Destination: Asia
What We Loved This Week: Street Food, Obama’s Inauguration and More
by World Hum | 01.23.09 | 4:42 PM ET
Our contributors share a favorite travel-related experience from the past seven days.
Frank Bures
I loved my new cookbook, The World of Street Foods: Easy Quick Meals to Cook at Home, which has everything from Tanzanian mango fritters to Thai tom yam to Libyan almond cookies to Mexican hot chocolate. Based I what I know, these recipes look like the real deal.
Jim Benning
Malcolm Gladwell’s hour-long talk on Book TV—you can watch it online here—about the role culture and communication can play in plane crashes. It’s utterly fascinating and changed the way I think about such things. (It’s also, it turns out, quite controversial.) Still, it makes me want to pick up his new book, Outliers: The Story of Success.
Valerie Conners
The inauguration of President Barack Obama, of course! But really, as I’ve tried to absorb the enormity of Tuesday, I’ve been moved by images from around the globe, particularly in this slideshow from Boston.com, which have offered such great perspective on how this moment has affected people well beyond U.S. borders.
Michael Yessis
Going to the National Mall and watching the inauguration. So, so cold out, but an overwhelming, beautiful experience.
Julia Ross
Of the many high points this week, I loved that Obama hightailed it over to the State Department on day two in office, bucked up our diplomats, and broke out his Indonesian. A global president = priceless.
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Yahoo! BuzzKarkaralinsk, Kazakhstan
by World Hum | 01.23.09 | 4:09 PM ET
REUTERS/Shamil Zhumatov Hunter Tastanbek Bergenbai holds his tame golden eagle before a traditional hunting contest near the town of Karkaralinsk in central Kazakhstan. Kazakhstan's national sport of Sayat, or hunting with golden eagles, is popular in the Central Asian state.
Slings and Arrows of Outrageous Fortune
by Alexander Basek | 01.23.09 | 2:31 PM ET
Over at the Hotel Hotsheet, Kitty Bean Yancey is up in arms about the cost of a Singapore Sling at the Raffles in, er, Singapore. Kitty is making a larger point about “hotel sticker shock,” but for our purposes, a pricey Singapore Sling is a fine example of something that’s a struggle for any frequent traveler: the paradox of drinking at the bar of a landmark hotel.
Camels and Marines in Old China
by Julia Ross | 01.23.09 | 12:30 PM ET
Maybe because I was a history major in college, old newsreels fascinate me. I’ve just discovered a treasure trove of early 20th-century travel films at the Travel Film Archive and spent some time scrolling through several China entries. One 1931 film in particular—Ghosts of Empire-Peking—caught my attention for its unusual variety of street scenes. The film opens with a line of camels trooping through the city gates, then continues with clips of a boy barber at work, a close-up of a Chinese woman’s bound feet and a U.S. marine parade. Not your standard travel promo, but sure makes Beijing look like an interesting place to visit. (via quirkyBeijing)
Morning Links: Buffalo-Wing Boycott, Nashville’s English-Only Measure and More
by Michael Yessis | 01.23.09 | 8:18 AM ET
- Nashville votes no and nyet and nein to English-only ballot measure.
- Video: Spending Time With Poster Boy, a street artist who prowls the New York City subway system.
- Even the U.S. Marines are avoiding Tijuana these days.
- A different take on Mexico: How U.S. media perpetuates cliches about the country.
- An exhibition of Robert Frank’s The Americans recently opened at the National Gallery in Washington, D.C. Slate has a slideshow.
- Aboard the slow train through Senegal.
- Aboard the other bullet trains of Asia.
- Are high-end adventure outfitters rising “above the global financial crisis and recession”?
- Buffalo-wing lovers in Buffalo, New York, call for a Buffalo-wing boycott on Monday. It could get worse: Supplies are so low and prices so high for wings that there may be a shortage on Super Bowl Sunday. What will we ever do, particularly with all the accompanying blue-cheese dip?
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On Asia: Points East
by Julia Ross | 01.22.09 | 1:56 PM ET
iStockPhoto If this is indeed the “Asian century,” count me as an early adopter. I’ve quit two full-time jobs to explore the world’s most diverse continent, and they were the two best decisions I’ve ever made. To an Asia hand, the lavender fields of Provence might be pleasant, but it’s the chanting of novice monks, the mystical tinkling of the gamelan, a bowl of spicy dan dan noodles that really get the blood pumping. I’m drawn back, again and again, and I don’t know if I’ll ever kick the habit.
My (unlikely) introduction to Asia began in arid, post-Soviet Uzbekistan in the late ‘90s. As soon as my conference in Tashkent wrapped up, I hopped a bus to the Silk Road city of Samarkand, where blue-tiled madrassas dazzled against an azure sky. They were like nothing I’d seen, a window into an ancient time when Tamerlane traipsed across the steppes.
More Exotic Foods Just to Let You Know You’ve Made it to Asia
by David Farley | 01.22.09 | 12:30 PM ET
Our fascination with curious animal parts continues. We just can’t seem to get enough of the rooster balls. Or deep-fried grasshopper, roasted bats and cooked canine for that matter. Nellie Huang over at Matador Travel gives us a lowdown on the top 10 most “exotic Asian foods.” All this makes me wonder: what do people in other parts of the world consider “exotic” American food. If we believed what we saw on TV advertisements—specifically, Burger King advertisements—then the hamburger, in all its boring bread-meets-ground-beef incarnation, is it (sorry Josh Ozersky). Saturday Night Live’s recent parody of said BK commercials is worth a view.
