Destination: Asia
Do You Like the Way My Fanny Pack Goes With My Traditional Burmese Lungi?
by Jim Benning | 03.19.04 | 7:44 PM ET
While traveling through Burma a couple of years ago, Rolf Potts found himself purchasing and donning a lungi—a skirt-like garment worn by Burmese men. By the time he got to Thailand, an Australian observed of Potts’ outfit: “Look at ya, mate. You’ve got it all mixed up.” In a thoughtful story in Sunday’s San Francisco Chronicle, Potts writes: “I looked down at my outfit. In addition to my lungi, I sported a nylon fanny pack (which made up for my lack of pockets) and a North Face dry-wick shirt (which had kept the sun off while biking). This ensemble didn’t strike me as particularly strange, but—according to the Aussie—wearing a fanny pack (stereotypically favored by middle-aged tourists) and a boutique safari shirt (which, while functional, is the modern fashion equivalent of a pith helmet) effectively canceled the lungi out.”
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Yahoo! Buzz‘I Get Off a Plane, 17 Hours Out of Joint, and Tell Naked Secrets to a Person I Know I Don’t Trust’
by Michael Yessis | 03.08.04 | 7:53 PM ET
Who else besides Pico Iyer would write a 3,700-word piece about jet lag? His sprawling story, adapted from his upcoming book “Sun After Dark: Flights Into the Foreign,” appeared in Sunday’s New York Times magazine. “I often think that I have traveled into a deeply foreign country under jet lag, somewhere more mysterious in its way than India or Morocco,” he writes. “A place that no human had ever been until 40 or so years ago and yet, now, a place where more and more of us spend more and more of our lives. It’s not quite a dream state, but it’s certainly not wakefulness, and though it seems as if we’re visiting another continent, there are no maps or guidebooks to this other world. There are not even any clocks.”
Welcome to Khmer Rouge Land!
by John Collins | 03.05.04 | 8:42 PM ET
John Collins explores the theme park economy centered on Cambodia's Killing Fields
It’s an 18-Hour, 42-Minute Flight, or About as Long as it Now Takes to Pass Through LAX Security
by Michael Yessis | 02.17.04 | 9:13 PM ET
Salon’s Ask the Pilot has more colorful info in his latest column about the world’s longest non-stop flight recently established by Singapore Airlines. Among the topics covered: deep vein thrombosis, the in-flight buffet and the post-flight garbage count. “Veteran fliers will know what I’m talking about,” Patrick Smith writes. “By the time most intercontinental flights are docking at the gate, the aisles, floors and seats have come to resemble the scene of a dumpster explosion, the volume of refuse (cups, wrappers, bottles, bodily fluids and food) increasing proportionally with time spent aloft. For 18 hours, I’ll venture the passenger-to-trash weight ratio is about 1-to-1.”
“This is the Record-Breaking Flight”
by Jim Benning | 02.06.04 | 9:28 PM ET
Those were the words of aviation fanatic Luke Chittock at the end of the world’s longest non-stop commercial flight—Singapore Airline’s 18-hour-plus Los Angeles to Singapore service—which began Thursday. Chittock was among a number of flying enthusiasts who made the trip, which broke the old non-stop commercial record by more than two hours. The Los Angeles Times featured a great story about the flight Friday.
Fun Tips For Your Next North Korean Holiday
by Jim Benning | 01.20.04 | 11:01 PM ET
Welcome to Club Thailand. Your Limo is Waiting.
by Jim Benning | 01.08.04 | 9:16 PM ET
If you like visiting Thailand and have $25,000 to spare, you can be among the first owners of a “Thailand Elite” card, a wacky tourism program designed by Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra to attract big-money visitors. So far, about 100 tourists, many of them Chinese, have paid the one-time $25,000 membership fee, which entitles them to a five-year multiple-entry visa, free golf, airport limousine trips and a number of other perks. “Promoters of the VIP plan admit that snob value is part of the appeal when it comes to Asian travelers with a penchant for members-only clubs and public displays of wealth,” according to an article about the program in the Christian Science Monitor. “The sales brochure holds out the tantalizing prospect of rubbing shoulders with ‘celebrities from around the world’ that are being targeted as potential VIPs.”
