Travel Calendar

cruise3sixty Conference

Spotlights Industry that

Is Changing the Way We Travel

Travel Advisors Have the Opportunity to

Learn How to Help Their Clients

By Ray Brasted and Susan Lazarus

Cruise operators, booking agencies, planners and travel advisors (agents) came to Ft. Lauderdale April 25-30 to learn about the latest developments in cruising, new technology and to network with colleagues. The event was the 8th annual cruise3sixty conference sponsored by American Express and Cruise LInes International Association, Inc. (CLIA).

As Camille Olivere, CLIA Trade Relations and Sales Committee Chair, wrote in the program introduction “In 2011, CLIA member lines introduced 13 ships of all sizes. Between 2012 and 2015 another 25 will join the fleet, including 14 this year, reflecting an investment of more than $10 billion.”

It is pretty impressive when you realize that this is being accomplished in the midst of a worldwide downturn in the economy. But the cruise industry has always seemed to ahead of the curve, providing travel options, coordinating land tours, partnering with major entertainment giants and, not the least, providing for accommodations for persons with physical challenges while hotels and restaurant chains lagged behind.

“This has always been a resilient and forward thinking industry,” said Olivere. One of the objectives of the conference was to communicate that to travel advisors because there is so much to learn. Below are just a couple of examples.

Royal Caribbean

“We want agents to be able to sell with confidence,” said Vicki Freed, Senior Vice President of Sales for Royal Caribbean International. She told media representatives that the cruise line company has taken on a large project to make all of the fleet modern and customer friendly. “We don’t want agents to forget our other ships,” she said, alluding to the fact that Royal Caribbean has major ships coming on line.

Norwegian Cruise Lines

Norwegian Cruise Lines’ CEO and President, Kevin Sheehan was beaming as he related the excitement he has for the new programs being offered by NCL. “I think you will be as excited as I am about the range of programs we are offering.”

The “Norwegian Breakaway” will launch in April, 2013 with features that include the first Aqua Park at Sea with five full-size water slides, including twin Free Fall slides and a three-story sports complex. The line will also feature the Nickelodeon Experience with a Kids’ Aqua Park.

Sheehan also announced that the new state-of-the-art 4,000 passenger ship, Norwegian Getaway, will make Miami, FL, her year-around home port. The ship is scheduled to begin weekly cruises beginning in the spring of 2014.

American Cruise Lines

From big to small, cruise companies are finding their markets. American Cruise Lines bills itself as a company that does small ship cruising “perfectly”. The company offers six ships with 50-150 passenger capacity. Sailing inland waterways the company focuses on service, cuisine, educational opporunties and entertainment.

The company was at cruise3sixty to let travel representatives and the press know about their programs. “We recognize the significance of the travel agent role in this industry, as well as their contribution to the success of our business,” said Charles A. Robertson, President of American Curise Lines.

Smaller ships can cruise places like the New England Islands, the Mississippi River or the Potomac and Chesapeake Bay.

Plenty of Options

Whether accommodating 50 passengers or 4,000, cruise leaders are determined to make the experience a personal one and that is the message they are sending to travel advisors, along with strong advice to get educated on all of the options in order to make cruising a special memory for each guest.

Ed. Note: To learn more about cruise3sxity visit their website at www.cruise3sixty.com. Watch for more travel news on this site. Ray Brasted and Susan Lazarus write about travel destinations, dining, theater, books and movies.

Q We’ve been trying to get a refund from Southwest Airlines for almost a year. It’s a refund that Southwest fully admits it owes but always finds an excuse not to pay.

Last spring, my family had tickets to fly from Fort Myers, Fla., to Milwaukee. When we arrived at the gate, a Southwest agent told us that our flight was oversold and that all seats had been assigned. We were denied boarding.

The agent said we had two options: Accept a refund for our return flight and find our own way home, or take the next available flight from Fort Myers to Milwaukee, which was two days later.

We took the refund. The agent wrote a check with the numerical amount of $1,387.20. However, she wrote the dollar amount in long-hand as “One Thousand Three Hundred and Seventy Three 40/100.”

In all the commotion, we didn’t notice Southwest’s error. We discovered the error when we were notified five days later that our bank refused to deposit the check because of the discrepancy.

We contacted Southwest by phone and were told we would get a new check. But we’ve gone back and forth for months, and I’ve been getting passed from one department to another. We’ve also reported this to the Department of Transportation. Still, no check.

