Destination: Asia
Asia’s Disaster Tourism Over the Line?
by Julia Ross | 03.05.09 | 5:27 PM ET
As we noted yesterday, two new disaster-themed tourist sites are set to open in Asia this month: a museum to commemorate the 2004 tsunami that leveled Indonesia’s Aceh province, and previously off-limits ruins and a museum related to the May 2008 earthquake in China’s Sichuan province. We can debate the pros (local economic development) and cons (unwelcome voyeurism) of disaster tourism, but the descriptions of these two new sites seem to me to cross a line.
Of the tsunami museum, the BBC reports, “Inside, visitors enter through a dark, narrow corridor between two high walls of water—meant to recreate the noise and panic of the tsunami itself.”
At the Sichuan earthquake sites, AFP reports, “Tour groups will be able to go boating on a ‘quake lake’ and visit a museum featuring an ‘earthquake simulation.’”
There’s a fun house aspect to this that I don’t like at all. It’s one thing to establish a museum to educate the public on a disaster’s impact and pay homage to lives lost, but to make the experience entertaining? It’s just plain inappropriate.
When I visited New York’s Ground Zero about four months after 9/11, I found staring into the gaping hole in lower Manhattan unforgettable enough. No simulations needed.
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Yahoo! BuzzFor Hong Kong’s ‘Airport Auntie,’ Apology and Upgrade
by Julia Ross | 03.05.09 | 2:21 PM ET
Remember the hysterical Chinese woman who missed her flight out of Hong Kong? Cathay Pacific has apologized for causing her public embarrassment to the tune of 5 million YouTube viewers (and many unbidden late-night talk-show appearances) worldwide. Because a Cathay Pacific staff member taped the tirade, apparently the airline felt it needed to exercise damage control. “Airport Auntie,” as she’s known, also got an upgrade on her next flight to San Francisco. (via WSJ China Journal)
Morning Links: Best Job in the World Finalists, ‘Narco-Tours’ and More
by Michael Yessis | 03.04.09 | 8:18 AM ET
- The 50-person short list for Tourism Queensland’s “best job in the world” includes a man who staged a musical on an Ontario street and Geek Brief’s Cali Lewis.
- The Tsunami Museum commemorating the victims of the 2004 Asian tsunami is open in Indonesia.
- China plans to open its earthquake ruins to tourists.
- Interesting essay by Alexei Tsvetkov on leaving Prague: “In the end some people here will probably miss me, but not many, not too much, and not for long.” (via The Rumpus)
- Ryan Adams: Travel writer? BlackBook has his take on Hollywood. Here are his musical takes on New York and Jacksonville.
- “Narco-tours” are on the rise in Mexico.
- Independent Traveler lists 10 reasons you should travel now.
- Esquire lists the 59 best breakfast places in America.
- Are you an, uh, anal traveler? (via BootsnAll Today)
- How great is this: John Wray will be giving a reading from his new book Lowboy while traveling on a Brooklyn-bound L train next week. Details in this video.
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Sawasdee, Golden Arches
by Julia Ross | 03.03.09 | 12:35 PM ET
Anyone who has frequented a suburban swimming pool or beach resort on the East Coast in recent summers should be familiar, by now, with the sound of consonant-heavy Eastern European accents piercing the salt air. That’s because thousands of college students from places like Moldova and Ukraine arrive each year to work summer gigs as lifeguards, waitresses or hotel clerks under the increasingly popular J-1 student visa program.
Now comes word that the next big J-1 wave could be from Thailand. GlobalPost reports that large numbers of Thai students have begun securing summer visas to work at U.S. fast food joints, with McDonald’s emerging as the workplace of choice. The story portrays the students as single-minded in their endeavor, trudging dutifully to the local Mickey D’s in unglamorous locales like Pittsburgh and Mobile, determined to parlay foreign work experience into hospitality-related jobs back in Bangkok. I hope they’re working in some fun as well. If the Serbian kids who staffed my sister’s pool outside Washington, D.C., last summer are any indication, I’d advise the Thais to consult their Eastern European counterparts on the finer points of letting loose.
I’m not in McDonald’s often (maybe twice a year), but I’ll keep an eye out this summer to see if the trend has reached the nation’s capital.
Morning Links: A ‘Tropical Havisham Enigma,’ iPhone Travel Apps and More
by Michael Yessis | 03.03.09 | 9:54 AM ET
- Pico Iyer investigates a “tropical Havisham enigma” in southern Sri Lanka.
- There’s a good reason why airline passengers lost fewer bags in 2008.
- Roger Yu evaluates some iPhone travel applications.
- Gulliver asks: “How will the recession affect green business travel?”
- Forbes lists America’s worst intersections.
- The fine Southwest has to pay for flying those planes that had missed safety checks: $7.5 million.
- The “very unconventional” lodging at Pixel Hotel Linz is spread all over the Austrian city. (via This Just In)
- Finally, here’s a look at the art of yarn bombing—“improving the urban landscape one stitch at a time”—in Vancouver B.C.
