Destination: Asia
The Critic: “12,000 Miles in the Nick of Time”
by Jim Benning | 08.09.03 | 12:11 AM ET
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Yahoo! BuzzYou Ordered in Cantonese
by Jim Benning | 07.29.03 | 1:08 AM ET
Travel writer Daisann McLane is learning to speak Cantonese. Not many foreigners take up the language these days. Mandarin is the official Chinese language, as well as the one that Western professionals are racing to master for business reasons. As a result, the practical-minded Chinese in New York’s Chinatown, where she studies, think she is a little crazy.
But as she writes in a thoughtful and inspiring story in Friday’s New York Times, her new language skills have unexpectedly opened new doors in her hometown.
“I’ve lived in New York for more than 25 years, and for most of that time I related to Chinatown the way I suppose most non-Asian New Yorkers do: as a fun place to eat dinner that is exotic, mysterious but ultimately unknowable and even, on occasion, brusque,” she writes. “But when I spread my Chinese homework out on restaurant and coffee shop tables, unexpected things happen. It is as if a door swings open and Chinatown invites me into the house to meet the family.” McLane, who also writes the “Frugal Traveler” column for the New York Times, fielded questions from World Hum last year.
The Hippie Trail and “A Season in Heaven”
by Jim Benning | 07.08.03 | 11:56 PM ET
Like a lot of people who came of age in the not-too-inspiring Reagan-era ‘80s, I’ve had plenty of moments when I wished I’d grown up in the seemingly far-more-interesting ‘60s. Likewise, the backpacker in me sometimes wishes I’d been a young traveler ambling across Asia in the ‘60s and ‘70s on the Hippie Trail, back in the days before Lonely Planet had explained how to do it, back when the world seemed to be opening up to independent travel for the first time. But was it all that it seems? On Vagablogging, Rolf Potts takes up the topic in a review of a new book about the Hippie Trail, David Tomory’s “A Season in Heaven: True Tales from the Road to Kathmandu.” Tomory interviewed 35 travelers for the book. The result? “[I]t vividly captures the mindset of the young people who dropped all in the ‘60s and ‘70 to optimistically wander across Asia,” Potts writes.
Is Television Destroying Bhutan?
by Jim Benning | 07.04.03 | 12:06 AM ET
The Himalayan kingdom is touted by adventure travel companies as a more exotic and remote alternative to Nepal and Tibet. But the country is changing fast, thanks in no small part to TV, introduced just four years ago. So how have Larry King, the Rock and Bart Simpson altered life in the country? Crime and drug use are up. And a third of Bhutan’s girls now want blonde hair and lighter skin, according to one unofficial survey. “There is something depressing about watching a society casting aside its unique character in favour of a Californian beach,” Cathy Scott-Clark and Adrian Levy write in a fascinating story in the Guardian (UK). “Cable TV has created, with acute speed, a nation of hungry consumers from a kingdom that once acted collectively and spiritually.”
Dreaming in Thailand
by Jim Benning | 06.17.03 | 9:52 PM ET
Photo by Jim Benning. Jim Benning assumed he had put his cultural travels on hold when he visited an American chain restaurant in Hat Yai. He was wrong.
I’m Not Sure We Should Stay Together, So How About We Take a 3-Month Trip to Asia?
by Michael Yessis | 06.13.03 | 12:07 AM ET
Long-term travel may not be the most obvious strategy to repair a rocky relationship, but, according to an essay in the Guardian, it’s an increasingly popular approach. “[T]here’s arguably a sense in which a trip around the world can act as a proxy form of relationship therapy, catalysing the negative dynamics of a relationship into resolution,” writes Kevin Braddock. “Some discover their partners to be different people when removed from their native context; others find it is they who have changed. The emotional terrain of a relationship can alter with every border crossed. Like meeting the parents or moving in together, travelling has become another stringent test in the process of finding a partner.” Braddock has done some terrific reporting for this story. It’s filled with telling on-the-road anecdotes about couples, including one from a 28-year-old PR agent named Liz who knew almost immediately after she and her boyfriend left on a year-long trip that their relationship was doomed. The day of reckoning came on Kho Pang Nan. “We were living together in a flat we’d bought, and decided to take a break because we’d been working so hard,” Liz told Braddock. “I knew it was make or break for us. It became clear we had different agendas, and I realised we should never have bought the ticket.”
Looking for Some Writing That Evokes a Sense of Place? Pick up a Good Whodunit.
by Michael Yessis | 06.11.03 | 12:16 AM ET
So says Reggie Nadelson in a vivid essay in the June issue of Travel + Leisure. The author of “Red Hot Blues” and “Hot Poppies” examines the importance of place in crime novels and recounts a few events from her own travels that led to specific scenes in her books, including a trip to Hong Kong that influenced the latter book.
