Travel Blog: News and Briefs
Following Tocqueville
by Jim Benning | 04.06.05 | 5:01 PM ET
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Yahoo! BuzzTravel Humor on the Tube
by Jim Benning | 03.30.05 | 4:25 PM ET
David Letterman’s Top Ten list Tuesday featured the “Top Ten Ways Airlines Are Cutting Back.” Number 10? “Pilots have to pay for their inflight cocktails.” Rim shot. The rest of the list can be read here. Jay Leno had a good one-liner in a segment on company slogans. Regarding Greyhound’s “Leave the Driving to Us,” he quipped, “That’s certainly better than their first idea, ‘The Drifter’s Choice.’” Having just spent a couple of days on a Greyhound bus en route to Juarez, Mexico, sitting in front of a guy who was traveling with only a plastic grocery bag and who was yelling at nobody in particular about dolphins in the desert, I can confirm that drifters do have a soft spot for the Greyhound.
The Allure of the Atlanta
by Michael Yessis | 03.15.05 | 7:46 PM ET
In the heart of one of Bangkok’s most notorious sex tourism districts lies the Atlanta Hotel. It’s “revered as the Taj Mahal of budget hotels,” writes Terry Ward in Sunday’s Los Angeles Times. Ward, who also wrote the current feature story on World Hum’s home page, recently spent five nights in Bangkok, and she tracked down the hotel’s elusive owner, Charles Henn. Henn promotes the Atlanta as a haven from the sex trade, a civilized oasis whose existence relies primarily on word passed from traveler to traveler. “The kind of person that would want to know about the Atlanta, well, would be in a minority anyway,” he tells Ward, “It appeals to a certain kind of traveler, and that’s just as it should be.”
Kenya vs. Tanzania: Trading Insults and Allegations for Tourist Dollars
by Jim Benning | 03.11.05 | 8:53 PM ET
Around the World Update: Fossett Returns, and So Does Bly
by Michael Yessis | 03.04.05 | 9:04 PM ET
At 1:50 p.m. CST yesterday afternoon, Steve Fossett landed in Salina, Kansas, to complete the first-ever solo flight around the world without refueling. It took him 67 hours, 2 minutes and 38 seconds to complete the trip. That’s more than five fewer days than it took USA Today writer Laura Bly to travel around the world by commercial aircraft. She landed at 7:15 p.m. EST Monday evening to finish an eight-day trip inspired by the 100th anniversary of “Around the World in 80 Days” author Jules Verne’s death. So how did the adventurers celebrate their accomplishments? Fossett basked in a champagne shower from his patron, Virgin Airlines chief Richard Branson. Bly, who chronicled her entire journey on the USA Today Web site, settled in with her husband for a glass of red wine and a Trader Joe’s barbecue chicken pizza.
Fossett Enters the Homestretch
by Michael Yessis | 03.02.05 | 9:08 PM ET
Adventurer Steve Fossett, who is currently attempting to make the first nonstop solo airplane flight around the world without refueling, reached Hawaii late Wednesday night. According to the latest Reuters report, if all goes according to plan Fossett will touch down in Salina, Kansas, Thursday afternoon. The 60-year-old millionaire former markets trader is flying an experimental plane powered by a single jet engine.
R.I.P. Uli Dickerson
by Jim Benning | 02.25.05 | 11:39 PM ET
It’s not often that a newspaper’s obituaries page takes notice of the death of a flight attendant, but Uli Derickson had one extraordinary journey aboard a TWA flight that sealed her place in history. In 1985, Derickson was among the crew flying from Athens to Rome on Flight 847 when two Lebanese men hijacked the plane, leading all on board on a terror-filled journey across the Middle East. Through it all, Derickson worked to protect the passengers, shouting “Enough” until the hijackers stopped beating one man, and finding ways to protect the identity of Jewish passengers. Astonishingly, according to Jon Thurber’s excellent obituary in the Los Angeles Times, Derickson was targeted for her efforts long after the hijacking. “She returned to her New Jersey home with her husband, Russell, a retired TWA pilot, and her son, Matthew,” the article states. “But unfounded reports, including some in the mainstream news media, that she had given the hijackers names of Jewish passengers on the flight brought threats from extremist groups. When the truth about her efforts to shield Jewish passengers was verified, she received threats from others. The family relocated to Arizona.” In the late-1980s, Lindsay Wagner played Derickson in a TV movie about the ordeal, “The Taking of Flight 847: The Uli Derickson Story.” Derickson had been fighting cancer. She died last Friday at the age of 60.