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Making Tracks to Laos
by Julia Ross | 03.02.09 | 1:30 PM ET
Who says there are no new frontiers to cross? The Guardian reports that the first rail line into Laos is set to open Friday, connecting Nong Khai,Thailand, to the village of Tha na Lang, over a newly built bridge crossing the Mekong river. From Tha na Lang, it’s a 20-mile hop up to Vientiane, by bus or tuk-tuk, creating a new overland route from Bangkok to the Laotian capital. Laos has been on my list for a long time, so this is extra enticement to go, and the Thailand part of the route holds extra allure because it wends through the relatively untouristed (for now) Isaan region.
Maybe this is one train journey I’ll get to before Paul Theroux.
A Traveler’s 10 Best Musical Discoveries
by Tom Swick | 03.02.09 | 10:35 AM ET
Contemplating and celebrating the world of travel
Morning Links: War Hotels, the Solas Awards and More
by Michael Yessis | 03.02.09 | 9:06 AM ET
- A major snowstorm in the eastern U.S. has disrupted travel throughout the country.
- GlobalPost began a five-part series about the favorite hotels of war correspondents.
- NPR says the “stimulus puts high-speed rail on the fast track.”
- Rome’s mayor announced an unorthodox way to fight “violence and thuggery” in the city. (via @theroadto)
- What can modern cities learn from slums?
- World Hum contributor Eric Lucas is dumbfounded that nobody tells the truth about Las Vegas.
- Some travelers are feeling guilty about traveling at all in this economic climate.
- Thailand thinks you’ll want to visit the country more if it has a signature cocktail. So it created the “Siam Sunrays.”
- Congrats to the winners of this year’s Solas Awards. David Torrey Peters took the grand prize for best travel story of the year.
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What We Loved This Week: Food Tours, Traveling Through the Harper’s Index and More
by World Hum | 02.27.09 | 5:03 PM ET
Bakhat Singh in the Moonlight Our contributors share a favorite travel-related experience from the past seven days.
Michael Yessis
The searchable Harper’s Index. The magazine has been delivering pithy factual tidbits since 1984, and now you can search through all of them online by topic. Here are the 90 matches in my search for items about travel. One of my favorites comes from 1990: “Amount the U.S. Air Force spent this year to study the effects of jet noise on pregnant horses: $100,000.”
Joanna Kakissis
I’ve always wanted to host my own YouTube cooking show, because doesn’t the whole world really want to see me make my secret baklava recipe to the beat of “Chains of Love” by Erasure? But I doubt my show would ever be as awesome as the sensational “Cooking With Clara,” which features Great Depression-era recipes by 93-year-old Sicilian-American Clara Cannucciari.
Global Warming Tourism: The Rising Sea Level Slideshow!
by Joanna Kakissis | 02.27.09 | 3:37 PM ET
Florida’s Key West as well as the Maldives, Tuvalu and the islands of Pate and Ndau in the Lamu Archipelago off the Northern coast of Kenya are among eight places that rising sea levels due to climate change will soon make uninhabitable, according to a provocative slideshow at Treehugger.
I hope this doesn’t start a trend in “climate-change cruises.”
All the ‘Slumdog’ News That’s Fit to Print
by Eva Holland | 02.27.09 | 11:25 AM ET
If I hadn’t already used the unstoppable Slumdog line a few weeks ago, you can bet I’d be putting it into play now. Since its big win at the Oscars, the name has been popping up everywhere, and frankly—despite the fact that I loved the movie—I’m reaching my saturation point.
Let’s briefly review the latest developments, and then (I promise) I’ll clam up on this movie-turned-full-blown-phenomenon. Here goes: the two young stars may or may not be the leads in a real-life love story, flats are being rented and trust funds set aside for the youngest child actors (who are slum-dwellers in their off-screen lives, too), and amidst all the media noise the film’s box office haul has just passed the $100-million mark. Oh, and did I mention that there’s a Broadway musical in the works?
Whew. With all the gossip flying around, it’s easy to lose track of the things that got everyone talking “Slumdog” in the first place—namely the movie’s unforgettable sounds and colors, and the universality of its fairy-tale story. So for my last word on this subject, I’ll call on rapper M.I.A. She’s got a video reminder, after the jump:
Cycling India’s Wildest Highway: Deliverance
by Jeffrey Tayler | 02.27.09 | 10:12 AM ET
In which Jeffrey Tayler pedals more than 1,000 miles along the Grand Trunk Road. Part five of five: journey's end.
Kathmandu, Nepal
by World Hum | 02.27.09 | 9:48 AM ET
REUTERS/Gopal Chitrakar Hindu devotees cross Bagmati River at Pashupati Temple to pay homage to Lord Shiva during the Hindu festival Shivaratri in Kathmandu.
Video: Jeffrey Tayler on His New Book, ‘Murderers in Mausoleums’
by World Hum | 02.26.09 | 5:27 PM ET
Jeffrey Tayler discusses traveling from Moscow to Beijing, "drink by drink."
Cycling India’s Wildest Highway: The Ganges
by Jeffrey Tayler | 02.26.09 | 11:03 AM ET
REUTERS/Arko Datta In which Jeffrey Tayler pedals more than 1,000 miles along the Grand Trunk Road. Part four of five: "Thou shouldst not mourn."