Travel Blog: News and Briefs
Coming Soon to a TSA Security Checkpoint Near You: Advertisements
by Michael Yessis | 01.08.07 | 6:11 AM ET
It’s odd, but it sort of makes sense: It’s hard to think of a more captive audience these days than travelers trying to get through airport security.
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Yahoo! BuzzJeff Biggers on NPR
by Jim Benning | 01.05.07 | 1:52 PM ET
World Hum contributor Jeff Biggers appears on NPR’s Latino USA this weekend to discuss his latest book, In the Sierra Madre. In fact, Maria Hinojosa’s interview with Biggers—or “Pancho,” as the Tarahumara called him—is already available online.
The World Hum Travel Zeitgeist: Cheap Flights and Covered Bridges
by Michael Yessis | 01.05.07 | 9:08 AM ET
It’s a new year, and travelers are still showing love for some old standbys—Las Vegas, cheap travel and a good Irish beer. But they’re also looking for some underwater adventure. Here’s your first Zeitgeist of 2007:
Most Viewed Weblog Category
World Hum (this week)
Las Vegas
Most E-Mailed Travel Story
New York Times (current)
No Place for a Zamboni: A Hockey Rink Where Players Sink
* Yes, this story is about the glorious sport of underwater hockey. It is, apparently, big in Britain.
Most Popular Page Tagged Travel
Del.icio.us (current)
How to Get the Cheapest Flight Every Single Time
Most Dugg Travel Podcast
Digg (current)
The Traveling Morans
Most Viewed Weblog Post
World Hum (this week)
Three Travel Books Crack Entertainment Weekly’s Nonfiction Books of the Year List
Best Selling Travel Book
Amazon.com (current)
The Places in Between by Rory Stewart
Top Travel and Adventure Audiobook
iTunes (current)
Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer
Busiest Airport in the U.S.
FAA (2006)
Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport
* Total flights logged in Atlanta: 976,307. Chicago O’Hare International Airport finished a close second with 958,643 flights.
Most Popular Travel Story
Netscape (current)
Covered Bridges Take You From Present to Past
‘Where the Hell is Matt?’: The Commentary Track
by Michael Yessis | 01.05.07 | 9:03 AM ET
Matt Harding of the ubiquitous around-the-world dance video has posted on YouTube a lecture he gave to students at Champlain College in Burlington, Vermont about the making of the video and travel in general. Click continue reading to watch:
War Tourism Comes to El Salvador
by Jim Benning | 01.04.07 | 11:54 AM ET
Nearly every country has to have a little war tourism, right? The U.S. has Gettysburg. Cambodia has the Killing Fields. Now El Salvador wants in on the action. According to the AP, the country is making the most of its 12-year civil war, which ended in 1992 and left 75,000 dead. “For a fee, former guerrillas will take visitors on tours of former battlefields or mountain hideouts, while museums display war memorabilia,” a story reports. Among the top destinations is Perquin, a mountain town where FMLN guerillas once established their headquarters. Visitors can stroll the “Museum of the Revolution,” which features uniforms and what remains of Soviet weapons. El Salvador is apparently the first Central American country to build a tourism business around its civil war history. What’s the hold up, Nicaragua?
New Rallying Cry in Boston: The Japanese Are Coming!
by Michael Yessis | 01.04.07 | 8:18 AM ET
Los Angeles leveraged former Dodgers’ pitcher Kazuhisa Ishii‘s popularity to help lure Japanese tourists to town. Seattle and New York rely on the Mariners’ Ichiro Suzuki and the Yankees’ Hideki Matsui respectively for the same thing. And now Boston is looking to cash in on the latest Japanese baseball superstar to come play in the U.S., Red Sox pitcher Daisuke Matsuzaka. William MacDougall, CEO of Tourism Massachusetts, “expects Massachusetts this year will win at least 20,000 extra visitors from Japan, worth an additional $75 million in economic impact,” according to a USA Today story by Barbara De Lollis. “The new Japan connection could even help the city win non-stop air service between Boston and Japan.” After his performance in last year’s World Baseball Classic, we knew Matsuzaka was good. We just didn’t know he was winning non-stop international air service good. Impressive.
