Travel Blog: News and Briefs
Rockers for Immigrant Hotel Workers’ Rights
by Jim Benning | 10.03.06 | 6:52 PM ET
It’s a rock-‘n’-roll-travel day here at World Hum. We’ve already reported on Dave Navarro and the sexiness of travel and Rush drummer Neil Peart’s travel-writing talk, and now comes word that Audioslave guitarist Tom Morello is down with the plight of Los Angeles immigrant hotel workers—so down, in fact, that he was one of 400 protesters arrested near LAX last week. Morello and his band are no strangers to the world of rock-travel news: Last year, Audioslave made history as the first American rock band to play Cuba in 26 years. News of Morello’s arrest was reported on the Web site of his lefty non-profit, Axis of Justice, which also offers music recommendations—French rocker Manu Chao, who sings in Spanish, Arabic, Galician and Portuguese, among other languages, makes the list.
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Yahoo! BuzzJoe Sharkey on “The Most Harrowing 30 Minutes of My Life”
by Jim Benning | 10.03.06 | 2:36 PM ET
Incredibly, New York Times reporter Joe Sharkey was aboard the corporate jet that collided with a Boeing 737 over the Amazon on Friday. The plane he was on landed safely, but the 737 crashed, killing all 155 people aboard. In today’s New York Times, Sharkey recalls the collision and the events that ensued, including an emergency landing in the middle of the rainforest. It’s a riveting account—the kind of frightening tale few people survive to tell. “With the window shade drawn, I was relaxing in my leather seat aboard a $25 million corporate jet that was flying 37,000 feet above the vast Amazon rainforest,” he writes near the top of the story. “The 7 of us on board the 13-passenger jet were keeping to ourselves. Without warning, I felt a terrific jolt and heard a loud bang, followed by an eerie silence, save for the hum of the engines. And then the three words I will never forget.”
Note to Man Questioned at Sea-Tac for Speaking Tamil: Do Not Stop Speaking Tamil at the Airport
by Michael Yessis | 10.03.06 | 7:15 AM ET
According to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, a 32-year-old man was overheard at Sea-Tac Airport speaking Tamil. An off-duty airline employee alerted the flight crew, who alerted airport officials. The passenger, who isn’t named in the story, was eventually released and put on a later flight. Before he departed, he told the Port of Seattle authorities that he “would not speak in a foreign language on his cell phone at an airport in the future.” To which we say, please do continue to speak Tamil at the airport. Hearing people speak other languages is one of the joys of travel, and hearing Tamil in particular is one of the inspirations for this Web site.
World Hum’s Most Read: September 2006
by Michael Yessis | 10.01.06 | 9:20 PM ET
Our 10 most popular stories posted last month:
1) Oprah Takes a Road Trip, Pumps Gas For First Time Since 1983
2) How to Use a Squat Toilet
3) Lost City of the Silk Road
4) “Getting Stoned With Savages”: The Adventures of Flip-Flop Man in Vanuatu and Fiji
5) The Art of Pool Crashing in Las Vegas
6) Happy Anniversary “On the Road”
7) Stephen Colbert’s New York City Travel Tips for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
8) Are Myanmar’s Ruins the Next Disney World?
9) Booking a U.S. Flight? Simply Call India.
10) The Winding Road to Joshua Tree
The Onion on the New Air-Travel Guidelines
by Michael Yessis | 09.30.06 | 6:26 PM ET
The Onion’s man-on-the-street interviewees this week weigh in on the new guidelines for liquids on planes. Says systems analyst Ed Johansen, “By giving passengers renewed access to these gels, lotions, and shampoos, we run the risk of creating a very dangerous and highly evasive super-slippery terrorist able to avoid all manners of restraint.”
The World Hum Travel Zeitgeist: Beppe, Borat, Bungees and Bunnies
by Michael Yessis | 09.29.06 | 8:03 AM ET
Beppe Severgnini returns to the top, and so does the Playboy Club. Travelers and armchair travelers have an eye on both this week as the Zeitgeist ventures to Oaxaca, New Zealand, Italy, Colorado and the 52nd floor of the Palms in Las Vegas.
Best Selling Travel Book
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La Bella Figura: A Field Guide to the Italian Mind by Beppe Severgnini
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Where the Moon Stood Still, and the Ancients Watched (Chimney Rock, Colorado)
* The current most e-mailed story overall at the New York Times, however, is our kind of travel story: Kazakhs Shrug at ‘Borat’ While the State Fumes
Bangkok’s “Golden Land” Airport Opens
by Jim Benning | 09.28.06 | 2:26 PM ET
Despite the recent coup, Southeast Asia’s largest airport opened today, the highly anticipated $4 billion “mega airport” 20 miles from central Bangkok called Suvarnabhumi, or “Golden Land.” “First conceived in 1960,” the AP reports, “the high-profile project transformed a swamp where villagers once caught cobras for a living into a fertile ground for politicians and their cronies to profit from shady deals, allegedly ranging from land speculation to bribery and kickbacks from the $3.8 billion project.” Okay, so it got off to a shaky start. But since then, 99 monks and Brahmin priests have apologized to the spirits for any harm done. And now, travelers are raving about the place. According to the International Herald Tribune, officials hope the new airport, designed to move 45 million passengers a year, will “surpass Hong Kong as a regional air hub.” An express train to downtown Bangkok is scheduled to open next year.
