Destination: Asia
I Heard the News Today
by Danielle Brigham | 01.27.03 | 9:57 PM ET
Australian Danielle Brigham always lamented that she couldn't find news about home while traveling abroad. Then came October 12.
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Yahoo! BuzzHoliday in Pyongyang
by Jim Benning | 01.27.03 | 10:56 AM ET
New York fiction writer Suki Kim traveled to North Korea last year during celebrations marking the 60th birthday of Great Leader Kim Jong Il, and she offers a fascinating account in the Feb. 13 New York Review of Books. Her story covers a lot of ground, including the not-so-festive flight from Beijing to Pyongyang aboard North Korea’s national airline.
“Upon boarding the aircraft, I was immediately struck by the martial music, the sort that would be played at a military procession,” she writes. “It soon drifted into a melodic song about the Great Leader, Kim Jong Il. The stewardesses in navy-blue suits and white blouses and gloves were in their early twenties and uniformly pleasant-looking. What struck me about them, other than the Kim Il Sung badges across their chests, was that they did not smile.”
Are We Married Yet?
by Joe Tortomasi | 01.04.03 | 9:58 PM ET
Joe Tortomasi quit his job, traveled to Taiwan and tied the knot with his sweetheart. At least he thinks he did.
On Bombs and Backpackers
by Jim Benning | 12.16.02 | 4:20 PM ET
Time magazine’s Michael Elliott has crystallized our thoughts perfectly. In an eloquent essay in the Dec. 16 issue, he laments the chilling effects the latest terrorist attacks in Kenya and Bali could have on global backpackers. “Few modern social developments are more significant and less appreciated than the rise of backpacker travel,” he writes. “The tens of thousands of young Australians, Germans, Britons, Americans and others who wander the globe, flitting from Goa to Costa Rica, from Thailand to Tasmania, are building what may be the only example of a truly global community.”
But the bombs targeting tourists threaten all that. Elliott himself discovered Europe 30 years ago by hitchhiking around each summer. “I learned more from those trips than from years in school, and I’d begun to look forward to the day when my daughters would light out on their own ventures—to go see their relatives in Australia or hike in Tibet or do things in Bali that they wouldn’t want to tell Dad about,” he writes. “So add one more reason to hate what the terrorists have done: they’ve stolen our dreams.”
Vietnam: The Post-Bali Bombing Asia Hot Spot
by Jim Benning | 12.13.02 | 4:45 PM ET
Bali’s tourism loss after the October nightclub bombing is apparently Vietnam’s gain. “Being considered a low risk as a target of terrorism has sent touris
m surging,” David Lamb reports in today’s Los Angeles Times. “City and resort hotels that had been chugging along at 60% occupancy before the Bali attack are fully booked well into this month.”
The Volunteer
by Will Kern | 12.12.02 | 10:02 PM ET
A Thai orphanage needed helpers to "play with the babies." Will Kern answered the call.
Mr. Benny and His Bones
by Jim Benning | 12.04.02 | 4:11 PM ET
Rolf Potts moved to Ranong, Thailand to work on his book. He didn’t plan to socialize, and he didn’t want any distractions. But that was before he visited Mr. Benny’s barbershop for a trim. As Mr. Benny worked on Potts’ hair, he told him a captivating tale of grave robbing and bone smuggling, and Potts couldn’t help but return for more.
“In sharing the bizarre tale of his dead uncle, Mr Benny had broken through my tunnel vision and allowed me to glimpse a piece of Ranong for the first time,” Potts writes on Lonely Planet online.
The piece is featured in A House Somewhere: Tales of Life Abroad, Lonely Plant’s new story collection.
Travel Photos That Won’t Bore Your Friends
by Michael Yessis | 12.02.02 | 3:46 PM ET
NASA’s Landsat 7 satellite travels in a sun-synchronous, polar orbit around Earth, collecting and transmitting up to 532 images of the planet’s various regions every day. Of the thousands of images produced, many have been deemed by the American space agency to have so much “aesthetic appeal” that they’re now part of an exhibit called The Landsat: Earth as Art. Only a science organization would use the phrase “aesthetic appeal” to describe these images. Try unique, mesmerizing, spectacular. Have a look at India’s Ganges River Delta, Namibia’s Namib Desert or Alaska’s Malaspina Glacier and see if you agree.
Follow the Ho Chi Minh Trail! Follow the Ho Chi Minh Trail!
by Michael Yessis | 11.24.02 | 5:34 PM ET
The supply route used by Viet Cong soldiers as they battled the U.S.-backed South Vietnamese forces in the Vietnam War is to become a visitor attraction, according to a BBC story.
“Tourist authorities in the province of Quang Tri have unveiled a $3.5m plan to restore a 41-kilometre (26-mile) section of the supply route which sustained the North’s fighters as they headed south,” the BBC reports.
The project should be completed by 2005.
Dear American Daughter
by Michael Yessis | 11.24.02 | 5:30 PM ET
Jennifer Adler had some bad experiences after giving out her e-mail address to people she’d met while traveling, so she made a pact with herself not to reveal her electronic identity again.
Then she met Lin, “an aged, slim man in slacks and a pale green crocheted sweater-vest” on a train in China. She traded addresses. It’s an exchange she treasures. “In the seven months since that morning, Lin and I have been writing about once a week,” she writes in a beautiful, moving essay in this weekend’s New York Times. “He addresses his messages to me ‘Dear American daughter.’ I have helped him with bits of English and tried to be sincere in answers to questions about American life; in turn he has bestowed his wisdom as only a stranger, a wise old foreign stranger, could.”