Travel Movies Go to the Oscars
by Eva Holland | 01.22.09 | 10:39 AM ET
Yes, the Oscar nominations are in. And while this year’s crop of nominated travel flicks won’t exactly be waltzing down the red carpet with all eyes on them—as expected, the films that made noise at the Golden Globes got significantly less love from the Academy voters—a handful may yet manage to sneak in one of the side entrances and grab some hardware.
Morning Links: ‘Killer Blueline Buses,’ the Idea of America and More
by Michael Yessis | 01.22.09 | 8:07 AM ET
- Revealed: confessions of a hotel housekeeper.
- No little bottle of lotion in your hotel room? No fruit in your breakfast buffet? Blame the economy. Hotels are.
- “Killer blueline buses” pose a dilemma in Delhi: They’re dangerous, but they’re needed.
- MediaShift looks at Phil Balboni’s vision for GlobalPost.
- GlobalPost asks its correspondents “What does the idea of America mean to the world?”
- Newley Purnell posts about Matt Gross and multimedia travel journalism—with a World Hum shout out, too.
- Theodore Dalrymple on the “disturbing reality at a Paris Metro stop.”
- Nathan’s says its flagship hot dog shop will remain in Coney Island. Glad to hear the site of some great childhood memories is being preserved.
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A ‘Guilt-Free Green Luxury Resort’ for the ‘Grown-up Backpacker’?
by Joanna Kakissis | 01.21.09 | 11:07 AM ET
I’m guessing you have to be a very rich grown-up backpacker to buy a place at the Cacao Pearl, Palawan, billed as the first non-profit, luxury eco-resort community to devote all of its revenue to environmental protection and social improvement. Cacao Resorts is set to build the resort on an 124-acre private island in the Calamianes archipelago on the northern end of the Palawan Biosphere Reserve in the Philippines. Antonio Calvo, a former film art director who worked on “Love Actually” and the horrifically acted “Alexander,” designed the five-star resort, which will have chic, zero-carbon homes, a spa and organic food amid rain forests, coconut trees and beaches.
I hope they will let me visit if I am ever rich and quietly famous.
‘The Terminal’: Limbo I Can Relate To
by Eva Holland | 01.20.09 | 3:20 PM ET
This weekend, on a long distance bus ride, I found myself watching The Terminal. (You know, the one where Tom Hanks lives in JFK for a year and makes out with Catherine Zeta-Jones?) Under ordinary circumstances, I probably would have found it sweet, if fairly forgettable—but on the bus, with snowy, nondescript Western New York sliding by, I was surprised by the way the film’s themes, about waiting and limbo, grabbed me. Airport terminals have a static in-between-ness all their own, but long bus and train rides—despite, obviously, keeping travelers in motion—can have that same quality of suspended animation, too. Being in a strange place, surrounded by strange people, dozing and eating in semi-public, I felt much less like someone watching Hanks’ character from the outside, and more like a colleague—or, well, like a fellow-traveler.
Morning Links: Obama’s Places, Poe’s 200th Birthday and More
by Michael Yessis | 01.20.09 | 8:06 AM ET
- Barack Obama’s places: Six writers on six places the new president lived.
- Another Onion gem: ‘United Flight Crew Hits up Passengers for Gas Money’
- Modern Drunkard’s bars you won’t be going back to anytime soon.
- US Airways Flight 1549: A New York tourist attraction?
- JetBlue has added a few flights between Pittsburgh and Tampa to accommodate Steelers fans flying to the Super Bowl.
- Photos: Behind the scenes of the Tube in London.
- Happy 200th birthday, Edgar Allen Poe. Here’s where to go in five cities that claim his legacy.
- What’s it worth if you’re mauled by a javelina? A Dutch tourist believes $400,000.
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Interview with Michael Buckley: Searching for Shangri-La
by Frank Bures | 01.15.09 | 9:09 AM ET
Frank Bures talks to the author of a guide to a place that may or may not exist
Morning Links: Skycar, Disney Shanghai and More
by Michael Yessis | 01.15.09 | 9:07 AM ET
- Disney and Shanghai have reportedly agreed on plans for a new Disney theme park in China.
- Google has added a transit layer to its maps in 50 world cities.
- The Skycar—a flying car—departed from London to Timbuktu with Neil Laughton behind the wheel.
- CNN offers video profiles of Dubai’s Emirates terminal and the airport of the year, Hong Kong International Airport.
- What about the world’s worst airports?
- Hu Jintao warns of potential travel problems in China for Chinese New Year.
- Men’s Fitness names Salt Lake City the fittest city in the U.S. The fattest? Miami.
- Slideshow: Paragliding over Africa.
- A Japanese website maps smells around the world. Apparently, there’s a “toasty odor of cow dung” somewhere out there.
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‘This is Japan!’
by World Hum | 01.14.09 | 10:18 AM ET
A seven-minute trip to Japan as seen through the lens of Eric Testroete