Destination: Asia
James Fallows in China: ‘Postcards From Tomorrow Square’
by Michael Yessis | 12.06.06 | 7:23 AM ET
Atlantic correspondent James Fallows recently moved to Shanghai, China for an indefinite stay. The December issue of the magazine features a terrific story that mixes his experiences as an expat with an analysis of where China has been and where it’s going. “I have not before been anyplace that seemed simultaneously so controlled and so out of control,” he writes. “The control is from on high—and for most people in the cities, most of the time it’s not something they bump into. What’s out of control is everything else.”
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Yahoo! BuzzWorld Hum World Headlines
by Jim Benning | 12.05.06 | 8:30 PM ET
News shorts for curious travelers.
Egypt
Pharaohs’ Tombs Trump Village Homes
Reports the New York Times: “Bulldozers moved Saturday into an Egyptian village near the Valley of the Kings in pursuit of a long-delayed effort to allow archaeologists to begin studying a wealth of tombs in the area.” More than 100 houses have been cleared in the last week. Interesting. In Los Angeles, they’d more likely destroy historic tombs to build new houses.
USA
What’s your travel terror score?
Did you know you had one? “Almost every person entering and leaving the United States by air, sea or land is assessed based on [Automated Targeting System’s] analysis of their travel records and other data, including items such as where they are from, how they paid for tickets, their motor vehicle records, past one-way travel, seating preference and what kind of meal they ordered,” the Associated Press reports. Creepy.
Spain
Bona tarda or buenas tardes?
The Los Angeles Times explores the pitched battle over languages in Catalonia. “Some ATMs in Spain offer a choice of six languages, four of which are the Spaniards’ own.”
Japan
Ping, Ka-Ching, Ka-Boom!
Money raised from Japan’s pachinko habit just might be supporting North Korea’s nuclear program, the Los Angeles Times reports. “The machines rake in more than $200 billion a year, some of which finds its way to North Korea.” As a result, some players are souring on the game.
USA
Bright lights, big city, mucho vino
Novelist Jay McInerney has a great side gig: traveling the world to write about wine for Home & Garden. Now, a number of those columns have been collected in a new book, A Hedonist in the Cellar: Adventures in Wine. His interest in wine “started with literature, really—as with so many other things,” he says in San Diego Reader. Among the inspirational books: Hemingway’s “The Sun Also Rises” and Evelyn Waugh’s “Brideshead Revisited.”
The World Hum Travel Zeitgeist: Great Wall, Good Grief!
by Michael Yessis | 12.01.06 | 8:50 AM ET
Is the world falling apart? Travelers this week seem concerned that it is, as crumbling attractions in China, England and Cambodia have grabbed our attention. Don’t worry. A man in India has some duct tape, and if he can fix a plane with it, surely he could be handy with it elsewhere. Here’s your Zeitgeist.
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The Great Wall, Siem Reap, Stonehenge Getting Too Much Love
Most Blogged Travel Story
New York Times (current)
Saving the Great Wall From Being Loved to Death
Most E-Mailed Travel Story
USA Today (current)
Ski Europe: The Best of the Alps
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Paris by Night
* A slow-loading but spectacular panorama of the City of Light.
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Loreena McKennitt’s An Ancient Muse
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Why Americans Should Never Be Allowed To Travel
* A collection of ridiculous things travel agents have heard from travelers. How ridiculous? This ridiculous: “I had someone ask for an aisle seats so that his or her hair wouldn’t get messed up by being near the window.”
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PodcastAlley (November)
808Talk: Hawaii’s Premier Podcast
Pico Iyer: On Travel and Travel Writing
by Matthew Davis | 11.30.06 | 8:32 AM ET
Two decades after boarding a plane for the trip that would yield "Video Night in Kathmandu," Pico Iyer talks to Matthew Davis about fact and fiction, books he wishes he hadn't written and his humble beginnings as a travel writer.
