Travel Blog: News and Briefs
Rambo in Burma: ‘This is a Hellhole Beyond Your Wildest Dreams’
by Eva Holland | 10.09.07 | 3:30 PM ET
An unlikely commentator has emerged on human rights in Burma. Sylvester Stallone, who recently spent time on the Thai-Burmese border while filming a new “Rambo” movie, is speaking out about the isolated regime’s ongoing war with ethnic minorities in outlying areas of the country. (He was there before the military crackdown on protesting Buddhist monks.) “I witnessed the aftermath—survivors with legs cut off and all kinds of land mine injuries, maggot-infested wounds and ears cut off. We saw many elephants with blown off legs,” Stallone said in an AP story. He added that people in his crew were threatened and had warning shots fired at them, while some of the families of his Burmese extras wound up in prison.
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Yahoo! BuzzZen and the Art of Strolling Past Bob Dole While Boarding a Plane
by Jim Benning | 10.09.07 | 1:47 PM ET
I was boarding a flight from San Diego to Washington D.C. last week when I looked up to see former U.S. senator, presidential candidate and erectile dysfunction medication pitchman Bob Dole. He was seated in the last row of first class, rosy-cheeked, with a crisp button-down shirt, watching the hoi polloi shuffle past. He had a vaguely self-satisfied grin on his face that seemed to say, Hey, I may be a fiscal conservative, but I’m willing to cough up something extra for comfort, and boy am I going to be more comfortable than you, with your “complimentary beverage service” and $5 “snack boxes,” during the next five hours.
‘The Darjeeling Limited’: A New Wanderers’ Classic?
by Elisabeth Eaves | 10.09.07 | 11:53 AM ET
Hollywood rarely produces a great travel film. It endlessly mines the road trip for material but doesn’t get at the actual experience of travel, the drama of which, for most of us, involves neither bad guys nor tragic endings, but rather logistical snafus and the occasional small epiphany. So it was with trepidation that I approached director Wes Anderson’s new movie The Darjeeling Limited, about three bumbling brothers on a train trip through India. By the end, though, I wanted to join the protagonists as they ran, yet again, for the train. “The Darjeeling Limited” is a fresh and funny lesson in that most ancient piece of travel wisdom—it’s about the journey, stupid, not the destination.
Cruising as Canada’s Tourism Cure?
by Eva Holland | 10.09.07 | 7:53 AM ET
Photo by Jean & Nathalie via Flickr, (Creative Commons).
Terrorism fears. New and confusing passport requirements. A slumping U.S. dollar and a surging loonie. These are a few of the reasons put forward to explain Canada’s sluggish tourism industry. But, writes Brian Flemming in a Globe and Mail opinion piece, they’re all flimsy excuses that obscure the real issue: “The real reason for the latest crisis is the failure of imagination of those involved in Canadian tourism, in both the private and public sectors. Until this imagination deficit is cured, Canada will continue to be seen worldwide as a boring, boreal tourist destination.”
World Hum Stories Win Lowell Thomas Awards
by Michael Yessis | 10.08.07 | 12:45 PM ET
Congratulations to Catherine Watson and Frank Bures, whose World Hum stories were selected as Lowell Thomas Silver Award winners today in the Society of American Travel Writers’ travel writing competition. Watson, whose latest story for World Hum appears today, won in the best Internet travel article category for Unlocking Beirut. Bures’s How to Use a Squat Toilet was honored in the service-oriented consumer article category.
Extreme Eating in East Berlin With the Stasi
by Michael Yessis | 10.08.07 | 11:11 AM ET
Bless Tom Perrotta for trying to eat local on the road, but after reading his extraordinary tale from a long-ago visit to East Berlin, I can understand why he’s hesitant to do so anymore. The author of “Election” and “Little Children” recalls that after a few beers with some locals, including two uniformed East German soldiers, he was urged to try Hackepeter, a combination of raw beef, chopped onions and raw egg. The food, he writes in the New York Times Magazine, was “quite tasty.” It was what happened afterwards that scared him.
The World Hum Travel Zeitgeist: Cheap Hotels, Cruise Cabins and Chinatown
by Michael Yessis | 10.05.07 | 3:08 PM ET
Travelers craved tips this week. The Zeitgeist is filled with stories about finding the best ways to squeeze the most out of a travel experience.
Most Read Feature
World Hum (posted this week)
Any Tips For Making a Cheap Hotel More Bearable?
