Travel Blog
Hong Kong Marks 10th Anniversary of Return to China
by Michael Yessis | 07.02.07 | 10:43 AM ET
The streets of Hong Kong filled with revelers and protesters yesterday, the 10th anniversary of the date Britain returned Hong Kong to Chinese rule. It was either a great occasion for students to meet and “have a fun day,” according to China’s People’s Daily Online, or, according to Western media reports, a day for pro-democracy advocates to once-again rally for more freedoms. World Hum contributor Daisann McLane put the situation into context in a recent story for Slate.
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Yahoo! BuzzWorld Hum’s Most Read: June 2007
by Michael Yessis | 07.02.07 | 8:00 AM ET
Our 10 most popular stories posted last month:
1) The Woman in the Kuffiya
2) An Island in Costa Rica
3) ‘Glacier Girl’ Set to Complete Flight Begun 65 Years Ago
4) Illuminating ‘Dark Travel’
5) Mexico to (Miss) U.S.A.: Boooooo
6) Ask Rolf: What Items Should I Bring on a Summer Road Trip?
7) We’ll Always Have ‘Charlie’
8) Cullen Thomas: Inside ‘Brother One Cell’
9) Rick Steves, It’s Time For a Tijuana-Off! (pictured)
10) A Western Woman in Saudi Arabia: ‘The Rules Are Different Here’
The World Hum Travel Zeitgeist: What Would Bono Do?
by Michael Yessis | 06.29.07 | 3:02 PM ET
The U2 singer, global activist and fly sunglasses wearer devoted his attention to Africa as guest editor of Vanity Fair. This week travelers, too, are taking great interest in the continent as well as in China, Savannah, “Glacier Girl” and the hot spot of Boise, Idaho. Here’s the Zeitgeist:
Most Viewed Travel Story
Telegraph UK (current)
10 out of 10 for Hong Kong
* The skyline (pictured) is No. 3 on the list.
Most E-Mailed Travel Story
New York Times (current)
36 Hours in Savannah, Ga.
“Hot This Week” Destination
Yahoo! (this week)
Boise, Idaho
Most Viewed Travel Story
Los Angeles Times (current)
Beijing: Forbidden No More
* The flood of stories about China continues.
Most E-Mailed Travel Story
USA Today (current)
Hut-to-Hut Hiking in New England
Most Popular Page Tagged Travel
Del.icio.us (recent)
SeatGuru.com
Most Read Feature
World Hum (this week)
Suffering and Smiling: Vanity Fair Does Africa
* The issue’s best story: Binyavanga Wainaina’s Generation Kenya.
Most Read Weblog Post
World Hum (this week)
‘Glacier Girl’ Set to Complete Flight Begun 65 Years Ago
Tall, Short Travelers at Greater Risk for Thrombosis
by Jim Benning | 06.29.07 | 1:51 PM ET
The World Health Organization announced Friday that long-haul travelers’ risk of developing deep vein thrombosis doubles after flights or ground trips in which they’re seated for four hours or more. At greater risk of developing blood clots, according to a study cited by the WHO, are very tall people with cramped leg room—yes, one more reason to love economy class—very short people whose legs don’t reach the floor, the obese and women who take birth control pills. The chances of developing thrombosis are low: roughly one in 6,000 long-haul travelers.
The Best in ‘Geek’ Travel: From Tokyo to Tatooine
by Michael Yessis | 06.29.07 | 11:43 AM ET
Where does someone who’s, say, willing to spend days in line waiting in line for an iPhone go on his or her travels? Apparently, where there’s a lot of technology and, in one case, nuclear fallout. Among the “geek vacation” spots recommended by Christopher Null in Wired’s July issue: New Zealand (for “The Lord of the Rings” movie locations); the South Pole (“Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station will warm any geek’s heart”); Tokyo’s Akihabara district (the “ultimate red-light district for gadget fetishists”); and Prypyat, Ukraine. Prypyat is “a town whose 47,000 inhabitants had to split within 36 hours of the meltdown” of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. Sounds better suited for Dark Travelers.
Meet Lorraine Artz, Full-Time Cruiser
by Michael Yessis | 06.29.07 | 10:18 AM ET
Lorraine Artz has spent at least 10 months of the year aboard a cruise ship for each of the last 20 years. At last count that’s 4,120 days, or more than 11 years of bouncy seas and buffets. Or, to put it another way, enough time to get back and forth to Mars in a spaceship 11 times. It’s not a lifestyle I’d ever want to live—I’ve cruised once, and though I’d like to try it again sometime, it can wait—but I have to admire such dedication to travel. In an interview with USA Today’s Gene Sloan, she says she doesn’t know how anyone can get bored on a cruise ship.
Has Paris Hilton Tarnished the Hilton Hotel Brand?
by Jim Benning | 06.28.07 | 1:07 PM ET
Last weekend I found myself on the poolside lawn of a Hilton hotel in Carlsbad, California, visiting out-of-town friends staying there. We were watching “Happy Feet” under the stars—their young boy was munching all-you-can-eat popcorn, riveted by the talking penguins on the hotel wall—and I was thinking about Paris Hilton. Her imprisonment was winding down, and I wondered whether her transgressions were having any impact on business at Hilton hotels. Did anyone who’d made a reservation associate the hotel chain with the infamous heiress? Were there any empty spots on the lawn that night because some anti-Paris families had opted instead for a Hyatt?