The Great Wall, Siem Reap, Stonehenge Getting Too Much Love
by Jim Benning | 11.27.06 | 9:14 AM ET
They’re not the only places in the world being overrun with tourists, of course, but their tourism woes have been highlighted in recent days by the New York Times, Associated Press and Los Angeles Times, respectively. The New York Times on Sunday focused on the Great Wall of China, which is suffering under the weight of an estimated 13 million visitors a year. “[T]he Great Wall is not just crumbling,” writes Jim Yardley. “It is disappearing. Roughly half of the estimated 4,000 miles of the wall built during the Ming Dynasty no longer exists, according to a recent report. It is also regularly being abused.” Among other problems, he writes, last year “the police broke up a huge dance party of Chinese ravers atop the wall a few hours’ drive outside Beijing.”
Hide the California Rolls! Here Comes Japan’s ‘Sushi Police’
by Michael Yessis | 11.27.06 | 9:10 AM ET
Japan has a problem with the proliferation of Japanese restaurants around the world: Too often, Japanese government officials say, they give Japanese food a bad name. “A fast-growing list of gastronomic indignities—from sham sake in Paris to shoddy sashimi in Bangkok—has prompted Japanese authorities to launch a counterattack in defense of this nation’s celebrated food culture,” writes Anthony Faiola in the Washington Post. “With restaurants around the globe describing themselves as Japanese while actually serving food that is Asian fusion, or just plain bad, the government [in Tokyo] announced a plan this month to offer official seals of approval to overseas eateries deemed to be ‘pure Japanese.’”
Should I Pack My Kilt on My Trip to Asia?
by Rolf Potts | 11.22.06 | 7:24 AM ET
Vagabonding traveler Rolf Potts answers your questions about travel
Gifts for the Traveler: Photo Books
by Jim Benning | 11.17.06 | 11:31 AM ET
‘Tis the season when intriguing travel-related photo books hit bookstores, offering travelers a raft of gift ideas. We already noted the recent release of Middle of Nowhere, Lonely Planet’s celebration of picturesque, far flung places. Yesterday, the San Francisco Chronicle’s Regan McMahon suggested several other intriguing titles. For starters, McMahon noted Hans Kemp’s Bikes of Burden, featuring photos of motorbikes pressed into delivery work in Vietnam. “In each sharp color photo, one can barely see the rider as items from ducks to hula hoops to fish to wooden cabinets to topiary are piled high on the two-wheeled vehicles,” McMahon writes. “My favorite: a shot from behind of a towering stack of live fish floating, one each, in water-filled, gallon-size baggies, with the driver completely obscured.”
UK-Inspired Thames Town Opens in China
by Jim Benning | 11.08.06 | 1:36 PM ET
Further evidence the planet will soon become one giant theme park: the opening of Thames Town, an English-inspired village in a suburb of Shanghai. It’s a $600 million development that includes a Winston Churchill statue, Victorian-style homes for sale, a fish-and-chips shop and a pub. Most of the homes have already been sold. But not everyone is pleased. According to Reuters, the owner of a pub and fish-and-chips shop in the UK feels cheated because her businesses were reproduced “almost exactly” in Thames Town. Said a representative from the development: “Maybe it’s a little bit of a misunderstanding. It’s not in any way supposed to be a replica.” Shanghaiist has more.
Flinn on the Lhasa Express: “I’d Give it a B-Minus”
by Michael Yessis | 11.06.06 | 8:06 AM ET
San Francisco Chronicle writer John Flinn took a ride on the Lhasa Express, the new train from China to Tibet, and returned with that verdict and a terrific tale of life—and strange happenings—on the high-altitude rails.
