Travel Blog: News and Briefs
From Ipanema to Copacabana: What Rio de Janeiro’s Beaches Say About Brazil
by Michael Yessis | 02.07.07 | 8:17 AM ET
A lot, it seems. “Brazilians like to say that the beach is their country’s ‘most democratic space,’” writes Larry Rohter in a terrific story in the New York Times. “But some bodies—and some beaches—are more equal than others.” Rohter focuses on Ipanema and Copacabana, revealing what groups frequent each of the 12 postos (lifeguard stations) that span Rio’s most elite beaches and how Brazil’s cultural and social trends are often born on the sand. “When, in the early 1970s, for example, the actress Leila Diniz wore a skimpy bikini to Posto 9 while gloriously pregnant and unmarried, traditionalists were horrified,” Rohter writes. “But feminists point to the episode as a galvanizing moment in their efforts to gain equal rights.”
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Yahoo! Buzz‘Significant Steps’ Taken in Quest for Morocco-Spain Tunnel
by Michael Yessis | 02.06.07 | 9:00 AM ET
Photo of Strait of Gibraltar by karynsig via flickr (Creative Commons).
Building a tunnel between Morocco and Spain has been on the “official drawing boards” of the countries’ governments for 25 years, according to the Washington Post’s Craig Whitlock, and perhaps on the minds of adventurers—and seasick ferry travelers—for much longer. Now, after rounds of geological tests and a set of blueprints developed by a Swiss firm, engineers say a tunnel underneath the Mediterranean Sea could materialize by 2025. “Government officials on both sides of the Mediterranean say the tunnel would give the economies of southern Europe and North Africa an enormous boost,” writes Whitlock. “But the project is being driven at least as much by intangible benefits: the prospect of uniting two continents that culturally and socially remain a world apart despite their geographic proximity.”
Music Cruises: Still a Trend
by Michael Yessis | 02.06.07 | 8:42 AM ET
In 2005, as we noted, the San Francisco Chronicle called music cruises a trend, asking, “[H]ow long will it be before a Holland America ship hosts Burning Man?” In 2006, we pointed out that Rolling Stone called the Jam Cruise with Les Claypool, Bela Fleck and Umphrey’s McGee a hot ticket. Now, in 2007, AP reports—imagine this—a rise in floating festivals. However, they’re still not a major force in the cruise industry. “It’s still on a small scale because chartering a ship takes a lot of moxie and money,” Jay Shapiro, owner of Five Star Travel in Fort Lauderdale and a member of the Cruise Lines International Association, told the AP. “You have to have a big name to get top dollar for tickets and draw people.”
Inside the UK’s Best Chip Shops With Badly Drawn Boy
by Michael Yessis | 02.06.07 | 8:05 AM ET
I’ve got a soft spot for Badly Drawn Boy, aka Damon Gough, and it’s not only because my wife and I saw him perform in San Francisco during our first date. Badly Drawn Boy, like the subject of our latest Q-and-A, Franz Ferdinand’s Alex Kapranos, is a musician with a healthy appreciation for food. But here’s the twist: Where Kapranos wrote a book about his gastronomic adventures while on tour, this month Badly Drawn Boy will be take his act on the road to some chip shops around the UK. How can you not love that?
Nominations Open for ‘The Travvies’
by Michael Yessis | 02.05.07 | 11:21 PM ET
Upgrade: Travel Better launched its travel blog awards today. Readers can nominate blogs for the Travvies through next Monday, with voting to begin nine days later.
Mexican Migrant Theme Park: Homage or Crass Attraction?
by Jim Benning | 02.05.07 | 9:07 AM ET
Last September, we noted the bizarre theme park of sorts outside Mexico City that aims to recreate the experience of crossing the border illegally, complete with a long hike, fake migra and sirens. The New York Times took a crack at the story Sunday, sending a writer along for the experience. Since operators began offering the four-hour nighttime hikes (or caminatas) a few years ago, about 3,000 tourists, mostly Mexican, have paid about $18 a pop for the experience, writes Patrick O’Gilfoil Healy. “The idea of tourists’ aping illegal immigrants can seem crass, like Marie Antoinette playing peasant on the grounds of Versailles,” he writes. “But the guides describe the caminata as an homage to the path immigrants have beaten across the border.”
Problems at Bangkok’s New Airport
by Jim Benning | 02.05.07 | 8:07 AM ET
Perhaps it was all too good to be true. Bangkok’s $4 billion “Golden Land” international airport opened in September to great fanfare. Monks and Brahmin priests even went so far as to apologize to the spirits for any harm done in the airport’s planning and construction. But several months later, all’s not well. Problems ranging from “cracked taxiways to leaky roofs to inadequate bathrooms to luggage snafus” plague the airport, reports the San Francisco Chronicle’s Travelers’ Checks column. It gets worse: “The national airport authority has found some 61 issues at Suvarnabhumi needing repair or redesign that will cost an estimated $45 million and six months to fix.” Meanwhile, the airport can continue operating. Great.
