Sri Lanka

Tag Archives for Sri Lanka.

And Russia makes 77

I am filling in my globe with all of the countries, territories and regions I have visited.  With the addition of Russia this week, I have made it to 77 countries. I only count a country if I have left the airport. So while, I have transited through Doha and Johannesburg airports, I do not include Qatar and  South South Africa in my tally. I have been to about two thirds of the countries in both Asia and Europe and exactly half of all the nations in the Oceania region of the planet. African exploration…

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How Big is that Island? The World’s Top 25 islands mapped.

I love gazing at maps. This map of the world’s 25 largest island nations and territories hooked me in. Seeing the actual sizes to scale makes you realise how big some island groupings are. Take Indonesia, for example. It is eight times bigger than New Zealand! The difference in size between the UK, home to 65 million and NZ, home to 4.5million, is not that much different. That tiny smudge on the north of most maps is Greenland, and yet it is about one-third the size of Australia! I have been to 12 of the top 25.…

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New Years Dreams

It is half way through August and we are  debating where to spend New Year’s Eve. Last year was in Hobart, Australia. Two years ago, we saw the festivities in Adelaide, Australia and three years ago found us in DaNang, Vietnam. Other places I have spent NY eve include:  Aberdeen, Scotland; Brisbane, Australia; Dallas, TX, USA; Ibadan, Nigeria; Melbourne, Australia;  San Salvador, USA and Sydney, Australia. Future options are: New York, Paris and Reyjavik. This year the destination needs to be a short hop from Bangkok, Thailand as we only have four days. The options…

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3 New Airlines Joining One World

My favourite alliance oneworld (named best airline alliance of 2013) are in the process of adding three airlines to its stable of airlines. This addition of these new members is reportedly the biggest expansion since the program began.The three new carriers are: TAM – member from 31st March, 2014 US Airways – member from 31st March, 2014 Sri Lankan- member from 1st May 2014   TAM (JJ)       Hubs: São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil Founded: 1976 Fleet:  172 Destinations: 61 destinations in 16 countries   Skytrax Rating: 3 star airline. Skytrax Passenger Rating: 42% In 2012, Brazil’s TAM merged with Chile’s LAN. One…

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Sniffer Dogs Marry

When we were kids, we enlisted all sorts of people into play weddings: the cat, teddy bears, dolls etc. Now someone has done it for real. This week, 2000 invitees and 20 police dogs attended a wedding ceremony for nine pairs of dogs, in the town of Kandy,  Sri Lanka. German Shepherds, Rottweilers, Labradors and Doberman took part in the wedding ceremony. The ceremony was intended to promote a programme to breed more sniffer dogs. This initiative was introduced with a aim to save foreign exchange of around Rs20 million [$US150 000] on importing high pedigree dogs from…

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