Travel Blog
The ‘Cuisses de Grenouille’ on that French Guy’s Plate Might be From Indonesia
by Joanna Kakissis | 05.02.08 | 11:29 AM ET
Email to friend
del.icio.us
Digg
Facebook
Furl
Ma.gnolia
Mixx
Reddit
StumbleUpon
Yahoo! BuzzPeter Hessler, ‘Cartography’ Win National Magazine Awards
by Michael Yessis | 05.02.08 | 11:03 AM ET
Hessler was honored with a National Magazine Award in the reporting category last night for China’s Instant Cities, a National Geographic story we first noted last June. In the leisure interests category, New York Magazine won for Cartography: The Complete Road Map to New York City Street food. Also of note: The Virginia Quarterly Review won the best single-topic issue, with South America in the 21st Century. The American Society of Magazine Editors website has a list of all the nominees and winners.
Venice Bans Feeding Pigeons in St. Mark’s Square
by Michael Yessis | 05.02.08 | 10:33 AM ET
The birds are “eating away at the city’s marble statues and buildings by pecking at small gaps in the facades to reach for scraps of food that were blown inside,” according to Reuters. In the list of dangers facing Venice, I’d rank the pigeons below this, but above this.
The Fugu Phenomenon*
by Michael Yessis | 05.02.08 | 9:23 AM ET
Homer Simpson may have introduced you to fugu. Or perhaps Anthony Bourdain. They’re among those who have eaten the potentially deadly blowfish and helped make it “the thrill-seeking gastronome’s equivalent to scaling Mount Everest,” writes Adam Platt in New York Magazine. It’s banned through much of Europe and available only in a few restaurants in the U.S., though the FDA-sanctioned importing process, according to Platt, renders the fugu “less toxic than a piece of mercury-saturated tuna sushi at your local Korean deli.”
Is the United States ‘The Most Underrated Country in the World’?
by Michael Yessis | 05.01.08 | 3:37 PM ET
Interesting conversation going on at the Sydney Morning Herald travel blog about the good and bad about traveling within the United States. Ben Groundwater started it with a mostly-positive defense of the U.S. as a travel destination. The CliffsNotes version of the conversation so far: Rocky Mountains, New York, New Orleans, clam chowder, pizza and people who are “generous to the point of being overbearing” are good. “[L]oud-mouthed, rude, arrogant, and ridiculously insular” people and getting fingerprinted upon entry are bad.
Globalization, Souvenir T-Shirts and the Future of Travel*
by Michael Yessis | 05.01.08 | 3:03 PM ET
Sophia Dembling asks three questions to kick off an intriguing blog post: “Now that the price of flying is skyrocketing, will the world start getting larger again? Will travel become less egalitarian than it has become in recent decades, as fewer people can afford to do it? And would that be, necessarily, a bad thing?” Dembling recently wrote Traveling While Texan for World Hum.
Update: May 2, 11:09 a.m. ET: A USA Today story outlines how “[r]ecord-high oil prices are threatening to ground millions of travelers who have grown accustomed to flying for fun and business during the past 30 years.”
France’s Smoking Ban Chokes its Hookah Bars
by Joanna Kakissis | 05.01.08 | 12:08 PM ET
The president of the Hookah Professionals’ Union—yes, there is such a thing—told the International Herald Tribune that about a third of France’s 800 hookah bars have closed since a ban on indoor smoking took effect Jan. 2.
‘Lesbian’ Fight Heats up on Lesbos
by Jim Benning | 05.01.08 | 10:49 AM ET
Yes, some on the Greek island of Lesbos have filed court papers demanding that a gay rights organization in the country stop using the word “lesbian” in its name. Their argument? As summarized by the BBC: “that international dominance of the word in its sexual context violates the human rights of the islanders, and disgraces them around the world.” Ridiculous. The word, of course, dates back to the ancient poet Sappho, who lived on Lesbos.
