Letters

Follow The Indictments

My wife and I are volunteer technical assistants, mostly in Micronesia. Right now we're finishing in Chuuk and heading for Kosrae. And we love your Pacific Magazine. The November 2003 issue is particularly good, especially the articles on the FSM. We hope you will keep following the fraud indictments in Chuuk.

Eldon Haines and Linda Rose

Homesick

Aloha. I enjoyed your magazine this afternoon. I normally browse the ill-written Samoa News articles to entertain my father who is visiting from American Samoa. I live in Illinois and am homesick for news from the Pacific realm. When I found your Web site, I was hooked and am very pleased to have read your December 2003 issue. Keep up the great work and best wishes for future success.

Tusi Marshall

Wrong Flag

I'm writing concerning a mistake the writer made in the Oct, 2003 article page 20 entitled "All Micronesia Fishing Tournament 11th Anniversary," where she stated "Alex Tretnoff proudly holds out the Pohnpei flag." The flag isn't a Pohnpeian flag, but the flag of the Federated states of Micronesia. All four islands (Yap, Chuuk, Kosrae, Pohnpei) are represented by this flag, but each island has its own flag. Please go over this and make sure all statements made are corrected and none offending.

John Datmagurun
Yap State Student at Kapiolani
Community College, Hawaii

Web Surf Facts

I write with regard to the "Surfing for Travel" article, which appeared in the October issue of Pacific Magazine.

I believe such articles. When research-ed properly, are of great benefit to

the visitor and potential visitor to the Pacific and hence commend you on your initiative with this piece. For the majority of travelers, the Pacific is a long-haul destination and hence one ideally suited to promotion via the Internet.

Regarding the review of the SPTO web site I wish to point out that the reviewer was factually incorrect in his review of our site. You state that there are only five choices for accommodation in the Cook Islands on the SPTO web site, hence resulting in the SPTO site being "not very useful to travelers."

Had your reviewer looked at the Cook Islands accommodation page properly he would have noticed a section entitled "Complete Industry Guide." By following the links in this section the reviewer would have found over 80 accommodation choices in various categories. The entry pages for our accommodation sections list those accommodation providers who are also SPTO members since one of our membership benefits is priority marketing on our Web site.

Peter Dawkins
South Pacific Tourism Organization

Our Writer Responds

Having re-reviewed the Web site after the three months since the article was written, let me compliment SPTO on the job it has done in improving the site since that time. At that time, I did not see the expanded categories such as "House Rentals" and "Budget Accommodation" which now appear on the pages.

Although the site has improved much, at this time I stand by my assessment of your site. If we were to compare it to sites such as "Island Hopper Vacations" it is obvious that the SPTO site still has far to go to catch up with sites offering online booking, up-to-date information on room prices and availability, 360 degree views of rooms, careful details, and a clearly stepped hierarchical menu.

It seems clear that if SPTO continues to improve at the rate they have, the site will eventually be of great benefit to travelers, and I look forward to reviewing your site again next year.

Michael J. Mercede

Corrections

o Our January "Pacific 2004" special country section repeated the map of American Samoa on the page devoted to Vanuatu. This has been corrected in the Web version of Pacific 2004.

o Sunita Prasad, the library services officer at the South Pacific Applied Geoscience Commission, points out by email that our January "Pacific 2004" data missed showing some countries in the region as SOPAC members. His corrections have been made on the Web version of Pacific 2004.

o Joanne Luff, assistant trade manager at Chief Container Service, noted some errors in the shipping information given for some countries in the January "Pacific 2004" section. Her corrections and additions have been updated on the Web version.

o A government brief in the December 2003 issue may have given the impression that an agriculture pest known as the "Asian Leaf Miner" was in Kosrae. Scientists, however, confirm that it is not present in Kosrae.

Pacific Magazine regrets any confusion that these errors may have caused.