A Southwest should have written you a check correctly when you couldn’t board. But that’s not all.

Have a look at the airline’s travel policies. Its contract of carriage (available at the airline’s website) spells out Southwest’s obligations when you’re turned away at the gate, a process referred to as involuntary denied boarding. Check out Section 9 under “Service Interruptions.”

You were entitled to more than just a refund for being kicked off your flight. You should have received twice the sum of the value of your remaining flight coupon or you could have opted for flight vouchers for the same amount.

No question about it, Southwest shorted you.

I’m surprised the Transportation Department didn’t get involved in your case. The involuntary denied boarding compensation requirements are part of federal regulations, and they are well-enforced by the government.

If this ever happens again, don’t allow yourself to be processed by a ticket agent. I understand there were crowds at the airport and that the agents seemed overworked. But this is what they do.

Stop the process. Pull up the airline’s contract of carriage on your cellphone, and read the paragraphs about involuntary denied boardings. Don’t let them hurry you. Read the check and make sure it lines up with what the contract says.

I contacted Southwest on your behalf. It called you and apologized, saying that your refund had “fallen through the cracks.” It overnighted to you a check for the correct amount and a $500 travel voucher.

Christopher Elliott is ombudsman for National Geographic Traveler magazine. You can read more travel tips on his blog at www.elliott.org, or e-mail him at chris@elliott.org.

Published: 12:54 p.m. Saturday, April 28, 2012

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WYOMING

Festival offers fun ways to work off all that fest food

Wyoming knows how to celebrate the outdoors, and its annual Flaming Gorge Days
Festival in Green River June 21-23 offers a good reason to visit the state’s
Sweetwater County, which lies halfway between Yellowstone and Canyonlands
national parks in southwest Wyoming. The event includes golf, basketball,
volleyball and horseshoe tournaments along with live music, kids’ events and
more. This is one festival that lets you work off the calories you pack on
eating the fest food. More at flaminggorgedays.com.

Sweetwater is developing a big reputation for mountain biking, too. Check out
the 20-mile Cherokee Trail/Currant Creek Ranch Loop off County Road 33. Up
in the high desert, you’ll find plenty of wildlife to photograph. The area’s
also known for camping, canoeing, fishing, golfing and hiking. Find out more
at tourwyoming.com.

UTAH

Utah raft trips booking up quickly – here’s a good deal

Rafting companies in Utah are reporting heavy bookings for this summer, so if
you’re angling to take your family to that state, you might want to book
now. Brian Merrill, who runs Western River Expeditions, says he thinks part
of the demand has to do with the offering of kid-friendly trips.

Here’s one to consider that’s affordable: four days of rafting in Utah on the
Colorado River, priced at $615 for adults and $515 for ages 5 to 15.

Equipment is included, along with meals, guides and river access shuttles. The
trip begins and ends in Moab, Utah on May 29, June 5, 12, 19 and 26; July 3,
10, 17, 24 and 31; and Aug 3, 7, 14, 21 and 28.

Two nights are spent at the Gonzo Inn, with daytime rafting, and the trip
concludes with a two-day raft trip on the river with a night spent in a
beach camp under the stars. For more, visit westernriver.com/trips/southwest.

ANDERS MEANDERS

Cool off with a round in Colorado

Colorado offers relief, and we’re not just talking about weather (although I’m
already looking forward to escaping the heat with my annual trip to that
state). Colorado golf courses offer play at elevations that are, to say the
least, uplifting.

But you don’t have to huff and puff on courses in the high country. Delta
County, southeast of Grand Junction on Colorado’s Western Slope, offers good
golf at highly reasonable green fees with astounding views from just high
enough, but not too high.

Devil’s Thumb Golf Club just north of the town of Delta sits south of the
Grand Mesa and north of the San Juans, West Elks, Black Canyon and
Uncompahgre Plateau.

It’s a prairie-style course with five sets of tees, 60 bunkers and three lakes
and is ranked among the top 10 public courses in Colorado.

A number of nearby hotels offer stay-and-play packages. On weekday nights, the
club’s Family Night package includes free range balls and fees of $25 for
nine holes with one cart per family. Fees are $31 on weekends. You’re at
about 5,000 feet elevation here. More at devilsthumbgolfclub.com.