A Guide to the ‘Middle of Nowhere’
by Jim Benning | 11.03.06 | 7:11 AM ET
Having created guidebooks to just about everywhere, Lonely Planet has set its sights on nowhere, and in a big way. We recently noted the release of Lonely Planet’s new literary travel anthology, Tales from Nowhere, which features stories from far-flung locales. Now comes the Lonely Planet Guide to the Middle of Nowhere, a coffee table book with arresting photos and short essays about middles of nowhere around the globe, from Bolivia’s Atacama Desert to India’s Himachal Pradesh. “For a supposedly social species, our appetite for space, wilderness and isolation is remarkable,” writes Ben Saunders in the introduction. “The phrase ‘middle of nowhere’ has wormed its way into our everyday language; we all know where it is, and we can all recount a visit there, but unlike the summit of a mountain, the shore of an ocean or a famous monument, ‘nowhere’ itself is harder to pinpoint.” Yet LP manages to locate it in more than 50 places, each of which can whet the appetite of those yearning for their own kind of nowhere.
The World Hum Travel Zeitgeist: Skimpy Skirts and Thunderbolts
by Michael Yessis | 10.27.06 | 11:30 AM ET
There’s a hint of fear in the air, but, as always, we’re still hitting the road. This week the Zeitgeist leads to Paris, Dubai, Iowa, Mexico City and the most scenic toilet in the world. Let’s go.
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World Hum (this week)
Japanese Tourists Succumb to “Paris Syndrome”
* I’ve seen a bit of coverage of this story this week, and the New York Post gets the best headline award: Paris Leaves Japanese French Fried.
World’s Least Favorite Airline
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Ryanair
Most Blogged Travel Story
New York Times (current)
Beyond Skimpy Skirts, a Rare Debate on Identity
* Hassan M. Fattah’s story explores the limits of multiculturalism in Dubai.
Best Selling Travel Book
Amazon.com (current)
The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid: A Memoir
* Two weeks in a row at the top for Bryson’s memoir of growing up in 1950s Iowa.
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USA Today (current)
Hotels Ditch Imposing Desks for Friendly ‘Pods’
* Three reasons why: To lure younger customers, to improve employee productivity and, of course, to increase revenue.
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Farecast
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Apple’s Gift to Travelers: Magsafe Airline Power Adapter
‘Expats’ in Busan: Rolf Potts in South Korea
by Jim Benning | 10.25.06 | 7:18 AM ET
Rolf Potts is filing stories from South Korea for Slate this week. His first dispatch came from the port city of Busan, where he attended a film festival. “I am here because I worked in Busan as an English teacher in the late ‘90s, and Korean-born U.S. director Wonsuk Chin has written a screenplay about this experience, titled ‘Expats,’” Potts writes. “Since Chin is at the festival, meeting with possible financiers for his film, I’ve made plans to see him this afternoon at the Grand Hotel.” It turns out Chin was inspired, at least in part, by a story Potts wrote years ago for Salon.
Japanese Tourists Succumb to ‘Paris Syndrome’
by Michael Yessis | 10.24.06 | 8:09 AM ET
Or, as the New York Post headline goes, “Paris Leaves Japanese French Fried.” Funny headline for an amusing story—amusing, at least, for everyone but the Japanese travelers who get “Paris Syndrome.” The Post and Reuters, among others, are relaying a story from the French newspaper Le Journal du Dimanche, which claims that “a dozen Japanese tourists a year need psychological treatment after visiting Paris as the reality of unfriendly locals and scruffy streets clashes with their expectations.” Paris Syndrome was first reported in 2004 in a psychiatric journal. According to AA Gill, there is a cure. He writes in the Times: “The cure is called Rome, though there are side effects: it’s very addictive.”
Can Slow Travel Save the Planet?
by Jim Benning | 10.19.06 | 2:36 PM ET
Paul Theroux, among others, has written of his preference for train journeys over air travel: “Although it has become the way of the world, we still ought to lament the fact that airplanes have made us insensitive to space; we are encumbered, like lovers in suits of armor.” That passage from The Old Patagonian Express, published in 1979, came to mind as I read a compelling new story on Alternet about air travel, its role in global warming, and potential solutions to the problem. The story notes a UK study showing that the predicted rise in air travel in the coming decades is bad news for the environment: “[F]actoring in the projected growth of air travel, carbon emissions would have to be reduced to zero in manufacturing, ground transportation and private households to meet the British government’s 2050 green goals.” So what’s the solution?