Travel Blog: News and Briefs
Ready for Takeoff? Please Fasten Your Seat Belt and Pop the Anti-Anxiety Drug of Your Choice.
by Michael Yessis | 09.18.06 | 3:06 PM ET
Make it Xanax or Valium or Ativan. Or just go with a sleep drug such as Sonata or Lunesta or Ambien. Don’t know which one’s best for you? Consult the interesting and highly informative story by Alex Williams in Sunday’s New York Times about the rise in popularity of prescription drugs among fliers in the age of terror alerts and cramped 737s.
“Everybody personally and professionally that I know who is afraid to fly gets their hands on Xanax,” said Jeanne Scala, a psychotherapist in Roxbury, N.J., adding that she has seen an increase in patients and friends talking about taking medication for flying jitters. “They’ll do anything to take the edge off the anxiety of sitting in a plane,” she said. “They just want to zone out, they want to sleep. So they’ll take Ambien, Sonata, even pain medication like Soma, which is for back pain. People use whatever they have—the pharmacy in their house.”
Just how effective are these drugs? I’m not a nervous flier, but I travel often with one, so I can attest to the power of a half an Ativan to calm nerves during turbulence. According to the Times’ story, the drugs alleviate much greater dangers than that.
Williams writes:
A few days after the terror arrests in London last month, a small commuter plane with three tourists was banking off the coast of Costa Rica when a sudden sound, like a muffled explosion, shattered the calm. The rear door of the plane, improperly shut, had blown open.
There was a moment of panic for two of the passengers. But Roger Knox, a graphic designer making a connecting flight before boarding a jetliner home to San Francisco, was not worried. He had just doubled his usual preflight dose of Ativan, a prescription anti-anxiety drug, in anticipation of the ride on the small plane.
Not sure I’d want to take anything that makes me—or my traveling companions—that calm.
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Yahoo! BuzzThe World Hum Travel Zeitgeist: Pool Crashing, Soda Pop and “Pizza Jason”
by Michael Yessis | 09.15.06 | 8:04 AM ET
After last week’s end-of-summer blues and 9/11 remembrances, seems like travelers and armchair travelers are in a happier mood, ready to eat and drink and crash some pools. Where? Looks like the world’s classic destinations are still in style. Here comes your zeitgeist.
Most Viewed Story
World Hum (this week)
* Jason Wilson: One Traveler, Three Dishes Named “Jason”
Most Blogged Travel Story
New York Times (current)
* Los Angeles: Galco’s Soda Pop Store
Destination of the Year
PlanetOut Travel Awards (2006)
* Spain
Best Selling Travel Book
Amazon.com (current)
* Rory Stewart’s The Places in Between
Most Viewed Weblog Post
World Hum (this week)
* The Art of Pool Crashing in Las Vegas
Cover Story From a Glossy Travel Magazine
Conde Nast Traveler (September issue)
* Insider’s Guide to New York City
Favorite Country for Holidays
Conde Nast Traveller UK Reader’s Poll
* Italy
Most Viewed “Travel & Places” Video
YouTube (this week)
* “Welcome to Aggieland”
Most Popular Site Tagged “Travel”
del.icio.us (current)
* TravelPost’s Airport Wireless Internet Access Guide
The Google “I’m Feeling Lucky” Button Travel Zeitgeist Search
* A happier place than the happiest place on earth
Got something that deserves to be included in next week’s World Hum Zeitgeist? .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).
Hotel Bed Jumping HQ
by Michael Yessis | 09.15.06 | 7:30 AM ET
For photos of families jumping on beds, kids jumping on beds, hipsters jumping on beds, people in Las Vegas jumping on beds, cruise ship bed jumps, bed jumping videos and just about all the bed-jumping images one can take, Hotel Bed Jumping HQ is your place.