In Cedaredge, Cedaredge Golf Club at 6,100 feet, is on the southern foothills
of the Grand Mesa (one of the world’s largest flat-topped mountains). The
challenging course offers elevated tees, and Surface Creek flows through the
front nine. I’m told the club’s Wildfire Pizzeria and Wine Bar serves some
of the area’s best Italian fare. Fees are $21 on weekdays and $39 on
weekends. More at cedaredgegolf.com.

TRAVEL CALENDAR

May

May 4-6: Hill Country Run Motorcycle Rally, Luckenbach. Food, music and
riding. Registration $45; includes cowboy breakfast. More at
hillcountryrun.com.

May 5: AsiaFest, Haggard Park, 901 E. 15th St., Plano. Music, dance, martial
arts, food and crafts. Free. More at asianamericanheritage.org.

May 5: Houston Dragon Boat Festival, Allen’s Landing, 1001 Commerce St.,
Houston. Race, Asian cuisine, music, crafts, performance. Free. More at
texasdragonboat.com/may .

May 5-6: Cottonwood Art Festival, Cottonwood Park, 1321 Belt Line Road,
Richardson. Free. More at cottonwoodartfestival.com.

May 10-12: Western Heritage Classic and Ranch Rodeo, downtown Abilene. Races,
rodeos, parade, chuck wagon cookoff, fiddlers contest and more. Tickets $5
to $25. More at westernheritageclassic.com.

Allen Travels With Team

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WALTHAM, Mass. — Boston Celtics guard Ray Allen will travel with the team to Atlanta Saturday afternoon for the first-round playoff series with the Hawks, but he’s still unsure if he’ll play Sunday in Game 1.

“I can’t say,” said Allen, who has a sore right ankle and has not played in two weeks. “Still day to day.”

Celtics coach Doc Rivers, however, said he does not think Allen will play Sunday.

More on the Celtics

Keep on top of the Green throughout the season with ESPNBoston.com’s Chris Forsberg. Blog

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“Honestly, I don’t think he’ll play, but we’ll find that out. He can play, so I’m not saying he’s not, and it would be very nice if he does, but he’s just not moving well and we’ll just find out.”

Allen said the swelling in the ankle has subsided, and he has seen improvement, thanks in part to a cortisone shot he took earlier in the week.

“I’m still dealing with trying to work through it,” he said. “I know it’s weak, but I still have pain in it, so we’ll see.”

Rivers said Allen will not participate in the team’s brief practice Saturday before the flight to Atlanta.

Allen, 36, admitted he will require surgery at some point, but also said it is not an option now because of the playoffs. He said if this were the beginning of the season, he would opt to have surgery.

Rivers said everyone else on the team is healthy and ready to play Sunday.

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A lot of people have a hard time trusting lawyers as it is, but what about one who claims he was part of a secret government time travel program when he was a kid?

Since 2004, Seattle attorney Andrew Basiago has been publicly claiming that from the time he was 7 to when he was 12, he participated in “Project Pegasus,” a secret U.S. government program that he says worked on teleportation and time travel under the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

“They trained children along with adults so they could test the mental and physical effects of time travel on kids,” Basiago told The Huffington Post. “Also, children had an advantage over adults in terms of adapting to the strains of moving between past, present and future.”

Skeptical? You’re not alone. Hong Kong physicist Shengwang Du issued a paper last year saying time travel is impossible, because nothing moves faster than the speed of light, the Los Angeles Times reported.

Nevertheless, Basiago’s claim gets support from Alfred Webre, a lawyer specializing in “exopolitics,” or the political implications surrounding an extraterrestrial presence on Earth. Webre said teleportation and time travel have been around for 40 years, but are hoarded by the Defense Department instead of being used to transfer goods and services faraway distances.

“It’s an inexpensive, environmentally friendly means of transportation,” Webre told The Huffington Post. “The Defense Department has had it for 40 years and [former Defense Secretary Donald] Rumsfeld used it to transport troops to battle.”

Basiago said he experienced eight different time travel technologies during his stint in the program. Mostly, he said, his travel involved a teleporter based on technical papers supposedly found in pioneering mechanical engineer Nikola Tesla’s New York City apartment after his death in January 1943.