Most E-Mailed Travel Story
USA Today (current)
How to Pick the Best Cruise Cabin
Most Read Blog Post
World Hum (posted this week)
Sex and the Stewardess: In Air Travel’s Glamour Days, Men Need Not Have Applied
Most E-Mailed Travel Story
New York Times (current)
When the Best Deals Don’t End in .Com
Most Viewed Travel Story
Los Angeles Times (current)
For Gays in Las Vegas, the Welcome Mat is Out
Most Popular Page Tagged Travel
Del.icio.us (recent)
Top 25 Travel Web Sites
* As selected by Travel+Leisure
Researchers Who Touted Viagra as Jet Lag Fighter Win Ig Nobel Prize
by Michael Yessis | 10.05.07 | 12:06 PM ET
Congrats to the Argentine scientists on their ground-breaking research and the hamsters who were fed the anti-impotence drug in the name of science—and comedy.
Related on World Hum:
* Latest Weapon in the War on Jet Lag: Viagra?
Do Conjoined Infants Need Two Seats?
by Michael Yessis | 10.04.07 | 11:33 AM ET
First Delta said yes. Now it says no, and the 1-year old Bailey twins of Queen Creek, Arizona will soon be traveling with their parents to Baltimore without the need for an extra seat. According to the Arizona Republic, Delta made the change after a reporter from the paper got wind of the story and called the airline.
R.I.P. Tony Ryan, Founder of Ryanair
by Michael Yessis | 10.04.07 | 10:21 AM ET
Where in the World Are You, Eli Ellison?
by World Hum | 10.03.07 | 5:03 PM ET
The subject of our latest nearly up-to-the-minute interview with a traveler somewhere in the world: writer and prolific World Hum commenter Eli Ellison. His response landed in our inbox today.
Where in the world are you?
Are ‘Climate Tourists’ Wreaking Havoc on Fragile Land?
by Joanna Kakissis | 10.03.07 | 10:45 AM ET
Glaciers and sub-zero temperatures have long kept most tourists away from Greenland. But as global warming changes the face of the Arctic—picture glaciers splintering into icebergs and long-buried islands revealed from the melted ice—a new crowd of eco-travelers is heading to Greenland and other previously ice-bound countries to see the ice before it’s all gone, the Wall Street Journal reports. They’re called climate tourists, and they’re stuck in the irony of our environmentally troubled times: “Any trip by train, plane or cruise ship pumps carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and potentially contributes to the warming of the planet,” writes the Journal’s Gautnam Naik.
‘I Wanna Be Sedated’: One Woman’s Solution to Travel with Children
by Eva Holland | 10.02.07 | 8:30 AM ET
I’m not a parent, so I can’t fully appreciate the struggle of traveling with toddlers. But I was fascinated to read Emma Mahony’s story in the Times of London about drugging her son on a long-haul flight. Mahony, the mother of a young boy and infant twins, came across the idea at a social gathering of mothers of twins. She writes: “Before I joined an evening out with mothers of the local Wandsworth twins’ club, I was a virgin to the pharmaceutical names of sedatives. There, after a few glasses of wine, the subject of drugging toddlers to travel came up, and the stories began to flow.”
10 Great Fictional Places, From Cicily, Alaska to Brokeback Mountain
by Jim Benning | 10.01.07 | 12:46 PM ET
In addition to featuring our list of the 10 Greatest Fictional Travelers, Sunday’s San Francisco Chronicle highlighted editors’ 10 favorite fictional places, “not because they are the most beautiful or Utopian (yawn), but because the description or script struck a chord that made us yearn to go there—just as good travel writing and videos should do for real destinations.” They came up with an intriguing mix from books, TV and movies, including Cicily, Alaska (from “Northern Exposure”); Brokeback Mountain (from Annie Proulx’s short story and Ang Lee’s film of the same name); and San Piedro Island, Washington (from the novel and film “Snow Falling on Cedars”). They note that they chose not to include Margaritaville. Why? Because it might have a hazardous pop top or two? For shame.
Related on World Hum:
* 10 Greatest Fictional Travlers
* How Did We Love Jack Kerouac This Week?
* Jimmy Buffett: Celebrating Changes in Latitudes
Mapping ‘Where I’ve Been’: Hope for America’s Lost One-Fifth?
by Julia Ross | 10.01.07 | 10:43 AM ET
Call me an optimist, but after recently discovering the mapping application Where I’ve Been, I see a ray of hope for the one-fifth of Americans who can’t find their country on a world map. The interactive map widget—a big hit on Facebook and launched on MySpace earlier this month—lets users color-code countries under “Where I’ve Been,” “Where I’ve Lived” and “Where I Want To Go,” yielding a travel thumbprint, of sorts, that can be loaded onto Web pages or blogs.
