:59):
US Department of Transportation, or DOT, introduced to rule requiring
airlines to quote provide passengers with automatic cash refunds when
owed close quote. Now the rule applies to specific conditions,
making the refund process much more hassle free. When they
(01:06:21):
say cash refunds, if you go back to the original
form of payment. If you paid for your ticket in cash,
you get cash back. But if you paid with a
credit card, which most people do, the refund or the
compensation will go back to your credit card. Now, when
airlines quote change or significantly change their flights, significantly delay
(01:06:47):
their check bags, or failed to provide the extra service
they purchased close quote, the airlines are indebted to compensate
passengers instantly. Now, before this rule maneuvered the refund process
of all airlines. By the way, that's all airlines, including
foreign airlines operating in the United States. Every individual airline
(01:07:13):
had its own refund policies. It's made it really difficult.
See the dot rigs say that if an airline significantly
delays flight, they owe your refunder compensation. Well, at one time,
United Airlines, when you could make up your own rules,
defined a significant delay as twenty six hours. Well, if
(01:07:37):
we delay your flight more than twenty six hours, we
may give you a Hamburger something well. Some airlines, and
at that time, United had unreasonable refund policies for flight
cancelations or delays, leading to numerous complaints to the DOT Now,
so if flights are canceled or significantly delayed and the
(01:07:58):
definition of NOP the definition of significant delay is more
than three hours for domestic and six hours for international,
passengers are automatically eligible for a refund, which means you
can opt out now. If you still go, then there's
(01:08:19):
other compensation, but you know aren't going to get a
full refund. If baggage return is delayed by more than
twelve hours for domestic flights or fifteen to thirty hours
for international flights, depending on the flight duration, the checked
baggage fee if you pay one if you've paid one,
will be refunded. Now, fees for extra services like seat
(01:08:42):
selection in flight entertainment wi FI will also be refunded
if not provided. So with the new DOT rule, every
affected passenger will be refunded automatically without needing to initiate
the process. Airlines must ensure that the refund reaches the
(01:09:04):
traveler that's you, within seven to twenty days, depending on
the method of payment. You know. Earlier we talked about
learning some phrases of foreign countries. I talked about echi
wad dol kudeska, you know quanto. All of these bonjours
(01:09:29):
learn how to just say hello. But one of the
other things you have to do is learn the rules
are and laws of different countries. Here's some really good
ones in the US. Here in the state of Utah
is against the law against a lot of use weapons
of mass destruction. And Salt Lake City has an ordinance
(01:09:51):
that you cannot carry a violin in a paper bag
in logan no manure throwing. Also there's a Utah law
that says you cannot hunt elephants within the state of Utah.
And yeah, all sorts of fun things. Alaska, you can't
operate motorcycles at night. Well, there's a lot of fun
(01:10:15):
stuff out there. Here on the travel show We'll Keep
You Up California, you can't eat frogs that die in
frog jumping competitions. Hey more here on the travel show
(01:10:44):
Guten Nobbyins unvil Koman Travel Show. I'm Larry Gelwicks, that
get away guru, and I've gotten away. I'm in Switzerland
right now. I'll be back in Salt Lake next week,
and thank you for joining us. What a wonderful time
we've had. You know, talking about some funny laws that
are still on the books. I mentioned right at the
end in California. Now these are all laws still on
(01:11:07):
the books. You can't eat frogs that die in frog
jumping competitions. In Colorado, you may not use a polstered furniture.
Outside Delaware, you cannot whisper or use profane language in
a place of worship. Now this one makes sense. In Florida,
(01:11:27):
you can't intentionally feed the alligators. Oh my gosh, did
you know there's four states that prohibit billboards? Can you
name them? Alaska, Hawaii, Maine, and Vermont. And in Indiana
it is against the law to catch a fish with
(01:11:48):
your bare hands. Well, lots of fun things, so be
aware before you go. Hey, Alaska is red hot pun
intended for. I mean, it's just an Alaska cruise. And
so I want to tell you you want to book
now for twenty twenty five, and if you're interested, I
(01:12:11):
will be personally hosting an Alaska cruise August twenty third
to the thirtieth. Now you remember I've told you there's
two types of Alaska cruises. There is the round trip Seattle.
You'll get the Inside Passage and some combination of Juno
or Ketchikan, Skagway, Sitka, Icy Straits, and Victoria. And then
(01:12:32):
there's the North South, which would be Vancouver to Anchorage
or vice versa. And you know they're very similar. You'll
still get some combination of those cities I mentioned. Both
cruises are in the Inside Passage, but there is one
big difference. On the North South. You'll get another day
or even day and a half headed north rather than
(01:12:56):
headed back to Seattle, and you generally get two glares
glacier days on the North South. I'm doing a north
south from Vancouver to Anchorage, Alaska, and we have two glaciers.
We have the granddaddy of them all, which is Glacier Bay,
and then we go to College Fjord. Now College Fjord
(01:13:17):
is one of my favorite glaciers. You know, these glaciers
are there on the mountains and there's hanging glaciers and
it's a fjord, which means it was carved out millenniums
ago by ancient glaciers. So we're in the fjord called
College Fjord and within that fjord itself, you will see
(01:13:41):
thirteen different glaciers. There are over twenty seven thousand glaciers
in Alaska, but most of them are in areas that
you can't get to. There are three thousand plus rivers
in Alaska, a one hundred volcanoes and volcanic fields. Well,
(01:14:01):
we will be sailing from Vancouver. Go there a couple
of days early. I love Vancouver. What I like to
do is get a rental car and drive up to Whistler.
That's where the Olympics were held and a great story.
So there's this small town on the road up to Whistler,
and there is a big sign has a picture of
(01:14:21):
a ferocious bear bearing its teeth and claws, and it
says bear country, bar bear country. Do not exit your vehicle.
So I pull over, and of course what do I do.
I exit my vehicle. I'd leave the door open, ready
for a quick escape, and I'm looking for bears. Well,
(01:14:42):
maybe it's fortunate I didn't see any, but that was
my brush with death, I suppose. But I love going
to Whistler. And then we'll sail from Vancouver, sailing out
of the Vancouver Harbor. One of the iconic experiences of
a lifetime. And so we'll see Juno and Ketcha Can
(01:15:05):
and Skagway. We'll go to Glacier Bay and then up
to College Fjord. We'll head north to Anchorage, and there's
some options afterwards if you want to spend some time
in Alaska. Now you will need a passport for this.
Once you got plenty of time and you ought to
be having a passport anyway. You know, these deals come up.
(01:15:26):
You'll hear about it here first on the travel show.
But would you come and join me. We do our
own shore excursions. We charter our own whale watching boat.
We'll go see Mendenhall Glacier, which is there by Juno,
I mean so many things to the totem parks of
Ketchi Can. We'll go looking for bears because they're coming
back trying to fatten up for the winter, and they
(01:15:50):
sense winter coming. In late August, it still may be
warm here in the in the valley, but it's getting
you know, the things are changing in the animals since
it August twenty third to the thirtieth. You can see
the details at Morriscolumbus dot com or call any of
our Morris Columbus agents at triple eight. Excuse me, eight
(01:16:13):
hundred triple nine forty six forty six. That's eight hundred
triple nine forty six forty six. Well, that brings us
to the end of another travel show. And again, thank
you for joining us. And when you see me in town,
so many of you stop and say hello, we have
a nice chat. I appreciate that more than you will
(01:16:35):
ever know. I'll be somewhere across the Atlantic tomorrow, and
while you're enjoying your Sunday, I'll be cramped in row
fifty two eating filet of peanut and rack of pretzel.