Driving Afghanistan’s Ring Road
by Jim Benning | 01.03.07 | 5:12 PM ET
Further evidence that some of the most compelling newspaper travel stories don’t appear in the travel section: Paul Watson’s front page account in the Los Angeles Times last week of his seven-day drive along Afghanistan’s Ring Road. “On the way,” he writes, “we managed to avoid a Taliban ambush, a potential kidnapper or highway robber, a suicide bomber and a gunman who fired close enough to take off one of our heads.”
National Geographic Adventure’s Top 2007 Destinations
by Jim Benning | 01.03.07 | 1:54 PM ET
Where to go this year? The world is wide open, but some countries seem particularly good choices now. For the December 2006/January 2007 issue of National Geographic Adventure, I worked with editors on a list of six countries offering compelling reasons to visit soon. Among them: China (now’s a great time to check out the new train to Lhasa); Morocco (for a major splurge before a visit to the High Atlas Mountains, spend a night at the historic, Winston Churchill-approved La Mamounia hotel in Marrakech, due to reopen this year after a renovation); and Brazil (TAM airlines is now flying nonstop between Miami and Manaus, making a visit to the Amazon easier than ever). To further stoke some wanderlust and inspire, the magazine celebrates the feats of a number of travelers, including the “new Magellans,” Colin Angus and Julie Wafael, who recently circumnavigated the globe by walking, cycling, skiing and, yes, rowing.
In Defense of Caribbean Tourism
by Michael Yessis | 01.03.07 | 8:20 AM ET
Few regions of the world are as dependent on tourism as the Caribbean. “Nonetheless, the literature on Caribbean tourism is surprisingly critical,” writes Orlando Patterson in an interesting opinion column in the New York Times. “Foreign anthropologists complain about the ‘tourist gaze’ and the distortion of local cultures; local chauvinists declaim that ‘tourism is whorism.’” Patterson, a professor of sociology at Harvard, calls these charges “largely puerile.” Tourism, he suggests, “enhances residents’ awareness of indigenous cultures, and it supports large numbers of entertainers.”
The Year in World Hum: A Look Back at 2006
by Michael Yessis | 12.29.06 | 7:45 AM ET
A well-traveled and growing community of readers. Loads of engaging travel stories. A much-appreciated pat on the back. It’s been another terrific year at World Hum, and 2007 promises to bring more great dispatches from around the globe. For our last weblog post of the year, though, we’re taking a look back. Here are the most popular posts—weblogs, stories, interviews, anything—for each month of 2006. Happy reading, and Happy New Year!
January: The Art of Writing a Story About Walking Across Andorra
February: Truth in Oxiana
March: Conan O’Brien: ‘Hasselhoff is Big in Germany, But I’m the King of Finland’
April: Freedom of the Seas: The New Biggest Cruise Ship
May: Report: Passenger on Virgin Atlantic Flight Had Ebola Virus
June: World Hum’s Top 30 Travel Books
July: Anthony Bourdain in Beirut
August: Around the Globe with No Clothes On
September: Oprah Takes a Road Trip, Pumps Gas For First Time Since 1983
October: Oprah Winfrey, Amanda Congdon and the New Golden Age of the Cross-Country Road Trip
November: USA Today’s Seven New Wonders of the World
December: Pico Iyer: On Travel and Travel Writing
Photo: TheAlieness GiselaGiardino’s flickr photostream. Creative commons.
R.I.P. James Brown
by Jim Benning | 12.26.06 | 5:14 PM ET
In honor of the Godfather of Soul, who died yesterday, we ventured deep into the World Hum archives and dusted off Anthem Soul, Rolf Potts’s dispatch about his encounter with “Sex Machine,” “Popcorn” and other Brown songs in a Syrian hotel. In its own modest, travel-centered way, we submit, it’s a fine little superbad tribute to Brown.