Let Us Now Praise the Teaching Geography is Fundamental Act
by Ben Keene | 09.14.06 | 5:00 PM ET
“Most Americans probably think Denmark is the capital of Sweden.” Sure, the remark was made somewhat in jest, but Tobias, the Dane I had just met while sitting outside of a pub in Aarhus on a crisp evening last weekend, had a point. As 2006 enters the home stretch, most of us Americans still don’t have a passport. The encouraging news, however, is that a bill currently under consideration by the House Committee on Education and the Workforce and sponsored by Roger Wicker of Mississippi could reduce the frequency of such geography-related jokes in the future. If passed, the Teaching Geography is Fundamental Act would “improve and expand geographic literacy among kindergarten through grade 12 students in the United States” by establishing a geography education grant program. House bill 5519 still has a long way to go before it’s signed into law, but I’m cautiously hopeful. At the very least, we owe it to the Swedes—er, I mean the Danes.
—.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) is the editor of the Oxford Atlas of the World.
Out: Palm Trees. In: Oak Trees.
by Jim Benning | 09.14.06 | 1:36 PM ET
Few features define the Los Angeles landscape more than towering palms. They’re the stuff of postcard images. They earn appreciative nods in just about every L.A. travel story—a quick Google search turned up this gem: “From sun, sand and palm trees, to hiking and biking in the mountains, the Los Angeles area has something for everyone.” But according to city officials, they couldn’t be less environmentally correct or more expensive. As a result, few of the dying trees planted before the 1932 Olympics are being replaced by young palms. A USA Today story about this—and how oaks just might become L.A.‘s new palms—offers a fascinating glimpse into the way economics and changing environmental attitudes can re-shape a landscape.
‘The Power of Travel Must Be a Critical Element in our Public Diplomacy Efforts’
by Michael Yessis | 09.14.06 | 8:17 AM ET
I pulled that quote from the home page of the Discover America Partnership, a new organization of United States travel industry representatives that seeks to boost the levels of visitors to the country and to enlist Americans as “citizen diplomats.” As we wrote earlier this year, the dwindling number of visitors to the U.S.—the industry says the war in Iraq and security restrictions are the main contributors to the decline—has the domestic tourism industry in a panic.
Waiting for Snow in America
by Terry Ward | 09.12.06 | 4:50 PM ET
I know how it feels to be a 6-foot-tall blonde in Tokyo—or, from my first travels to the Middle East, to realize that showing a little kneecap can be tres risquÃ(c)—but I always find it more interesting to read about the culture shock foreigners experience here in America. For Somalian immigrants taking a recent crash course on American culture at a Kenyan refugee camp, one thing awaiting them in their new home proved particularly baffling: snow.
Air Travel and the Cooties
by Terry Ward | 09.12.06 | 2:10 PM ET
It always grosses me out when the person next to me on a plane is wheezing into their handkerchief and sneezing up a storm. Which isn’t to say that I haven’t been that guy on more than one occasion, of course. The sniffling airline passenger seems even less innocuous, however, after a report on a recent study in Tuesday’s Washington Post. Writes Rick Weiss: “The decline in U.S. air travel that followed the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks delayed the onset of that year’s annual flu outbreak and slowed its spread around the country, according to a new analysis that could help health officials decide whether to impose flight restrictions in the event of a global flu pandemic.”
What Would an Honest In-Flight Announcement Sound Like?
by Michael Yessis | 09.12.06 | 7:30 AM ET
The Economist asks that you to “stop your sudoku for a minute and listen” to the flight attendant. “At Veritas Airways, your safety is our first priority,” the announcement goes. “Actually, that is not quite true: if it were, our seats would be rear-facing, like those in military aircraft, since they are safer in the event of an emergency landing. But then hardly anybody would buy our tickets and we would go bust.” Warning: You’ve got to watch a commercial to read the rest of the announcement, which is not for the uneasy flier. Via Jaunted.
The 9/11 Anniversary: World Hum Looks Back
by Michael Yessis | 09.11.06 | 7:00 AM ET
Five years ago, on the morning of the terrorist attacks in New York City, Washington D.C. and the air near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, World Hum was barely four months old. I was living in San Francisco, and Jim was making his way through Southeast Asia. “This isn’t the way you’re supposed to feel when you travel abroad,” Jim wrote in Terror in America: A Letter From Thailand, which we posted the following day. “You’re supposed to be immersed in the exotic, pleasantly buzzed, delightfully lost, happily, if temporarily, in exile. You’re supposed to shuck off your old self, lose track of the news back home and try on an utterly foreign way of life.”