That's about what they serve right now. Anyway, we've had
a great show. Don't forget that British Isles cruise I
(01:16:58):
talked to you about July seventh to the twentieth of
next year. We'll see England, Ireland, Northern Ireland and Scotland
and France the British Isles July seventh to the twentieth.
I'll be your host. Hey, God bless you, and God
bless our great country America.
Guten morg Unville Koleman the travel show. I'm Larry Gelwicks
that get Away Guru, and I am in Zurich, Switzerland today.
We have completed an incredible Rhine River cruise and we
started off in London for a few days, made our
way to Amsterdam and then a one week Rhine River
(00:40):
cruise through the Netherlands, France, Germany, and then disembarked here
in Switzerland and Basel. Last night we were in Lucerne
and tonight we're in Zurich, coming home tomorrow. It has
been a wonderful show. I sure hope that you'll join
me on one of my travel adventures. You know what
(01:02):
I usually do is, you know, I talk about a
lot of travel, but I will say, hey, I'm going here.
Who wants to go? Zurich is really a fascinating, fascinating town.
You know, the architecture is really quite impressive. I suppose
(01:22):
the number one thing I tell people to say in
Zurich are the twin towers of the gross Munster. It's
really Zurich's most prominent landmark. You can climb up to
it and take a breathtaking view of the city, but
you've got world class innovation and economy, modern architecture, old architecture.
(01:45):
But let's talk about something really important. What do people
eat here? Well, they eat everything, of course, I've been
having brats wherever I go. But I suppose a quintessential
local dish in Zurich is a Zurich style sliced veal
in gravy, roasty, which is shredded fried potatoes. Think of
(02:08):
going to Denny's and get a hash brown something like that,
and burley, which is a crusty bread roll. It makes
for an absolutely popular, wonderful visit. You know. I think
throughout Switzerland maybe cheese fondue might be the number one
(02:29):
most popular Swiss It's followed by roasty and musulli. Yeah,
and it's a clean country. The streets are clean, it's
absent of a lot of graffiti. Everything about it is fantastic. Now.
One of the things I'm hearing all the time now
is people want to travel. Some are calling it revenge travel.
(02:51):
You know, we were cooped up for a couple of
years and now we want to be back and seeing
the world. And people want something out of the ordinary,
perfectly safe. They want experiences, not just a typical you know,
twelve countries in four days in Europe or something like that.
(03:14):
They're looking for experiences, mixing with the locals. Well, the
big thing I always hear is I want to be safe.
You know so many good choices. Why be nervous? Why
be anxious about going to a destination that perhaps is
a bit sketchy. Well, according to research, cruise ships are
(03:38):
statistically the safest form of travel. Catch this per billion passengers,
not million per billion passenger miles. The fatality or deaths
per one billion passenger miles on a cruise ship is
(03:59):
point zero eight. Now, to put that in perspective rail
for rail travel, it's eleven point nine for cars three
point three trucks also three point three and point eight
for commercial air travel. What was cruising? Point zero eight?
(04:22):
So cruise travel is ten times safer than air travel
and off the charts compared to rail. Now, of course
accidents do happen, as do death and injuries, but the
numbers are very very few. So you have cruising is
ten times safer than air travel, forty times safer than
(04:44):
riding in a car or truck, and one hundred and
thirty times safer than rail travel. Yeah, I really love cruising.
It's you know what I like about it is that
all my meals and entertainment are in. Now people ask
me what's your favorite cruise line? Well, first of all,
are we talking ocean cruises or river cruises? I love
(05:09):
river cruising. In fact, my wife Kathy, she much prefers
the river cruises, but she still loves the big ocean liners.
Here's the categories. I put in what I call first class,
and your experience will differ on this ship or that
ship within the same company. But I like Princess and
Royal Caribbean and Norwegian Cruise Line. Each one of them
(05:32):
has something special. I call that first class. Now, if
you want to get into the premium that would certainly
include Holland America and Celebrity in my view. You know,
Holland America has smaller ships, usually about twenty five hundred.
Some of the big cruise ships now hold six thousand
guests plus several thousand crew members. Just like a small
(05:54):
city that's floating, Every ship on its size has advantage
and some drawback. If you want to get into the
luxury line, you're talking Regent seven C's Seaborn Crystal. I
absolutely love Crystal Cruises, but of course the price tag
is going to be a bit better with that. So
(06:17):
here's what you want to look for. Look for the deal.
And I always say, look at the target audience. Now,
every product, every service in the world has a target audience. Now,
they'll take anybody, but who are they really going after. Well,
(06:40):
how do you determine that with cruises? Look at the
photos on their website and in their brochure. Let me
give you an example. If you were to look at a
Crystal Cruise Ultra Deluxe, you're going to see a relaxed
country club, elegant, casual, nothing stuffy. But you're going to see,
(07:00):
you know, fifty five and up in a relaxed country club.
Atmosphere beautiful and by the way, they kill it, just
kill it in the dining room. It's so good. Now,
if you look at a Disney cruise, what are you
going to see? You're going to see kids, families. Now,
will Crystal take children, yes, but you just don't see them.
(07:23):
Will Disney take grandma and grandpa by themselves without family, Well,
of course they will, but that's not their target audience.
I remember a caller on the Travel show, Oh this
couple of years ago, a young man called and he said,
I'm getting married. We're engaged, and we want to go
on a cruise for our honeymoon. Which cruise line would
(07:46):
you recommend? And I said how old are you? And
he said twenty three? I said first marriage, yeah. Are
you both in good health? Yeah? And you want a
cruise yeah? And I said I recommend Disney Cruise Line.
And there was this silence on the phone. This was
live on the radio show. And he said, Disney, aren't
(08:06):
there like this is our honeymoon. Aren't there like thousands
of kids running around? And I said, exactly, It'll be
the best form of birth control you could possibly imagine
on your honeymoon. I do love cruising. Now. One of
the things that if you're traveling overseas in most countries,
you're gonna need not all, but most countries, you are
(08:29):
going to need foreign currency exchange. I'm gonna tell you
how to get the best rate with that. Now. Some countries,
like I go to Cambodia, it's US dollars, Vietnam it's
US dollars, Thailand it's thy bot, the UK it's the
British pound. Most of Western Europe is the euro and
so forth and so on. Mexico. You never need to
(08:51):
change money to pay, so let's just use US dollars.
So you want to find out that first, is US
dollars widely accepted? But if not, here's what you want
to do. You want to find out the true exchange rate.
It's called a BBR banker's buying rate, or different names
they call it. Find out what the true exchange rate is.
(09:15):
You won't get it because the money changers you thought
were driven out of Jerusalem two thousand years ago have
resettled at foreign currency exchange booths all over the world.
But you find out, for example, right now, one US
dollar is ninety two euro cents or one euro is
(09:35):
ninety two US cents, So excuse me. One euro costs
a dollar eight usd and one US dollar is ninety
two cents. The British pound. One British pound will cost
you a dollar twenty nine for that. So my rule
(09:56):
of thumb is try to never lose more than five percent.
I'd like to get down there about two percent, two
and a half percent. If you change at the airport,
you're always going to lose ten to twelve percent. That's
just too much for me. But you want to have
some money in your pocket. So what the best thing
(10:19):
to do is take a one hundred dollars bill, hold
it up to the money changer and say how much
am I going to get? So if I held up
one hundred dollars, I should get ninety two euro. Well,
I was in Florence and some guy was offering tourists
seventy five euro. He was killing of it twenty five
percent clip, and they just assumed that's the way it is,
(10:42):
So just say how much am I going to get
for my one hundred dollars. Hey, when you're traveling, always
learn some helpful phrases overseas here on the Travel Show,
(11:10):
Welcome back to the Travel Show. Thank you for joining
us here every weekend. I just love having you here,
and you know, back home, half a dozen times every
week someone will say I recognize that voice or I
recognize you from television, And if you see me out
in public, please say hello. I always like to stop
(11:31):
and chat and get a little bit of your life
story and background. But to me, I am so grateful
to have you join me here on the Travel Show.
