Travel Blog: News and Briefs
The Traveler’s Technology Gift Guide
by Eva Holland | 11.22.10 | 2:50 PM ET
San Francisco Chronicle travel editor and World Hum contributor Spud Hilton offers up his latest: a gift guide for the technologically-inclined traveler in your life, “from the bare-minimum kit to full Gear-Junkie-From-Hell package.” The list is extensive and makes some sensible points, and it’s a fun read.
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Yahoo! BuzzWhat We Loved This Week: Echo Mountain, Book Passage and ‘Big Red Son’
by World Hum | 11.19.10 | 5:13 PM ET
Eva Holland
I picked up Consider the Lobster, a collection of David Foster Wallace essays, over the weekend, and each one has been better than the last. I think my favorite so far is “Big Red Son,” a 50-page look back at DFW’s time in Las Vegas at the Annual Adult Video News Awards. It’s probably the oddest combination of intelligence, insight, humor and crude double-entendres I’ve ever encountered.
‘American Traveler Dignity Act’ Introduced in the House
by Eva Holland | 11.19.10 | 2:08 PM ET
The legislation was proposed by Texas Representative Ron Paul, and would strip TSA screeners’ of their immunity from prosecution. From Paul’s speech to the House:
My legislation is simple. It establishes that airport security screeners are not immune from any US law regarding physical contact with another person, making images of another person, or causing physical harm through the use of radiation-emitting machinery on another person. It means they are subject to the same laws as the rest of us.
Moving beyond the current controversy over scanners and pat-downs, Paul also commented more broadly on airline security since 9/11:
I warned at the time of the creation of the TSA that an unaccountable government entity in control of airport security would provide neither security nor defend our basic freedom to travel. Yet the vast majority of both Republicans and Democrats then in Congress willingly voted to create another unaccountable, bullying agency—in a simple-minded and unprincipled attempt to appease public passion in the wake of 9-11. Sadly, as we see with the steady TSA encroachment on our freedom and dignity, my fears in 2001 were justified.
I’m not sure that going after individual screeners with, say, sexual harassment charges really gets to the root of the issue; they aren’t the ones making policy. Still, it’s heartening to see travelers’ concerns being taken up at the highest levels in Washington. (Via Gadling)
‘On the Road’ Meets ‘On the Bro’d’
by Michael Yessis | 11.17.10 | 4:26 PM ET
An amusing and crude Tumblr mashes up Kerouac’s classic. The opening lines of On the Bro’d:
I first met Dean not long after Tryscha and I hooked up. I had just gotten over a wicked fucking hangover that I won’t bother to talk about, except that it had something to do with a six-foot-five douchebag and a beer bong. With the coming of Dean Moriarty began the part of my life you could call my life on the bro’d. Before that I’d often dreamed of going West to see hot LA actress chicks and try In N’ Out burgers, always vaguely planning and never taking off. Dean is the perfect bro for the road because he knows how to fucking party.
And the mad ones? You’ll now find them trolling Buffalo Wild Wings:
[T]he only bros for me are the awesome ones, the ones who are mad to chug, mad to party, mad to bone, mad to get hammered, desirous of all the chicks at Buffalo Wild Wings, the ones who never turn down a Bud Light Lime, but chug, chug, chug like fucking awesome players exploding like spiders across an Ed Hardy shirt and in the middle you see the silver skull pop and everybody goes “Awww!”
(Via @thebookslut)
New on UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage List: Acupuncture, Mexican Food and More
by Eva Holland | 11.17.10 | 2:20 PM ET
UNESCO has announced 46 new additions to its catchily-named Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. Among the new items? Chinese acupuncture, Colombian Marimba music, and several different regional carpet-weaving practices from Azerbaijan and Iran.
So far, the inclusion of “the gastronomic meal of the French” seems to be garnering the most media attention, but as devoted fans of Mexican food, we’re thrilled to see that “traditional Mexican cuisine” also made the list. “The Mediterranean diet” was a third foodie addition, credited to Spain, Greece, Italy and Morocco.
Tony Hiss Talks ‘Deep Travel’
by Eva Holland | 11.17.10 | 1:13 PM ET
The former New Yorker staffer and author of In Motion: The Experience of Travel talks with the Book Bench about what he calls “deep travel.” Here’s Hiss:
Deep Travel is an exhilarating state of mind that travel can evoke, when everything seems suddenly fresh, vivid, intensely interesting, and memorable. Because you focus on what you’re looking at and listening to, Deep Travel is like waking up while already awake; things have a way of seeming emphasized, underlined. Travel can sometimes summon this kind of awareness automatically—we can all remember times when the world came alive unexpectedly—but we can also bring it to vibrant life voluntarily.
He goes on to talk about how to call up and retain that feeling even in more familiar settings. It’s worth a read.
The Hajj, in Photos
by Eva Holland | 11.16.10 | 2:12 PM ET
The annual pilgrimage to Mecca kicked off this week. The Big Picture has an absolutely stunning photo essay from the event.
Frommer’s Europe: From $5 a Day to $95 a Day
by Eva Holland | 11.16.10 | 1:17 PM ET
Doug Mack crunches the numbers on the evolution of Arthur Frommer’s classic guidebook, “Europe on $5 a Day,” from the 1957 original to its final, 2007 incarnation: “Europe on $95 a Day.” The result is an interesting little snapshot of the ways travel prices have changed over the years. By 1996, for instance, the guidebook was titled “Europe on $45 a Day”—but the inflation-adjusted value of $5 was just $27.92.