“The machine consisted of two gray elliptical booms about eight feet tall, separated by about 10 feet, between which a shimmering curtain of what Tesla called ‘radiant energy’ was broadcast,” Basiago said. “Radiant energy is a form of energy that Tesla discovered that is latent and pervasive in the universe and has among its properties the capacity to bend time-space.”

Basiago said project participants would jump through this field of radiant energy into a vortal tunnel and “when the tunnel closed, we found ourselves at our destination.”

“One felt either as if one was moving at a great rate of speed or moving not at all, as the universe was wrapped around one’s location,” Basiago said.

Basiago claimed he can be seen in a photograph of Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg in 1863, which he said he visited in 1972 via a plasma confinement chamber located in East Hanover, N.J.

“I had been dressed in period clothing, as a Union bugle boy,” he said. “I attracted so much attention at the Lincoln speech site at Gettysburg — wearing over-sized men’s street shoes — that I left the area around the dais and walked about 100 paces over to where I was photographed in the Josephine Cogg image of Lincoln at Gettysburg.” (The boy on the left in the photo below).

In addition, Basiago said he traveled to Ford’s Theatre the night of Lincoln’s assassination on five or six occasions. “I did not, however, witness the assassination,” he said. “Once, I was on the theater level when he was shot and I heard the shot followed by a great commotion that arose from the crowd. It was terrible to hear.”

Basiago said each of his visits to the past was different, “like they were sending us to slightly different alternative realities on adjacent timelines. As these visits began to accumulate, I twice ran into myself during two different visits.”

Being sent back in time to the same place and moment, but from different starting points in the present, allowed two of himselves to be in Ford’s Theatre at the same time in 1865.

“After the first of these two encounters with myself occurred, I was concerned that my cover might be blown,” he recalled. “Unlike the jump to Gettysburg, in which I was clutching a letter to Navy Secretary Gideon Welles to offer me aid and assistance in the event I was arrested, I didn’t have any explanatory materials when I was sent to Ford’s Theatre.”

And how did these alleged time travelers return to the present day or their point of origin? According to Basiago, some sort of holographic technology allowed them to travel both physically and virtually.

“If we were in the hologram for 15 minutes or fewer,” he explained, “the hologram would collapse, and after about 60 seconds of standing in a field of super-charged particles … we would find ourselves back on the stage … in the present.”

Basiago said the technology should only be used for real-time teleportation, not time travel, because, “It would be chaos.”

Basiago and Webre recently held a seminar in Vancouver, B.C., focusing on the need to disclose, deploy and declassify the technology, as well as the public policy decisions that would be needed to use it.

Webre, for one, said he wants teleports installed in every major city where people and products would be transported through the time-space continuum. “This would free up a lot of urban space that is currently being used by train yards or airports,” Webre said.

Of course, there are risks. Basiago remembered feeling extreme turbulence while going through the vortal time tunnel. Webre said one tragedy occurred in the early days of the technology in which a child in Project Pegasus arrived a few seconds before his legs.

“He was writhing in pain with just stumps where his legs had been,” Webre said.

Webre said problems like that have since been solved. Still, he said teleportation needs strict legal controls to prevent it being used for “for political control, economic control or illegal surveillance.”

All of this is fascinating stuff — if true. But experts who include retired Army Col. John Alexander, former director for the Advanced System Concepts Office, U.S. Army Laboratory Command, are, to put it mildly, skeptical.

“If this could be done, if anyone could go even one second into the future, we’d own the world,” Alexander told The Huffington Post. “There are computer programs on Wall Street that are hundredths of a second faster and provide a tremendous advantage.”

Basiago said that as many as 100 people worked on Project Pegasus. Alexander said he doubts that many people could keep the secret for 40 minutes, much less 40 years.

“There’s a saying in Washington: If two people know something, it’s not a secret,” said Alexander, author of “UFOs: Myths, Conspiracies, and Realities.” “If this was used by the Department of Defense, how did we miss the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq or the fall of the Shah of Iran?”

Basiago said Alexander’s rhetorical questions can be explained by the paradoxes of the time-space continuum.

“I only know about how the time travel technology was used during my involvement with Project Pegasus, so this is only speculation,” he said. “But it’s possible that ‘forward intelligence’ showed [Iraq leader Saddam] Hussein using the weapons of mass destruction, but our military went in and toppled him before he could use them.”

