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Many people have been choosing a different kind of vacation. The population of India is well over one billion. Many may not find that this country would be the place to get away and relax. However the states in the Southern part of India, Kerala and Goa, the scenery and the coasts offer possibilities to do just that. However, many traveling to these cities are opting out of the standard vacations and stays in luxury hotels. Goa is experiencing the benefits of those volunteering for working vacations. One organization that has many programs to offer those, all around the world is, Overseas Working Holidays. Some are longer trips such as 2 months, but some are just two week programs.

There are many projects to chose from. Most donate their energy to teaching English. This is one of the more popular vacations, as there is no experience necessary. There is a one week orientation seminar but that is all. Goa is one of the most popular destinations in India for tourism, and these programs allow those who desire, to give back to the communities they fall in love with while on holiday. Colva Beach is a site with an English school. But there are other locations throughout the town as well. And there is more to it than just teaching the language, time is spent volunteering in the health service industry. And then, the volunteer in turn, learns a bit of the Hindu language, and stay at ashrams practicing meditation and yoga. There is time as well to explore, as to leave Goa without taking in the beaches and the restaurants and the spice shops of downtown would just be a crime. Many find that this type of vacation is very satisfying and worthwhile. There is the exchange of cultural ideas and the formation of friendships. The focus becomes to help those who need help, and this kind of travel puts miles between one and one’s office back home, in more ways than one.

The city of Bangkok is rich in culture, history and the arts. They have many prestigious events and facilities and a strong community based support to keep them thriving. This community support extends beyond patronage, as the Bangkok Community Theatre demonstrates. This all-volunteer organization is dedicated to the passionate amateurs who want to take part in a theatre production. It is a popular community involved and supported company who has also gained the interest of many tourists who are visiting the city and staying in a 5 star hotel Bangkok.

The Bangkok Community Theatre began in 1972 when two existing companies found they had much in common and felt a collaboration effort would benefit them both. They joined resources and the BCT soon opened its doors. The theatre produces a 4 to 5 play season each year and pulls its cast from local volunteers. Many of Bangkok’s citizens want to take part in a production, but don’t want to get onstage. The BCT uses these people for backstage work such as props, costumes and also for lighting and set design and construction. The theatre also holds monthly “club nights” where they will all meet and discuss theatre related topics and teach the essential skills.

Currently, the theatre is preparing for its Fringe Festival 2009. Auditions have taken place and the productions are in rehearsal for this one evening event in May. The festival will feature short one act plays, monologues and scenes. It offers the opportunity for anyone who has an interest in performing but has never before been onstage to get their feet wet. This is a very supportive environment and the members of BCT are there to assist, coach and help new-comers through the process. This is an all-inclusive event and the BCT makes every effort to cast everyone that has the courage to audition. Tourists from Western cities like London, Chicago and San Francisco will be happy to know that festival will be spoken in English.

Madrid is the highest European capital city. Located on top of a plateau, the summer and winter climates can become quite extreme, becoming brutally steamy and hot in the summer and quite bitter in the winter. The best time to visit this city is in the spring or autumn seasons and many festivals just so happen to occur during these months. Madrid is already a very populated city, and becomes more so congested during festivals, but that only has served to further the excitement and the merriment on the streets.

One of the traditional medieval festivals of Madrid, Carnaval, began again in 1976. For the previous forty years, Franco and his regime had outlawed it. The parades and the parties draw the locals to the streets and bring in many with the many tourists staying at the luxury hotels, Madrid, Spain comes alive. The festival begins with a grand parade through the center of town, with elaborately designed costumes and competitions for the best and most outrageous. That night there is an outdoor concert. The festival concludes on Ash Wednesday, with a rather odd ceremonial ritual. Participants dress in black, and join the parade to bury the sardine. It is not a real sardine, but a cardboard replica, which is set into a coffin. The procession is mournful, and the ceremony concludes with the sardine being buried at the Fuente de los Pajaritos.

One of the most famous festivals that occurs annually is in honor of Saint Fermin, a martyred Catholic Saint. This is the Running of the Bulls. During the week of celebrations, brave participants run each morning with the bulls, and then continue on with the celebrations, the feasts and the dancing throughout the night. And the festival has also grown to include the ceremonial bullfights that happen nightly. Mention of this in Hemingway’s book, ‘The Sun Also Rises’ served to further the fame and the interest in this annual Spanish festival.