UN: Half the World to Live in Cities by 2008
by Michael Yessis | 06.28.07 | 12:02 PM ET
The world’s urban population is surging, according to a United Nations Population Fund report released yesterday. By next year, an estimated 3.3 billion people will live in cities. By 2030, the number will rise to 5 billion. George Martin, the report’s author, calls the growth “unstoppable.” According to a New York Times story, the report predicts that the surge in population will likely occur less in mega-cities like Lagos, Nigeria than in “places like Gabarone, Botswana, whose population is projected to rise to 500,000 in 2020 from 18,000 in 1971.” Overall, Asia and Africa will see most of the growth. The “accumulated urban growth of these two regions during the whole span of history will be duplicated in a single generation,” according to the report.
Q&A with Paul Kvinta: Travels With Rory Stewart in Afghanistan
by Michael Yessis | 06.28.07 | 10:40 AM ET
To report his inspired profile of Rory Stewart in the latest issue of National Geographic Adventure, Paul Kvinta ventured where few Western travelers are going these days: Kabul, Afghanistan. Stewart, the author of the books The Prince of the Marshes and The Places in Between, now leads a nongovernmental organization in Kabul called the Turquoise Mountain Foundation, which is working to save the Old City. His exploits as a writer—“Places” is based on Stewart’s solo walk across Afghanistan—and, as Kvinta writes, his “significant clout and talents” have enabled him not only to help focus the world’s attention on Kabul, but put him in a position to affect real change in the country.
Greenland: The ‘World’s Largest and Loneliest Island’
by Michael Yessis | 06.28.07 | 9:14 AM ET
Not for much longer, perhaps. Air Greenland recently launched its first commercial flight from the U.S. to the self-governing Danish territory, which lures most of its relatively minuscule amount of visitors—55,000 last year—from Denmark. One of the few non-Danes to visit this year: USA Today’s Laura Bly, whose terrific story reveals a beautiful—take a look at her slideshow—and heartbreaking place, a land where climate change and social change are moving at a rapid pace.
Where’s the Love for Travel Magazines?
by David Farley | 06.28.07 | 8:05 AM ET
Wanted: Cambodian Noodle Joint in New York
by Julia Ross | 06.27.07 | 3:26 PM ET
If New York is the food capital of the world, why is a good bowl of kuy thiew so hard to come by? That’s the question writer Matthew Fishbane poses in a Salon essay examining America’s reluctance to embrace Cambodian cuisine. Recalling his days slurping noodles at sidewalk stands in Phnom Penh, he desperately searches the city for an authentic taste of fish sauce and lemongrass, but finds only one Cambodian joint on the Lower East Side, and its offerings don’t quite measure up.
Everest Base Camp in Tibet: The Himalayan Bangkok?
by Jim Benning | 06.27.07 | 2:57 PM ET
As we recently noted, the Chinese government is building a 67-mile highway to Everest base camp in Tibet, paving over a rough path, allegedly so runners will have an easier time carrying the Olympic torch to the mountain. That new road, writes Michael Kodas in the New York Times, is going to “turn Mount Everest into the first arena, and profit center, of its Olympic Games.”
British Tabloid Travel Headline of the Day: ‘Riot at 30,000 Feet…Over Reclining Seat’
by Michael Yessis | 06.27.07 | 11:02 AM ET
From The Mirror: “A British Airways pilot was forced to make an emergency landing after a passenger reclined his seat, annoyed the man behind him—and sparked a mid-air riot.” Twenty people were caught up in the brawl on the 747 from Lagos, Nigeria to London’s Heathrow airport, according to Mirror crime correspondent Justin Penrose. The weapons of choice: fists, bottles and belts. Sounds like the passengers would have been better off flying The “Zinedine Zidane 10.” (Via Jaunted.)
Related on World Hum:
* British Tabloid Travel Headline of the Day: ‘Boy, 12, Makes a Mockery of Air Security’
* British Tabloid Travel Headline of the Day: ‘Santa Claus in Travel Ban’
* British Tabloid Travel Headline of the Day: Fattie Ordered Off Ship
Colin Thubron on ‘The Road to Oxiana’
by Jim Benning | 06.27.07 | 8:11 AM ET
Travel writer Colin Thubron celebrates Robert Byron’s classic 1937 travel narrative The Road to Road to Oxiana in Saturday’s Guardian. “Witty, lyrical, erudite, combative, it still strikes the reader with a vivid contemporary immediacy,” he writes. “Composed in the form of a random diary, its deceptively conversational tone was, of course, the result of meticulous craft. Spiky character sketches and farcical conversations (replete with musical notation) are interlaced with news clippings, scholarly digressions and some of the most precise and beautiful architectural descriptions in the language.”
Related on World Hum:
* No. 2: ‘The Road to Oxiana’ by Robert Byron
* Truth in Oxiana
* ‘No Particular Place to Go’: A BBC Radio Celebration of Great Works of British Travel Literature
* No. 23: ‘Behind the Wall’ by Colin Thubron
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