You know, this is my thirty third year as host
of the travel show, Hey, just to finish up exchange rates,
as I said, you want to lose no more than
(11:52):
five percent. You won't get it at the airport. Most
hotels will just kill you on the exchange rate. Always
check it out. But you see a lot of advertisement
that say no fee, no commission. That is a hoax,
that is that is just nothing. Because the money changer
sets the exchange rate. They make their money and fair
(12:13):
enough on the exchange rate. So ignore no fee, ignore
no commission. Nobody charges that. They say I'll change it
at this rate. So this story in Florence, there was
a money changer there right by the Trevy fountain and
he was changing euro and for one hundred dollars you
should get ninety two euro. He just had a sign
(12:35):
and it was seventy five cents to the euro. People
would give him one hundred bucks and they just assumed
this must be what the exchange rate is. They had
no idea he was picking their pocket, he was robbing them.
So always always always know the true exchange rate. And
like I said, when you're looking at a money changer
(12:56):
and it's this, it's this, and you can't figure out,
just say it's a fifty dollars bill or one hundred
dollar bill. I like to use a hundred because it's
easy to calculate. Just say how many euro how many
British pounds, how many Japanese yen do I get for
my hundred, and then you can figure out what you're
giving up.
Speaker 2 (13:16):
You know.
Speaker 1 (13:17):
One of the things I like to do in travel
is always learn a few local phrases. You know, the
locals love it when you are trying. You don't have
to be fluent. But for example, in Japan where I
by the way, I'll be taking a group to Japan.
We'll spend three days in Tokyo in early May and
(13:39):
then board a Princess Cruise ship for eleven days sailing
round trip from Tokyo, and we will see Japan in
South Korea in Busan, and you know the Japanese Alps,
Mount Fuji, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Cochin, Toba, Tokyo, Yokohama. The cruise
(14:02):
itself is May sixth to the sixteenth. And you know,
Japan is expensive, but this is a way to see
it at a very reasonable cost. Because all of our
meals you pack and unpack with everything's included on the cruise.
Then we do our own shore excursions there in Japan.
But anyway, what I'd like to do is learn a
(14:26):
few phrases, like where is it in Japanese? Is Dokodeska,
So I might say eki wa dokodeska. Eki is train station.
That's a very important people people people people always use
the trains. In fact, the shinkanson is the bullet train,
(14:50):
and so you might just say eki wa do Kodeska. Well,
this one time I was in Japan, I was twenty
twenty five years and hadn't I was single, hadn't married yet.
I grabbed my sixteen year old brother again. We lived
in San Francisco, So I grabbed my sixteen year old
brother and said, let's go to Japan and Korea for
(15:14):
the summer. I had a friend living in Tokyo, an
American guy buddy of mine, who was teaching English over there,
and we kind of used his house as a base
and we'd stay a couple of days with him and
then take off for a week. Ago we're there, you know,
a month or more, traveling like bohemians, bedouins, sleeping in
(15:36):
you know, youth hostels and everything. We're twenty five years
old and sixteen years old anyway, and yes, I you know,
we did everything, We saw everything. So I had to
get a youth hostile pass in Tokyo. And one of
the crazy things they do in Japan is this, by
(15:58):
the way, they do this in your the same street.
I'm going to make up a name and call it
Jones Street. That's not a Japanese name, but you'll understand,
and it'll go down for block block block. Then the
very same street will change to Smith Street. It's crazy,
and the numbering system can be twelve, fourteen, sixteen, twenty four,
(16:19):
twenty two, twenty eight as you go down the street.
It's absolutely crazy. So I had to find this youth hostel,
and this was back nineteen seventy five, but I knew
that Dolkhodesca is where is this? So I would walk
up Sumi Mussen, which is excuse me, and they're taken
(16:39):
back that some white guy was speaking Japanese to them.
I'd say sumimus Sin. I would point to a piece
of paper with the address on and say Dokadeska and
they would start rattling off in Japanese, speaking to me
in Japanese. But what I noticed is they always would point.
(17:02):
People do that around the world. Well where's this, Where's that?
People will tell you in their native language and point
to it. So I'd go another block, subi ma sen
dokodeska and point to this, and they tell me in
Japanese and point, and they kept pointing one direction. I
was going down. The names of the street change, and
then all of a sudden, when I said, subi ma
(17:22):
sen dokodeska, they pointed back the other way. I ended
up finding the youth hostel. It was on a side
street on the third floor of a building, simply by
people pointing, pointing, pointing with that. You know you speak Spanish,
I mean something like quanto, which is how much, or
that's the mask in quanta the feminine. They'll tell you
(17:43):
how much and what you want to next, remember is
mui caro, which is too expensive. You start your negotiation now.
One of the most important phrases in Spanish is this
one untaco, ma, give me one more taco please. So
in your traveling local signs words the local laws, just
(18:06):
get familiar with them. A few basically learn how to
say thank you. You know, kab kunkah in Thailand is
thank you, and they just smile when you're trying to
say something with them. Hey, Well, when we come back
here on the Travel Show, my good friend back in
(18:26):
Provo Utah, Dan Hohne, will be joining us. I consider
him the smartest man I've ever known in all things
Middle East. Got his graduate degree from Israeli university. All
that and more, what's going on in Israel and the
Holy Land when we come back. You're listening to the
(19:02):
Travel Show, I'm Larry Gelwicks to get Away Guru, and
yes I did get away. I've been telling you. Last week.
We're in Dusseldorf and Clone, Germany, and today we're in Zurich, Switzerland.
We fly home tomorrow. Looking forward to getting back home.
But what a marvelous trip we've had. You know, we're
(19:23):
going to turn our attention to the Middle East and
like to welcome back to the show my dear dear friend,
Dan Hohne, who I consider the smartest man I've ever
known on all things Middle East. Dan, welcome back to
the Travel Show.
Speaker 2 (19:38):
Thank you, Mary. It's good to be back.
Speaker 1 (19:40):
It is, it is, it is. Indeed, you got your
graduate degree in from an Israeli university. You live there
for some ten years founding member of the Center for
Near Eastern Studies or the BYU Jerusalem Center. You travel
there often, and you know that what good degree you got,
(20:01):
as I recall, and Dan and I've been best friends
for fifty years. We used to sit next to each
other in university classes was but your graduate degree, as
I recall, was in biblical history and geography. Dan is
a walking google. I always embarrass him. He tells me
(20:21):
not to do it, but I don't listen to him.
So anyway, Dan Net and Yahoo spoke what a couple
of weeks ago almost what is going on in the
Middle East? As just the problems they got there? When
(20:41):
can you think we can look and feel good about
going back as visitors? So, first of all, what's going
on over there?
Speaker 2 (20:51):
Well, of course, right now the Hamas situation has died
down quite a bit, and you need to understand over
there that the area of Gaza is only twenty five
miles long and our twenty yeah, twenty five miles long,
and it's only about oh anywhere from seven and a
(21:15):
half miles at its widest point down to three and
a half miles. Basically, it's about half the width of Utah.
Lake for those that live in Utah and the same lakes.
So it's not a very large area. It's far away
from where most tourists ever go, and so this tourism
(21:35):
could go on just flying there that the media and
other things have kind of shared it away and Europe, Asia,
africair tourists are going there, but Americans seem to be
a little more hesitant.
Speaker 1 (21:50):
You know, I don't know of any tourists that go
to Gaza. And as I recall, Israel took you might say,
took possession of that area and along with the Sinai
after the sixty seven war, and then was it two
(22:11):
thousand and five signed a peace accord and as a result,
there were I believe ten thousand Jews in the Gaza.
