Destination: Asia
When Futuristic Vacation Villas Go Bad
by Joanna Kakissis | 06.03.08 | 10:29 AM ET
Taiwanese officials started building San-Zhr Pod Village in the 1960s, with every hope that it would turn out to be a hip place to visit or even live. It was supposed to be an ahead-of-its-time kind of development, with spaceship-like dwellings, an amusement park and a dam that protected it against sea surges. But the project turned out to be doomed from the start.
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Yahoo! BuzzKim Sunée: Travel, Food and the Search for Home
by Joanna Kakissis | 06.02.08 | 2:31 PM ET
Joanna Kakissis asks the author of "Trail of Crumbs" about her journey back to South Korea, the benefits of "not fitting in" and her view of wanderlust
China’s Panda Reserve May Relocate
by Julia Ross | 06.02.08 | 1:25 PM ET
One of China’s premier tourist attractions—the Wolong National Nature Reserve, home to the nation’s panda conservation center—may relocate due to damage sustained by the Sichuan earthquake, the AP reports. Several panda shelters were destroyed and landslides have made roads to the remote center impassable, disrupting much needed bamboo supplies. National Geographic includes this amazing video of Wolong’s cubs being rescued in the hours after the quake. Here’s hoping for a full recovery.
Related on World Hum:
* Thousands Feared Dead in China Earthquake
* Peter Hessler’s Former Students and the China Earthquake
Photo by autan via Flickr (Creative Commons).
Record-Setting Week Atop Mount Everest
by Eva Holland | 05.27.08 | 12:39 PM ET
The last week has been particularly eventful at the top of the world. Near-perfect conditions at Mount Everest prompted a rush to its icy reaches, resulting in a record 75 climbers reaching the summit in a single day. (The highest previous total was 63 summits, in 2002.) One of those 75 climbers was Apa Sherpa, who also set a record of his own by summiting for the 18th time. According to the CBC, Canadian Andrew Brash was also among the 75. Brash became a minor celebrity two years ago when he gave up his first Everest attempt just 200 meters from the top to rescue a fellow climber.
Peter Hessler’s Former Students and the China Earthquake
by Jim Benning | 05.23.08 | 1:09 PM ET
A quick note before we head off for the three-day weekend that the New Yorker has posted correspondence from former students of Peter Hessler about their experience in the deadly Sichuan earthquake. “I am sorry to say my parents’ house collapsed,” one wrote. Hessler chronicled his Peace Corps teaching experience in Sichuan Province in the (now classic) travel book River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze.
New Travel Book: ‘Bar Flower’
by Frank Bures | 05.21.08 | 1:40 PM ET
Full title: “Bar Flower: My Decadently Destructive Days and Nights as a Tokyo Nightclub Hostess”
Author: Lea Jacobson
Released: April 15, 2008
Travel genre: Expats behaving badly
Territory covered: Japan
Hello Kitty Named Japan’s Tourism Ambassador to China
by Jim Benning | 05.21.08 | 1:00 PM ET
Congrats, Hello Kitty. You earned it. See, Tijuana? For your tourism mascot, you went with Xuani—frankly, an unknown quantity—and look at the mess you’re in now. I suggest following Japan’s lead. Think big. Think branded multilingual animated icon with global reach. Think of someone who’s not afraid to holler, “Vamanos!” Yes, Tijuana, I’m talking Dora the Explorer. Now that’s a mascot.
Related on World Hum:
* Eva Airways Harnesses the Power of Hello Kitty
Photo by antigone78 via Flickr, (Creative Commons)
Pico Iyer in Ladakh: ‘The World’s Last Shangri-La’
by Michael Yessis | 05.19.08 | 3:43 PM ET
The New York Times’ T Magazine features Pico Iyer’s latest story, a chronicle of a trip to the northern Indian region of Ladakh. He writes: “[W]ord has got out that here is a remote, unusually undeveloped ‘paradise,’ to which, of course, we bring our own, very different images of paradise.” Sometimes, as we know, paradise even involves shopping centers.
