Travel Blog: News and Briefs
‘There is Nothing Quite as Hypnotic as a Travel Show that Suggests it’s Better to Stay Home’
by Michael Yessis | 05.10.10 | 12:57 PM ET
Alessandra Stanley finds a thread of fear and alarm in travel programs on television.
That fearfulness is perhaps fitting in an era of man-made economic decline and natural calamity—be it volcanic ash in Iceland or earthquakes in Haiti, Chile and Tibet—and the more standard travel fare on television has rarely seemed so timorous. Nowadays even the Travel Channel is hidebound and xenophobic, focusing on beaches of Florida and California, and only occasionally venturing farther abroad than hotel chains in the Caribbean.
She has half a point: Shows like “Locked Up Abroad” exist and they can give even the most intrepid traveler shivers. But a word in defense of the Travel Channel: Did she even watch the current lineup? What about this or this or this—all of which aired in the last two weeks?
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Yahoo! BuzzAlain de Botton Imagines a World Without Airplanes
by Michael Yessis | 05.10.10 | 11:47 AM ET
The man who recently spent a week at Heathrow outlines what the world might look like without “the unremitting progress of inbound aluminium tubes.” De Botton even imagines what would happen to Heathrow:
At Heathrow, now turned into a museum, one would be able to walk unhurriedly across the two main runways and even give in to the temptation to sit cross-legged on their centrelines, a gesture with some of the same sublime thrill as touching a disconnected high-voltage electricity cable, running one’s fingers along the teeth of an anaesthetised shark or having a wash in a fallen dictator’s marble bathroom.
(via Gadling)
Photos: Laundry Around the World
by Michael Yessis | 05.10.10 | 11:03 AM ET
Ross Arbes and Alexandra Hiatt share their images of laundry taken during a 16-month trek. Here’s what compelled them:
At first, we assumed that it was the colors that continually caused us to focus on the laundry. But these clotheslines also provided subtle allusions to gender issues, cultural differences and the impact of modernization. The closer we zoomed in, the more we came to see laundry as an open window into others’ lives.
Laundry can also bring people together.
What We Loved This Week: Bottom Bay, Chinglish and ‘A Journey Across Africa’
by World Hum | 05.07.10 | 10:39 PM ET
Eva Holland Eva Holland
I loved spending the afternoon at Bottom Bay, a small beach on the south east coast of Barbados. I don’t know what it is about beaches—if there’s something in our wiring that conditions us to love their color combinations, or what—but I can hardly imagine any place prettier.
Freya Stark: ‘The Greatest Woman Traveller of the 20th Century?’
by Michael Yessis | 05.07.10 | 3:16 PM ET
Sara Wheeler says yes.
I think so, though Gertrude Bell, a fellow Arabist 25 years Stark’s senior, runs her a close second. (Stark considered Bell overrated, accusing her of never staying anywhere long enough to get to the heart of things.) “One can only really travel,” Stark once said, “if one lets oneself go.”
Bell landed on Julia Ross’s list of inspirational female travelers.
Rory Stewart Wins in UK Election
by Michael Yessis | 05.07.10 | 11:07 AM ET
“The Places in Between” author and Tory politician Rory Stewart captured 53.4 percent of the vote and will represent Penrith and The Border as a Member of Parliament. As Slate’s June Thomas tweeted, “Let the walking begin.”
Arthur Frommer Wades Into Airplane Seat-Reclining Wars
by Eva Holland | 05.06.10 | 1:03 PM ET
And gets some unexpected blowback. Last week, Frommer spoke out about Spirit Airlines’ plans to eliminate reclining seats on their planes—and, as he writes in his follow-up post, “an uproar ensued.” Strident emails supporting Spirit’s action poured in from readers. Turns out, there’s a major anti-reclining faction out there, and they mean business.
I’m a regular only-part-way recliner myself, and I’ve had to rescue my laptop from near-crushing by an abrupt full-recline more than once, so I can see both sides of the issue.
Where do you come down in the seat-reclining debate?
How to Travel Like Kim Jong Il
by Michael Yessis | 05.05.10 | 3:21 PM ET
First, no jets. Use a train. Or three. You need the decoys. It’s not paranoia. People really would like to see you dead. Maybe travel at night, too, to avoid surveillance. Oh, and you’ll need food and drink. Send for a few cases of Bordeaux from Paris. It’ll go well with the live lobster you’ve shipped in.
