Unwrapped travel

We’ve just opened the Travelfish propaganda department — an online store where you can purchase a range of T-shirts emblazoned with Travelfish propaganda.

The range is a little limited at the moment (haven’t got around to designing the Travelfish thong and fridge magnets yet), but we thought we’d get things started and what better way than with a competiton!

All you need to do is suggest a slogan to run under our logo — the only limitation is it can’t be more than 100 characters in length.

Post your suggestion in this thread (please don’t email it to us) and we’ll sift through all the results at the end of May (that’s midnight 31 May 2006 for those concerned with details). You can enter as many times as you want.

The winner will receive a US$50 certificate for use at amazon.com, and see their slogan on our products — we may use other entrants as well, but only the winner gets the prize!

You do not need to buy a T-shirt to participate (though you’re welcome to if you’d like!). The only requirement is that you’re a Travelfish member.

So put your thinking cap on then throw it in the ring — good luck!

The very popular Bangkok-based blog, MangoSauce, recently had their Adsense account terminated over what Google considers to be “dodgy content”. The site’s owner had put together a good write-up picking up Google on a few double-standards… Full story here.

Best known for its heavily touristed floating market, Ratchaburi doesn’t get all that many visitors. Nevertheless, we’ve just updated our coverage of there. You can read it all here: Ratchaburi travel guide.

We’ve just added Nakhon Pathom into Travelfish — home to the largest Buddhist monument in the world. Probably not Thailand’s biggest tourist highlight, but we thought we’d cover it anyway.

Full Nakhon Pathom coverage here.

The friendly people over at Footprint have listed travelfish.org as the #1 online resource in their section on useful websites for travel to Laos.

“Up-to-date information on Laos is not easy to come by. The best bet is to browse Lao-related or Lao dedicated websites. The best sites, in our experience are:
www.travelfish.org”
(At the top of the list of nine Lao-related websites).

Thanks!

Thanh Nien Daily reports on a new boat service that has commenced between Can Tho and Phnom Penh. The service will run from Can Tho to Phnom Penh on Thursday and Phnom Penh to Can Tho on Sundays. The trip, taking around seven hours will pass through Long Xuyen and Chau Doc, costing US$45 to Phnom Penh and US$35 in the opposite direction. The difference in cost most likely due to the extra expense of running upriver, against the current.

Update: Due to low business, the schedule for this service has been modified to leaving Can Tho on Thursday and returning from Phnom Penh on the Sunday.

Update: This service has been suspended — ask around in Can Tho or Phnom Penh to see if it has restarted.

We’ve just added the Thai beach hang-out of Cha-am into Travelfish — if you’re sick of hanging out with foreigners all there time, perhaps a weekend in Cha-am will be the Thai experiece you’ve been looking for. Full Cha-am travel guide here.

If you’re looking for something a little different during your time in Laos, take a read of our latest feature story: The Gibbon Experience — a conservation project where guests are able to stay in the rainforest canopy. Sounds great!

We’ve just added new and revised content for Bangkok’s Chinatown. We’ve added a crop of new restaurant listings, updated all the hotels and added a few new while we were at it — including the rather smart Shanghai Inn.

Our full Chinatown coverage.

Just so you don’t forget, on the front page of the site we’re running a photo a day over the next ten days from the Yasothon Rocket festival. This year it runs from May 13-15 — don’t miss it! Click here for more information on the festival.