Photo: Reebok Embraces Bollywood
by Jim Benning | 05.14.08 | 1:42 PM ET
Perhaps it’s due to jet lag—I just arrived in London and have been forcing myself to stay awake to adjust to the time change. Or maybe it’s because I was reading The Post-American World on the flight over and had just come across this line: “The biggest movie industry, in terms of both movies made and tickets sold, is Bollywood, not Hollywood.” Whatever the reason, I was taken with this shrinking-planet shop-window display I just passed in Soho:
A Passage to India—With Mom
by Jim Benning | 05.12.08 | 5:35 PM ET
Nice Mother’s Day piece by Jeff Greenwald about a trip to India with his 75-year-old mother. “Not only was this my mother’s first trip to Asia, but she and I had also never traveled together,” he writes in the Los Angeles Times. “And although she had been to Israel and Europe, including Russia, India was something else entirely.”
Shrinking Planet Statistic of the Day: The Rise of China
by Jim Benning | 05.12.08 | 1:04 PM ET
Amazing bit of not-so-trivial trivia: “China today exports in a single day more than it exported in all of 1978.” Source: Fareed Zakaria’s new book, The Post-American World, as quoted in Sunday’s New York Times.
Related on World Hum:
* Shrinking Planet Headline of the Day: ‘Free Tibet’ Flags Made in China
Travel Outfitters Assist in Burma Cyclone Relief
by Jim Benning | 05.12.08 | 11:03 AM ET
The government of Burma (Myanmar) has blocked legions of foreign aid workers from entering the country to help with cyclone relief efforts, but a couple of outside travel companies have been able to offer at least some assistance. Most notably, Colorado-based Asia Transpacific Journeys, with dozens of local staff members and three Westerners in the country, has been distributing thousands of water filters around Yangon, the Los Angeles Times reports. Their efforts raise an interesting issue related to the ongoing debate over the ethics of traveling to Burma.
Thousands Feared Dead in China Earthquake
by Jim Benning | 05.12.08 | 10:35 AM ET
At least 8,500 As many as 50,000 people are feared dead as a result of a 7.9-magnitude earthquake that struck roughly 60 miles northwest of Chengdu in China’s Sichuan province. Among the areas hit is Wenchuan, the Times of London reports, “best-known as the home of the Wolong Nature Reserve, China’s leading research and breeding base for the endangered giant panda.” Many travelers know Chengdu as the gateway to Jiuzhai Gou, a wilderness park and UNESCO World Heritage site. The quake was felt as far away as Bangkok.
Updated, May 15, 9 a.m, ET
A Skeptic’s Journey to a Thai Monastery
by Joanna Kakissis | 05.08.08 | 9:02 AM ET
Interesting piece touching on spirituality and travel in the Chapel Hill-based magazine The Sun. Andrew Boyd, who has written a yet-to-be published book about his “spiritual misadventures traveling around the world,” goes to Doi Suthep monastery in Thailand to quiet the noise in his soul. He’s a skeptic in a world of faith, bound by his “monkey brain” instincts. He lusts after German tourists and apprentice nuns, and swaps drug stories with a former Chicago stockbroker turned monastery-philosopher-in-residence. Enlightenment, it seems, is kind of hard to come by.
Photo by Wandering Angel via Flickr (Creative Commons).
The Oreo Goes Global
by Joanna Kakissis | 05.07.08 | 9:26 AM ET
Kraft Foods is pushing the all-American cookie on Great Britain this month, hoping to convince the finicky biscuit eaters that two crisp chocolate wafers sandwiched with “creme” trumps a digestive any old day. The Oreo is already the top-selling cookie in China, though it’s been modified to suit Chinese tastes (less sugar, wafers instead of cookies and oblong instead of round). The Chinese are also dunking their Oreos in milk, the ever-perfect combo for this resilient cookie.