Travel Blog: News and Briefs
David Byrne: ‘Don’t Forget the Motor City’
by Eva Holland | 10.05.10 | 10:13 AM ET
The musician and World Hum contributor recently spent a week in Detroit, and he’s posted a lengthy, thoughtful item about the visit on his blog. Much of it focuses on the origins of Detroit’s infamous urban decay:
This is a city that still has an infrastructure, or some of it, for 2 million people, and now only 800,000 remain. One rides down majestic boulevards with only a few cars on them, past towering (often empty) skyscrapers. A few weeks ago I watched a documentary called Requiem For Detroit by British director Julian Temple, who used to be associated with the Sex Pistols. It’s a great film, available to watch on YouTube, that gives a context and history for the devastation one sees all around here. This process didn’t happen overnight, as with Katrina, but over many many decades. However the devastation is just as profound, and just as much concentrated on the lower echelons of society. Both disasters were man-made.
(Via The Daily Dish)
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Yahoo! BuzzHunter S. Thompson and the Vancouver Sojourn That Could Have Been
by Eva Holland | 10.04.10 | 4:11 PM ET
Fifty two years ago, Hunter S. Thompson applied for a job at the Vancouver Sun, then under the direction of an ambitious new editor. The application letter—apparently written in a “frenzy of drink”—appears in full in this Sun article, and it’s a remarkable read. Here’s Thompson on the state of modern journalism:
As far as I’m concerned, it’s a damned shame that a field as potentially dynamic and vital as journalism should be overrun with dullards, bums, and hacks, hag-ridden with myopia, apathy, and complacence, and generally stuck in a bog of stagnant mediocrity. If this is what you’re trying to get The Sun away from, then I think I’d like to work for you.
For fans of Thompson as a travel writer, the letter closes on a tempting note: “It’s a long way from here to British Columbia, but I think I’d enjoy the trip.” (Via @AllisonCross)
Preppies Are Cocky Travelers
by Michael Yessis | 10.04.10 | 3:03 PM ET
They may not even sit next to you on a plane if you’re wearing sweatpants. I learned this and other tidbits—one of them addressed to “Pookie”—from Vanity Fair’s excerpt of “The Official Preppy Handbook” reboot, True Prep. The travel section begins:
We travel, and we’re rather good at it. Some of us have traveled from a very early age, even if it’s been just back and forth from Princeton and Newport. We may travel to see relatives, to take a semester away, or to go to rehab. We go to Europe because it’s there, and there is so very much to learn from Europeans.
In Europe, we learn how to kiss people on both cheeks, how to do math when we convert the dollar into the euro, and how to make ourselves understood in adverse conditions. We get to practice the little bits of foreign languages we’ve retained from school, and to see that Italian men can carry off the sweater-around-their-shoulders look easily.
The travel section, along with the 15 Prep Travel Commandments, begins about halfway down the page.
China’s Mandatory Vacation Woes
by Eva Holland | 10.04.10 | 12:53 PM ET
Forget about shrinking vacation syndrome. In China, workers are struggling with a complex schedule of mandatory holidays—followed by mandatory make-up days. The New York Times’ Andrew Jacobs explains:
According to a government-mandated holiday schedule that took effect in 2008, workers were given three consecutive days off last week for the Mid-Autumn Festival, but they were required to make up two of those by working the Saturday and Sunday on either end of the holiday.
This give-and-take arrangement is then repeated for the National Day holiday, with employees enjoying seven straight days off—Friday through Oct. 7—except only three of those are official free days. (The four “gifted days” will be made up over the weekends before and after.)
If you have trouble with the math, you are in good company.
Apparently, an internet cheat sheet has been circulating that aims to help. Here’s its breakdown: “One day off, three days on, three days off, six days on, seven days off, two days on, one day off.” Clear as mud, huh?
U.S. Issues Travel Alert for Americans in Europe
by Michael Yessis | 10.04.10 | 11:16 AM ET
The State Department alerted U.S. citizens in Europe yesterday to “the potential for terrorist attacks.” From the alert:
Current information suggests that al-Qa’ida and affiliated organizations continue to plan terrorist attacks. European governments have taken action to guard against a terrorist attack and some have spoken publicly about the heightened threat conditions.