They all had to move. I think they even took
the graves out of Gaza and the local people, the Palestinians,
And I don't want to get political here. I'm just
(22:33):
recounting history, and tell me if I've got it right.
The Palestinians elected Hamas as their government and billions of
dollars were given to Gaza, much of it was not
used for aid for the people. Is that a safe.
Speaker 2 (22:50):
That's a safe way to say it, and not all people.
Of course, the Gaza agreed with the Hamas coming in.
There was a little bit of a strong arm getting
them in. Realized that Israel and removing those people had
to use their own military to remove Israelis from the
area of Gauza. I'd stayed in Gaza number of times
(23:10):
when it was much smaller area. But Hamas wasn't the
one elected at first. It was a Palestinian authority and
they didn't see eye tie. It's interesting that they reached
recent agreements during the two of them. I don't know
if it will really last very much because they don't
see ideologically very similar things. But at any rate, Hamas
(23:36):
took over and the result was is by twenty twelve
they began to you know, start sending rockets, missiles, some
of those things. They got to support from Iran. Iran
is really the one supporting all of the.
Speaker 1 (23:56):
Bank Romo. It's a difficult situation. I know you talk
to friends and colleagues and contacts in the Middle East
and in Israel all the time. So my question is
what are you hearing about the progress for the Holy
Land Israel to become a safe place although tourists are
(24:19):
returning there now, well where are we with them?
Speaker 2 (24:22):
Yeah, well, I feel really pretty comfortable. I have a
group to go with Morris Columbus the end of October,
and then a private family group of ten to go
right after them. I'm still feeling very comfortable with that.
And we will see so much of the country between
(24:44):
the two groups there. And yet I don't feel any
of the places would be unsafe to visit. And the
places are opened up again. A couple of places in
the North they're a little bit concerned, but not anything
that we would look at in danger, just saying that
things are properly opened and that we can see everything.
(25:05):
But we'll see ninety ninety ninety nine percent of any
everything that we'd normally like to see there. So it's
and that's in the North area, I pretty much hundred
percent of everywhere else, you.
Speaker 1 (25:19):
Know, one of the how do I say it's a
nice thing because the conflict is horrendous, But it's not
crowded there right now. There's no crowds out there. Are
there any of the traditional pilgrimage site for Christian pilgrims
Christian visitors that are not open to tourists if we
(25:45):
went in the next couple of months.
Speaker 2 (25:49):
No, No, they're all open. As far as the Christian
sites go, they're all open again. The northern border is
the question. We hope that the kind of agreement that's
tenantally made between hits Blaan Azrob Hold. We'll see what
happens at that time that. Nonetheless, everything else there's nothing
(26:13):
you ad miss and they've gone back to their regular
schedules pretty much by this point, so now I'm not
concerned very much about missing anything. There'd be when I
talked about the northern border. We're talking right on the border,
you know, the conflict, even though there's been a few
missiles from NSBLA that have gone farther south. The conflicts
(26:36):
within three miles on either side of the border, which
are not miles, I mean three kilometers. That's basically a
mile and a half if you want, but something, and
that's what we're talking about. I mean where I live,
I'm three miles from Uvu and three miles from Byu,
(26:56):
and about two and a half miles away from the
arm Temple. I'm right in the middle of things, and
all of those are farther away. Yeah, you know, the distance.
Speaker 1 (27:08):
So Dan, everyone talks about a holy land being a
life changing experience, and for me it is. I've been
there so many times, you have lived there. But what
what can people do when they do take that Holy
Land experience? What can they do to best prepare themselves
(27:29):
for it?
Speaker 2 (27:31):
Well, you know, we do a few seminars and things.
I have things on a website that I have as well,
but we send out a lot of materials before they go.
We have a couple of zoom sessions and things, and
we actually give them some reading lists, some good books
to read and so forth before they go. Sides, locations, experiences.
(27:52):
For those that are going for the scriptures, you know,
I'd recommend that they read, for instance, the Gospels before
Gospels again and for Latter day Saints, if they can
get to Joseph Smith translation that shows both. It would
be a good idea because it brings so many good insights.
But you know, even the Catholic groups I planned to
(28:14):
go there and everything, I would recommend going through the
four Gospels and the New Testament. Then if they want
to know about the contemporary affairs, there's a number of books,
even recent ones that are out and I'd be a
little leary on some of the information unless you get
a broad perspective on the current events through the media,
(28:36):
because you get so many different sides and all, and
you have to keep that in balance.
Speaker 1 (28:41):
Yeah, you know, I think of the times I've gone
to Gettysburg where Abraham Lincoln stood and delivered the Gettysburg addressed,
or pickets charge up that hill and everything changes. As
(29:01):
a latter day Saint going into the Sacred Grove, the
story is never the same. Catholics who visit the Vatican,
you can never feel the same about your Catholic faith
when you've been to the Vatican and you've been to
the Sistine Chaplain. So what I found is when we
(29:25):
actually visit these historical places, it does something to us
and the stories of the Bible. You know, you and
I've talked about the most frequent comment that we get.
And by the way, Dan leads tours there, and Dan
and I combined lead tours there. We each bring a
different perspective. My graduate studies included Hebrew and Coptic, Coptic
(29:49):
being one of the Egyptian languages and religions, and so
we both bring something very different. I do a lot
of the takeaways, don't I Dan, like you know, it's
interesting what happened, But how does this affect my life?
How do I like it? Unto myself? But once you've
been there, the story in the life and ministry of
(30:12):
the Savior is never the same of The most common
remark we get at the end of a tour is Dan, Larry,
I can't wait to read the four Gospels again.
Speaker 2 (30:24):
Oh, that's right, and you will. It's that type of
an experience, you know, there's no way to compare, even
though we talk about all these special experiences throughout the world.
You can go in many, many locations, but when you
think of going where basically Jesus walked and lived, spent
his more mortal life, performed the atonement, and to be
(30:47):
in actual locations or within a stone's throw of the
very spot he stood, and you know, places like Magdala
are new openings there. If you've been to the Holy
Land before, you need to go back and see some
of these new things that have been found archaeologically. In fact,
they're over about thirty items in twenty twenty three that
(31:08):
were significant archaeological finds there. But standing and being there
reading the scriptures hearing these takeaways that you give and
I try and do a little bit of that too,
and you just can't compare the experience. You know, for
students too, I've got a new program that I'm working
on that I expect to go next year next May, June,
(31:30):
part of July. For non BYU students. The current YU
program that goes there, you must be a BYU student
for two.
Speaker 1 (31:39):
Hey, Dan, we're coming to a break. Stay on the
line and I want to hear about your new program
and we come back on the Travel Show. Welcome back
(32:01):
to the Travel Show. I'm Larry Gelwicks, the getaway Guru,
and we've been talking to Dan Hone, who is a
Middle East and holy Land specialist and dear dear friend
of mine. Dan, I gotta tell you that I love
hosting holy Land tours with you. I learned so much
from you, and you know, we're a pretty good team.
(32:25):
If you want to look at any of the Morris
Columbus holy Land tours, and by the way, we have
a lot of wonderful guides, including Dan, really good and
just go to Morriscolumbus dot com Moorriscolumbus dot com and
scroll down to Morris Murdoch Escorted Tours. That's the group
(32:47):
department has the tagline of Morris Murdoch and then click
on Holylands and you can see what's out there. We're
going to keep a regular up date on the Holy Land.
And what I tell people is you got to feel
comfortable going. You know, if you're going to be a
(33:10):
nervous nelly and just so distracted, you're going to miss
the experience. So yeah, you want to do that. Now.