The Art of Tourism
by Jim Benning | 02.24.05 | 12:47 AM ET
New York Times Travel: Too Hip for its Own Good?
by Jim Benning | 02.24.05 | 12:40 AM ET
Thomas Swick thinks so. In his latest column, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel Travel editor writes that the newest incarnation of the Times Travel section, which was redesigned several months ago, puts a premium on hip attitude at the expense of insightful coverage. That, he writes, “is disheartening to people who want to learn about the world.” He continues: “[T]he ideal of hip is inimical to the idea of travel. The trendy are conformist, superficial, hostile to outsiders; travelers are, by avocation, independent, philosophical, curious about others. Travel is a flight beyond borders, formulas, preconceived notions. Hip is a landlocked country with a strict visa policy and a small population of fashionable peasants.” Swick has been critical of travel writing in the Times and other U.S. papers in the past. A couple of years ago, he wrote a terrific essay on the topic for the Columbia Journalism Review. Finally, regarding the redesigned Travel section, an update: We noted when the new look debuted that editors failed to include a travel essay, which had been a long-running feature. We hoped they hadn’t ditched the essay for good. We’re happy to report that Sunday’s Travel section did, in fact, feature an essay. Perhaps travel essays are hip again?
R.I.P Hunter S. Thompson, Gonzo Traveler
by Jim Benning | 02.22.05 | 12:49 AM ET
The counterculture legend and self-proclaimed “gonzo” journalist who died by his own hand Sunday is being remembered for all sorts of contributions. I’ve yet to hear anyone describe him as a travel writer, but Thompson often wrote about travel in his unique style.
Wally World, Here They Come!
by Michael Yessis | 02.19.05 | 12:53 AM ET
National Lampoon—“a company synonymous with the most disastrous vacations since the Shackleton expedition,” according to the San Francisco Chronicle—has started a travel division. The brains behind the movies “Vacation” and “Animal House” have an obvious demographic in mind for the all-inclusive packages: college students. The Bolton Common’s Fran Golden has the details.
O’Hanlon Gets His Close-Up
by Michael Yessis | 02.17.05 | 1:21 AM ET
Bravo, Jon Stewart! Monday night on The Daily Show he went where few other television hosts have gone before: he had a travel writer as a guest. Redmond O’Hanlon promoted his new book, Trawler, with tales of adventure on the high seas as well as an ancient sea creature that he presented to Stewart—in a jar, wrapped in a pair of boxer shorts. O’Hanlon, it seems, knows how to make an impression. In a profile in Sunday’s San Francisco Chronicle, John Flinn called his travel books “among the most hilarious, most harrowing, most learned and most deliciously twisted ever written.” Flinn continued: “He’s not nearly as well known as he ought to be, but those who do what he does put him at the very top of the field. When I asked two writers I admire, Tim Cahill and Bill Bryson, which writers they admire, they both cited O’Hanlon without hesitation. Bryson calls him ‘probably the finest writer of travel books in the English language, and certainly the most daring.’ He also calls him ‘wonderfully odd.’” Anyone who saw him on The Daily Show will probably agree.
Travel Blog Roundup
by Michael Yessis | 02.17.05 | 1:20 AM ET
Travel + Leisure has a roundup of its favorite travel blogs in its March issue. BootsnAll, Fodor’s, TravelBlog and World Hum are among the sites included.
Where’s Travel?
by Jim Benning | 02.08.05 | 5:20 PM ET
The print media have been hyping a new literary awards show in the works called The Quills, which will be televised by NBC this fall in a “star-studded ceremony.” According to organizers, the so-called “reading public” will vote for their favorite books in 15 categories, including mystery, romance, science, health, sports and business. Some hope the awards will bring a sense of glamour and populism to the books business that other literary awards have failed to accomplish. Great, I thought as I read about this. Perhaps travel lit might even capture the spotlight for a brief moment. Unfortunately, travel is nowhere to be seen on the list of categories. I suppose there’s a chance a travel narrative could be honored in the “biography/memoir” category, but I doubt it. On the popularity scale, a book like Paul Theroux’s “Dark Star Safari” can’t compete against Bill Clinton’s “My Life,” or any one of the other countless celebrity memoirs or biographies published each year. Of course, it’s not the end of the world. But it is a missed opportunity.
Shanghai: ‘The Playground of World Architecture’
by Jim Benning | 02.07.05 | 3:25 PM ET
Perhaps no other city on the planet offers such a dazzling display of futuristic architectural styles than Shanghai. The February issue of Harper’s features a terrific analysis of that architecture. Writes Mark Kingwell: “Shanghai is a fantasyland of architectural grandiosity where any drawing, no matter how insane or adolescent, may come to life almost instantly, without the citizens’ committees, building restrictions, and expensive labor that hamper architectural geniuses everywhere.” Alas, the story is not available online.