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The Howard government received warnings regarding travel expense claims made by Peter Slipper, it has emerged. Photo: Alex Ellinghausen

THE Howard government received repeated warnings about discrepancies in Peter Slipper’s travel expenses but failed to curtail his behaviour, documents outlining fresh allegations against the embattled Speaker reveal.

An ”urgent” briefing note sent in 2003 to the former special minister of state, Eric Abetz, warned that Mr Slipper had been spoken to ”on various occasions” about his family travel entitlements yet continued to make expense claims that broke the rules.

The Howard government found the issue politically charged enough to prepare a brief titled ”Hot issues” in case it was raised at an estimates hearing, according to documents obtained by The Sunday Age through freedom of information.

The brief suggested the government respond to questions by reporting that Mr Slipper had repaid the $5079.40 owed to the Commonwealth, but in the background notes, headlined ”not for release”, it said ”Mr Slipper was critical of departmental processes in identifying apparent travel outside of entitlement”.

Mr Slipper has stood down as Speaker during investigations into claims he fraudulently used Cabcharge vouchers. Staff member James Ashby has also filed a civil suit against Mr Slipper over unwanted sexual advances, including lewd text messages, and claimed his boss handed over blank Cabcharges bearing his signature to limousine drivers.

Mr Slipper has released copies of 13 dockets that he says exonerate him of the Cabcharge claims. But discrepancies in the docket serial numbers have raised doubt about their authenticity.

Yesterday, Labor frontbencher Craig Emerson said he believed the dockets were legitimate.

”Given that the allegation is that they were blank but signed, these are not blank, they are signed and they call into serious question the allegation of criminality,” he said.

But yesterday fresh evidence emerged of Mr Slipper’s history of breaching parliamentary entitlement rules.

Documents show that in 2002 Mr Slipper claimed trips for his ex-wife and children on eight occasions when he was not present, while between July 2002 and February 2003 he took $39,818 worth of flights from far-flung places including the Torres Strait islands of Saibai and Boigu, Cairns, Alice Springs, Whyalla and Mount Gambier, as well as Brisbane, Canberra, Sydney, Melbourne and Perth.

The Sunday Age has also learnt one unnamed employee in Mr Slipper’s electoral office spent more than $34,000 on travel in 2008-09 – more than 10 times that of any other staff member on the travel budget. The amounts claimed include airfares, travel allowances and Cabcharges. The office’s total staff travel was more than $7000 over its $45,772 budget, according to Department of Finance records.

Internal emails show Mr Slipper received three warnings that the staff travel budget was approaching the limit but the spending continued.

The revelations about staff spending come as the Australian Federal Police continues its 18-month-long investigation into unrelated allegations of fraud against Tim Knapp, a long-time adviser to Mr Slipper.

Mr Knapp is being questioned over claims he misused a Commonwealth fuel card and took leave for which he had already been paid.

The Coalition has been criticised for continuing to preselect Mr Slipper nine times, despite the ongoing questions about his drinking, his abuse of parliamentary entitlements and his relationship with staffers.

Former Howard government advisers and senior Liberal Party figures said Queensland Liberal Party factional boss Santo Santoro’s support for Mr Slipper protected him from being disendorsed.

”There was definitely a concern [about Mr Slipper], but he was entrenched,” a senior adviser in John Howard’s prime ministerial office said. ”If you’d been able to move him on, you would [have], but you weren’t able to. He had the numbers.”

Mr Slipper was appointed Mr Howard’s parliamentary secretary in 2002 but was dismissed in 2003.

Opposition Leader Tony Abbott told the Victorian Liberal Party Council yesterday that Prime Minster Julia Gillard’s decision to stand by Mr Slipper was sending the wrong message to sexual harassment victims.

Ms Gillard has said that if Mr Slipper is cleared of any criminal wrongdoing he should be free to return to the Speaker’s chair while the sexual harassment matter proceeds.

With STEPHANIE PEATLING

The secret diaries of Slippery Pete as told to John Mangan

SUNDAY

Keep smiling, mate, just keep smiling, I thought, as I gritted my teeth and hurtled through the media pack at Brisbane Airport.

To be honest, I felt pitifully underdressed in only an opennecked shirt and leather jacket, but I couldn’t find any bow ties in my cabin baggage. There’s no respect for the office of Speaker in this country. Memo to self: book serjeant-at-arms to goose-step in front of me with mace next time.