Now we've talked about tours, but you were one of
the founding members of the BYU Jerusalem Center and you're
putting together a program as I understand that the BYU
(33:31):
Jerusalem Center, which is an excellent program, only takes BYU
students and you must have had at least two semesters.
And is that only BYU Provo or any of the campuses.
Speaker 2 (33:44):
Any of the BYU campuses, whether it be Idaho or
the other campus in Hawaii. So it's three campuses and
they take one hundred students each time. They have a
wait list, so you want to sign up early for
those if you can go. I had a lot of
students who are non YU students that used to be
the program was open to any student who met the
(34:08):
minimum requirements academically and physically and stuff. But I had
a lot of parents, these former students parents are now
parents of kids old enough to go too, and they said,
you know, we want our kids to attend it, but
they can't because they're not BYU students, and they can't
(34:30):
transfer if they've got to spend three semesters away from
their campuses. So I've put together a program and the
Kabu thing give up in the Galilee has agreed to
build a campus there if we can get the funding
for it. They've got funding, but they're willing to reserve
it just for a program to begin up there for students,
and I'm going to do the first program without the
(34:52):
campus being built up there right now. This is where
the YU students stay when they go to Galilee. We're
going to spend an extended time and Goalie do the field.
Chance have the courses. You can get information on it
by going to a website I have. It's called Travel
Studies Institute dot org. Travel Studies Institute dot org, and.
Speaker 1 (35:14):
That's studies that studies, not study.
Speaker 2 (35:19):
That's correct.
Speaker 1 (35:19):
Travel Studies Institute dot org. We're speaking with Dan Hone,
who I've already given you his credentials. So any any
last comments before I say goodbye?
Speaker 2 (35:32):
Uh, just Tom next year in Rusalem, so to speak,
but let's do it this year in Jerusalem. Very very good.
Speaker 1 (35:41):
We've been speaking to Dan Hone, uh tour host, expert,
college instructor on all things Middle East and the whole end. Dan,
thank you very much for joining us here on the
travel show. All right, thank you, Safe travel, safe travels.
What a good guy. You know, he and I have
been the best of friends for fifty years and I
(36:05):
just have so much love and appreciation for him. If
you you know, we talked about that experience in Japan.
You remember I said, Dolkodeska, where is it? And you
know Benjola Dolkodeska. That's an important one of where is
the restroom? And uh so much of my travels I've
(36:28):
been in Japan, probably twenty times more. I love everything
about it. You don't love about Japan particularly is the cleanliness.
It is clean. You don't see the graffiti. Now you
do see some jaywalking, but not by the Japanese. It's
the tourists go jaywalking. They and you know one thing
(36:48):
that's really interesting is an absence of trash bins around
the city because in their custom, you take your trash home,
you dispose of it, you don't leave it around the city.
And it's just marvelous. You know. When we did this
Japan tour three days in Tokyo and then eleven day
(37:10):
cruise last year in twenty twenty three, I found this
little hole in the wall Ramen shops only sat seventeen people.
And I love ramen. So I'm walking down this alleyway
of restaurants and shops and I see a line out
this small hole in the wall. It only seats seventeen people.
(37:30):
With the lines at this place, is got to be good.
Absolutely the best food I've ever had in my life.
I went back every night for ramen. But think of
teraiaki and Susi Shasheemi tempura, all of these things. I
will be hosting a tour of Japan, the Empire of
Japan and Korea May sixteen, excuse me, May six to
(37:52):
sixteen next year. We sail round trip from Tokyo Yokohama.
We go to South Korea to Shimi Zoo, Mount Fuji
in the Japanese outs Hiroshima Nagasaki, Toba coach. I mean
it goes you see Japan. We will offer as an
option a four day, three night pre cruise that will
(38:14):
see all things in Tokyo. Otherwise you don't see Tokyo,
you sail and fly into it. Love to have you
join me May six to sixteen. Of course the Tokyo
be earlier in that. Get all the details at morriscolumbus
dot com. Scroll down to Morris murdoch Escorted Tours and
click on Asia more when we come back. Welcome to
(38:56):
our number two of the Travel Show, the Best two
Hours in Radio. I'm Larry Gelwick's to get Away Guru,
and as I told you earlier, I have gotten away.
I'm in Zurich, Switzerland. Today. We've had a wonderful travel
show listeners group in London, in Amsterdam, we sailed the
Rhine River, Netherlands, France, Germany and Switzerland. Yesterday we're in Lucerne.
(39:21):
Today we're in Zurich. Tomorrow we're at the airport and yeah,
we'll be home tomorrow. It's gonna be a lot of fun.
Here is one of my favorite quotes, favorite statements from
Robert Louis Stephenson I often ask myself the question, as
a preamble to this statement of Robert Louis Stephenson, what
(39:44):
is it about Polynesia, the South Sea Islands, the South
Pacific that is so magical, so captivating, so romantic to us?
What is the draw that pulls us again and again
and again. You know, there you think about it, there's
a romantic adventure to it. Warm tropical weather, the sunrises
(40:09):
in the sunsets, very friendly local people who love to sing, dance,
play with fire, and the scenery that absolutely explodes the senses.
What I always tell people when we head to the
South Pacific is you will take photos, even with your
HD camera, and you'll take these photos home and people say, oh,
(40:32):
how beautiful you're going. No, no, you don't get it.
The photos don't capture the beauty, the depth of the
blues and the greens, the hues of color. No way
does it do it. You have uncrowded, unspoiled beaches and
are really a world set apart where for me time
(40:54):
stands still. And I've spent a lot of my life
in the South Pacific. Here's what Robert Lewis did, Evenson,
you know, the Scottish author wrote July twenty eighth, eighteen
eighty eight, Whilst in the South Seas, he said, quote,
few men who come to the islands leave them. They
(41:15):
grow gray where they alighted the palm shades, and the
trade winds fan them till they die, perhaps cherishing to
the very last. The fancy of a visit home, which
is rarely made, more rarely enjoyed, and yet even more
rarely repeated. No part of the world exerts the same
(41:40):
attractive power upon the visitor. With some sense of its seduction.
The first experience can never be repeated. The first love,
the first sunrise, the first South Sea island are memories
apart and touched a sense of virginity close quote. I
(42:05):
just love that because that's what explains it to me.
You know, the South Pacific and Polynesia is very big.
You have, you know, what's considered part of the of
the South Seas and Polynesia. You have the Hawaiian Islands,
the most isolated land group land mass in the world,
(42:25):
and then you have all the islands of the South Pacific,
Australia and New Zealand. It's one of those things that
everybody wants to visit and go again and again. Well,
I will be headed there in February of next year.
Now that's what's that like, six seven months away. It'll
(42:48):
be a cruise. We'll have a three day, three night
option in Sydney. We'll see all of Sydney, then board
a cruise ship in Sydney, sail to Melbourne and down
to Tasmania. Yeah, we'll be looking for the Tasmania Devils.
And then across the Tasman Sea, which by the way
was named after Abel Tasman, the first European to venture
(43:11):
in here. He was a Dutch explorer. And we'll visit
both the North and the South island of New Zealand.
Auta Roa, the land of the Long White Cloud. We'll
visit Fjordland National Park on the south. Now this is
Lord of the Rings country, Dneed and christ Church in
(43:31):
christ Church, you think you're in England. The Tudor buildings,
the Tudor architecture. Up to the Bay of Islands Taranga.
I you know, Tronga is like the New Zealand equivalent
of Santa Cruz, Santa Monica, Newport Beach, it's a beach community.
