As You Like It--Trips Geared to Single Interests : Trends: In the fast-growing field of specialty travel, there are tours for, among others, recovering alcoholics, baseball fans, women seeking husbands and gay tourists.

How about a trip to watch the moss grow on Mt. Kinabalu in Borneo?

Or a trip across the Arctic on board a nuclear-powered Soviet icebreaker?

Or a leisurely sightseeing tour of Scud missile damage in Israel?

What about a journey with 200 other women to meet single, available men in Australia, Ireland or Paris?

How about a voyage to Tahiti to watch sharks feed off the coast of Bora-Bora?

Welcome to the growing and brave new world of specialty travel--trips, books and travel services--designed to serve special new segments of the travel market. These segments include Vietnam veterans with the urge to return to the battlefield, recovering alcoholics looking for a sober vacation, busy executives looking for the ultimate danger trip, and gays and lesbians hoping to travel without the threat of harassment.

Specialty travel is a different type of adventure travel. It doesn’t necessarily mean a strenuous trip. Instead, it can often mean trips to certain destinations for no other reason than that they are there . . . and you want to be first.

For the die-hard baseball fan, a Hatfield, Mass., company called Sports Tours has organized a four-day “Ultimate Road Trip.” Starting at $575 per person, the company takes fans to a different major league ballgame in a different city for four or five days. The deal includes seats at the games, air-fare/motor-coach costs to each game, as well as a room at the visiting team’s hotel in each city.

During the recent war in the Persian Gulf, one enterprising tour operator marketed a very different kind of “sightseeing” tour. Isram Travel, a New York-based tour operator, offered a “life-seeing” tour to Israel, visiting Patriot missile sites and military bases, as well as areas damaged by Iraqi Scud missiles. The cost of the six-day tour: $1,157 from New York, which included air fare, hotels and breakfasts. Gas masks were extra.

For those who missed the Gulf War but are still looking to experience a sense of danger, a New York company called Adventures in Paradise offers 20 different tours of Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. One itinerary in southern Laos features a trip along the infamous Ho Chi Minh Trail. Those on the Vietnam tour will be taken to see the notorious underground tunnels of Cu Chi. And those on the Cambodia tours will have an extended four-day stay at Siem Reap, only four miles from Angkor Wat.

(Under current U.S. laws, U.S. companies are prohibited from selling tour packages to those three Southeast Asia countries. But Adventures in Paradise lists Thailand as its head office. Therefore, the U.S. office sells travel arrangements to Thailand, and the Thailand office handles the air-and-ground packages in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, which is technically legal under U.S. Treasury regulations.)

Stamford, Conn.-based Salen Linblad Cruises (203-967-2900) offers the special trip on board a Soviet icebreaker.

There are now tours that introduce single women travelers to single men in the country they visit. For the last three years, a Newport Beach tour operator has advertised something called the “USA Ladies’ Tour.” In 1989, the company organized a special trip to Australia. For $2,995, single women were guaranteed a trip Down Under--to meet Australian men.

The two-week trip included visits to Sydney, Cairns and Melbourne, hotels and receptions during which participants were promised encounters with kangaroos, koalas, kookaburras . . . and single Australian men. Although the tour brochure lists a specific disclaimer (“We do not guarantee that any mutually satisfying relationships will be formed as a result of this tour”), the trips have apparently been very successful.

“The women loved it,” reports Barbara Reps, manager of Andante Travel, which organizes the tours. “So last year we went to the matchmaking festival in Ireland, and this year we’ll probably do a New Year’s trip in Nice or Paris.

Prior to the Australia trip, Reps had 1,500 men send in their biographies and photos. She did the same thing for a trip to Alaska. Does it work? So far, Reps reports four marriages from the Alaska trip, and two each from Australia and Ireland.

A number of companies have begun to serve certain groups of travelers who need special assistance. Travelers who are gay have often been victims of discrimination by airlines, hotels and tour operators. It was not unusual for homosexual men and women to be denied accommodations at certain hotels, given less preferable tables at restaurants or little or no tour guidance when abroad.

This week, Random House publishes a book for this segment of the specialty travel market, appropriately titled “Are You Two . . . Together?” Written by Lindsy Van Gelder and Pamela Robin Brandt, the book is billed as a gay and lesbian grand tour of Europe.

“We wrote this book,” says Van Gelder “because there really wasn’t anything that qualified as gay travel writing. We wanted to provide a service for gays to help get them through language, culture and lifestyle barriers, not to mention a look at the little pathways to gay history.”

The book tells gays not just where to go, but where not to go. “We’ve had homophobic hoteliers in France throw gays out because they wouldn’t rent to ‘perverts,”’ says Brandt. “And gays have also experienced difficulty trying to have a romantic dinner for two on the Riviera. But we also discovered that overseas, hoteliers tend to look at gays as American tourists first.

“In fact,” she adds, “we were genuinely surprised at the number of countries that have embraced a more open feeling to gay and lesbian travelers. When you think about it, it’s a lot more open than in the U.S., where Lindsy and I are still considered illegal in 25 states.”

Then there’s something called sobriety travel. A recovering alcoholic named Scott Fasken helped popularize the concept.

“I started trips for recovering substance abusers because I found out when I got sober five years ago that there weren’t fun things to do in recovery,” Fasken says. The trips help recovering alcoholics socialize again without having to resort to the crutch of alcohol.

“A sober experience is like living for the first time. And when you travel with other people trying to maintain their sobriety, you have an immediate bond because you talk the same language.”

Fasken’s company--Grangeville, Ida.-based Idaho Afloat--organizes a number of different rafting trips down the Snake River. “It’s more than just travel,” he says. “I look at myself as a mental health provider. We provide all the basics and the nature so the people on the trip can focus on their self-esteem.”

There are a number of travel companies that specialize in sober vacations. In addition to Idaho Afloat, (208) 983-2414, check with Sober Vacations International, (213) 470-0606; Sober Adventures International, (800) 537-5444 or (818) 887-0306, and Agency International, (404) 266-2200.

And finally, for those who truly have a sense of history, there’s the hotel room in Hong Kong that you can reserve now . . . for 1997. Actually, for $1,997 Hong Kong (about $256 U.S.), the Excelsior Hotel will sell you a room with a view for one specific date in 1997: June 30. That’s the last day of British rule, the day the Chinese Navy sails into the harbor. But if you want to book the room, you’d better hurry. There’s already a waiting list.