Tag: Islands
Armed Indonesian Soldiers Seize Tiny Island with Tasty Waves
by Jim Benning | 12.16.05 | 3:08 PM ET
They took over the island of Mengkudu in the Indonesian archipelago after villagers on a neighboring island claimed the Australian running a surf camp there wouldn’t allow them to visit. According to a news report, David Wylie, 54, had obtained permits to run the camp, which has been open since 2001. But an army colonel involved in the operation said Wylie had yet to obtain other necessary permits. “My troops raised the Indonesian flag when they arrived on Mengkudu,” the colonel said. “It is ours.” The camp’s future wasn’t clear, but the colonel said of Wylie, “[W]e do not want to kick him off the island.”
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Yahoo! BuzzFor Sale: Private Island. Electricity Not Included. $350,000.
by Jim Benning | 07.28.05 | 1:28 PM ET
Who among us hasn’t dreamed of living on a paradisiacal private island—the kind of place where you can relax under a shady palm with a frosty margarita and forget about deadlines and bills and the “global struggle against violent extremism”? For those with the cash and the nerve, Islands magazine has just identified the go-to guy. His name is Farhad Vladi, and he is an impeccably dressed, German-raised private island broker who has sold more than 1,500 islands around the globe over the last 30 years.
What Do Jordan’s Ain Ghazal Statues and the Islands of Tuvalu Have in Common?
by Jim Benning | 11.12.03 | 7:36 PM ET
Michael Shapiro answers the question in Sunday’s San Francisco Chronicle, offering an interesting list of threatened attractions around the world—places that, if you’re so inclined, should be seen sooner rather than later. “From the historically and biologically irreplaceable to the poignantly frivolous, we’re living at a time when the planet’s heritage is under ever greater threat from war, neglect, climate change, overpopulation and unmanaged tourism,” he writes. Among the places making Shapiro’s list: the islands of Tuvalu, threatened by rising waters, and eroding Quetzalcoatl Temple in Mexico City. Shapiro also points readers to the World Monuments Fund’s new 2004 list of 100 threatened sites.
Betrayal in Santorini
by Jim Benning | 09.17.03 | 1:30 AM ET
Photographs can lie. Especially travel-related photographs. Thomas Swick recently visited the Greek island of Santorini, one of the world’s most photographed places. Walking among the whitewashed buildings, among legions of other visitors, it hit him: [I]n all those pictures there are never any people. And, not seeing a human presence, we imagine it: the old sea captain fingering his beads, the whiskered widow draped in black. People as picturesque as their surroundings,” the South Florida Sun-Sentinel travel editor writes in his latest dead-on column. “And in Santorini, in summer, they don’t exist. It’s not just that the streets are crammed with tourists, they are depleted of locals. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a place so completely given over to tourism.”
Honey, Let’s Move to Rarotonga. Okay, Dear.
by Jim Benning | 07.26.03 | 1:12 AM ET
I didn’t get the sense that Carla Sinclair and Mark Frauenfelder set out to inspire readers when they wrote about their unlikely move recently from Los Angeles to tiny Rarotonga in the Cook Islands. But it’s hard to read their piece in this week’s LA Weekly without concluding that you can do anything you set your mind to, as long as you accept that there will be wrinkles along the way. The idea for the move was hatched while they were hanging out in a Los Angeles coffee shop, engaging in their annual New Year’s Day tradition of setting goals for the coming year. “We both felt like we were in a rut, and with a new baby due in a few months, we knew that rut was sure to become deeper,” they write. Then Carla offhandedly suggested they move to Rarotonga, a place they’d visited 10 years earlier. “Maybe it was Carla’s pregnancy-induced hormones or the first throes of Mark’s midlife crisis, but the idea of moving to an island in the South Seas didn’t sound as preposterous as it would have at some other time,” they write. And so they did. At the time they wrote the story, they’d been living in Rarotonga all of 10 days. Their tale is terrific, and fortunately for readers, future installments are on the way.