And then into Auckland, where we'll also have a post
cruise option there in New Zealand, including a tour of
(43:56):
Auckland and down to Hobiton, Yes, where they film the
movie and all those homes and buildings that are built
into the mountain. Yeah, they're still there. Well the cruise
dates itself or February fifteenth to the twenty eighth. There's
not much space left. Love to have you join us.
And you know what you can do is I mean
(44:17):
there's many airlines that fly to New Zealand and home
from excuse me, fly into Sydney because that's where we
start a home from New Zealand. You can certainly fly NonStop,
but you also want to consider flying Fiji Airways. That
is a great airline, beautiful planes, good service. You make
a stop in Nandi, Fiji, both going and coming, and
(44:41):
in most airfares most it will allow a free stopover
in Fiji. Now, Fiji itself is three hundred and thirty
two islands and over five hundred islets. The islets are
very small islands. So you put those together, eight hundred
(45:01):
and thirty two islands and islets. Eighty percent of the
population is on two islands. It's a very small population.
The island of Viti Levu and the island of Vanua Levu.
It was under starting British rule in eighteen seventy four.
(45:21):
It has a very British influence there, but you know
who came over. The landowners brought folks from India and
there's an enormous Indian, as in India, Indian presence there.
There's three official languages, English, Fijian, and what's in Hindi
(45:45):
where they call Fiji Hindi. It's kind of like Spanglish,
but it's Hindi. And there are over two hundred dialects
spoken there, but everybody speaks English easy to get. It's
just you know what I love about Fiji is the people.
They are just the happiest, friendliest people anywhere in the world.
(46:11):
You know a question I'm often asked is, Larry, are
there really secret airfares? And the answer the answer to
that is yes. Let me tell you what a secret
airfare is. The actual legal term is a tour operator fair.
(46:31):
And you can get this to Hawaii, to Mexico to
just about anywhere. Vacation spots mostly, but airlines know how
many seats they're gonna sell, and so they will come
to a handful of license bonded insured tour operators and say, listen, guys,
we will give you an unbelievable discount on airfare. But
(46:57):
and the devil's always in the details. You can't sell
airfare alone because that upsets all the higher prices that
everybody else is paying. And so as a consequence, you
have to bundle it with something. And that bundling might
be a hotel, a car rental, something you don't even
(47:21):
have to get a car rental or hotel for your
entire state. I know people that go to Hawaii using
the secret airfares and they got to get a car
rental for two days, or got to get a hotel
for two days. You have to bundle. In some cases,
the bundled air and hotel or the bundled air and
car is less than airfare alone. Sometimes it's slightly more,
(47:47):
but it is always a better deal than buying your
air and your hotel separately. And on this show, I've
given you multiple examples when I've broken the prices down
well a secret airfare. If you're planning a vacation anywhere,
be sure to ask your experienced and professional travel advisor,
(48:09):
are there secret airfares and the secret airfare really is
a tour operator affairs. So simply ask for a combined
air and hotel package and I promise you that you're
going to save a lot of money. One of the
things when you're booking air and hotel package is you
want to be alert for or what I call the
(48:31):
evil resort or destination fees. Now President Biden said he's
going to get rid of these, hasn't done it yet,
but says he's going to do it, and I hope
before he leaves office, since he's announced he's not running again,
that he will do this. He calls them junk fees.
Airlines used to do this that have a base fair
(48:53):
and then all these mandatory add ons and the FED
system will say, give us one price for all mendatory
price items. I wish they'd do that with hotels. But
the resort fee can be anywhere from thirty to fifty
dollars or more a day, and you have to pay
that locally. So when you're booking your airand hotel, be
(49:15):
sure to ask so there's no surprises. What if any
resort fees are there when we come back, what are
you going to do if you're leaving overseas in a
few days and your dog eats your passport. Yeah, right
here on the Travel Show. I'm Larry Gelwicks, They get
(49:54):
Away Guru here on the Travel Show. And greetings to
you from Guten Nobbins from Zurich, Switzerland. Yeah, I'm here
with a wonderful group of travel show listeners, and I
wish you were here with me. I hope you'll join me.
You know what you can do. Go to morriscolumbus dot com.
Scroll down to Morris Murdoch Escorted Tours and look at
(50:17):
all of the wonderful cruises and tours. If it's a cruise,
click on cruise on the toolbar, or click on a
geographic area. We have wonderful tour guides throughout the company.
But I'd love to have you join me. In my face,
my picture will be on the groups that I am taking.
We apologize for the face. All right, here's what you're doing.
(50:40):
You're headed overseas to a wedding. What could possibly go wrong?
Nato Fratoli and his fiance. We're headed to Italy. Fratoli,
Now does that sound irish to you? No? Italian are
headed to Italy for a wedding. The dog, CHICKI, one
(51:02):
and a half year old Golden Retriever, jumps up and
her passport. His fiance's passport was on the table. That
dog grabs it and choose it to smither reens. What
possibly are you doing? The couple is freaking out. There
is no passport, no help, you know. And I got
(51:25):
to give kudos to some government employees because they reached
out explain their problem. And these people, Nato Fratteroli and
his fiance, they handwalked a replacement passport. But can you
imagine that first impression, that first thought when you see
(51:45):
your passport in Fido's excuse me, not Fido, it's Chicky
in Chicky's mouth. With that, you know, we talked several
weeks ago. For those of you in the Utah area,
there are some several passport places where you can apply
for a passport, but then your completed application is sent
(52:09):
out of state. The US State Department has announced that
a passport processing center that's the ones that print and
distribute it is going to be opened right here in
Salt Lake City. And I know that Senator Romney was
involved in helping get the FEDS to that They announced
six new passport processing offices, including Salt Lake City. Well,
(52:34):
this will allow you to walk in with an appointment.
If you want to walk into a passport office, you
have to have an appointment. And if you have emergency
travel which means you have to show your airline ticket,
explain why it's an emergency, they will process it in
(52:54):
as little as one day. So that's something we're really
looking forward. The State depart has not announced when they
will open this particular office. You know, as I've said
earlier in the show, and I've said many times, I
just love Thailand. It's the people, it's the culture, it's
(53:15):
the food. It's exotic, it's everything from tropical islands to
rice paddies. The northern Thailand is the foothills of the Himalayas,
and of course elephants are part of the culture there.
Do you like a massage. You can get a foot
massage for forty five minutes to an hour for six
(53:37):
seven dollars a regular merson. There's two basic types of
body massages. One it's called a taime massage. They will
give you like hospital scrubs and it's more acu pressure.
The other type of body massage is. They call it
an aroma therapy or oil massage. They use a aroma
(53:59):
scented massage oil and it's like a Swedish massage, you know.
And it is modest and nothing to worry about there.
But that can cost you if you get outside of
the resort fifteen dollars for an hour. So Kathy and
I have this joke, and we've never accomplished it. We
(54:19):
never will, but I get to tie on three or
four times a year. Kathy is with me on most
of these trips. We always say, Okay, this trip, we're
going to get a massage every day. We never have
and I said, we never will, but it's kind of
fun to do that. One of the places that intrigues
(54:41):
me is Wa Doussu Tep in Thailand. Now what means
temple For those who live in say Salt Lake City,
and there's a LS Salt Lake Temple, it would be
called Wat Salt Lake, the Temple of Salt Lake. I
guess the Vatican would be what Vatican City, the temple
(55:03):
or cathedral of Vatican City. Well up out of cheng Mai,
which is in northern Thailand, you're leading into the foothills
of the Himalayas su Tep, and we're gonna talking about
what that's temple Dou Sutep, remember those two words. Soutep
itself is a district of western cheng Mai. Now cheng
(55:23):
Mai is where they have the famous night bazaar. It
is just unbelievably cool. And uh so Soutep is a
district and also gets its name from the adjacent island
mountain Doi in Thai means mountain, So you have the
Wat Dou su Tep, the mountain in the Sutep district. Well,
(55:48):
in terms of an impressive temple, the construction of Whatduisutep
began ready for this thirteen eighty six, and according to
a popular legend, the temple was built to hold a
piece of bone from Lord Buddha's shoulder. Now, one of
those bones was mounted on a sacred white elephant, very
(56:10):
important symbol in Thailand. Who then climbed Dou Sutep mountain.
