If you wake up in the Venetian Hotel, you may not know immediately whether you are in Las Vegas or Macau, the two cities where it is located. For all the similarities between the two hotels, one is located almost as west as land goes, and the other almost round the globe in the Far East. Put another way, the two cities are located eight time zones away from GMT, on opposite ends of the earth.

Step out of either of the two Venetians, and very different worlds await. For Macau, also spelt Macao, is a blend of Mediterranean Portugal and traditional China even as it embraces the modern West. Its casinos are a playground for the rich, its heritage is sight for tourists and its conference facilities and geographic location an ideal place to hold business events and meetings. The Venetian Macao alone, with its over 100,000 square metres of convention space and 3,000 suites, can hold 90 Boeing 747 jumbo jets.

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Michael Finney of “7 On Your Side,” a consumer advocacy program on the television station KGO in San Francisco, recently reported on the woes of a Travelocity customer. Scott Stanton of Willits, California shoots video around the world. About a year ago Stanton used Travelocity.com to book a flight on Air China. When he checked in for the flight, things got weird. The clerk at the counter told him he had two seats on the same flight, and that he had paid for both, even though he was traveling alone. Immediately, Stanton called Travelocity. The travel agency told him it would credit his account back, and not to worry about it. Then, post-trip, his bank statement showed not only a charge for two Air China tickets — $1,079 each — but also a double charge of the $24 Travelocity booking fee. This time Travelocity told Stanton that it wouldn’t reimburse him until Air China paid it back, and that it could take up to 90 days to process the refund. More than a little ticked off, Stanton contacted the consumer advocacy television program “7 On Your Side.” Program staff investigated the issue, and Travelocity said it would give Stanton a refund. But then Stanton encountered another hitch: Travelocity would refund his money only by crediting the same debit card he had used to purchase the airline ticket… a debit card account he no longer had. “7 On Your Side” staff stepped in again, and Travelocity sent Stanton a refund check. So, a happy ending at last for Stanton. And for the rest of us? How do we keep from being double-charged? By keeping careful records, according to KGO’s website:

Travelocity … was still looking into why the system did not catch Stanton’s double-booking. … [It] regrets the delay in refunding the money. If you ever find yourself with two tickets, keep all receipts and both ticket numbers, so you can quickly prove that you didn’t buy or use both seats.

As ever, caveat emptor… buyer beware!

A recent Financial Times article quotes Bruce Flynn, a UK native who has operated restaurants in New York and Florida: “This has been a problem for a long time.” Flynn is referring to a cultural difference between Europe and the US. European waiters get paid salaries — as much as US$1,750 per month in Rome — while their American counterparts live off a combination of low hourly pay and tips. European tourists, lured to the US by a favorable exchange rate — more than US$1.50 to one euro — are tipping as if they’re still in Europe — 10 percent tops, instead of 15 to 20 percent.

What to do? Some less-tony restaurants in the US are printing reminders at the bottom of the bill, with a suggested gratuity. Others are replacing the dollar symbol with a euro symbol, after the bill has been totaled up.

It’s not clear whether the stingy tips are a product of ignorance or, well, stinginess. European tourists are coming to the US in record numbers. Will awareness of US tipping practices increase, along with the number of transatlantic visits? So far, indications are “mais non.”

We land in San José. Excited by the views of lush mountains and the vibrant flora, I am anxious to get started. I chose to travel to Costa Rica because I was tired from months of backpacking and bus-riding travel. I desperately want to bake in the sun, eat good food and smell fresh air. I wanted a taste of “la pura vida,” or “the pure life.” Although the tourism industry has used this phrase to exhaustion — it’s on T-shirts, coffee mugs, and anything else you can imagine — I still believe it exists. Costa Ricans take great pride in this phrase. Ask any Tico, “¿Cómo Estás?” and they will answer, “¡Pura Vida!” So I am on a quest for a taste of this purer life. With high hopes and all the gusto of a naive American tourist I embark on my journey.

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According to BBC News, on Sunday Virgin Atlantic pulled off the first partly-biofueled flight by a commercial airline. The Virgin Atlantic jumbo jet flew from London’s Heathrow over to Amsterdam, fueled partly by a babassu palm nut that grows wild in the Amazon. Virgin says that it believes such flights will become routine in 10 years. That’s all good, right? Well… depends who you ask.

Reuters reports that environmentalists are not pleased, for two reasons – doubt that biofuels will significantly reduce carbon emissions, and concerns that biofuels will divert staple food crops away from people’s plates. This from Friends of the Earth, an international environmental network:

There is mounting evidence the carbon savings from these crop-based fuels will be small at best. Even if every plane leaving the UK was able to run on biofuels from tomorrow, any carbon savings would be wiped out in less than 10 years by the rapid growth of the aviation industry.”

As for another concern — that biofuels may divert food crops from people’s mouths and into fuel production — Virgin said that it was ill-founded:

[Virgin] said the babassu tree, native to Brazil, and the coconuts did not compete with staple food sources, but rather, came from existing mature plantations. … Both products are commonly used in cosmetics and household paper products.”

Virgin founder Richard Branson insists that biofuel technology is viable, saying he believes algae produced in sewage treatment farms will be a likely source of renewable fuel for the airline industry in the future.

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