The government suggests U.S. travelers in Europe register their travel plans, but not cancel them. The Under Secretary for Management Patrick F. Kennedy added some context in a teleconference:
We are not, repeat not, advising Americans not to go to Europe. That is not - this is an alert, and we put out an alert, as you said - as I’ve said, and I think you’ve noted, to ensure that American citizens are aware of the possible incidents.
Now, we tell them that - basically, to use common sense if they see unattended packages or they hear loud noises or they see something beginning to happen that they should quickly move away from them. These are common sense precautions that people ought to take - don’t have lots of baggage tags on your luggage that directly identify you as an American, know how to use the pay telephone, know how to contact the American embassy if you need help.
And very importantly, as it says in the Travel Alert that we put out today, register - and you can do that online and the website tells you how to do it - register with the American embassy or consulate in the location you’re visiting so that if you need help, we might be able to find you, and if anyone inquires about your welfare and whereabouts, should there be, tragically, an incident, we would know how to reach out to you.
The vagueness of the alert has baffled and frustrated some travelers.
In follow up stories, however, some news organizations are noting specifics. CNN points to intelligence chatter about “Mumbai-style attacks,” referring to the “commando like attack featuring small units and small firearms” across the Indian city in 2008. ABC reports several European airports are among potential targets.
What We Loved This Week: Calor Norteño, ‘Packing for Mars’ and the Astronomy Picture of the Day
by World Hum | 10.01.10 | 5:07 PM ET
Jim Benning
This Spanish-language cover of the Black Eyed Peas’ “I Gotta Feeling” by a band called Calor Norteño, performed in Tijuana (and recorded, unfortunately, with a shaky camera):
The Life of a Hotel Butler in Macau
by Eva Holland | 10.01.10 | 1:54 PM ET
The Wall Street Journal takes a look at the growing corps of butlers working at top-end hotels in Macau, Hong Kong and mainland China, offering a level of service most of us probably associate with an aristocratic life that’s now decades or centuries in the past. And yes, there are Jeeves references.
Josephine Ive, the English-born hospitality guru behind Australia’s Magnums Butlers, a school for budding Jeeveses, says there has been a significant increase in demand for butlers across China from both private residences and hotels.
“There are now many more millionaires in China than before. [They] are traveling a lot more and are being exposed to different levels of service,” says Ms. Ive, a former chef and lady butler who once cooked for the British royal family. “It’s very hard to put figures on the growing demand for butlers in China, but almost all the top-end hotels are including butler services now,” she says. Many of Magnums’s graduates go on to work for high-end hotels across Asia; corporations and yachts are also a source of demand.
For Sale: Britain’s ‘Most Remote Pub’
by Eva Holland | 10.01.10 | 1:15 PM ET
The Guardian’s Andrew Gilchrist reports that the Old Forge, a pub in Western Scotland reachable only by a long hike or by boat, is in need of new ownership—and that the current owners “won’t be selling to anyone who won’t keep its spirit alive.” Here’s Gilchrist’s take on that spirit:
From hikers to yachties to locals, anyone who has ever been to the Old Forge will tell you it’s a special place. It’s not just the food, from its Skye crab to its haggis lasagne, that’s fantastic; it’s not just the fact that its local ales, such as Red Cuillin, go down a treat after a day out on some of west coast’s finest peaks; nor is it just the ravishing view out across the bay at dusk, to those giant knuckles of rock encircling the still waters. No: it’s the whole party spirit that seems to affect the place as the sun goes down. Drums, guitars and fiddles line the walls - and they are not there for show.
“Your pals are no bad on the guitars,” the barman told me one night, after an evening of everything from Burns to the Proclaimers, from Biffy Clyro to George Michael. “You know, if they keep the place going, we’ll no shut.”
Do the FAA’s ‘Silly Rules’ Accomplish Anything?
by Michael Yessis | 10.01.10 | 12:26 PM ET
Not really, writes Willy Stern in the Weekly Standard. To Stern, the silly rules include mandatory seat belt fastening, the cell phone ban and requiring seats upright for landing.
