This weeks travel blog of the week is Claire takes on the world, an amusing and feature rich blog of Claire's worldly travels.

What I enjoyed about Claire's blog is that out of the many blogs I have seen Claire had actually been to the Amazon. After 8 months in South America she had finally arranged a 3 day trip to the Amazon where they attempted to cross a river sitting on a wooden raft. While half way through the water Claire yelled to her friend "Jenny, where's your camera?"

Jenny replied "Claire, it's not the time for pictures!" and then suddenly realised when checking her money belt that her camera and mp3 player were covered in water!

When they finally reached the Amazon, of which Claire likens to looking like a forest in Ireland, Jenny referred to the experience as "We're getting to meet the entire cast of A Bugs Life today".

You can read the rest of Claire's adventures here

Workers at a Royal Mail sorting office in Norfolk had to leave the premises when a suspicious package was spotted. 60 staff were evacuated after the security alert and a bomb disposal squad was called in. Staff have now returned to work and an investigation is under way. The incident may cause some minor delays to deliveries in the area.

BA has delayed moving its long haul flights to Terminal 5 until June. It was due to switch most of its long flights to the terminal  the 30th of April but problems with the baggage handling system will now mean a delay. BA has not given a date when they expect to move the flights to the new terminal.

Thameslink will provide an additional 14,500 seats on its routes with the introduction of new energy efficient trains. The trains will run from 2012 between London St Pancras and Blackfriars and on the Midland and East Coast lines. They will also operate on other routes via London Bridge and Elephant and Castle to destinations on the Brighton lines and routes in Kent, Surrey and Sussex. The deal means that the current fleet of trains will increase by a total of 380 carriages and that another other six trains an hour will run between Blackfriars and St Pancras International.

The budget airline Oasis which runs flights from London Gatwick to Hong Kong has applied to go into liquidation. The airline offered flights for a little as £65 each way and operated daily flights between London and Hong Kong. The airline has debts of around one billion Hong Kong dollars. Hundreds of people have been left stranded after the shut down.

Thomas Cook has brought the luxury travel firm Elegant Resorts from its shareholders Geoff Moss and Barbara Catchpole. The company carried more then 20,000 last year and its assets are worth around £22.3 million. Thomas Cook plans to run it as a standalone business and will keep the company’s current management team.

The problems with the new Terminal 5 at Heathrow have left BA with losses of around £16 million so far. The costs have mainly been incurred because of the cancellation of 300 short haul flights. The problems are likely to continue and some analysts predict the losses could eventually run to as much as £150 million.

This weeks travel blog of the week is steveislost.com. The blog is written by Steven Kazuo Nakano and charts his travels over the last couple of years. After selling off all of his stuff including his prized car back in 2005 Steve has already been to Argentina, Chile, Egypt, Israel, Peru and Venezuela, just to name a few places. The most recent entries find him in India where he purchases a motor bike in order to see more of the country. Steve talks about the complexities of dealing with the local police and paperwork issues and the fact that the best way to deal with them is just not to stop at the checkpoints.

One of the more humorous posts from his time in India also mentions what Steve describes as "the number two worst room I stayed in". Whilst this is not surprising, after reading the post you probably like me will be left wondering what the worst room he has stayed in was like, perhaps Steve can enlighten us here? Firstly he says the room was very close to a pig sty which gave it a beautiful spring smell, but the wildlife inside the room was slightly more irritating. One thing is for sure his post will certainly have you scratching as you read about the population of bed bugs he shared the room with. You can see what he calls his first nights catch pictured left. He says of the room and the number of bedbugs:
"I have stayed in places before where I have seen a few, but not a major infestation like this. At the joining of the wall to the ceiling was thousands of little droppings where they pooped. After the first night I finally realized where they were coming from and could see them sticking their heads out of the cracks waiting for me to go to sleep" and he resorts to staying awake most of the night as the bugs come out to feed. It sounds lovely. On a more cheerful note he also posts this cute picture of a family of monkeys . ahhh.

PC2Paper has increased its UK prices this weekend to reflect the recent increases in postage prices from Royal Mail. The increases mean that a UK letter will now cost 56p to send via first class mail and 49p to send second class. Prices for letters sent to overseas destinations from our UK based printing station have also increased accordingly.

Just when it was looking like things were getting better at Terminal 5 there have been yet more problems. Once again the baggage handling system has caused more problems and the recent snow in the UK has added to these problems. More than 60 flights have been cancelled as a result and passengers are advised to check the BA website before travelling.

Nearly a week after the new Terminal 5 opened at Heathrow it is finally ready to operate a full schedule of flights making it the first day of normal operation. Until today flights have been cancelled every day to take pressure off the overloaded baggage handling systems.