Travel Blog
Introducing Tenzing Hillary Airport
by Jim Benning | 02.11.08 | 11:54 AM ET
The airport closest to Mount Everest, previously known as Lukla airstrip, will now be called Tenzing Hillary Airport in honor of the first climbers to summit Everest, the Nepalese government announced. Sir Edmund Hillary died last month; Tenzing Norgay died in 1986. Most visitors to Everest land at the airstrip. “It is a dramatic introduction,” the BBC notes, “as the plane has to drop steeply between the mountains and then lands on a runway which slopes steeply upwards.” YouTube has some great video.
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Yahoo! BuzzNew Travel Book: ‘Traversa’
by Frank Bures | 02.11.08 | 10:33 AM ET
Full title: “Traversa: A Solo Walk Across Africa, from the Skeleton Coast to the Indian Ocean”
Author: Fran Sandham, a former Rough Guides editor
Released: Feb. 14, 2008 (U.S.)
Travel genre: Walking travel
Territory covered: Namibia, Zambia, Malawi and Tanzania
Fire Destroys Seoul’s Namdaemun Gate
by Michael Yessis | 02.11.08 | 10:23 AM ET
“People’s hearts will ache,” South Korea’s President-elect Lee Myung-bak said. Namdaemun was a South Korean national treasure, a 610-year-old wooden gate located at the center of Seoul. Police have arrested a suspected arsonist, a 70-year-old man identified only by his family name, Chae. Before the fire, Namdaemun looked like this:
‘Live for Nothing, Die for Something’
by Eva Holland | 02.11.08 | 9:47 AM ET
That’s the tagline for the latest Rambo movie, and according to Reuters, the people of Yangon are “going crazy” for it.
World Hum’s Most Read: Feb. 2-8
by World Hum | 02.08.08 | 5:11 PM ET
Our five most popular features and blog posts this week:
1) Starbucks vs. the Traveler (pictured)
2) Traveling While Texan
3) The Road to Happiness
4) Super Tuesday Abroad: Obama Takes Jakarta
5) Under the Banyan Tree
Shanghai Starbucks photo by c a m i l o via Flickr, (Creative Commons)
What we Loved This Week: ‘Juno,’ Halakis and Mama’s Dumplings
by World Hum | 02.08.08 | 4:17 PM ET
World Hum contributors share a favorite travel-related experience from the past seven days.
Joanna Kakissis
I finally saw Juno, which I loved not only for the touching and hilarious script (and the outstanding Ellen Page) but for the 91-minute dosage of my beloved Minnesota. Lush canopies of trees, cross-country runners, oversized flannel shirts, mini-vans in the snow, even the mere mention of St. Cloud—all of this almost made me cry with longing. Even though, ya know, the movie was actually filmed in Canada. Here’s a look:
U.S. Customs to Amy Winehouse: No, No, No*
by Eva Holland | 02.08.08 | 12:39 PM ET
Troubled British singer Amy Winehouse has been denied an American visa for this weekend’s Grammy Awards, reports the CBC. Winehouse, who is two weeks into her latest rehab stint, will be up for six awards at Sunday’s ceremony, including Album of the Year—but for this year at least, she won’t go, go, go.
*Update, Monday, Feb. 11: Winehouse got last-minute approval to travel to the U.S. but performed live via satellite from London—at 3:41 a.m. local time. Here’s video:
The Man Behind the Bells of Notre Dame
by Michael Yessis | 02.08.08 | 10:57 AM ET
The Traveling Paperback: ‘Currency in the Land of the Transients’
by Eva Holland | 02.08.08 | 9:13 AM ET
Over at Brave New Traveler, Rachel Friedman wonders about the impact of Amazon’s Kindle e-book reader on the traditional paper book—and most importantly, on the traveling paperback. I’ve been tuning out the e-book debate for several years now, but this story caught my attention thanks to its loving reminiscences about that essential backpacking rite: the hostel book swap.
Cruise Passenger: ‘Up Until I Got Shot I Was Having a Great Time’
by Michael Yessis | 02.08.08 | 5:01 AM ET
Steve Storton is one hardcore cruiser. He was shot during a port call on the island of Margarita in Venezuela, “then was rushed to hospital, where docs put him in a wheelchair and x-rayed him three times before discharging him two hours later with just painkillers,” according to The Sun. He was having so great of a time that he then climbed back aboard the P&O cruise ship Oceana and completed the last five days of his trip.
U.S. Woman Arrested in Saudi Arabia Starbucks
by Jim Benning | 02.07.08 | 2:51 PM ET
Her “crime,” according to the Times of London: sitting with a man who was not her husband. She was hauled away by a member of Saudi Arabia’s Commission for Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice. The woman works for a company in Saudi Arabia and visited the Starbucks with male colleagues to use the Internet after their Riyadh office suffered an outage.
BBC: ‘Airbus Predicts Air Travel Boom’
by Jim Benning | 02.07.08 | 12:43 PM ET
Is this really a news story? Isn’t a plane manufacturer’s prediction that planes will be in great demand a little self-serving? How about wrapping a headilne around this, BBC: “World Hum forecasts explosive growth in armchair travel.”
No Peace Center for Alcatraz
by Jim Benning | 02.07.08 | 11:45 AM ET
San Francisco voters rejected a proposal this week to turn Alcatraz Island—the former prison site and ridiculously popular tourist attraction—into a “global peace center.” Whew. Given the rough U.S. economy, I’m afraid any move that could threaten the bustling Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary souvenir T-shirt industry could be this nation’s ruin. Sure, peace center T-shirts would sell, especially in San Francisco, but they wouldn’t do Federal Penitentiary numbers. For a vicarious visit and a few grim statistics, here’s video of the approach to the island from a tour boat:
Kibbe and Myth in the Mississippi Delta
by Joanna Kakissis | 02.07.08 | 11:06 AM ET
If you go to any family-run diner in the Mississippi Delta, chances are you’ll find tabouleh, dolmas and the Lebanese meat dish called kibbe tucked between the barbecue and fried chicken on the menu. That’s because waves of Lebanese settled in Mississippi between the 1870s and 1960s, setting up grocery stores and restaurants to make a living, according to NPR’s Kitchen Sisters and “the Faulkner of Southern food,” John T. Edge.
Of Memory and Chinese New Year
by Julia Ross | 02.07.08 | 7:33 AM ET
The Year of the Rat begins today, and I’m missing the firecrackers outside my window at 6 a.m. A year ago, I was living in a fourth floor walk-up above a night market in Taipei, taking in the full clamor of Chinese New Year for the first time.