Man Detained by TSA for Writing “Kip Hawley is an Idiot” on His Clear Plastic Carry-On Bag
by Michael Yessis | 09.28.06 | 7:26 AM ET
Who is Kip Hawley? Just the director of the Transportation Security Administration. The alleged incident in Milwaukee, posted by a traveler on a flyertalk forum, has a lot of people pointing out that free speech doesn’t end at the security gate. Or at least it shouldn’t. If the flyertalk forum with the post is down—I got a database error this morning—check out Wonkette’s post that includes the original post.
Lonely Planet’s ‘Tales from Nowhere’
by Jim Benning | 09.27.06 | 2:43 PM ET
Lonely Planet’s latest literary travel anthology, Tales from Nowhere, just hit bookstores. Edited by Don George, it features dozens of stories from contributors such as Pico Iyer, Simon Winchester, Jeffrey Tayler, Lisa Alpine and Rolf Potts. The stories, the back cover states, “all celebrate and illuminate one simple truth: if we embark on each adventure with an open heart and an open mind, travel will take us places we never planned to go, and enrich and englighten us in ways we never otherwise would have known.” So where is Nowhere? “Nowhere is a setting, a situation and a state of mind. It’s not on any map, but you know it when you’ve been there.” I’m delighted to have a story in the book, too. My Nowhere was a Sizzler restaurant, of all places, in southern Thailand.
Travel Writers Pick Their Favorite Airports
by Michael Yessis | 09.27.06 | 2:09 PM ET
USA Today’s Jayne Clark asks a handful of travel writers about their favorite airports in today’s edition. Among them: The Naked Tourist author Lawrence Osborne, who notes about his favorite, Wamena, Irian Jaya, on the island of New Guinea, “It’s the anti-airport. It has almost no staff. There is no glass in the windows, just naked men in pig fat jumping up and down.” Hmmm. Could be worth a trip just to see that.
The Pope on Travel
by Jim Benning | 09.27.06 | 1:51 PM ET
It’s World Tourism Day, and to celebrate, Pope Benedict XVI told those gathered at St. Peter’s Square, including tourists, “I hope that tourism will increasingly promote dialogue and respect between cultures, thereby becoming an open door to peace and harmonious cohabitation.” Now that’s one papal statement we can get behind.
Ben Bradlee Cruises “the Slot”
by Michael Yessis | 09.27.06 | 7:20 AM ET
This week’s New Yorker features a piece I’ve been looking forward to since March: Legendary newspaper editor Ben Bradlee’s story about taking a cruise in the waters of the Pacific where he served on a United States Navy destroyer in World War II. It’s a great read, with Bradlee weaving war remembrance in with travels.
Travelers’ Tales’ ‘The World is a Kitchen’
by Jim Benning | 09.26.06 | 6:20 PM ET
Food, cooking and travel are, thankfully, inextricably linked. They’re also great fodder for books. Bill Buford’s Heat is among the latest to explore the subjects in a book-length memoir. Now comes The World is a Kitchen, an intriguing book from Travelers’ Tales that combines stories about learning to cook in countries around the globe with recipes and related resources. Writes Michele Anna Jordan in the preface: “Cooking has become the universal language, an international tongue that allows us to communicate, to resolve every cultural challenge, be it language, custom or belief, and even overcome personal inhibitions like shyness and insecurity. We take a bite, smile, and raise our eyes to see the same response in our companions. May I have some more, please? And you know what comes next: How did you make it? We lick each other’s fingers and ask for the recipe.” The book is the latest in a series of Travelers’ Tales titles exploring travel and food.
Flight Attendant to Gay Couple: Stop the Touching and Kissing or We’ll Divert this Plane
by Michael Yessis | 09.26.06 | 7:31 AM ET
The New Yorker’s Lauren Collins has the sad tale of boyfriends who were singled out by a flight attendant for kissing— “not kiss kiss, just mwah,” said George Tsikhiseli, one of the kissers—and told to behave or the pilot would divert the American Airlines Paris to New York flight. As Andrew Sullivan wrote, “I think American Airlines just lost a lot of potential customers.”
Airplanes and Climate Change: The Guardian’s Week-Long Debate
by Michael Yessis | 09.26.06 | 6:47 AM ET
The Guardian’s Travelog is currently hosting a week of posts about air travel and its effect on climate. The opening post comes from Tom Morton, managing director of Climate Care. “If all air passengers had to offset five times more than they emitted on their flight, few would argue against air travel on the grounds of climate change impact,” he writes. “Somewhere between making an equal reduction and making a reduction five times that emitted by your flight, there is a point at which environmental indifference to flying evaporates. It is just a matter of debate as to where that point is.”
* Related on World Hum: Branson Pledges Airline and Train Profits to Renewable Energy Research