What’s at work here is society’s unhealthy fear of risk—a problem that is compounded by scaremongering in the press and the prevalence of lawsuits over the most minor injuries and actions—and a reluctance to assume personal responsibility in the face of the ubiquitous Nanny State. But there’s also simple inertia.
“In 21 years of flying, I never once heard a flight attendant complain about enforcing these rules,” says Candace Kolander, now coordinator of air safety for the Association of Flight Attendants. “It’s not an annoyance for us. You hear the bongs and you go through the ritual. It’s ingrained.” Indeed, it is ingrained, and that’s part of the problem. Luke Froeb of Vanderbilt University’s Owen Graduate School of Management explains that institutions like the FAA fall victim to what behavioral economists call a “status quo” bias, where rules—no matter how ridiculous—are almost impossible to change once in place.
Fun fact from the piece: The regulation that requires seats to be upright for takeoff and landing runs 1,382 words, more than double the amount of words in the U.S. Bill of Rights. (Via The Morning News)
BP Dollars Fund Travel Writer Junket to Gulf Coast*
by Jim Benning | 09.30.10 | 2:50 PM ET
Tourism boards often invite travel writers to visit places, all expenses paid, hoping for positive coverage.
The practice has always raised ethical concerns, but a recent junket to the Gulf Coast is drawing more critical attention than usual because the funding originated with BP. The oil company gave $551,000 to the Santa Rosa County Tourist Development Council, and the council used a small portion of it to bring six travel writers to Florida’s Navarre Beach region. According to an article in the Pensacola News Journal (a Los Angeles Times blog has also picked up the story), they were “chauffeured around in a limo” and put up in condominiums “to get the word out that this summer’s BP oil spill is over, and the beach, along with the rest of Santa Rosa County, is open for tourism.”
According to the same article, the writers worked for publications such as Baton Rouge Parents, the Houston Tribune, Southern Hospitality Magazine, PlanetEyeTraveler.com, UPTake.com and JustSayGo.com.
Among the writers on the trip was Ron Stern, who wrote an article for JustSayGo.com raving about his visit.
After checking in, I wasted no time and headed out to check the beach and water conditions. As I suspected, what I found was a beautiful white sand beach (actually comprised of quartz) with no visible tar. I waded out into the emerald-green water and looked for any signs of smelly, slimy oil. Nope, nothing except for some swimmers, seagulls and families enjoying the sunshine, gorgeous water and clean shores. So much for everything I had been hearing and seeing, at least in Navarre.
Kate Wilkes, the executive director of the Santa Rosa County Tourist Development Council, told me she was happy to be able to bring writers to the area. Not every place in the Gulf suffered the same kind of damage from the oil spill, she said. Little oil is to be found on Navarre Beach, yet visits have plummeted and the area has seen bed tax dollars drop 40 percent in the last year. Local businesses are hurting.
“The national news made it sound like we were all covered with oil and dead pelicans,” she said. “My job is to make sure that as long as it’s safe and a good place to take a vacation, that people know about it.”
Was she troubled by the fact that coverage of the trip could also play into BP’s public relations campaign?
“They created this mess and it ruined peoples’ lives,” she said. “Our summer season was crippled. We know from the hurricanes that it can take two or three years to come back from these things. They need to help make people whole.”
She added, “If it helps BP, there won’t be a moment that I’ll say BP has done their job and we’re all square. It could be three years before we can say that.”
She didn’t know whether the writers were aware their trips were funded by BP. Had they asked, she said, they would have been told, adding, “There are certainly no secrets about it.”
Update: 4:12 p.m. ET: I just spoke with Ron Stern, who wrote the JustSayGo.com story.
He said he didn’t know at the time he was on the trip that funding for it had come from BP. Had he known, he would have stayed home: “For perception purposes, I wouldn’t have taken the trip.”
Nevertheless, he’s not sure this trip raises any new questions about junkets and ethics just because it was funded by BP.
“The reality is you could make the same argument about any press trip,” he said. “Do press trips compromise objectivity? Nobody tells me what to think or write and I wrote it as I saw it.”
He said he finds some of the coverage about the trip “extremely offensive” because it suggests the writers were beholden to BP and “in their pocket.” That, he said, wasn’t the case.