Remember Dou means mountain. Soutep is the district and the
king of this area with a piece a relic of
Lord Buddha, a piece of his shoulder, knew it had
to be placed in a temple, but he didn't know
(56:32):
where the temple should be, so they took the sacred
white elephant, tied the bone on its back, and turned
the elephant loose, and the elephant climbed the mountain dou
Sutep and stopped near the peak. After trumpeting three times,
the elephant laid down and gently passed away there in
(56:52):
the jungle. The king knew this must be the sacred
spot which is now the site of the Doi Sutep.
And it's the gold temple. And people say, oh, it's
got a little bit of gold, and I said, no,
you're not listening to me. It is a gold temple.
It's a functioning temple and it has been since the
fourteenth century, started in thirteen eighty six, refurbished, rebuilt. But
(57:15):
the priests are there and it's a wonderful experience to
get a blessing from one of the Buddhist priests. Hey,
we got more when we come back on the Travel Show.
(57:43):
Welcome back to the Travel Show. I'm Larry Gelwick's the
Getaway Guru, and as I've already told you, I've gotten away.
I'm in Zurich, Switzerland, head home tomorrow with a wonderful
group of travel show listeners, I hope in your plans
that you will join us on any of our Morris
Colors escorted tours, or go individually with the advice and
(58:04):
help of any of our great travel advisors. And I'd
especially love to have you join me on one of
my travel adventures. Let's play kind of a travel quiz game.
I'm gonna ask you a few questions, and you can
just kind of say them out loud. Which ones do
you know? Which country does not allow chewing gum? That's Singapore. Now,
(58:29):
if you're a foreigner, they're not gonna stop you. If
you spit it on the ground and they see it, yeah,
you're gonna probably get a fine. If you wanted to
see polar bears in Canada, get a polar bar polar
bear tour, which there are some. What is the best
pro province for polar bears in Canada? British Columbia, Nova, Scotia, Alberta. No,
(58:56):
it's Manitoba. Uh. The movie Cast To with Tom Hanks
was filmed in which country? We just talked about it earlier.
That movie was filmed in Fiji. Okay. Where does the
Rocky Mountaineer train run from where to where? In the
(59:17):
US the Rocky Mountaineer train. That's a very scenic one.
Denver to salt Lake. Now you can take it salt
Lake to Denver or Denver to salt Lake. Denver to
salt Lake is the scenic because Salt Lake to Denver
is mostly during the night. Okay, Why was the Eiffel
Tower built? What was the event that was the World's Fair?
(59:41):
And which river in Italy has river cruises on it?
That's the Tiber River. Okay, just a few more. Let's
see here name the major ruins in Guatemala. You fly
to the city of Flores. It is tical. You know,
(01:00:04):
a favorite city of mine in Guatemala. I love Guatemala.
You know Guatemala City is It's okay, there's a wonderful
pre Columbian museum there, but it doesn't have a lot
of this, that or the other. You know, A short
drive in Guatemala city is Antigua. It's surrounded by volcanoes.
(01:00:25):
It is iconic colonial. You just think you've stepped back
in time with cobblestone streets, colonial architecture. And then down
to the market in Chichi Costinango. Now what's nice about that?
I think it's the best indigenous market in all of Guatemala,
Chichi Costinango. And here's what's cool. You know, when Christianity
(01:00:47):
came to the New World, the indigenous natives had their
own what we would call a pagan religion, and in
some respects, early Christianity and Catholicism married some of the
indigenous tribal beliefs and ceremonies with their Christianity, and some
(01:01:14):
of that extends today because there's a beautiful little Catholic
church there right there at Chichi Costannango, near the market,
and you can go in for mass in the front door.
You come out the back and there are the indigenous
native pagan priests and they all get along fine. You know,
just I guess, preserving your options just in case we're wrong.
(01:01:38):
We'll cover all, but the people will participate in the
Christian Catholic Church and participate with the indigenous natives. With that, okay,
let's see one more to visit the Great Barrier Reef,
which I've bought. I'm a diver, I've gone diving on
the Great Bearer Reef. What city would you fly in
(01:02:00):
to and what country? Well, the country's Australia and the
city would be cans spelled c n e S. One
of the stops we made on this particular cruise, the
Rhine River cruise that we just finished with Strasbourg. I
love Strasburg, France, and you know what's interesting is that
(01:02:23):
Strasburg has changed nationalities four times. It's German, it's French,
it's German, it's French. And you know, you're very close there,
Strasburg to Frankfurt. That's a good airport to fly into.
I mean, you can fly into Strasburg, but the rates
tend to be hired, the rental car rates or sky
(01:02:44):
high I like to drive or fly into Frankfurt, which
is just one hundred and forty miles away. You're a
little over two and a half. You don't have I
fifteen on it, so you're gonna take you about two
and a half hours or so. But along the way
you can stop in Heidelberg, which is just ninety miles.
It's kind of like Salt Lake to Logan. The Strasburg
(01:03:05):
Cathedral or the Cathedral of Our Lady of Strasbourg. Construction started.
Put your seat belt on for this one in the
year ten fifteen and it took over four hundred years
to build. Construction it finished in fourteen thirty nine. It
has a very Romanesque arch and Gothic architecture, four hundred
(01:03:28):
and twenty four years to build. And in that cathedral
there's five sets of stained glass We saw all this
just a few days ago, that depict nineteen emperors, the
stained glass windows of the Holy Roman Empire, and the
windows themselves date to the Middle Ages. These, these five
(01:03:49):
sets of stained glass windows in the Strasburg Cathedral date
to the twelfth and thirteenth century. Now earlier in the shit,
I just casually mentioned one of my favorite stops other
than the bakeries and the chocolate shop there chocolate shops
plural in Strasburg is La Petite Fonts. It's one of
(01:04:12):
the most picturesque areas of Strasburg, with winding cobblestone streets,
half timbered houses, cafes, canals, trees and flowers everywhere. So
you want to sit at a cafe and have a
leisurely drink diet coat, coffee, maybe a pastry, maybe a lunch,
(01:04:33):
a sandwich or I mean anything there and just watch
life go by, watch the people and don't be in
a rush. I just love Strasburg. One of the things
that is very significant, and I appreciate Secretary buddhistchev and
(01:04:54):
President Biden getting behind this is airlines now have to
compensate panthers excuse me, passengers almost instantly for delays and cancelations.
You know, when COVID started, we had to cancel a
Holy Land tour. And my brother Tom, he's one of
(01:05:17):
the finest men I know. I hope you meet him,
but I hope you never ever meet him professionally. Why
he's an emergency room doctor. If you're meeting him professionally,
that's not a good thing. Well, he was going to
fly to Israel with a tour that Dan Hone and
I were taking, and he was on Lao found a
(01:05:38):
great fair out of Seattle, and then of course COVID
canceled everything. It took him over a year to get
l Au to refund his ticket. Airlines all the time
they want to keep your money and say we'll give
you a credit, or they just ignore your phone call,
they just ignore your email, they ignore your letter. Well,
just this last April, a couple of months ago, the
(01:05:59):
US Department of Transportation, or DOT, introduced to rule requiring
airlines to quote provide passengers with automatic cash refunds when
owed close quote. Now the rule applies to specific conditions,
making the refund process much more hassle free. When they
(01:06:21):
say cash refunds, if you go back to the original
form of payment. If you paid for your ticket in cash,
you get cash back. But if you paid with a
credit card, which most people do, the refund or the
compensation will go back to your credit card. Now, when
airlines quote change or significantly change their flights, significantly delay
(01:06:47):
their check bags, or failed to provide the extra service
they purchased close quote, the airlines are indebted to compensate
passengers instantly. Now, before this rule maneuvered the refund process
of all airlines. By the way, that's all airlines, including
foreign airlines operating in the United States. Every individual airline
(01:07:13):
had its own refund policies. It's made it really difficult.
