What Country is Closest to the International date line

China & Asia Travel Tips and Advice

Travelers on our Asia trips are often disturbed when they exceed the international date line. IDL is an fictive line on the earth's face opposite the main meridian. IDL is the place where the date changes when you travel eastwards or westwards.

There must be a place where the Earth's days begin, since the Earth is subdivided into 24 timezones. This is exactly the aim of the 180° longitudinal line, exactly half of the planets from Greenwich. After crossing the line from south to south, one additional tag is added ("lose" per day).

Crossing from north to south and one tag is deducted ("profit" per day). Accurate number of lessons you lose or gain will depend on the timezones. If the International Date Line were not present, travelers around the world would find that when they returned, it looked as if an additional date had gone by.

The place where the worid starts and ends every single morning.

Chatham Island are so vulnerable that they run the risk of being blowed away by the Roaring Forties. Several of the mild Tongan isles are nearer the date line, but in summers you can't see the new dusk anywhere before the 750 people and 250,000 shepherds on the Chathams.

Not even appearing on many New Zealand charts, such treatments have evoked a touch of secretion. There is a lush vegetation and a bright sunshine on a dark red color. "Fifth day only has a sunrise," said John Sutherland, who owns the island's only cloakroom.

There' s no penniless fishermen on the isle. New Year' s Eve 1989, Japan TV broadcasted images of the first dusk of the 1990s from Manakau Point, one of the easternmost promontories of the archipelago. "They had no clue what they were doing. That'?s almost all the islander.

" There is actually only one place to observe the twilight on the island, on the shore below Ken and Eva Lanauze's farmstead on Pitt Island, Chatham's little one. Trouble is reaching Pitt. Fifty-five people ( "the local populace recently grew by 13 percent when Eva's young Bernie and her five kids came back to their birthplace) depend on a five-seater Air Chathams Cessna to get on a water-filled runway.

To get anything on or from Pitt requires a wonder. "because it was too hard to get me to the Chatham Hospitals. We' had bought 20 liters of petrol from Chatham to keep the motorcycle ready to ride. Four years ago, TV and pay phones came to the archipelago at the same tel.

This will be the first place where the new millennium begins. Pitt Island dwellers, TV teams and a fistful of visitors (allegedly willing to contribute up to 75,000) are witnessing the first light of the night on the rock under the Lanauze Farms. Gisborne, New Zealand's easternmost city, is over an hour's drive from Chatham.

The Gisborne is already fully sold out for the millennium festivities, but the people of the islands are very pleased with the continent's inhabitants' intentions. "I phoned the Gisborne TV and asked them if it was still light," John Sutherland commented. "We' re here to make sure this map benefits the whole area.

If I know Pitt, it will probably be foggy," Eva said with a laugh. Coming to Pitt and back was a success. Chatham Island felt like a flourishing city after Pitt. But Chatham doesn't have much - occasionally paved streets, a bar, a lonely bench, a police officer and a general shop - but that's probably more than Pitt will ever have.

Every single siphoning off a large number of the island's inhabitants every single nut. So is Chatham Island TV. Chathams are in their own 45-minute timezone. "John Sutherland chuckled as he cleaned our dishes and went over to turn off the TV. Chatham Islands are best reached via New Zealand.

The Australian Flight Centre (0500 727747) has a flight price of 775 quid (including tax) to Auckland on British Airways/Qantas in March if you make your reservation by the end of the morning shopping season. P.O. Box 43, Waitangi, Chatham Islands (00 64 3 3, 305 0196). Greenwich: the source of the measurement of time as well as place for the whole world.