Las Vegas Cowers at ‘Death Ray’
by Michael Yessis | 09.30.10 | 11:13 AM ET
It singes hair! It melts plastic cups! It inspires funny leads on blogs!
The “Vdara Death Ray,” as it’s known to some pool employees at the Vdara Hotel & Spa at the Las Vegas CityCenter, is apparently a result of the design of the building. The sun reflects off one of the hotel’s towers in a way that targets a section of the hotel’s pool area with extreme temperatures for short periods of time. From the Las Vegas Review-Journal:
Viewed from above, the Vdara tower resembles a crescent. The crescent’s southern-facing side is concave. There is no tall building farther south to block the sun’s hot afternoon rays, so Vdara receives the full brunt. Its pool lies at the center of this southern-facing wall, on top of a low-rise building that is three stories tall.
How hot is the “Death Ray”? If it can melt plastic cups, as reported, it’s pretty hot. According to the Review-Journal, plastic cups melt at around 160 degrees.
Anthony Bourdain: Graphic Novelist
by Eva Holland | 09.29.10 | 1:53 PM ET
The author, “No Reservations” host and World Hum contributor has a new project in the works: “Get Gyro,” a graphic novel for DC Comics. Bourdain describes it as an “ultra-violent slaughter-fest” and as “‘Fistful of Dollars’ meets ‘Eat Drink Man Woman’.” Color me intrigued. (Via The Book Bench)
Expat Pleasures: Jimmy Buffett, Live in Paris
by Eva Holland | 09.29.10 | 12:56 PM ET
Jim Manzi is living in Paris, where a recent Buffett concert has him reflecting on the expat experience:
One of the many great things about living here is the fun of having typically American experiences completely out-of-context. The annual late-September Buffett concert in Paris has become, like the seven-a-sides in Hong Kong, a ritual gathering point for expats for thousands of miles around. This created a hilarious Anglophone bubble in the middle of Paris. About the only French I heard came from Jimmy at the mic (who, having lived here years ago, still seems to have pretty passable French).
A surprising number of his songs reference the city. In fact, he closed the concert with a great acoustic version of He Went to Paris, which is a song that Bob Dylan cited as one of his favorite tunes by one of his favorite songwriters. Though not many of us here are living a Lost Generation literary life, it still felt very bonding.
I can relate. One of my favorite weekends, during the year I lived in England, was spent preparing a makeshift Thanksgiving dinner and tossing a football around the backyard with other North American students—funny, since pigskin and pumpkin pie are no part of my life at home, however “typical” they are supposed to be. As Manzi points out, context is everything when you’re living abroad.
The Strangest Travel Quotes of All Time
by Michael Yessis | 09.29.10 | 12:03 PM ET
“Travel ... six letters flowing like melted French Brie across two syllables.”—Cathy Salter, Sept. 27, 2010, Columbia Daily Tribune
The famous Twain quote and the Saint Augustine quote and so many other famous travel quotes—they’re just so earnest, aren’t they? After reading Cathy’s words of wisdom above it occurred to me that we could use a little more levity, a little more strangeness, a little more melted French brie in our famous travel quotes.
Inspired by her words, I humbly submit a few suggestions for the canon:
- Travel ... in Spanish, it’s five letters that melt like jamon across three syllables.
- Travel is like a Peruvian flute band busking in your soul.
- Travel sticks with you like gum in your hair until you get it out with peanut butter.
- Travel opens the heart, and the wallet.
Got your own strange travel quote? Share it below, or join the #faketravelquotes conversation on Twitter.
Why Expats and Migrants Don’t Truly Eat Like Locals
by Michael Yessis | 09.29.10 | 11:30 AM ET
A study suggests loyalty to the foods, flavors and brands of our youth is quite strong. From the Economist:
But 16% of people studied were migrants: they had grown up in one state and moved to another. They had the same options, in terms of what was on offer and at what price, as everyone else in their adopted home. But although they consumed more local favourites than someone in their native state would have, they bought fewer local hits (and more of the favourites from back home) than a longtime resident. And this gap between the purchases of migrants and that of the locally born was quite stubborn: although it faded the longer a person lived in their new state, it still took 20 years to halve in magnitude. Even 50 years on, it was still large enough to show up in the data.
(Via The Morning News)
