Laos is a land of festivals. Every village, every temple, & every ethnic minority not only holds its own special festivals but joins the wider Lao community in celebrating the national ones as well. This book explores the most important festivals of Laos & offers a rare & fascinating glimpse into the spiritual & communal life of the Lao people. Written & photographed by experts in Lao history, society, & culture, ” Festivals of Laos” is a wonderful combination of insightful narrative & stunning photography. Martin Stuart-Fox is professor emeritus of Asian studies at the University of Queensland & the author of six books on the history, politics, & culture of Laos. Somsanouk Mixay has worked in Laos in the news & media sector for many years & has many articles, features, & books to his credit. Steve Northup has served as staff photographer for the Washington Post & Time magazine. He lives in rural New Mexico. ...

Every year when summer rolls around, millions of us sacrifice the joys of a comfortable bed & warm running water in favour of a weekend of debauchery in a field in the middle of nowhere. Whether you`re planning a weekend hobnobbing with the A-listers at Coachella, trading goods in the desert at Burning Man, raving through the night at one of Croatia`s beachside parties or seeing the biggest bands in the world at Glastonbury, the pull of a music festival is undeniable, but it can all be a bit daunting. No doubt you will have heard stories of monsoon rain reducing the festival site to a giant mud bath, or stumbling home after 24-hours non-stop raving & finding an inebriated stranger sleeping in your tent, but how do you cope with these situations? Whether it`s getting a ticket (often considerably harder than it sounds) or picking the perfect spot to pitch a tent, FESTIVALS: A SURVIVAL GUIDE will talk you through everything you need to know about a weekend of music, mates & mayhem. Providing insider tips gained from years of festival going, learn what to do when you lose all your friends & why it`s never a good idea to put together a strict timetable of bands you want to see. Then there`s information on the festival characters to befriend & the ones to avoid
- nobody likes to be woken at 6.30am by a group of hippies starting up an impromptu drum circle outside your tent. The practical advice offered also

Includes:: how to plan your day, use social media to discover where the secret gigs are, fool-proof ways to smuggle booze past security guards, & why only a fool would wear a playsuit when having to use a festival toilet.


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Topographic survey of France at 1:25, 000 in IGN`s excellent TOP25 / Série Bleue series. All the maps are GPS compatible, with a 1km UTM grid plus latitude & longitude lines at 5’ intervals. Contours are at 5m intervals except for mountainous areas where the maps have contours at 10m intervals, vividly enhanced by hill shading & graphics for rocky terrain. Colouring with graphics indicates different types of vegetation or land use (deciduous or coniferous forests, moors, orchards, vineyards, etc). PLEASE NOTE: coverage of France at this scale is currently being revised – the format & the presentation of each title are indicated by the letters at the end of its Sheet Reference number (e.g. 0416ET, 3531ETR, 1923SB, etc.)MAPS WITH FULL TOURIST OVERPRINT & AN ENGLISH MAP LEGEND: all TOP25 maps & the SB editions of Série Bleue have an overprint highlighting waymarked walking trails including long-distance GR routes &, where appropriate, ski routes. Symbols indicate campsites, gîtes d’etape, refuges, equestrian centres & other recreational facilities or sites, tourist information centres, cultural heritage, etc. Towns & locations of particular interest are highlighted.- ET or OT = single-sided TOP25 map covering approx. 29x 21 km / 18x 13 miles.- ETR or OTR = waterproof & tear resistant TOP25 map covering the same area as the corresponding ET or OT number, but double-sided, printed on a smaller size sheet with a good overlap between the sides.- SB = Série Bleue map with full tourist overprint; these maps, first introduced in summer 2014, each cover approx. 29x 24km / 18x 15 miles.SÉRIE BLEUE maps with numbers ending in E (Est) or O (Ouest): most editions now indicate the GR routes, but do not show any other tourist information. Map legend is in French only. Each map covers approx. 14x 20km / 9x 12 miles. ...

SHORTLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER INTERNATIONAL PRIZE 2017 A young woman named Amanda lies dying in a rural hospital clinic. A boy named David sits beside her. She`s not his mother. He`s not her child. The two seem anxious &, at David`s ever more insistent prompting, Amanda recounts a series of events from the apparently recent past. As David pushes her to recall whatever trauma has landed her in her terminal state, he unwittingly opens a chest of horrors, & suddenly the terrifying nature of their reality is brought into shocking focus. One of the freshest new voices to come out of the Spanish language, Samanta Schweblin creates an aura of strange & deeply unsettling psychological menace in this cautionary tale of maternal love, broken souls & the power & desperation of family. ...

SHORTLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER INTERNATIONAL PRIZE 2017A young woman named Amanda lies dying in a rural hospital clinic. A boy named David sits beside her. She`s not his mother. He`s not her child. The two seem anxious &, at David`s ever more insistent prompting, Amanda recounts a series of events from the apparently recent past. As David pushes her to recall whatever trauma has landed her in her terminal state, he unwittingly opens a chest of horrors, & suddenly the terrifying nature of their reality is brought into shocking focus. One of the freshest new voices to come out of the Spanish language, Samanta Schweblin creates an aura of strange & deeply unsettling psychological menace in this cautionary tale of maternal love, broken souls & the power & desperation of family. ...

An Intrepid adventurer, Mark has spent the last decade travelling areas left ominously blank on maps. This is the story of his malaria-wracked expedition across central Borneo. Once again he defies cartographers by going in search of the `wild men of Borneo`
- a tribe of jungle dwellers whose existence is validated only by myth. With fellow traveller Paul he paddles up an uncharted river into what was believed to be the valley of the spirit world
- where even the island`s fiercest head-hunters feared to go. Crossing mountains that no western eye has ever seen, they penetrate ever deeper into the vengeful jungle. On the way they encounter shipwreck, malaria, amoebic dysentery, near starvation, leeches, exhaustion, enforced alcohol abuse, barbecued mouse-deer foetus & a ferocious craving for chocolate!

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Seeking the beautiful, the breathtaking & the bizarre, Charlie Elder goes in search of Britain`s rarest & most endangered animals. Travelling the length & breadth of the UK, & meeting up with experts along the way, he tracks down secretive & scarce mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, fish & insects living on the brink, ranging from the iconic Scottish wildcat & surreal spiny seahorse to the striking golden oriole, outlandish wart-biter cricket & sinister black rat. Few & Far Between celebrates the diversity on our doorstep & highlights the natural treasures we risk losing. ...

Fez in the Encounter Guide Series from Lonely Planet, exploring a range of cities & regions worldwide in a handy, pocket-sized format designed to introduce visitors to the distinctive neighbourhoods of the destination. Frank & informal in style, the guides are renowned for their appeal to independent travellers & are written & researched by local authors. Each guide is organised into 5 distinct sections
- Highlights, Diary, Itineraries, Neighbourhoods & Snapshots
- recommending a series of essential encounters for visitors to the region. Each guide opens with a

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Topographic coverage of mainland Spain at 1:50, 000 in the MTN50 (Mapa Topográfico Nacional) series from the Centro Nacional de Información Geografica, the country’s civilian survey organization. The maps have contours at 20m intervals, enhanced by relief shading, plus colouring and/or graphics to show different types of terrain, vegetation or land use. Boundaries of national parks & other protected areas are marked. In addition to all the usual information featured on topographic mapping at this scale, detailed presentation of the road & rail networks, rural tracks & paths, etc, the maps also show campsites & mountain refuges. On more recent editions some GRs, the official long-distance hiking routes, are also marked (although not as clearly as on hiking maps from other publishers). Each map covers 29.5x 18.5 km (with adjustments in the border or coastal areas). The maps have a 1-km UTM grid, plus margin ticks for latitude & longitude at 1` intervals. Map legend is in Spanish only.HOW TO CHOOSE THE RIGHT 50K MAP: all the titles in CNIG’s 200K Provincial Road Maps series at 1:200, 000 are overprinted with the grid for the 1:50, 000 maps & can be used to see the area covered by each 50K title. TO SEE THE LIST OF TITLES IN THIS SERIES PLEASE CLICK ON THE SERIES LINK.PLEASE NOTE
- MAP TITLES: the grids shown on our website serve both the civilian & the military 1:50, 000 topographic series. Although the areas covered by maps in both series are identical (apart from some border or coastal sheets), occasionally map titles differ – only one title is shown on the grid, usually the military one. In Galicia, the Basque country & in the Catalan speaking areas the tendency now is to use local place names rather than the often better known Castilian ones. Where possible, both versions are included in our titles. Map titles listed on our website are based on information received by us at the time of publication, but sometimes maps arrive showing a completely different title! As long as the map number is as ordered, the correct map has been supplied.
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This masterly work will continue to be an invaluable source of reference for anyone wanting practical advice on working with GRP, in order to make repairs & improvements correctly & thus extend the life of their boat. Since it was first published 45 years ago, Hugo du Plessis` Fibreglass Boats has become a classic, relied upon by owners, surveyors & boat builders keen to understand how fibreglass behaves, & obtain practical advice on working with GRP. In a deliberately non-technical manner, he explains the peculiar nature of fibreglass, its durability, its weaknesses, where its likely to fail, the effects of use & the weather, plus the latest research into causes of the biggest worry for owners
- blistering & osmosis. ` One of the most respected works on the subject...thorough & its scope is vast` Yachting Monthly `A long-established classic` Kelvin Hughes
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