I handled the ‘‘no comments’’ like the old pro that I am, which left me out on the kerb on the Speakerphone to the limo hire company rifling through my pockets for a Cabcharge. Ah, the first Cabcharge of the day, it’s a good feeling.

MONDAY

Not shaping to be a good week. Even the Dalai Lama hasn’t been returning my calls. I told the House when Juliar and her mob appointed me Speaker — that I would play no favourites, and my door would always be open to all members. Why the fuss that the open door policy extends to my shower? It’s just like being back in the old school days, in the locker room of the under-15s lathering up after a game. Don’t get me started on the good old days.

TUESDAY

It used to be you knew who your mates were. I haven’t felt this betrayed since the Member for Fairfax took a sneaky photo in the House of Reps while the President of Indonesia was giving a speech, which by some trick of perspective made me look like I was sound asleep. Next thing the photo was in the local rag. This is typical of the grubby, scumbag stunt the opposition would pull, I thought. Then I remembered that I was a member of the opposition.

WEDNESDAY

Being a servant of the people can be tiring. Work hard, travel hard, that’s practically my motto. The Department of Finance spooks are always giving me curry over my expense claims, but you’ve got to get out and about haven’t you? You’re no use to your constituents if you spend your whole time hidden under a rock, at least that’s what Tony Abbott used to say, before asking who I’d back in the next leadership vote.

THURSDAY

Those tabloids have kittens when I make the sacrifice of going on one of my gruelling marathon overseas educational jaunts on the taxpayers’ coin — 43 days is my personal best — but what’s the point of leaving the earthly paradise of the Sunshine Coast if you’re not going to be thorough?

Found a few of my old Cabcharge vouchers, just need to fill them out and release them, that should get me back in the Speakers office, my backbenchers quarters don’t even have a shower!

FRIDAY

Unbelievable, now they’re suggesting the vouchers aren’t kosher. Don’t they realise I’m doing my bit to prop up the economy. Honestly, investing $75,000 of taxpayer funds on taxi and limousine travel over 18 months is not that hard with traffic congestion these days. I’ve always had a lot of people to see. I keep telling them: I wouldn’t have this problem of getting stuck in traffic if they’d just see the wisdom of my request for a motorcade and police escort.

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‘Moon Bangkok’ (Avalon Travel, $17.99, 268 pages)

Suzanne Nam, 38, moved to Bangkok about six years ago to be a reporter for an English-language newspaper. The Cambridge, Mass., native still lives there, and is the author of “Moon Bangkok.” Here’s an edited chat with her about recommendations:

Bangkok is huge and cosmopolitan. Is it hard to get around?

It’s very big and kind of sprawling — without physical boundaries except for a river. As a visitor/traveler, you can feel very overwhelmed. There are hundreds of small neighborhoods that are special, and there are enclaves — small, ethnic neighborhoods. The population of Bangkok is primarily Thai and ethnic Chinese but a few blocks from where I live, for instance, is an African enclave, and next to that is one for Arabian Gulf people.

Bangkok has a reputation as a shopping destination. Is that accurate?

It’s the middle- and low-end shopping that’s cool. There are tons of “lunch markets” — ad hoc places that spring up to cater to office workers on lunch breaks. You’ll find suits, baby clothes, leather jackets. And in shops that are very inexpensive, there’s cool-design stuff. You can indulge in high fashion, sort of, without spending a ton of money, assuming you don’t weigh more than 140 pounds.

Can you point us to the primo shopping?

The Platinum Fashion Mall is a massive indoor market with probably 1,000

stalls. You can buy everything; it’s also comfortable, neat and air-conditioned. You’ll find dozens of people selling things like women’s shoes for a couple bucks. It’s around the corner from the biggest mall in Bangkok, CentralWorld. You can go there for high-end to midlevel purchases.

What’s your favorite place in Bangkok for Thai food?

Ad Makers has great, reliable Thai food. It’s comfortable and air-conditioned. Another place I love that’s kind of the standard for fried chicken is Jay Kee. The food is fresh and fast. It has great salads, chicken and sticky rice. It’s nothing fancy but is fantastic.

And the No. 1 site to see?

The Grand Palace, hands down. It was the royal palace, and not just one structure: It was a small city when it was used. Inside is a temple that has one of the most important Buddha figures in Thailand. If you need to pack all your sightseeing into one afternoon, go there.

— John Bordsen, Charlotte (N.C.) Observer