Travel Blog

Never mind that members of the Los Angeles-based Latin-funk-rock band Ozomatli oppose just about everything the Bush administration stands for. At the behest of the U.S. State Department, they’re touring the Middle East and beyond, from Jordan and Egypt to India and Nepal, as cultural ambassadors. “Our world standing has deteriorated,” saxophonist Ulises Bella told the Los Angeles Times. “I’m totally willing and wanting to give a different image of America than America has given over the last five years.”

Heading…

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Russia to Plant Flag on North Pole Sea Bed

by Michael Yessis | 08.02.07 | 11:40 AM ET

It’s provocative actions like this that we had in mind when we selected the Northwest Passage as one of our Seven Wonders of the Shrinking Planet. According to the AP and other media reports, Russia’s Rossiya icebreaker has reached the North Pole, clearing way for scientists “to dive in two mini-submarines beneath the pole to a depth of more than 13,200 feet, and drop a metal capsule containing the Russian flag on the sea bed.” The goal of the expedition: to solidify a claim to the enormous oil and gas reserves that are believed to be stored beneath the floor of the Arctic Sea. Russia, however, isn’t the only country with interest in controlling the area.

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Update: Starwood Closing Virtual Aloft Hotel in Second Life

by Michael Yessis | 08.02.07 | 11:21 AM ET

That was fast. Last year, Starwood created some buzz for its new Aloft hotel brand by debuting an outpost in the virtual world Second Life. Now, according to the Los Angeles Times, the experiment is over. “There’s not a compelling reason to stay,” said Brian McGuinness, vice president of Aloft, a part of Starwood Hotels & Resorts. McGuinness says the virtual property did serve a purpose—the idea for radios in the showers at real-world Alofts, among other things, came from suggestions by Second Life users.

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New Travel Book: ‘The Year of the Goat’

by Michael Yessis | 08.02.07 | 10:41 AM ET

Full title: “The Year of the Goat: 40,000 Miles and the Quest for the Perfect Cheese”

Authors: Margaret Hathaway, with photographs by Karl Schatz. Hathaway, according to the book’s Web site, “loves any combination of the following: reading, writing, cooking, napping, animal watching, traveling, making puppets, and being outdoors.” She also managed New York’s famed Magnolia Bakery. Schatz is “a photographer, picture editor, web designer, and journalist,” and the former online picture editor for Time Magazine. 

Released: August 1, 2007

Travel genre: Food narrative, cheese-and goat-based

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Suriname, Brand That Nation!

by Jim Benning | 08.01.07 | 3:25 PM ET

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Turin: Discovering the Supernatural in ‘the Detroit of Italy’

by Michael Yessis | 08.01.07 | 1:50 PM ET

Despite its bona fides as the home of Primo Levi and the headquarters of the Slow Food movement—not to mention the 2006 Winter Olympics—that appellation helped keep David Farley away from Turin during his many travels through Italy. Farley, a World Hum contributor, finally made it there recently, and as he recounts in a fine story for the Washington Post, Turin has an “intriguing supernatural side.” He writes: “I quickly learned (from about every local I spoke to) that Turin lies on the axis of white magic (along with Lyon, France, and Prague) and the axis of black magic (which it shares with London and San Francisco), making it one powerful place, if you believe in that stuff.”

Related on World Hum:
* David Farley and Jessie Sholl: A Passion for Prague
* Ben’s Place: Turin, Italy

Related on TravelChannel.com
* Samantha Brown’s Guide to Turin

Photo of Turin, Italy during the 2006 Winter Olympics by bluviolin, via Flickr (Creative Commons).

Recalling Jack London’s ‘The Road’

by Jim Benning | 08.01.07 | 12:08 PM ET

While Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road” celebrates its 50th anniversary this year, Jack London’s road trip book, The Road, celebrates its 100th anniversary—albeit with much less fanfare. Yet, writes Jonah Raskin in a terrific piece in The Nation, “London’s account of his wild, eye-opening journey across the country by railroad, boat, on foot—and even barefoot, when his shoes fell apart—remains a pivotal work in the cultural history of America’s long obsession with road travel, roadside attractions and road books.” Not only did “The Road” inspire Kerouac to become a writer, Raskin notes, but it was “a Beat memoir before the advent of the Beats, and an existentialist narrative before the arrival of existentialism.”

Related on World Hum:
* Video: Steve Allen interviews Jack Kerouac
* Kerouac’s ‘On the Road’ Scroll Enjoying Super Bowl Press

Security Expert: New Passports Vulnerable to Cloning, Sabotage

by Michael Yessis | 08.01.07 | 11:17 AM ET

Lukas Grunwald, “an e-passport consultant to the German parliament” according to a story in Wired, says the new U.S. passports have security flaws that could “allow someone to seize and clone the fingerprint image stored on the biometric e-passport, and to create a specially coded chip that attacks e-passport readers that attempt to scan it.” Grunwald is scheduled to elaborate on his findings at the DefCon conference in Las Vegas later this week. He’s one of many who have sounded alarms about the RFID chips in the new passports.