Can’t Find Prince Edward Island on the Map? That’s Because Fodor’s Forgot to Put It On. Oops.
by Michael Yessis | 07.17.03 | 10:05 PM ET
Canadian Tourism officials are steamed—and Fodor’s officials are embarrassed—after the guidebook giant’s “shoddy work” on maps it produced for the Canadian Tourism publication, PureCanada, has come to light. Fodor’s, which was paid $600,000 to develop editorial for the publication, left Prince Edward Island completely off the map, spelled Nunavut as “Nunavit” and forgot the cities of Fredericton and Halifax, too. “This is not our finest hour,” Stuart Applebaum, a spokesman for the publisher of the popular guides, told Canada’s National Post newspaper. “We’re very sorry about the errors and we’re making every effort to correct them as quickly as possible.” Said Prince Edward Island’s Minister of Tourism, Jeff Lantz: “We’re a little surprised and disappointed that something like that could happen with a very well-respected company.”
Sandbags in the Archipelago
by Heather Eliot | 03.15.03 | 9:54 PM ET
On a remote South Pacific island, Heather Eliot meets a man and explores the fine line between fantasy and reality.
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.
Can Hawaii Have Tourism Without Hawaiians?
by Michael Yessis | 11.06.02 | 1:03 AM ET
At the end of my just finished two-week trip to Hawaii, I spent several days in Honolulu near Waikiki Beach. The weather was warm and people wore Aloha shrts while strolling along Kalakaua Avenue. But, for the most part, Waikiki looked and felt like Touristville, America. Theme restaurants abounded. Japanese tourists traveled in packs. And, alas, native Hawaiians were few and far between. It’s a typical phenomenon—people are drawn to a place, then the commercial rush to serve those visitors often corrupts, destroys or simply pushes out the native culture that attracted them in the first place.
Honolulu makes a fine case study, and Peter Apo of the Native Hawaiian Hospitality Association uses it in an opinion piece in Sunday’s Honolulu Advertiser. “As a people, Hawaiians are continually disappointed when we try to confront the realities of Hawai’i's contemporary visitor industry landscape,” Apo writes. “Hawai’i's hospitality paradigm is a model of exclusion of the host culture and far from the Hawaiian cultural model of ho’okipa (hospitality).”
Apo explores how modern Hawaiian tourism evolved, and how it affects locals. “It’s unfortunate that of all the players, the host communities have the smallest voice and are not necessarily the direct beneficiaries of tourism. Yet they are the ones being asked to share themselves, their families and their lives with unrelenting waves of strangers. For the most part, they have no choice but to live in tourism’s onslaught and in its wake.”
Resentment is palpable just a half-mile off Waikiki. I visited a locally owned shop, whose proprietor told me not to eat at the restaurants in Waikiki because the “food will make you sick.” She suggested I go to a Hawaiian restaurant up the street “past the evil Starbucks” or, if we had time, to drive across the island to her hometown, Kailua. That, she said, is where one can find a more laid back, friendly Oahu.
I went and had a great time. However, abandoning Waikiki isn’t a solution Apo advocates in his piece: “Not only is Waikiki not beyond redemption, but it is our kuleana as the host culture to recapture it, to take care of it, to nurture it, to be part of the solution and to respect our ancestors by not abandoning them.”
Dog Days on Maui, and on St. Croix
by Jim Benning | 04.15.02 | 11:13 PM ET
It’s often said in the newspaper business that readers love few stories more than a good dog yarn. Well, the New York Times delivered a double dose of dog stories on Sunday—both related to travel. In the news section, the paper offered a heart-warming tale about a woman who runs a market on Maui’s Hana Highway and loans her dogs to tourists. ““I know people when they’re on vacation must miss their dogs, so I let them use my dogs,” she told the Times. The tourists win, and so do the pooches.
How Low Can You Go?
by Michael Yessis | 01.16.02 | 12:50 AM ET
When a flamboyant Aruban limbo master picks him out of a crowd, Michael Yessis gets a reminder that traveling as a guest sometimes means being a little flexible
A Time of Living Dangerously?
by Chuck Newman, Chris Dickson | 10.18.01 | 12:55 AM ET
Stories of unrest in Jakarta run almost daily on CNN and BBC. Chuck Newman and Chris Dickson, however, aren't yet ready to flee.
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