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Thailand announced Friday it would drop rules requiring people to wear masks outdoors and no longer require foreign visitors to register before travel, as Covid-19 cases fall and the kingdom seeks to lure tourists back. Facemasks have been compulsory in public in Thailand, including outdoors, since mid-2021 when the Delta variant was running rampant. But as the pandemic has subsided, the tourism-dependent kingdom has gradually relaxed covid restrictions in a bid to boost visitor numbers. […]
by Pierre-Henry Deshayes © Agence France-Presse Longyearbyen, NORWAY (AFP) — Home to polar bears, the midnight sun and the northern lights, a Norwegian archipelago perched high in the Arctic is trying to find a way to profit from its pristine wilderness without ruining it. The Svalbard archipelago, located 1,300 kilometers (800 miles) from the North Pole and reachable by commercial airline flights, offers visitors vast expanses of untouched nature, with majestic mountains, glaciers and […]
Japan announced Thursday it will reopen to tourists from 36 countries starting June 10, ending a two-year pandemic closure, but travellers will only be allowed in with tour groups. The decision comes after the government last week said it would test allowing small group tours with visitors from the United States, Australia, Thailand and Singapore from this month. On Thursday, the government revised border controls to resume accepting package tours from 36 countries and regions […]
Japan will trial small group tours with travellers from the US, Australia, Thailand and Singapore from this month, the government said on Tuesday, as it experiments with easing strict Covid border rules. The country’s borders have been closed to almost all arrivals since the spring of 2020 in response to the coronavirus pandemic. Authorities only recently began allowing some students and business visitors to enter. There are no plans to lift border restrictions fully, […]
Mộc Châu, Vietnam (AFP) — Don’t look down! Vietnam launched a new attraction for tourists with a head for heights on Friday, with the opening of a glass-bottomed bridge suspended 150 metres (490 feet) above a lush jungle. The Bach Long pedestrian bridge — whose name translates to “white dragon” — in northwest Son La province snakes around dizzying cliff faces before spanning a dramatic valley between two peaks, hitting a total length of […]
TOKYO, Japan (AFP) — Japanese rescuers on Monday confirmed the death of a child in a weekend sightseeing boat accident, raising the death toll to at least 11, as efforts to find survivors continued. The Kazu I was carrying 24 passengers, including two children, and two crew when it sent a distress signal on Saturday afternoon as it began to take on water in the frigid waters off Japan’s northern Hokkaido island. Ten people were […]
LEON, Nicaragua (AFP) – It took Ana Muller half an hour to trek to the peak of the Cerro Negro volcano, a small effort given the reward on offer at Nicaragua’s top tourist attraction: volcano boarding. The active Cerro Negro is just 728 meters (2,400 feet) high, but sliding down its ash-covered slopes on a board is a 40-second thrill that allows participants to say they have surfed a volcano. “It is a unique experience,” […]
by Francoise Kadri Agence France-Presse NEFTA, Tunisia (AFP) – A remote oasis in Tunisia’s desert was exhausted by decades of wasteful water use for agriculture — but now pioneers around an eco-lodge are reviving the spot with innovative projects. They hope their back-to-basics approach can keep alive the ancient Saharan caravan stop and its traditions as a sustainable alternative to the region’s high-irrigation date plantations. “Among the palm trees, everything can grow,” said Mohamed Bougaa, […]
MEXICO CITY, Mexico (AFP) — An explosion caused by a suspected gas leak in a beachside restaurant left two dead and 19 injured in Mexico’s Caribbean resort of Playa del Carmen on Monday, authorities said. The victims’ nationalities were not immediately known. Soldiers were seen guarding the site of the blast, which caused severe damage to the restaurant in one of Mexico’s most popular tourist destinations. “Emergency teams arrived at the scene to help the […]
by Nathalie OLOF-ORS Agence France-Presse GENEVA, Switzerland (AFP) – Airlines may find themselves swept up in unprecedented turbulence — with air travel shunned over climate concerns, plagued by pandemic shutdowns and soaring oil prices — but for private jet operators, business is booming. The appeal of private jets has taken off since the start of the pandemic, amid fear of catching Covid-19 and as widespread cancellations and stringent measures have turned flying commercial into a […]
Nearly 15,000 Russian and 2,000 Ukrainian tourists are stuck in the Dominican Republic due to travel restrictions imposed after Moscow’s invasion of its neighbor, the government in Santo Domingo said Wednesday. The Caribbean country said it had reached a deal with hotel chains to “guarantee” the tourists’ accommodation “until such time as a solution is found.” Hotels in the Dominican Republic, a country renowned for its beautiful beaches, welcomed five million guests in 2021. The […]
SYDNEY, Australia (AFP) – Australia opened its international borders to all vaccinated tourists Monday, nearly two years after the island nation first imposed some of the world’s strictest Covid-19 travel restrictions. A Qantas flight from Los Angeles was the first to touch down in Sydney at 6:20 am (1720 GMT) followed by arrivals from Tokyo, Vancouver and Singapore. “It’s fair to say we’ve all been waiting a long time to welcome visitors back to Australia,” […]