Adios, Savvy Local Concierge. Hello Third-Party Product Pushers.
by Michael Yessis | 09.11.06 | 5:49 AM ET
Yes, it looks like the days of the all-knowing, time-tested concierge are on the wane. On the heels of a story about airlines outsourcing their call centers to India comes this piece in the Wall Street Journal about hotels hiring third-parties to handle their concierge desks. Unaware travelers, unfortunately, seem to be the losers. “These third-party concierges may have an agenda beyond making guests happy—namely, selling enough tickets to turn a profit for their employers,” Hannah Karp writes.
Booking a U.S. Flight? Simply Call India.
by Terry Ward | 09.08.06 | 1:32 PM ET
Last week, I called United Airlines to check my mileage balance in hopes of booking an impromptu award flight. I was calling in the wee hours, when phone traffic was presumably lower, and, as I had hoped, my call was quickly connected from the automated system to a real person. After several attempts at pronouncing both the dates of my proposed departure and the destination city (Toulouse), I realized that I had been connected to an operator in India. To be sure, it’s nothing new these days—American companies across the board are cutting costs by outsourcing to the Subcontinent, and the airlines are no exception.
Running from Migra at a Mexican Park
by Jim Benning | 09.08.06 | 1:32 PM ET
We’ve been chronicling our planet’s slow but steady descent into a vast collection of theme parks, from the theme park economy at Cambodia’s Killing Fields to our news item yesterday about Myanmar’s theme park temple complex. Just when we think things can’t get more absurd comes a Houston Chronicle story about a park in Mexico that simulates the experience of crossing the U.S.-Mexico border illegally, on the run from migra. Visitors to the park north of Mexico City pay $15 to slog through bogs, ride in a truck and hear the sounds of gun shots and the shouts of immigration officers.
The World Hum Travel Zeitgeist
by Michael Yessis | 09.08.06 | 7:02 AM ET
Looks like we’re a little grumpy this week. Our snapshot of what’s on the minds of travelers and armchair travelers reveals we’re concerned about “Ugly Americans,” bad-mannered Chinese and our poor service on American Airlines. What will get us out of this funk? Perhaps 36 hours in Grand Rapids, Michigan? Here’s your zeitgeist.
Most Viewed Weblog Post
World Hum (this week)
* Rethinking the Ugly American
No. 1 World Music Album
iTunes (current)
* The Life Aquatic by Seu George
Most Complained About U.S. Airline
Air Travel Consumer Report (June 2006)
* American Airlines
Most Popular Site Tagged “Travel”
del.icio.us (recent)
* Kayak
Best Selling Travel Book
Amazon.com (current)
* Rory Stewart’s The Places in Between
Most E-Mailed Travel Story
USA Today (current)
* Chinese travelers’ bad manners earn a chilly reception
Most Viewed Dispatch
World Hum (this week)
* Tony Perottet’s The Joy of Steam
Most Viewed “Travel & Places” Video
YouTube (this week)
* U-StampIt Productions: “This is a sample video for three co-hosts and their upcoming show on Italy”
Most Viewed Weblog Country Category
World Hum Weblog (this week)
* China
Most E-Mailed Travel Story
New York Times (current)
* 36 Hours: Grand Rapids, Mich.
The Google “I’m Feeling Lucky” Button Travel Zeitgeist Search
* “What I did on my summer vacation”
And, finally, a tribute to the Crocodile Hunter
* In honor of Steve Irwin and International Khaki Day, we’ll be flying the khaki today. R.I.P. Crocodile Hunter.
Got something that deserves to be included in next week’s World Hum Zeitgeist? .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).
Chinese Government to its Traveling Citizens: No Spitting!
by Michael Yessis | 09.08.06 | 5:52 AM ET
There’s been a lot of coverage about the rise in Chinese tourists. And much of it centers on their bad manners, though the Chinese do have at least one high-profile defender. Now, to help its citizens make a better impression around the world, the Chinese government is producing an etiquette guide for its citizens traveling abroad. Among the tips: don’t spit, don’t litter and don’t speak loudly in public.