He also explored what you can still see in Paris on $5 a day in a World Hum audio slideshow awhile back. The answer? Not much, though confusion and surprises are still free.
Nine of the World’s Oldest Maps, in Photos
by Eva Holland | 11.16.10 | 12:35 PM ET
Over at the Matador Network, World Hum contributor Lola Akinmade puts together a photo essay of some seriously vintage maps—from ancient Babylon to the Ming Dynasty.
Christopher Buckley: ‘I Was Deck Boy Aboard a Norwegian Tramp Freighter’
by Michael Yessis | 11.15.10 | 4:33 PM ET
In 1970, Buckley shipped out for a year of adventure. His remembrance in the Atlantic is beautiful:
I remember standing in the crow’s nest as we entered the misty Panama Canal, and the strange sensation as the 4,000-ton ship rose higher and higher inside the lock. I remember dawn coming up over the Strait of Malacca; ragamuffin kids on the dock in Sumatra laughing as they pelted us with bananas; collecting dead flying fish off the deck and bringing them to our sweet, fat, toothless Danish cook to fry up for breakfast. I remember sailing into Hong Kong harbor and seeing my first junk; steaming upriver toward Bangkok, watching the sun rise and set fire to the gold-leafed pagoda roofs; climbing off the stern down a wriggly rope ladder into a sampan, paddling for dear life across the commerce-mad river into the jungle, where it was suddenly quiet and then suddenly loud with monkey-chatter and bird-shriek, the moonlight lambent on the palm fronds.
Passports With Purpose Turns Three
by Eva Holland | 11.15.10 | 3:18 PM ET
The travel-blogging fundraiser is back. Last year, World Hum contributor Pam Mandel and her fellow Passports co-founders raised enough money to get a school built in Cambodia—and helped inspire us to name travel bloggers, collectively, as our 2009 travelers of the year.
This year Passports With Purpose has its sights set on raising $50,000 to build a village in India. Check out the Passports With Purpose site to learn more about blogging the effort, becoming a sponsor or bidding on the many travel-themed prizes.
California’s ‘Kazakh-Land’: Central Asian Theme Park or Stunt?
by Eva Holland | 11.15.10 | 1:23 PM ET
Over at Registan, Michael Hancock investigates Kazakh-Land, a theme park in southern California. Hancock, though, doubts whether the place actually exists, beyond its snazzy website:
Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you Kazakh-Land! Situated near sunny Malibu, California, it offers something for everyone, from romantic folk-art displays to retirement-style weekend getaways. The website is plenty nice and the word on the inter-tubes [up to this point] is that it’s the real deal. However, there is a lot of suspicious English (especially on the guestbook and caretaker pages) that smells of Russian translation. Like some bad Borat joke, Russian-language descriptions of the theme park name-drop Pamela Anderson and Angelina Jolie. It’s not their fault, of course - these descriptions come off the site’s own guestbook, which reads like a finely translated and prepared proof-of-concept brochure. In other words, I’m skeptical whether any of these people are real.
The rest of the post includes some speculation about the source of the park’s photos (Hollywood movie sets) and the reason (money laundering, real estate concerns) for the hoax. I suppose we also have to consider the possibility that there’s another Borat project in the works? (Via The Atlantic Wire)
What We Loved This Week: Rory Stewart, New York City and ‘How to Eat at Chipotle’
by World Hum | 11.12.10 | 4:51 PM ET
Eva Holland
I’m in New York City this week, and my visit coincides with a handful of travel-themed readings, including two events for the new anthology, A Moveable Feast. The timing is perfect—I always love the chance to immerse myself in the city’s writing community.
Mapped: Sexual Harassment in Cairo
by Eva Holland | 11.12.10 | 11:31 AM ET
And speaking of street harassment—a group of women’s rights activists in Cairo has created a new site aimed at raising awareness of the problem in their city. The project, HarassMap, uses crowd-sourced emails and text messages to map harassment on the streets—divided into categories like “catcalls,” “touching,” “stalking or following” and “indecent exposure.” The second step? Approaching community leaders in harassment “hotspots” and enlisting their help in combating the problem.
A Mark Twain Pilgrimage
by Eva Holland | 11.11.10 | 4:20 PM ET
Fresh off a trip to the grave of Robert Louis Stevenson, World Hum contributor Catherine Watson visits Mark Twain’s grave in Elmira, New York—and explains how Twain had previously flown under her radar:
America’s most American writer lies in a family plot on a gentle hillside, beside his beloved wife, Livy, surrounded by the graves of their children and her relatives—all under simple, matching headstones.
The name on his marker is the one he was born with, Samuel L. Clemens. The pen name we know him by—which he once claimed to detest—gets second-billing below.
For me, these quiet graves were the end of a quest I hadn’t planned on making. I’d always been a Hemingway fan, with runner-up passions for Robert Louis Stevenson and the Bronte sisters.
But this year—the 100th anniversary of his death—I’ve been immersed in Mark Twain. I’ve been reading almost nothing but his abundant travel writing, with side trips into biographies about him, when I needed a break.
It has felt like living with the man, and his writing is so prolific and varied—and his life so preposterously colorful—that I now wonder how I could have cared about anyone else.