Thirty-Year Journey from Belgium to Malaysia Celebrated with Karaoke, Coffee
by Michael Yessis | 11.17.02 | 11:08 PM ET
Susan Casey met her friend Sang 30 years ago at a Belgian hostel, and she’s stayed in touch with him ever since. Recently she went to visit him in his hometown of Kuala Lumpur, which inspired a report for the public radio program Savvy Traveler on the beauty of a travel friendship maintained. “He gave me a new way to see things,” she says.
Also, two other recent Savvy Traveler pieces caught our attention. Author Tim Palmer sat for an interview about his book Pacific High, which chronicles a nine-month trip he took with his wife along the Pacific Coast Range from Baja California north to Kodiak Island in Alaska.
And World Hum contributor Jeff Biggers had a piece about what can happen when you travel with a banjo, a baby and a laptop computer.
‘Anne of Green Gables’ Big In Japan
by Michael Yessis | 11.15.02 | 12:29 AM ET
About 50 years ago, Hanako Muraoka translated the book “Anne of Green Gables” by Canadian author L.M. Montgomery into Japanese. “It was a good book and she
was a good translator, but no one could imagine what would happen next,” writes Cleo Paskal in a recent edition of Canada’s National Post. “Half-a-century later, Akage no An (Anne with Red Hair) has become a rol model—no, an icon—for countless Japanese…The books sell well, Japanese tourists flock to Prince Edward Island, and earnest young folk try to live life as Anne would have.”
Paskal’s piece explores the travel scene inspired by the book, including the theme park in Hokkaido, Canadian World.
Singapore Girl: Icon, Anachronism, Winged Geisha and Pretty Young Thing
by Michael Yessis | 11.13.02 | 12:35 AM ET
Singapore Airlines is one of the world’s great airline success stories—never in 30 years has it failed to turn a profit, and for 14 out of the last 15 years the readers of Travel + Leisure have named it their favorite international carrier.
A big reason for its success? The flight attendants, aka Singapore Girls. “She’s a winged geisha, a tea-party animal, a pretty young thing in a form-fitting sarong,” USA Today reporter Jayne Clark writes of the Singapore Girl. “She’s also an anachronism of sorts, harkening back to an era when being a stewardess wasn’t just a job, it was a lifestyle.”
Clark covers some interesting cultural ground in the piece, including weight, hair and makeup regulations for Singapore Girls that “raise doubts about whether Western sensibilities could ever fit that snug Pierre Balmain-designed sarong kebaya that is her signature garb.”
Forget Relaxing on Ko Kamui. I’m Going to Prison!
by Jim Benning | 11.08.02 | 12:53 AM ET
During their holiday in Thailand, New Zealander Phillipa Bonnet and Irishman Gerry McCue saw a notice posted at their guest house that foreigners locked up in the country’s maximum security prison—mostly on drug charges—love having visitors. So the two travelers took a Bangkok river taxi out to Bang Kwang to pay a visit.
“I have to admit, I’m a bit interested in how horrible the stories are,” Bonnet explained. Reports Frank Bures in the Christian Science Monitor: “In perhaps the latest twist to reality-based tourism, visiting imprisoned foreigners has become something of a trend among young travelers passing through Bangkok. Each year, some 8.5 million tourists pass through Thailand. As paths to beaches become more well trodden, young backpackers looking for a more visceral holiday experience have been going to Bang Kwang to see their compatriots.”
About 7,000 foreigners are doing time in Thailand, Bures writes, including 18 U.S. citizens.
State Department Warnings on Bali: Confusing
by Jim Benning | 10.29.02 | 1:30 AM ET
Few predicted that Bali would be struck by the kind of violence that killed 180 people recently. But in the Los Angeles Times on Sunday, writer Jane Engle suggests that the warnings were there. “When they bombed paradise on Oct. 12, nearly everyone was surprised—except, perhaps, those who had carefully read the travel safety announcements issued by the U.S. State Department,” she writes.
Engle notes that the U.S. State Department issued a November 2001 warning for Americans to avoid visiting Indonesia, and that two days before the bombing it issued a worldwide caution urging citizens to avoid places where Americans hang out, such as clubs and restaurants. “Taken together,” she writes, “the Indonesia and worldwide statements said, in effect: Don’t go to a club in Bali frequented by Americans. But you had to read both to get the full picture.”
I don’t believe that the travelers injured or killed in that Bali nightclub or any other tourists in Bali at the time were acting irresponsibly—that if they had only done their research they might have avoided the place. Sure, Bali has long been surrounded by troubled islands. But the fact is that before the bombing, Bali was said to be generally safe—by the State Department and many others. A couple of months before the bombing, while researching a travel article, I called the State Department to question the agency’s contradictory statements about Bali. (As Engle later notes, the department’s consular information sheet for Indonesia both warned that the country was dangerous and stated that Bali was largely free of disturbances.)
Should I really be writing an article suggesting Bali was safe, I asked? Is it responsible? Not to worry, a department official told me. Bali had a safe track record, hence the caveat about the island being free of disturbances.
So there you go. State Department warnings and statements, however well intentioned, often raise more questions than they answer. The department’s statements about Bali were contradictory and confusing. Fortunately, Engle urges travelers to tap other sources of information about potential destinations beyond the State Department.
On that point, I couldn’t agree more.