See the dot rigs say that if an airline significantly
delays flight, they owe your refunder compensation. Well, at one time,
United Airlines, when you could make up your own rules,
defined a significant delay as twenty six hours. Well, if
(01:07:37):
we delay your flight more than twenty six hours, we
may give you a Hamburger something well. Some airlines, and
at that time, United had unreasonable refund policies for flight
cancelations or delays, leading to numerous complaints to the DOT Now,
so if flights are canceled or significantly delayed and the
(01:07:58):
definition of NOP the definition of significant delay is more
than three hours for domestic and six hours for international,
passengers are automatically eligible for a refund, which means you
can opt out now. If you still go, then there's
(01:08:19):
other compensation, but you know aren't going to get a
full refund. If baggage return is delayed by more than
twelve hours for domestic flights or fifteen to thirty hours
for international flights, depending on the flight duration, the checked
baggage fee if you pay one if you've paid one,
will be refunded. Now, fees for extra services like seat
(01:08:42):
selection in flight entertainment wi FI will also be refunded
if not provided. So with the new DOT rule, every
affected passenger will be refunded automatically without needing to initiate
the process. Airlines must ensure that the refund reaches the
(01:09:04):
traveler that's you, within seven to twenty days, depending on
the method of payment. You know. Earlier we talked about
learning some phrases of foreign countries. I talked about echi
wad dol kudeska, you know quanto. All of these bonjours
(01:09:29):
learn how to just say hello. But one of the
other things you have to do is learn the rules
are and laws of different countries. Here's some really good
ones in the US. Here in the state of Utah
is against the law against a lot of use weapons
of mass destruction. And Salt Lake City has an ordinance
(01:09:51):
that you cannot carry a violin in a paper bag
in logan no manure throwing. Also there's a Utah law
that says you cannot hunt elephants within the state of Utah.
And yeah, all sorts of fun things. Alaska, you can't
operate motorcycles at night. Well, there's a lot of fun
(01:10:15):
stuff out there. Here on the travel show We'll Keep
You Up California, you can't eat frogs that die in
frog jumping competitions. Hey more here on the travel show
(01:10:44):
Guten Nobbyins unvil Koman Travel Show. I'm Larry Gelwicks, that
get away guru, and I've gotten away. I'm in Switzerland
right now. I'll be back in Salt Lake next week,
and thank you for joining us. What a wonderful time
we've had. You know, talking about some funny laws that
are still on the books. I mentioned right at the
end in California. Now these are all laws still on
(01:11:07):
the books. You can't eat frogs that die in frog
jumping competitions. In Colorado, you may not use a polstered furniture.
Outside Delaware, you cannot whisper or use profane language in
a place of worship. Now this one makes sense. In Florida,
(01:11:27):
you can't intentionally feed the alligators. Oh my gosh, did
you know there's four states that prohibit billboards? Can you
name them? Alaska, Hawaii, Maine, and Vermont. And in Indiana
it is against the law to catch a fish with
(01:11:48):
your bare hands. Well, lots of fun things, so be
aware before you go. Hey, Alaska is red hot pun
intended for. I mean, it's just an Alaska cruise. And
so I want to tell you you want to book
now for twenty twenty five, and if you're interested, I
(01:12:11):
will be personally hosting an Alaska cruise August twenty third
to the thirtieth. Now you remember I've told you there's
two types of Alaska cruises. There is the round trip Seattle.
You'll get the Inside Passage and some combination of Juno
or Ketchikan, Skagway, Sitka, Icy Straits, and Victoria. And then
(01:12:32):
there's the North South, which would be Vancouver to Anchorage
or vice versa. And you know they're very similar. You'll
still get some combination of those cities I mentioned. Both
cruises are in the Inside Passage, but there is one
big difference. On the North South. You'll get another day
or even day and a half headed north rather than
(01:12:56):
headed back to Seattle, and you generally get two glares
glacier days on the North South. I'm doing a north
south from Vancouver to Anchorage, Alaska, and we have two glaciers.
We have the granddaddy of them all, which is Glacier Bay,
and then we go to College Fjord. Now College Fjord
(01:13:17):
is one of my favorite glaciers. You know, these glaciers
are there on the mountains and there's hanging glaciers and
it's a fjord, which means it was carved out millenniums
ago by ancient glaciers. So we're in the fjord called
College Fjord and within that fjord itself, you will see
(01:13:41):
thirteen different glaciers. There are over twenty seven thousand glaciers
in Alaska, but most of them are in areas that
you can't get to. There are three thousand plus rivers
in Alaska, a one hundred volcanoes and volcanic fields. Well,
(01:14:01):
we will be sailing from Vancouver. Go there a couple
of days early. I love Vancouver. What I like to
do is get a rental car and drive up to Whistler.
That's where the Olympics were held and a great story.
So there's this small town on the road up to Whistler,
and there is a big sign has a picture of
(01:14:21):
a ferocious bear bearing its teeth and claws, and it
says bear country, bar bear country. Do not exit your vehicle.
So I pull over, and of course what do I do.
I exit my vehicle. I'd leave the door open, ready
for a quick escape, and I'm looking for bears. Well,
(01:14:42):
maybe it's fortunate I didn't see any, but that was
my brush with death, I suppose. But I love going
to Whistler. And then we'll sail from Vancouver, sailing out
of the Vancouver Harbor. One of the iconic experiences of
a lifetime. And so we'll see Juno and Ketcha Can
(01:15:05):
and Skagway. We'll go to Glacier Bay and then up
to College Fjord. We'll head north to Anchorage, and there's
some options afterwards if you want to spend some time
in Alaska. Now you will need a passport for this.
Once you got plenty of time and you ought to
be having a passport anyway. You know, these deals come up.
(01:15:26):
You'll hear about it here first on the travel show.
But would you come and join me. We do our
own shore excursions. We charter our own whale watching boat.
We'll go see Mendenhall Glacier, which is there by Juno,
I mean so many things to the totem parks of
Ketchi Can. We'll go looking for bears because they're coming
back trying to fatten up for the winter, and they
(01:15:50):
sense winter coming. In late August, it still may be
warm here in the in the valley, but it's getting
you know, the things are changing in the animals since
it August twenty third to the thirtieth. You can see
the details at Morriscolumbus dot com or call any of
our Morris Columbus agents at triple eight. Excuse me, eight
(01:16:13):
hundred triple nine forty six forty six. That's eight hundred
triple nine forty six forty six. Well, that brings us
to the end of another travel show. And again, thank
you for joining us. And when you see me in town,
so many of you stop and say hello, we have
a nice chat. I appreciate that more than you will
(01:16:35):
ever know. I'll be somewhere across the Atlantic tomorrow, and
while you're enjoying your Sunday, I'll be cramped in row
fifty two eating filet of peanut and rack of pretzel.
That's about what they serve right now. Anyway, we've had
a great show. Don't forget that British Isles cruise I
(01:16:58):
talked to you about July seventh to the twentieth of
next year. We'll see England, Ireland, Northern Ireland and Scotland
and France the British Isles July seventh to the twentieth.
I'll be your host. Hey, God bless you, and God
bless our great country America.
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