Arbo Valley Travel and Tours

Keeping your hydration at a high level is important when tackling the great outdoors. The loss of concentration, disorientation and false judgment are all risks that you’re exposed to if you don’t take special care to provide your organism with regular supply of fresh clean water. The direct use of bottled water isn’t always a good solution. The water stagnates, especially in long and far away camping destinations, thus using a camping water filter is a much better alternative.

Depending on the size of your group there are different types of filters available. The plethora of models offered by numerous brands often tend to be confusing when you’re trying to choose your portable water filter. There are a few things you should know in order to avoid making the mistake of buying a low quality system that may be unreliable and cause potential harm to yourself or fellow campers.

For large groups of people that are often found at base camps and relief organizations, there are some very good expedition filters like the Katadyn KFT, made of hardened stainless steel and big enough to cope with the demand of the group. Advanced removal systems help you keep your water clean, fresh and tasty by filtering out particles, parasites and other organic substances, and providing silver treated ceramic element that takes care of bacterial growth at a micro-level. Pumping capacity and weight are important factors here and for reference, the Katadyn model offers a rate of 4L per minute, weighting around 5 kg.

A smaller water filter is very suitable for a more private usage, but that doesn’t mean you should make compromises on the quality of the service it provides. Using the excellent Katadyn Pocket Water Filter model as a guide, we’re looking at a very comfortable unit, with a shock absorbing pump handle and attachable outlet hose to make filling up bottles with filtered water a much easier task. Using the same technologies as its bigger brother, this light portable filter, weighting just half a kilo, takes out even the very small bacterias and protozas from the water, at the rate of 1L per minute. Guaranteed to last up to 50 thousand liters if used correctly, such a filter system can serve you for many years.

If you are an active camper or a camping group, make sure to take care of yours and everyone else’s health, and safety, by accommodating a filter unit in your backpack. Once you taste the fresh purified water and feel the benefits first-hand, you won’t think of going out without your camping water filter ever again.

Life is getting stressed and technology, far from helping us relax, has increased work and stress. Those with computer work have to sit hunched over a desk all day long but the stress of work has caused other tensions of the mind. We once thought that Spa therapy is becoming a fashion. Those were the days. Now Spa has become a necessity and just as the demand has risen, Spa resorts are increasingly becoming better organised, as they say, in mind and body. The Balinese Spas, for instance are taking the wellness experience to the next level by introducing professional counselling to the menu. It seems spas are no longer just beauty parlours and fat farms – these days, they want to sort out your mental health too. The concept is very promising as it supported with qualified therapists.

Massage Research & Surveys

Surveys suggest that one in four Europeans suffers from mental-health problems and the UK-based adventure travel website www.AwimAway.com is inundated with requests for spa breaks. “What follows is more interesting”, says its CEO Harish Kohli. These requests are accompanied by comments such as “I am getting divorced”; “my job is so stressfull”; “I’m fed up of being so fat”.

Research also indicates that “Stress-related disorders make up between 80-and-90 percent of the ailments. What they require is someone to listen, someone to touch them, someone to care. That does not exist in modern medicine.

One of the complaints heard frequently is that physicians don’t touch their patients any more. Touch just isn’t there. Years ago massage was a big part of nursing. There was so much care, so much touch, so much goodness conveyed through massage.

Many now believe that massage therapy is absolutely key in the healing process because it relieves stress, it is obviously foundational in the healing process any time and anywhere. Perhaps a resort offering “proper” therapy is just the ticket?

Chic Spas

The accommodation is Spas is the epitome of Asian chic, overlooking a steep, deep-green rainforest valley and foaming river. The restaurants serve delicious food that’s also healthy. But the best they offer is the emotional-health, sometimes in group-participation coaching that can have topics such as “how to break bad habits and maintain good ones”. They hope to encourage guests to see how to make constructive changes. Sometimes, we tend to ignore how important our emotional health is to our physical welfare. Studies have shown that after operations patients with a positive attitude leave hospital sooner and their scars heal more quickly.

The process works if the counselling is used in conjunction with the spa’s other specialist services. These include a nutritionist, an iridologist, an osteopath and an Ayurvedic doctor. Get ready for the new era of yoga and massage. This will now be complemented with mental massage.

Where To Go

UK-based operator AwimAway (020 7430 1766, www.awimaway.com) offers Spa holidays to destinations around the world. AwimAway has special offers to Bali and India and can organise your holiday to the resorts with spa, yoga and mental message.

Health and safety is a daily part of modern life and an ever increasing part our working lives. In the UK you have a wide range of standard documents such as method statements, risk assessments COSSH assessments, Health and Safety Manuals etc.

Often when you purchase machinery or a substance you will find it originated in another country made by people who speak a different language. But it will (or should) come with instructions for usage in the language of its destination country. Such technical manuals will no doubt have been translated into possibly many languages. This will have been completed with the assistance of a translation agency.

However, people now migrate between countries more then ever. We need only look at the migration in the EU. For example we have Polish people arriving into Britain and workers from the Ukraine now replacing them in Poland. People are on the move.

Businesses are using this migration of skill and or cheap labour. But often the migrant worker will speak limited amounts of the new language(when they arrive) and read / write it this new tongue even less. This causes potential health and safety issues if not considered and addressed. This is where language translations should be considered.

Under English law a person is deemed to have read something if they have signed it. But surely we enter a grey area if the person can obviously not read in the language?

This is a larger concern to directors and business owners as they now can be made personally responsible for such issues as ‘corporate manslaughter’.

We must also consider the growing ‘claims culture’. After an incident could your migrant worker, Motivated by a large pay-out, suddenly lose their ability to communicate in English? And how will you prove that they are reducing their language abilities? Incidences of similar abuse already occur with native workers do they not?

With these issues in mind, will your insurance company start to question your policies in regards language translation? The question must be when will this issue become serious enough for them to require action.

They only true way to avoid this is to consider language translation as part of the initial employment cost of migrant workers and as part of the health and safety audit. If you cannot be sure that your employee can read documents related to the health and safety parts of their job you will need to have a translation available in their language.

Likewise, if they are to be given any interactive training, interpreting will be required if language levels are not high enough. For the larger business it might be possible to give additional health and safety training to a member of staff who can speak in these other languages and ensure they both receive the translations and understand any training given. They can then assist or manage the training of these new staff.

As stated at the beginning on this article, equipment manuals are often translated into many languages. On this basis you may be able to obtain copies of manuals with translations into the languages of your migrant team. These translations should be a consideration on future pre-purchase discussions.

Some readers may be dismissing the above statements. If that is the case, visit the HSE’s (Health & Safety Executive) website and you will see that they already show translations of various documents into 28 languages!