Destination: Africa
World Travel Watch: Demonstrations in Venezuela, Clashes in Namibia and More
by Larry Habegger | 11.19.09 | 2:10 PM ET
Larry Habegger rounds up global travel news
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Yahoo! BuzzPhoto You Must See: Waving the Algerian Flag
by World Hum | 11.17.09 | 12:22 PM ET
REUTERS/Amr Abdallah Dalsh Fans of Algeria’s soccer team wave the Algerian flag in Khartoum.
World Travel Watch: Monster Crocs in Australia, Bridge Collapses in Costa Rica and More
by Larry Habegger | 11.12.09 | 1:33 PM ET
Larry Habegger rounds up global travel news
Sometimes a Language Barrier Isn’t One
by Spud Hilton | 11.11.09 | 11:51 AM ET
On the benefits of language barriers in a Tunisian rug shop
‘Ivory Coast = France = Japan’
by Michael Yessis | 11.06.09 | 10:02 AM ET
That equation comes from a James Fallows post in the Atlantic, and he’s talking about language habits.
That is: in France and Japan, the deep-down assumption is that the language is pure and difficult, that foreigners can’t really learn it, and that one’s attitude toward their attempts is either French hauteur or the elaborately over-polite and therefore inevitably patronizing Japanese response to even a word or two in their language. “Nihongo jouzu! Your Japanese is so good!”
World Travel Watch: Monster Shark Off Australia, Deadly Driving Games in Bulgaria and More
by Larry Habegger | 10.29.09 | 10:44 AM ET
Larry Habegger rounds up global travel news
Interview With Nicholas Kristof: Traveling and Tweeting Under ‘Half the Sky’
by David Frey | 10.21.09 | 10:53 AM ET
Photo by Fred R. Conrad David Frey asks the author about his dream vacation, Twitter, travel to hellholes and the trip that changed his life
A Beach Holiday in The Gambia?
by Eva Holland | 10.13.09 | 10:49 AM ET
I’ve always admired the Brits for their more adventurous winter sun-seeking. Every winter, it seems they’re as likely to be found lounging in Kenya or the Seychelles as in the usual Caribbean hot spots—and, once again, the U.K. travel media is going way beyond Cancun with this Times Online profile of a little-known (to North Americans, anyway) West African beach destination. Writer Alex Spence notes: “There are only six sets of traffic lights and a couple of ATMs in the entire country.” Take that, Puerto Plata.
Nigeria’s Rebranding Campaign Hits a Hollywood Road Block
by Eva Holland | 09.28.09 | 11:43 AM ET
Poor Nigeria. The government there launched a major rebranding campaign back in March, attempting to improve its reputation for corruption and annoying email scams, but so far cooperation from outside the country has been hard to come by. Two of the latest obstacles? A Sony PlayStation commercial that made a crack about those aforementioned email scams, and the sci-fi movie “District 9,” which apparently portrays its Nigerian characters as “gangsters, cannibals, pimps and prostitutes.” Ouch.
Slate Takes a Ramadan World Tour
by Eva Holland | 09.16.09 | 12:02 PM ET
Writer Jason Rezaian has spent time in five different Muslim-majority countries—Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Dubai, Iran and Turkey—during the annual month of fasting, and in a short essay he reflects on the subtle (and not-so-subtle) differences in the ways each one celebrates their shared holy month.
Dan Baum on Journalism and the Expat Life
by Eva Holland | 09.14.09 | 4:57 PM ET
In a recent series of tweets, the veteran reporter looked back on how he launched his career—by setting up as an independent foreign correspondent in Zimbabwe—and encourages young writers to follow suit. The tweets are collected on his website. Here’s a sample:
I still think going abroad—particularly to a place others avoid—is a way to make a name.
It’s a way to distinguish oneself from the mass of people who want to be writers.
It’s a way to call attention to oneself—by having something others don’t.
And it’s a way to do what we all got into this business for in the first place.
That is, to shine light into places the public needs to know about, but might otherwise miss.
(Thanks for the tip, Rob Verger)
Congolese Man Plans New Lawsuit Against Tintin
by Michael Yessis | 09.02.09 | 12:40 PM ET
Cover art from The Adventures of Tintin Vols. 6-10 Two years ago Bienvenu Mbutu Mondondo filed suit in Belgium, demanding Tintin in the Congo be removed from the market because of its “racism and xenophobia.” He got no response from the Belgian legal system, so he’s planning to “launch parallel proceedings in France and go ‘all the way to the European Court of Human Rights if necessary,’” according to the Telegraph.
“Tintin in the Congo” has been stirring up controversy in the U.S. recently, too. Last month the book was removed from the shelves of a Brooklyn, New York, library—news that made the mash-up map of book bannings in America that Eva wrote about yesterday.
Tintin, of course, has been celebrated by many people—including Julia Ross here on World Hum—for its “power to unite travelers and melt national divides.” (Via The Slatest)
Paul Theroux: ‘The Cross-Country Trip is the Supreme Example of the Journey as the Destination’
by Michael Yessis | 08.24.09 | 2:37 PM ET
Yet one of the most intrepid travel writers alive had never driven across the U.S. So when the Smithsonian asked him and five other travel writers to take on their dream assignments, he picked the cross-country trip. He delivered a beautiful story. He writes:
In my life, I had sought out other parts of the world—Patagonia, Assam, the Yangtze; I had not realized that the dramatic desert I had imagined Patagonia to be was visible on my way from Sedona to Santa Fe, that the rolling hills of West Virginia were reminiscent of Assam and that my sight of the Mississippi recalled other great rivers. I’m glad I saw the rest of the world before I drove across America. I have traveled so often in other countries and am so accustomed to other landscapes, I sometimes felt on my trip that I was seeing America, coast to coast, with the eyes of a foreigner, feeling overwhelmed, humbled and grateful.
The other five writers involved are Susan Orlean (Destination: Morocco), Francine Prose (Japan), Geoffrey C. Ward (India), Caroline Alexander (Jamaica) and Frances Mayes (Poland). Here’s Jan Morris’s introduction to the project.
South Africa: A Wildlife Conservation Grand Tour
by Eva Holland | 08.20.09 | 12:05 PM ET
Slate’s Green Room leads the way.
Thomas Friedman on the ‘Overconnected Tourist’
by Michael Yessis | 08.17.09 | 9:40 AM ET
He went to remote Botswana—the “Land of No Service”—and sent forth a column that touches on the “blessings and curses” of being connected:
For the normally overconnected tourist, the first thing you notice in the Land of No Service is how quickly your hearing, smell and eyesight improve in an act of instant Darwinian evolution. It is amazing how well you can hear when you don’t have an iPod in your ears or how far you can see when you’re not squinting at a computer screen. In the wild, the difference between hearing and seeing with acuity is the difference between survival and extinction for the animals and the difference between a rewarding experience and a missed opportunity for photographers and guides.
He sounds downright Pottsian.
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