The Los Angeles Times has more on how the Dear Leader likes to get around.
An American Traveler Remembers the ‘Ugly’ Years
by Eva Holland | 05.05.10 | 1:56 PM ET
Perceptive Travel has a thoughtful essay from Theresa Dowell Blackinton, looking back at her overseas reception across several years of travel—from the ’90s to 9/11, the Bush Years and the election of President Obama. Here’s a sample from her 2004 stint as an expat in Greece:
As a teacher, I found that America worked itself into every lesson plan, whether I wanted it to or not. “What do you think the main themes of To Kill a Mockingbird are?” I asked.
“That Americans are racist,” a student replied.
“Do you think that’s true?” I asked. “Are all Americans racist?” I wanted to dig deeper, to explore an issue that affects their culture as much as it does mine.
“Well they hate Muslims,” another student responded. The others nodded their heads in agreement.
‘If You See Something, Say Something’?
by Eva Holland | 05.05.10 | 1:13 PM ET
In the wake of this weekend’s attempted car bombing, Slate’s Noreen Malone heads to Times Square in search of “suspicious activity.” The result is an unusual sort of ode to one of the world’s most famous public spaces. Here’s a taste:
I asked Ghazi what sort of “unusual” behavior might grab his attention. “Someone panicky or paranoid,” he said. “You make a logical assumption that he’s off his meds.” And how often does he see that? “Oh! Every day.”
Travel Movie Watch: ‘180 Degrees South’
by Jim Benning | 05.04.10 | 2:37 PM ET
180 South looks like a great new outdoorsy travel documentary. In it, Jeff Johnson retraces a 1968 road trip from Ventura, California, to southern Patagonia undertaken by Yvon Chouinard and a few others. The film features surfing and climbing, and, it seems, a healthy dose of philosophizing about travel and life.
It’s touring the country now—dates and locations are listed here—and it comes out on DVD in June. Here’s the trailer:
Yosemite Through the Eyes of a Chinese Artist
by Jim Benning | 05.04.10 | 12:31 PM ET
Lovely piece in The Smart Set about Chinese artist Xie Zhiliu’s renderings of Yosemite National Park, which are now part of an exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. Xie visited Yosemite in 1994, a few years before his death.
There, he produced a series of paintings that are a testimonial to cognitive dissonance. He paints the mountains and trees of Yosemite, but they look vaguely Chinese. The vegetation looks sparse, like in the drawings that accompany Chinese calligraphy. The stones of Yosemite rise up with the stalagmite abruptness we expect of Chinese art.
Cognitive dissonance at work on a canvas can be a beautiful thing. I’m reminded of these impressionistic West-meets-East paintings by Van Gogh.
Shanghai Launches its own Chinglish Crackdown
by Eva Holland | 05.04.10 | 11:40 AM ET
In the lead-up to the 2008 Beijing Games, we noted the government’s efforts to clean up the city’s more creative English signage. A couple of years later, Shanghai is ready to follow suit: 10,000 signs—and counting—have been tidied up by the Shanghai Commission for the Management of Language. Says one of the campaign’s leading proponents: “The purpose of signage is to be useful, not to be amusing.”
Copacabana: ‘Unknowingly Retro ... Deliciously Original’
by Michael Yessis | 05.04.10 | 10:06 AM ET
It’s also Ground Zero for dog hairdressers, according to Jon Lee Anderson. His compelling take on Copacabana and Rio de Janeiro is in the Financial Times:
That’s the Copacabana I see, anyway, a place full of ordinary people and chancers, too; a bit tawdry and unknowingly retro, and, therefore, deliciously original. To a large extent, this description also applies to Rio at large. At a time when so many other cities in the world have seen radical makeovers to adopt the cloned look of homogeneous urban modernity, Rio is still refreshingly eclectic and chaotic, so enveloped in its own self-indulgent, sometimes desperate but radiant reality, too, that it seems to inhabit its own time capsule.
Rory Stewart: Member of Parliament?
by Michael Yessis | 05.03.10 | 11:36 AM ET
The author of “The Places in Between” is running for office in the U.K. No surprise how he’s campaigning. The man who walked from Iran to Nepal has, according to Slate, walked “300 miles over sheep-dotted hills” to familiarize himself with his potential constituency.