Boycott Nepal, The Trekking Capital Of The World?
by Jim Benning | 06.05.03 | 8:59 PM ET
That’s the suggestion from Ethical Traveler founder Jeff Greenwald in an op-ed piece in today’s San Francisco Chronicle. A travel boycott, he believes, will pressure the government to stop turning away Tibetan refugees seeking asylum, as it did recently, and instead allow some refugees to pay an illegal entry fee and remain in Nepal, as the government has traditionally done. “A popular boycott of travel to Nepal will send a strong message to the kingdom’s officials, who draw huge profits from climbing expedition and visa fees,” he writes. “This boycott must be maintained until Nepal issues an apology to the Tibetan community, and an assurance that such a shameful lapse in human decency will not occur again.” In an e-mail to Ethical Traveler members, Greenwald notes that this is the organization’s first “direct action.” He urges travelers to visit EthicalTraveler.com, which has a link to the Nepalese Embassy and a suggested letter.
Yazuka 101
by Jim Benning | 04.28.03 | 3:27 PM ET
Say you move to Japan or spend a few months visiting. How would you know if your neighbor was a member of the Japanese mafia, a shady character committing all manner of violent acts, even taking giant bowls of steaming udon noodles without paying for them? Thankfully, Amy Chavez explains the basics in the Japan Times. She speaks from experience, having recently discovered that her neighbors fit the profile. “Does your neighbor take part in nocturnal motorcycle revving?” she writes. “This is a favorite activity of the bosozoku, many of whom go on to join the ranks of yakuza or other organized crime groups.” Or how about this one: “Does your neighbor call any of his friends ‘aniki,’ the term used to refer to a senior gang member?” If so, be afraid. Be very afraid.
Morning, Not Smart
by Katherine LeRoy | 04.16.03 | 9:53 PM ET
Photo by Katherine LeRoy. She coped with the slamming car doors and the fumes from the gas station next door. But Thai pop gave Katherine LeRoy a hot heart.
Kurt Andersen’s Holiday in Asia
by Jim Benning | 04.14.03 | 3:44 PM ET
As the war in Iraq began, public radio show host and novelist Kurt Andersen happened to be heading off on vacation to Asia with his wife and daughters. “We had been planning the trip for more than a year,” he writes in a thoughtful, ambitious and wide-ranging account in Sunday’s New York Times Magazine. “We had already bought the tickets and booked the rooms and read the guidebooks and got the inoculations, so despite the natural nervous impulse to hunker down, we decided to stick to our plans rather than postpone the trip until the girls’ summer vacation. In our damn-the-torpedoes holiday fashion, we made the same choice as the Bush administration—which had, in its own way, already bought the tickets, booked the rooms, read the guidebooks and got the inoculations and was dead set on going to Iraq this season, before the weather got too hot.”
Hong Kong Promises to ‘Take Your Breath Away’
by Michael Yessis | 04.11.03 | 3:46 PM ET
During another time, “Hong Kong will take your breath away” wouldn’t be a terrible tourism slogan. But with the outbreak of SARS in the city, it has become one of the all-time unfortunate lines of ad copy—shortness of breath is one of the main symptoms of the syndrome. Tourism officials tried to recall advertisements featuring the slogan, according to the Guardian, but they acted too late for several publications. British versions of Cosmopolitan and Conde Nast Traveller, as well as some Hong Kong billboards, still feature the slogan.
Rory Stewart Quit British Foreign Office, Walked Across Asia
by Michael Yessis | 03.25.03 | 9:09 PM ET
Rory Stewart quit a promising career in international relations to walk across central and southern Asia. “I think when I set off, my motivation really was to try to put myself in the background and get a feeling, almost an anthropological feeling, of how it is in villages in very remote places, how they see the world, how people see Islam, for example,” he told Guy Dixon, who recently profiled Stewart for Canada’s Globe and Mail newspaper. Stewart chronicled his journey through Pakistan, India and Afghanistan—he’s thought by some to be the first tourist there after the fall of the Taliban—in articles for the London Review of Books and other publications. The stories were so well received, Stewart landed a book deal. “The Places In Between,” which covers his two-year walk, will be released later this year.
‘I Would Get Stopped on the Road Because They Can Tell ... That You’re Not From Around Here’
by Michael Yessis | 02.14.03 | 4:12 PM ET
This week public radio’s nationally syndicated This American Life, one of the nation’s best radio shows, will air American teen-ager Hyder Akbar’s audio journal from his recent journey to Afghanistan. The show promises to be compelling. In many ways, Akbar is like any other suburban American teen-ager: U2 posters cover one of his bedroom walls. But he also has deep family ties to Afghanistan. After September 11, he wanted to see the country for the first time, so he skipped his high school graduation ceremony and went. “As a personal challenge, Akbar insisted on immersing himself totally in the experience,” today’s Los Angeles Times reports. “He refused to be vaccinated beforehand, and while there he suffered intense digestive problems because he drank the water and deliberately ate undercooked meat. It was his attempt to belong in a community that clearly didn’t see him as one of its own.”
Pico Iyer: Parasite?
by Jim Benning | 01.29.03 | 10:45 AM ET
Apparently so. The travel writer and novelist might be admired in the West, but in Japan, where he lives, Iyer’s neighbors call him “Isoro,” or parasite. Why? Because when the rest of the men get up and go to work in the morning, Iyer stays home to write. That gem is but one revelation in a profile of Iyer in Sunday’s Los Angeles Times.