World Hum’s Most Read: July 2007

by Michael Yessis | 08.01.07 | 8:41 AM ET

Our 10 most popular stories posted last month:
1) Seven Wonders of the Shrinking Planet
2) Ask Rolf: I’m in my Mid-40s. Am I Too Old to Stay in Hostels?
3) Chopsticks Faux Pas and Other Cultural Land Mines in Japan
4) ‘Man Overboard’: A Look at Cruise Ship Disappearances
5) The Death of the Mile-High Club
6) Three Travel Tips: Clever Uses for Your Digital Camera
7) Ask Rolf: Has Long-Term Travel Abroad Hurt My Chances of Landing a Job Back Home?
8) Leo Hickman: In Search of the True Cost of Travel
9) Honeymooning with Jaws (pictured)
10) How To: Eat Weisswurst in Munich

In Los Angeles, Among the Stars

by Jim Benning | 07.31.07 | 2:22 PM ET

After reading that actress Drew Barrymore wanted to become a travel writer, South Florida Sun-Sentinel travel editor Thomas Swick wrote a column suggesting he become her mentor. In fact, he thought he’d offer to do just that during a recent visit to Los Angeles. “But soon after that column appeared, I started to have second thoughts,” he confessed Sunday. “Now that I was in L.A. I wanted to find her and tell her to forget travel writing (no future) and ask if she’d give me acting lessons.”

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Voluntourism: ‘Overpriced Guilt Trips’ or a ‘Real Chance to Save the World’?

by Michael Yessis | 07.31.07 | 11:49 AM ET

That’s how Time frames its recent story on voluntourism, or, as its headline states, “Vacationing like Brangelina.” Catchy, but not truly representative of the well-reported piece on a growing travel niche.

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‘The Simpsons Movie’: From Serbia to Springfield, New Zealand

by Jim Benning | 07.31.07 | 11:22 AM ET

Of course, “The Simpsons” has been a near global phenomenon for years, but the recent release of “The Simpsons Movie” gave the Los Angeles Times a fine excuse to explore just how widespread the animated family’s popularity is—and the resulting challenges producers face. Today’s story notes, among other oddities, the 12-foot-tall glazed donut sculpture built by Fox at the entrance to Springfield, New Zealand, a town so small it doesn’t have a movie theater but that, nevertheless, drew more than 3,000 people last week to “eat hot dogs, doughnuts and French fries and to greet Homer and Bart, who took the train from Christchurch 65 kilometers away for the event.” The show gets dubbed into 15 languages, but the movie has been dubbed into 31 languages, including Dutch and Thai. Adding all the required voice-overs hasn’t been easy.

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Chicago’s ‘Ghetto Bus Tour’: Listening to the ‘Voices of the Voiceless’

by Michael Yessis | 07.31.07 | 8:47 AM ET

Rio. Lagos. Mumbai. Chicago? Indeed, “poverty tourism” has reached the shores of Lake Michigan. For $20, travelers can hop on a yellow school bus with Beauty Turner, a “magnetic 50-year-old with a preacher’s gift for turning a phrase,” according to a story in the Chicago Sun Times about her “Ghetto Bus Tour.” The AP, which also ran a piece on Turner and her tour, reports that it’s her “last gasp in her crusade to tell a different story about Chicago’s notorious housing projects, something other than well-known tales about gang violence so fierce that residents slept in their bathtubs to avoid bullets.”

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Bourdain: ‘What Right Minded Person Would NOT Travel the World if…Given the Chance?’

by Jim Benning | 07.30.07 | 4:20 PM ET

Long before World Hum was acquired by the Travel Channel, we were fans of Anthony Bourdain and his show No Reservations. We wrote about his experience in Beirut and his Graham Greene worldview. We even went so far as to call him a street-thug-poet-chef. Gadling just posted an interview with Bourdain, whose new season starts tonight. “What right minded person would NOT travel the world if and when given the chance?” Bourdain told the site—quite reasonably, we think—via e-mail. “I began to travel seriously as soon as I COULD. It took a successful book—and an indulgent network to allow me the opportunity—and I’m making the most of it.” Right on, Anthony. Let’s hear it for travel and indulgent networks.

Related on TravelChannel.com:
* Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations Wiki

AP Editor: Kids on Planes More Controversial Than Hillary Clinton

by Jim Benning | 07.30.07 | 3:13 PM ET

Earlier this month, AP travel editor Beth Harpaz wrote a column suggesting there might be a growing backlash against traveling families, and specifically, kids on planes. She pointed to recent news reports of a nursing mother ordered off a plane and a mother and boy booted off a flight after the boy repeatedly said, “Bye, bye plane.” Wrote Harpaz: “Sure, I have heard kids babbling, singing songs and playing games on airplanes. Yes, I have heard them complaining or crying when their ears hurt or they are bored. But that’s OK. I don’t mind. A world without children and their sounds is not a world I want to live in.”

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