The Honolulu Advertiser from Honolulu, Hawaii • 63

Travelogue The Honolulu Advertiser GERRY VOLGENAU Sunday, December 21, 1997 Travel Writer Ed Kennedy, 525-8023 I A WINTER IN ANTARCTICA I 1 1 I0mf' Good God, this IS lace a fearful New vaccines for hepatitis, typhoid ready Travelers tip: Yellow is not attractive when it's your eye color. Doctors call it jaundice. It's caused by hepatitis. The most common form is Type which comes from eating bad food, particularly in tropical countries. So pay heed if you're planning a winter venture to hot beaches with cool rum drinks.

The good news is: New vaccines are out not only for hepatitis but also for typhoid. These new vaccines are more effective, have fewer side effects and last longer, says travel-medicine expert Dr. Jeffrey Band, director of the Beaumont Interhealth Service in Royal Oak, Mich. When to get a shot Not everyone needs a shot. Skip it if you're going for a week to a tourist place and eating in first-class restaurants.

But, Band says, get a hepatitis A shot if you tend to wander off the beaten track, experiment with local foods or plan to stay for more than three weeks. The places with the highest danger, he said, are Central and South America, Africa and Asia. All varieties of hepatitis Inflame the liver. Type nonlethal in virtually all cases, is contracted from food and water. Types and which can kill you, are contracted through blood, either from dirty needles or sexual contact.

You know you've got hepatitis if your eyes turn yellow, your appetite evaporates, you have a fever, dark urine and get exhausted just tying your shoes. The old hepatitis A vaccine was immune globulin. It was 80 percent effective and had to be repeated every three months. The new one came out two years ago, Band says. It's safe for adults and kids and Is 95 percent effective for six to 12 months.

If you get a second shot after six months, you are protected for life, he says. Treating typhoid As for typhoid, a killer you also get from tainted food in tropical places, innqvations have brought two changes, Band says. 1 The old typhoid vaccine, developed in 1917, htirt like blazes, was 70 percent effective for up to three years and the side effects felt like the worst flu bout of your life. In 1990, a new live-bacteria pill was developed. You take it every other day for eight days.

Band says it has "one one-thousandth of the side effects" and is good for up to five years. The problem: remembering to take it every other day. Then in 1995, a new polysaccharide was introduced. This shot gives all the protection of the four-dose oral drug, but you just need one dose, which is effective for three years. Other terrific drugs are being developed, Band says.

They include vaccinations for travel diarrhea, an improved cholera drug and a single-pill drug for diarrhea, hepatitis A and typhoid. For foreign health information or vaccinations, check with your doctor. Gerry Volgenau writes for the Detroit Free Press. Top photo: With the temperature at -85 degrees Fahrenheit, ice forms on the mask of a worker at the Amundsen-Scott Research station. Above: Flag lines between equipment and the main domed facility help guide workers caught outside during blinding, white-out storm conditions.

'i. 'vU Adventurer discovers of splendid isolation Robert Falcon Scott, explorer Photos by Dan Potter or a search on the more. For informa- mid-January. If all goes as expected, the sale could close Jan. 31, ending the nation's longest labor dispute the next day.

From Anthony Curtis' Las Vegas Advisor monthly newsletter. The Las Vegas Advisor can be ordered for $50 for a one-year subscription by calling 1-800-244-2224. Send questions for the Advisor to lvainfi.net via the Internet or write to 3687 S. Pro-cyon Las Vegas, NV 89103. If you really, really want to Many people don't want to go as far as the South Pole but are intrigued by the idea of visiting Antarctica.

Several tour companies offer the Antarctic experience. Most of these involve a cruise on a ship, often a reconditioned ice breaker, to the shores of Antarcti By Chris Oliver Special to The Advertiser ca where visitors enjoy spectacular ice floes, penguin rookeries, seals and other wildlife, along with beautiful sunrises w-magine a place where the sun rises once a year; where the and sets only JL temperature and sunsets. Cruises start at around $5,000 a person and run November through February, the most comfortable time to visit Antarctica. Some tours will even fly visitors on to the South Pole for a quick visit. A yLarsen Peninsula' Amnndsen-Sabtt NNf 'v American-, travel agent grees and only two weather pat-terns prevail: calm or storm.

A place where the Aurora lights snake through the night sky, turning it Internet will link you with specific companies. The other way to get to the South Pole is to work there. In the United States Antarctic Program, all of the support personnel are hired and employed by a company called Antarctic Support Associates. dips to minus 100 de GOING They hire cooks, plumbers, mechanics, computer operators, technicians, cargo handlers, secretaries and purple and yellow; where the winds sculpt bizarre snow forms on the landscape and where ice crystals hang in the air, encircling the horizon in bands of dazzling light. See Antarctica, Page F2 a life VEGAS Spicy appetizers: For -eome great appetizers with a bite, check out the Gordon Biersch microbrewery at Sunset.

Station. "Angry prawns" with Worcestershire, chicken, and shrimp pot stickers with spicy mustard and seared blackened ahi in Cajun remoulade are- just a few of the appetizers (all in the $7 range) that pack just enough heat to get, you han-kerin" for one of Biersch's homemade brews. Question: Last month you wrote that the Frontier strike, 90' To 500 Miles 4 7V TAntarcJIwi li "Voss South iCiMsMurdo rulB -SouthVi 3' i Magnetic' .06 I tion contact them at: Antarctic Support Associ-ates, 61, Inverness Drive East, Suite 300, CO 801 12. Tel. (303) 790-8606.

Riviera's 'Nickel Town' designed strictly with the low-roller in mind which has been going on for years, had ended due to a sale of the casino. Someone apparently forgot to tell the pickets that I saw last week. Answer: The Frontier was sold to a Kansas City industrialist last October. The Nevada Gaming Control Board investigation into his background, unlike most licensing investigations that can take up to a year, was expedited, and has been fast and flawless. The Control Board has scheduled its licensing vote on the new owner for publishers of the Las Vegas Advisor shows readers how to have a high-roller casino experience on a low-roller budget.

"The Frugal Gambler" ($12.95) tells you how to qualify for comp rooms, meals, shows, pampering and more, all by playing 25-cent slots and video poker. It also covers taking advantage of casino promotions, getting bumped from flights and finding the potentially profitable casino games. Available at Borders book stores or from the toll-free number below. This information is supplied by Anthony Curtis and Deke Castleman, editors of the Las Vegas Advisor. Some casinos have fun pits small areas with a few tables devoted to beginners, frugal types and the overall less serious.

Other casinos rely on their nickel slots to appease the low-rollers. The Riviera is about to take the whole low-roller concept a step further by devoting an entire new casino (actually add-on to its existing casino) to this category of gambler. "Nickel Town," due to open any day now, is a facility in which 70 percent of the machines will accommodate nickel play. Though 5-cent machines traditionally pay very poorly, the Riviera promises returns up to 98 percent. Nickel Town will have a 1950s theme and inexpensive food and drink, such as 79-cent foot-long franks, 50-cent draft beer and 25-cent lemonade.

Frugal gambling: Speaking of nickels, a new book by the.