Seeking Salmon in Southeast Alaska*
by Joanna Kakissis | 05.01.08 | 10:03 AM ET
Daniel Duane loves to eat wild salmon, which used to live in abundance off the West Coast of the United States and whose numbers are now crisis-level low. His home, the San Francisco Bay area, was once famous for its seafood. But many San Franciscans now get their seafood from elsewhere, like the rest of American supermarket shoppers. It’s an antiseptic setting, and it just won’t do for an outdoorsy foodie like Duane. So he traveled by seaplane to southeast Alaska to glimpse one of the last remaining American paradises and to catch “this beautiful food” in “a web of freshwater, saltwater, and surrounding wildlands healthy enough to generate 5 billion pounds of seafood year after year, without diminishing anything.”
Travel Writing and Tall Tales: An Historical Perspective
by Michael Yessis | 04.30.08 | 4:51 PM ET
Nilanjana S Roy reminds us that the story of Thomas Kohnstamm and the controversy he’s stirred up are nothing new. She writes, “The issues that Kohnstamm raises—poor pay, insufficient time, too much territory to cover—have plagued the travel writing industry ever since the Egyptians, Arabs and Chinese sent off emissaries to see what the rest of the world was like.”
Dingle vs. An Daingean: The End?
by Michael Yessis | 04.30.08 | 4:39 PM ET
The popular Irish town best known to travelers as Dingle, and called An Daingean in Gaelic, may soon be known officially by two names, Dingle and Daingean Ui Chuis. That’s the compromise proposed by Ireland’s Minister for the Environment, John Gormley, who said he plans to amend a 2004 order requiring many Irish towns, Dingle included, to adopt Gaelic names. A majority in Dingle resisted the name change, favoring the English name for its familiarity with tourists. The residents came up with a compromise name—Dingle Daingean Ui Chuis—which prompted a round of international publicity and, now, an amended law and an AFP story. No word on whether Fungie will be getting a name change, too. (via Jaunted.)
Related on World Hum:
* Out: Dingle. In: An Daingean.
Photo by Michael Yessis.
Aboriginal Musician Rocks iTunes
by Joanna Kakissis | 04.30.08 | 12:36 PM ET
Australians are snapping up new music from Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu, an Aborginal musician who sings some of his songs in his native language, Yolngu. According to the International Herald Tribune, his first solo album, “Gurrumul,” released earlier this year, “jumped to No. 1 on the iTunes Australia roots music chart (it is currently No. 3)” and “is running strong in the mainstream iTunes music chart, above such international heavy hitters as Mariah Carey.” His MySpace page touts it as “One of the most important and beautiful Indigenous albums yet recorded.” Here’s a video clip from a recent show:
For Sale: Rare Coconut Palm, $1 Million
by Jim Benning | 04.30.08 | 11:43 AM ET
With three heads atop a single trunk, it’s a “botanical curiosity,” an expert says. I bet it’d look great on a $350,000 private island.
The BoltBus: Cheap Rides, Free Wi-Fi, a Little Lonely
by Jim Benning | 04.30.08 | 10:03 AM ET
We’ve written occasionally about the cult appeal of Chinatown buses, which offer dirt-cheap rides between Chinatowns in a number of Eastern U.S. cities. To compete, Greyhound has launched its own budget option, BoltBus, which features online booking, power outlets and, perhaps coolest of all, free Wi-Fi. So how’s the ride? Daniel Sorid bought a round-trip ticket from New York to Philadelphia for all of $2.50 and found himself the lone passenger on the journey.
Dancing Inmates in Philippines Become Tourist Attraction
by Michael Yessis | 04.29.08 | 4:33 PM ET
A YouTube video of them dancing to Thriller (see below) made them famous. Now the inmates of the provincial prison on the island of Cebu in the Philippines are greeting audiences for a two-hour program on the last Saturday of every month. “Visitors can have their pictures taken with the prisoners,” Reuters reports. “They can also buy souvenir prison shirts.”