Lonely Planet at 30
by Jim Benning | 12.29.03 | 9:46 PM ET
Jim Benning celebrates three decades of groundbreaking independent travel guides
And Perhaps the Least Used Guide Books of 2003
by Michael Yessis | 12.08.03 | 9:36 PM ET
Visit 180 Countries in One Afternoon and Get Free Drinks
by Michael Yessis | 11.24.03 | 9:48 PM ET
It’s possible at the World Travel Mart, the annual gathering of representatives from nations, airlines, car rental companies, cruise lines, hotels, railways, regional tourist boards and just about every other travel-related business you can think of. They put the best spin on their “product” for thousands of tour operators, travel agents and, of course, travel writers in search of stories, freebies and potent cocktails—not necessarily in that order. Cleo Paskal of Canada’s National Post traveled to this year’s Mart in Birmingham, England, and found it to be “a surreal event.”
Pico Iyer on “Tibet, Tibet”
by Jim Benning | 10.27.03 | 8:58 PM ET
Iyer reviewed the new book by Patrick French in Sunday’s Los Angeles Times. “The new work stitches together an unflinching account of the author’s two-and-a-half month journey across Tibet in 1999 with an exhaustive excavation of historical resources designed to show that Tibet was never the peace-loving paradise so many generations of well-wishers have longed for it to be,” Iyer writes. In the end, it seems, Iyer had mixed feelings about the book. “I began to feel that what [French] had seen and heard in Tibet was so abject and so harrowing that he could no longer even open his ears to the hopeful voices of Dharamsala and London.” The article is available online only to subscribers.
“Tokyo on One Cliche a Day”
by Michael Yessis | 10.20.03 | 9:01 PM ET
Oh, those wacky Japanese. They eat whale meat. They love comic books. They sleep off their sake buzz in hotel rooms the size of refrigerators. And they host loads of Western writers who love to write about such wacky things. The latest is Seth Stevenson, who recently filed a week’s worth of dispatches from Tokyo for Slate’s Well-Traveled feature. No deeper cultural insights here. Just some corny laughs. “[I]f you’re still hung up on the whale, you should know that you can get horse sashimi here,” Stevenson writes. “I have not eaten horse sashimi, but if I do, I am planning this exchange: I take a bite of horse, cough, clear throat, cough. Companion: ‘Something wrong with your throat?’ Me: ‘Just a little horse.’”
Talk About a Long Flight
by Jim Benning | 10.17.03 | 9:02 PM ET
Singapore Airlines announced this week it will soon begin operating the world’s longest non-stop commercial flight, an 18-hour haul connecting Los Angeles and Singapore. CNN.com has the details.
“I Am Not a Domestic Tyrant”
by Jim Benning | 10.06.03 | 9:18 PM ET
Depending on your perspective, the story is either every travel writer’s worst nightmare or the worst nightmare of anyone who has ever invited a writer into his home. Norwegian journalist Asne Seierstad was covering the war in Afghanistan when a curious Kabul bookseller invited her to stay with him, to see from the inside what life for locals was like. Seierstad accepted the invitation and wrote a non-fiction book about it, “The Bookseller of Kabul,” which is flying off bookshelves in Europe. Trouble is, the bookseller in question happened to read an English translation of the book, and he doesn’t agree with Seierstad’s conclusion that he is a tyrant, and that the women in his home live in slavery. He was so angered by her portrayal of him, in fact, that he has flown to Europe to speak out against the book, calling it “shameful,” and promising to sue the author. “There is more than a smattering of irony that a man who loves literature and has devoted himself to publishing now finds his life scarred by a book,” reporter William Wallace writes in a fascinating account of the conflict in the Los Angeles Times. “And it is equally troubling to see a man who risked his life to hide books from both Soviet and Islamic fundamentalist censors now demand that an offending book be banned, stripped from bookstore shelves and burned.” Free registration is required to access the article.
Khao San Road on Terrorist Target List. Pass the Banana Pancakes.
by Jim Benning | 09.30.03 | 9:22 PM ET
It’s hard to believe, but the hostel-lined road in Bangkok, a symbol of global backpacker culture, was among those places targeted for bombing during an APEC meeting next month, according to published reports. Four suspects arrested in connection with the plot are scheduled to go on trial in November. Nevertheless, according to a story in the Bangkok Post last week, Khao San’s backpackers are unfazed. “Music plays at full blast, food carts pass by, and ice-cold beer is still the hottest menu item,” the paper reports. The article even quotes a British guy named Stuart who said he didn’t plan to go anywhere. And for further proof that backpacker culture on Khao San is alive and, uh, well, Khao San Road the Web site features a story about the latest T-shirts for sale on the road touting “Khao Sarn Syndrome.” The shirts list the vows that backpackers with the syndrome apparently must take, including, “I shall wear as big a backpack as possible to bear proud witness of my creed” and “I shall not leave Khao Sarn Road without a Lonely Planet guide.” Nope, Khao San Road hasn’t changed a bit.