‘On the Road in America’: Can a Reality Travel Show Improve the Image of the U.S.?
by Michael Yessis | 02.02.07 | 1:16 PM ET
Is the U.S. Treating Tourists Like Terrorists?
by Jim Benning | 02.01.07 | 10:54 AM ET
Whenever I fly home from a trip overseas and am herded into immigration and customs lines at the airport, usually by stone-faced officers hollering instructions at the top of their lungs, I’m always struck by just how cold and unwelcoming the feds make the arrival process. I don’t expect to be greeted with chocolates by security officials, but I just don’t encounter the same level of hostility when I arrive in other countries. I always wonder what’s going through the minds of travelers coming to the U.S. for the first time. According to a CNN report, it turns out that many potential visitors may not be coming to the U.S. at all because of just such issues here and at U.S. offices abroad. Overseas travel to the U.S. has dropped 17 percent since 9/11. Travel industry leaders blame the government and are calling for changes. “International travelers will tell you that they find that they are treated like criminals, that they are barked at by U.S. officials,” said Geoffrey Freeman of the Discover America Partnership. “They simply feel unwelcome and that is leading them to choose other countries.”
World Hum’s Most Read: January 2007
by Michael Yessis | 02.01.07 | 8:20 AM ET
Our 10 most popular stories posted last month:
1) Paulina Porizkova: A Model Traveler
2) How Do I Land a Travel-Related Job?
3) For Sale: World’s Smallest Island Nation
4) The World Hum Travel Zeitgeist: Cheap Flights and Covered Bridges
5) Travel and the Legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr.
6) ‘Has the Romance Gone Out of Travel?’
7) Tom Bissell in Estonia: ‘It Feels, In a Word, Sane’
8) ‘The Soccer People’: Heartbreak and Triumph in Clarkston, Georgia
9) ‘The Ice Cave’: Journeys Into the Wild
10) National Geographic Adventure’s Top 2007 Destinations
Egypt: We Don’t Need Your Vote to be Among the New Seven Wonders
by Michael Yessis | 01.31.07 | 8:38 AM ET
While Petra and other candidates for the New Seven Wonders of the World status are working hard to solicit votes, officials in Egypt are fuming about the Pyramids of Giza even being nominated. Why should the pyramids have to compete in a contest to become a new wonder when they’re the last remaining wonder from the original seven?
Record Travel in 2006
by Jim Benning | 01.30.07 | 7:01 PM ET
More people traveled internationally in 2006 than in any previous year, according to the World Tourism Organization. The numbers were up 4.5 percent from 2005. Perhaps most interestingly, the AP notes, “Africa posted the biggest growth rate in 2006 at 8.1 percent, benefiting from travelers’ fears of terrorism elsewhere in the world.” Go Africa.
Bryan Curtis: ‘My Dinner With Zagat’
by Michael Yessis | 01.30.07 | 8:48 AM ET
Slate’s ‘Middlebrow’ columnist Bryan Curtis spent an evening out in New York City with Tim and Nina Zagat, which he describes as “a bit like sailing the coast of South America with Ferdinand Magellan.” The Zagats are the publishers of some of the most influential dining guides in the United States, and Curtis’s excursion provides much insight into their powers. Their books are everywhere, and when you’re a Zagat, an open table in a crowded restaurant and fawning fellow diners seem the norm.
Update: Japan’s ‘Sushi Police’
by Michael Yessis | 01.30.07 | 8:46 AM ET
I supported the idea of a seal of approval for “pure Japanese” food when I heard about it last year. Now, as the Japanese government moves closer to taking action on the idea, Mariko Sanchanta has another take. “Japanese food has spread in popularity abroad in great part thanks to restaurants owned by enterprising individuals—many of whom are Chinese and Korean in the US—who saw a business opportunity and successfully exploited it,” Sanchanta writes in the Financial Times. “Sure, kimchi and sashimi probably don’t mix. But instead of separating the authentic from the inauthentic, the government should hand out thank you notes to everyone who tries to promote Japanese food—especially the genius who invented the California roll.”
Doing Hard Time at the Ritz
by Jim Benning | 01.29.07 | 12:16 PM ET
Paying your debt to society has never sounded so appealing. A man sentenced to home detention in Southern California is doing his time at the Ritz-Carlton in Marina del Rey, where amenities include Los Angeles’s only waterfront pool and hot tub and Jer-ne Restaurant + Bar, which Los Angeles Magazine raved has the city’s “Best Fusion Cuisine.” The federal prosecutor for the case is nonplussed, observing, “When someone is sentenced to electronic monitoring, normally the presumption is he’s not going to be holed up in a four-star hotel.” Actually, by AAA’s ratings system, the hotel is a five-diamond. In fact, it’s the only waterfront five-diamond hotel in L.A.