The World Hum Travel Zeitgeist: Paris and ‘The Places in Between’
by Michael Yessis | 12.22.06 | 8:02 AM ET
It’s a week of classics—and perhaps emerging classics—here at the Zeitgeist. This week, we travelers are showing our love for Paris, Irish pubs, the Hawaiian islands, the wonders of the world and Rory Stewart’s walk across war-torn Afghanistan.
Most E-Mailed Travel Story
New York Times (current)
Paris: 36 Hours
Most Viewed Weblog Post
World Hum (this week)
Belgium has a ‘War of the Worlds’ Moment
Most Popular Travel Podcast
PodcastAlley (December)
808Talk: Hawaii’s Premier Podcast
Best Selling Travel Book
Amazon.com (current)
The Places in Between by Rory Stewart
* The New York Times selected it as one of the top-10 books of 2006, and it’s back on top after Bill Bryson’s nine-week reign.
Most Popular Page Tagged Travel
Del.icio.us (current)
SeatGuru
Most Viewed Story
World Hum (this week)
How to Down a Pint in a Real Irish Pub
Top Travel and Adventure Audiobook
iTunes (current)
Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer
Most Dugg “Travel” Story
Digg (current)
The World’s Top 100 Wonders: How Many Have You Seen?
Most Popular Travel Story
Netscape (current)
How to Complain Effectively
* Solid advice for holiday travelers.
Most Read Travel Story
USA Today (current)
Storm Snarls Holiday Travel
The Google “I’m Feeling Lucky” Button Travel Zeitgeist Search
And for those who, like me, will be driving for the holidays this weekend, here’s how to survive a blizzard. Safe travels and happy holidays.
Got something for next week’s World Hum Travel Zeitgeist? .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).
2006: The Year of Mapping Dangerously
by Ben Keene | 12.21.06 | 1:00 PM ET
‘Tis the season to look back on the year that has passed and make lists, and those of us in the maps business are no less backward looking than others. Borders shift, populations grow or shrink, and place names are altered. The pace of change can be mind-numbing. So I thought I’d compile my own short—and consequently incomplete—list of some of the most noteworthy geographical developments of the last 12 months.
Nation Branding: What the World Can Learn From Spain, India and New Zealand
by Michael Yessis | 12.21.06 | 7:30 AM ET
They’re “universally acknowledged to be the crown jewels in the recent annals of nation branding,” writes John Cook in the January 2007 issue of Travel + Leisure, the latest publication to address one of our favorite topics: how countries present themselves in an effort to lure travelers. Cook recounts success stories—Spain’s transformation from a “sleepy low-rent vacation spot for the British and German working classes to a hip, cutting-edge cultural destination” and New Zealand’s capitalization on its starring role in the Lord of the Rings trilogy—but, more interestingly, also examines countries with branding problems. Among them: Serbia, Ecuador and Kazakhstan.
Carmelo Anthony and the Perils of In-Flight Publishing
by Jim Benning | 12.20.06 | 2:33 PM ET
The December issue of Northwest Airlines’ in-flight magazine features a cover story on Denver Nuggets star Carmelo Anthony. Yes, the same Carmelo Anthony who was just suspended for taking part in a brawl during a game over the weekend. As a result, the airline has decided to pull the magazine off its planes and replace it with the January issue. As the airline said in a statement, “Northwest does not want to appear to condone in any way the behavior of some of the players during Saturday’s game, including Mr. Anthony.” We at World Hum salute the airline and would like show our solidarity: We won’t be publishing any travel stories by Mr. Anthony or any of the other players involved in the brawl. Sorry, Mr. Anthony, but you’ll have to send any travel stories you may or may not have written elsewhere.
