Destination: Indonesia
Hillary Clinton’s Peace Corps Bid
by Julia Ross | 02.09.09 | 1:57 PM ET
Hillary Clinton embarks on her first foreign trip as Secretary of State next Sunday, breaking with tradition by visiting Asia rather than Europe or the Middle East. The Japanese are thrilled that they’re first on the itinerary, and the Chinese are eager to talk climate change, but it’s her stop in Jakarta that’s got me interested. The State Department confirms Clinton wants to discuss reestablishing the Peace Corps program in Indonesia, which shut down in the 1960s after only two years in operation. If Indonesia supports the idea, the move would certainly bolster President Obama’s strategy to improve U.S. relations with the Muslim world and would open another valuable avenue for person-to-person exchange.
Clinton’s stop in Beijing will likely get the lion’s share of media attention next week, but I’ll be watching the Jakarta coverage to see if she scores a small victory for public diplomacy.
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Yahoo! BuzzJakarta, Indonesia
by World Hum | 01.30.09 | 10:19 AM ET
REUTERS/Beawiharta An Indonesian woman selling vegetables waits for customers beside a railway track in Jakarta.
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.
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.
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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Morning Links: Museum of Broken Relationships, GlobalPost and More
by Michael Yessis | 01.12.09 | 8:27 AM ET
- GlobalPost begins its “bold journey to redefine international news for the digital age.”
- Two Japanese restaurants split the $100,000 bill on a bluefin tuna. Yumiko Ono says it tasted “smooth, succulent and a little on the light side.”
- Turns out cities impair our brains.
- More than 200 people are feared dead after a ferry sank off Indonesia’s Sulawesi island.
- During the last two years an estimated 1.5 billion passengers flew on U.S. airlines. Not one of them died as a result of a crash.
- The Los Angeles Times tried out Row44, “a soon-to-debut satellite Wi-Fi system” for airlines.
- Daisann McLaine tells why she always visits supermarkets when she travels.
- Kristen Wiig and Neil Patrick Harris played long-nailed air traffic controllers on Saturday Night Live.
- Alexandr Vondra, the Czech Deputy Prime Minister, says “art is to arouse emotions.” A map of European cliches and stereotypes commissioned by the Czech Republic is succeeding on that count.
- The Las Vegas Mob museum is stirring up controversy in Washington, D.C.
- The Museum of Broken Relationships—“an exhibition of the relics of failed love”—opened in Singapore last week. It’s perfect for anyone who wants to see “an axe used by a woman to break up her ex-girlfriend’s furniture, along with the broken furniture.”
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Western Tourists Told to Avoid Bali
by Valerie Conners | 10.24.08 | 11:19 AM ET
Bali tourism officials and other governments issued the warnings in response to news that the convicted bombers in Bali’s 2002 nightclub terror attacks will be executed in November.
A Writer’s Port of Call
by Adam Karlin | 04.23.08 | 12:07 PM ET
Adam Karlin went to Indonesia to work as a reporter. But after a visit to Jakarta's old wharf to see the aging Makassar schooners, he left with a calling of a different order.
Tourists Should be ‘Beat Up,’ Says Bali Bombing Conspirator
by Michael Yessis | 03.25.08 | 12:27 PM ET
Cleric Abu Bakar Bashir called Western tourists in Indonesia “maggots, snakes and worms,” and he urged his followers not to tolerate them in a sermon captured on video by Australian university student Nathan Franklin.
The Back of the Bus
by Laurie Gough | 03.17.08 | 4:43 PM ET
Laurie Gough reflects on a classic travel experience: The bus ride through a developing country. Cue the bumps, flat tires and Lionel Richie tunes in the jungles of Sumatra.
For a Beach Vacation, Should I Go All the Way to Bali or the Maldives When Hawaii Would Do?
by Rolf Potts | 02.15.08 | 11:13 AM ET
Vagabonding traveler Rolf Potts answers your questions about travel
One Man’s Odyssey into ‘Eat, Pray, Love’
by Rolf Potts | 02.11.08 | 1:33 PM ET
Elizabeth Gilbert's best-selling trans-global travel book is a fun read -- but don't expect Rolf Potts to embrace the fantasy
Angkor Wat, Better When It Rains
by Julia Ross | 11.08.07 | 1:30 PM ET
When writer Stephen Brookes told friends he planned to visit Cambodia’s Angkor Wat in July—the height of monsoon season—they said he was crazy. “You’re certain to get stranded in your hotel, swatting at mosquitoes and hoping you don’t come down with malaria,” came the general response. Well, Brookes and his wife proved them wrong. In a story for the Washington Post, Brookes recounts a lovely trip to Angkor in the off-season, when costs are low, tourists are sparse, and visitors can take in the temples at their leisure.
Indians in Bali: The ‘New Americans’?
by Liz Sinclair | 10.30.07 | 7:04 AM ET
In the wake of the Bali bombings, the country’s traditional tourists—Americans, Australians and Europeans—started to vacation elsewhere. Asians from countries such as India, experiencing rapid economic growth, filled the gap. But as Karim Raslan notes in a recent article for the Financial Times, there’s something familiar about these tourists. They often behave with the same cultural elitism that characterized the stereotypical American, becoming, as Raslan calls them, the “New Americans.”
Women’s Travel E-Mail Roundtable, Part Eleven: (De)Parting Words
by Liz Sinclair | 10.12.07 | 7:14 AM ET
All this week, four accomplished travelers -- Stephanie Elizondo Griest, Liz Sinclair, Terry Ward and Catherine Watson -- talk about the rewards and perils of hitting the road alone as a woman.