Foreign films are popular in Singapore and it offers many country specific film festivals throughout the year. The Singapore International Film Festival takes place in April, celebrating the diversity of culture and genres in film while bringing together artists and audiences from around the world. It includes the British Film Festival, the Chinese Film Festival and the Australian Film Festival plus many others. One of the more popular and inclusive film festivals, the event offers more than 200 full-length feature films, documentaries, animated films and shorts. It is by far the largest film festival in Singapore.

The Festival began in 1986 at a time when mainstream commercial movies dominated Singapore’s local cinemas. Considering the popular market this seemed like a potentially risky venture, however the festival developers believed in the expanding multi-cultural interests of audience members. This proved to be an accurate assessment as the festival gained in popularity and attendance each year. It became a competitive market force in 1991 offering awards such as the first Sliver Screen Award For Best Asian Feature and Best Asian Feature. This gave a new prestige to the quickly growing industry. It now has 3 award categories: Asian Film Competition, Singapore Short Films Competition and
Singapore Film Awards. There is a large guest audience population and the business hotels in Singapore are an essential aspect of accommodating them.

In 1997 the Festival celebrated its 10-year anniversary. This event showcased a special screening of some rare Singapore films. One of the more important features of the celebration was the first screening of St. Jack, written by Peter Bogdanovich. This was an important showing as it brought into popular awareness the celebration of film history and development. Bogdanovich is a highly admired writer, director, historian and critic. While he has worked on an endless list of projects, The Last Picture Show is his most critically acclaimed film.

Many visitors and citizens of Singapore, visit Orchard Road. This is the main market in all of Singapore, with everything from fruits and vegetables grown by local farmers, to flower stalls, clothing shops and restaurants. In the downtown area the market is close to the Singapore luxury hotels, and the business district and other attraction and visitor sites. Orchard Road has no rival, as the choices offered, the quantity and the quality have over the years made this one area the central location for shopping, fun and dining. The area offers everything in terms of shopping and the bars and cafes are perfect for taking a break from the hustle and bustle, relaxing, and just watching those passing by.

During the middle 1,800’s this street was lined with plantations, nutmeg and pepper trees primarily, hence the name Orchard Road. The first plantation owners were the only people living in the area. Over the years the plantations survived through various plagues, or natural disasters such as flooding or drought, and most remained very successful. Then, in the early years of the 1,900’s a disease came through and effectively wiped out all the nutmeg, in the course of one year. The disease was never identified, and the result would change the history of the road forever.

Villages had been settled around the plantations and when those were destroyed, the Singapore Cold Storage Co. opened a market. This store provided produce and dried goods to the people in the area. During the next fifty years a dam was rebuilt and the canals were reconstructed to better control the flow of the water and thus cut down the amount of flooding in the valley. The first department store was opened in the 50’s, and with that…many other businesses started to open, coffee shops, and restaurants started to line the street. Throughout the rest of the century, development and commercial industries have continued and the result is that this is now, the main hot spot for shopping, entertainment and cultural activities in Singapore and for the surrounding cities as well.

History begins for this city, Kuala Lumpur, in Malaysia almost 200 years ago. Long before the grand buildings were designed and the Kuala Lumpur Malaysia hotels and resorts came to exist and provide economic security, the main source of financial viability were in the tin mines of an area not yet much explored. Many traveled from Sumatra, crossing the Straits of Melaka, cutting with machetes their path through jungles virgin to human presence, and paddling boats along the river Klang to create settlements. Early camps are in the regions of Petaling , a well known street name in the Chinatown sector of the city today, were populated with those planting paddy fields and mining tin. With simple measures these early settlers managed to extract tin from the earth and supplemented their earnings with this hard work. The word spread throughout Malaysia and SE Asia about the riches to be found here, the tin riches, and many began to travel here in hopes of discovering wealth, much like the days of the California Gold Rush.

One such chief, Raja Abdullah, became interested in the opportunity of profiting from the mining of tin and sent miners from China up to the valley in 1857. These 87 men spent days on a boat, battling wild animals with the threat of various tropical diseases including Malaria just over their shoulders. Once docked, the journey was continued on foot through the untraveled jungle ‘paths’ that led to the mines which sat along two rivers, the Klang and the Gombak. Spirits of the jungle were on the minds of those making this journey and often a shaman or ‘Pawang ‘ accompanied trips of this nature, to ensure that the spirits of the jungle would not be disturbed. These medicine men were also hired to be present at the mine sites as well. Chinese immigrants put their lives on the line, searching for adventure most certainly, but searching also for a new life, with new opportunities. This is the way the city of Kuala Lumpur was founded and continues to be the way it is lived today, in the modern world.

