Trip: Global Travel Beta

trip 1999-2002, click map for info

The first place to look for anyone planning a trip abroad is the US State Department's site, or for pre-2002 info their archive site, an omnibus resource for world travelers.  See the Travel Warnings section for basic country beta and the Medical Information section for a rundown on travel insurance and medical emergencies overseas.

The British Foreign Office maintains a similar site at www.fco.gov.uk

Got your shots? Check the Centers for Disease Control for vital information on everything from cholera outbreaks to vaccines for Japanese encephalitis. Click on Traveler's Health link. See also www.masta.org.

Booking tickets in the electronic age has never been easier. Check this listing of e-ticketers to price those flights and reserve your seat. A global selection of online guidebooks and other resources is also available on this page.

Looking for a surf tour or camp? This new section links with some of the best surf travel companies on the planet. If we missed a link to a worthwhile site, post info@coastalsurvey.com with the url for inclusion in the next edition of coastalsurvey.

For information while you're on the road, it's hard to beat the local cybercafe. Much of the planet is already wired, and new locations are coming online every day. To get an up-to-date listing of where to log on check:

• The Cybercafe Search Engine or
• The Ultimate List of Cybercafes.

For geeks who prefer to make their own connections, see the Worldwide Phone Guide, "what you need to hook up your modem just about anywhere". Of course, with WiFi regions popping up everywhere from the local Starbucks to a Ginza McDonalds, this bit of tech savvy will soon seem like so much arcana from the digital age.

So,how much is that in Escudos? Convert your Dollars to Drachma with these handy exchange tools:

• OANDA Currency Converter
• The Universal Currency Converter

But before you can convert the cash you have to find it. MasterCard has thoughfully provided this global ATM locator, which pinpoints over 820,000 cash machines worldwide. And they take Cirrus too.

If you're trying to phone that girl you met in Bombay, but you can't remember the area code, you can find it on AmeriCom's Area Decoder.