The town of Cardiff in Wales was first settled during the Roman Times, however not much remains in terms of archaeological artifacts or the of the first fortress that was constructed along the Taft River. Not much is recorded from then until the year 1066, when a castle was built along the same banks of the river. It was constructed by Robert Fitzhamon and once built a town was settled surrounding the castle. The name for Cardiff derived from the original Welsh title of Caerdydd. These banks have a history of fortified structures, thus the name of Caer which means just that, fortress. There are still remains of Fitzhamon’s castle surviving to this day. During this time of early settlement, this was a small community of farmers and fishermen, but over the next few hundred years the population reached one thousand. Beginning with the 1,800’s however a family moved into Cardiff and changed the course of the small town. The Bute family were the mail land-holders and brought industrialization to the community. The opportunities flourished and the transformation began which resulted in what is now known as Cardiff Bay, becoming one of the most important centers of trade and industry, and the largest city in Wales. By 1839, docks were being constructed on the banks of the river Taft, and the mining industry took off. The city became the major exporter of iron and coal.

The Bute’s owned many of the most prosperous mines as well as many of the docks, and they successfully ensured that all that was taken from their mines, was also shipped out from their docks solely . This not only provided the company with financial wealth and security, but had the added significance of turning their family owned docks to those among the busiest in all the world. By the beginning by the late 1,800’s, after just under one hundred years, the population had increased ten-fold, and city had become quite the metropolis with elegant mansions lining the streets and a Cardiff hotel on every other corner. The entire city benefited from the business savvy of the Bute family. During World War II, much of the city was damaged by bombing by the German armies, as many European cities were. However the city was reconstructed over the years and is now a splendid city with museums, major arenas for sports and music concerts, an internationally recognized Opera House and is a city once again filled with the pride of its citizens and optimism for the future.

Singapore and the government of Singapore, have been criticized in the past for the strict, and often times brutal, laws regarding crime. Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong has on of the most staunch positions on drug sales and trafficking. He states that nothing will bring a society down quicker than the sale of and eventual over-use of drugs by the people of any given culture. Many of those convicted of such crimes are punished quickly and rapidly, receiving the same punishment as rapists and child molesters. Life term jail sentences or in some cases, the death penalty. Consequently, the people of Singapore are known for their law-abiding nature, which has recently received notice and is being taken advantage of by West Nigerian drug smugglers. And as in many cases of terrorists acts, or organized crime, many are willing to do what ever it takes, for how ever long it takes, in order to ensure that their plans are carried out. They will wait for very long periods of time if the payoff is big enough and worth the risk. However, what has been under investigation for years by the Central Narcotic Bureau, is an organization that puts unsuspecting women in the most risk.

As stated before, Singaporeans are known as law abiding and gentle people, and that is no more true than of the women of the country. What is becoming quite commonplace, is that Nigerian men are befriending and creating romantic involvements with these women and then convincing them to carry drugs across various borders in different countries. The women, passing through customs, often do so based on the generalization of that law abiding citizen from Singapore and are rarely stopped or questioned. They are the perfect fall guy because so rarely do they fall. “Chance” meetings, in bars or luxury Singapore business hotels, wherein the Nigerian men woo the women, begin the process. One man under investigation reportedly had a three year love affair with a Singaporean woman, leading up to the one trip she would make for him delivering cocaine. She did get caught and is now serving a life sentence in prison. The men are banking, literally and figuratively, on what these women will do in the name of love. It is a scam that has been going on for years, however it is now a well known scam that authorities and the women of Singapore are becoming aware of.

Rowers from across the world are heading to Australia for last-minute training leading up to the Indian Ocean Rowing Race 2009. This pioneer race will be the first competition to cross the Indian Ocean and the first ocean rowing race to take place in the Southern Hemisphere.

Rowers will depart Geraldton, Western Australia on April 19, 2009. The fastest teams may be able to cross the 3,100 nautical miles in under 60 days. However, organizers anticipate that some boats may need over 100 days to reach their destinations.

The race will conclude in glamorous island of Mauritius. Racers, fans, and media will find a number of luxury hotels Mauritius available to celebration the completion of this water marathon.

Racers will compete in teams of pairs, fours, and eights. There will also be a solo class. Solos and Pairs are expected to take the longest to arrive in Mauritius. Some of the Fours and Eights may need only 40 – 50 days to complete the course. Most racers have received extensive corporate sponsorship and have been training for the event for several years. Many teams are also raising money for charity.

Organizers expect about 30 boats to compete and are only providing one support yacht for the race. Racers are expected to have their own water and food and have been warned to prepare for dehydration and sunstroke as well as water hazards such as sharks and waves as high as 60 feet.