Travel Blog
I Want My Book TV: June 10-11, 2006
by Jim Benning | 06.09.06 | 1:30 PM ET
Lots of good stuff on C-SPAN2’s Book TV this weekend: South Florida Sun-Sentinel travel editor Thomas Swick discusses his book, “A Way to See the World” (broadcast at least once before); Joseph Stiglitz, Thomas Friedman and Ted Koppel debate globalization; and John Tayman talks up his book, “The Colony: The Harrowing True Story of the Exiles of Molokai.”
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Yahoo! BuzzNational Passport Month: It’s About Time, No?
by Jim Benning | 06.09.06 | 1:01 PM ET
Last summer, we wrote about Lonely Planet’s effort to promote international travel by urging Congress to declare September National Passport Month. A resolution was written that apparently had bipartisan support. Then September 2005 came and went and nothing happened. Well, this week—finally - the House of Representatives passed the resolution without a single “no” vote. (It’s hard to imagine opposition to such a thing.) Apparently it doesn’t require Senate approval, so now all it needs is President Bush’s signature. To ensure that happens by September of this year, Lonely Planet plans to launch a letter-writing campaign, among other efforts. What will come of it all, we don’t know, but we think it’s a grand gesture. Less than 23 percent of Americans hold a passport. Any effort to get passports into more Americans’ hands, and inspire a few more trips abroad, is one worth supporting, isn’t it?
Yazd, Iran
by Ben Keene | 06.09.06 | 12:03 PM ET
Coordinates: 31 53 N 54 22 E
Elevation: 4,035 feet (1,230 m)
For a country often referred to religiously in monolithic terms, modern Iran possesses subtle gradations on its map of sacred geography that complicate our understanding of this Islamic Republic. The city of Yazd, located on a plateau between a salt desert to the north and a sand desert in the south, is one such example of this. Just west of Isfahan in the center of the country, Yazd is known for its fine silk and was visited by Marco Polo during his travels across Asia in the 13th century. This ancient city also claims the largest population of Zoroastrians in Iran and is an important site of worship for practitioners of a faith that influenced Judaism, Christianity and Islam.
—.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) is the editor of the Oxford Atlas of the World.
Video: Colbert on His Hostile Hostel Experience
by Michael Yessis | 06.09.06 | 7:16 AM ET
Comedy Central has posted the video of Stephen Colbert’s “Don’t Go to Europe to Find Yourself” rant we mentioned earlier this week. It’s part of his “Stephen’s Sound Advice: Graduation” clip, and the travel bit starts with about two minutes remaining. Thanks to Dan in Austin for the heads up.
Welcome to “Tehrangeles”
by Michael Yessis | 06.08.06 | 12:28 PM ET
The biggest community of Iranians outside of Iran lives in Los Angeles, or “Tehrangeles” as some residents call it. As tensions between the governments of U.S. and Iran continue to rise over, among other things, the development of nuclear technology, Tehrangeles has become more and more important in the eyes of both countries. The Council on Foreign Relations, for instance, says the CIA relies on Tehrangeles to “pick up valuable intelligence” from residents who travel often between the two countries. Today on NPR’s Morning Edition, Renée Montagne takes a less wonky look at the community, which is centered along Westwood Boulevard, just south of the UCLA campus. “Pop into any shop and you’ll hear Farsi,” she says. “The business signs are all in Persian.”
Just Because a Village is Small Doesn’t Mean it Can’t Be Global
by Michael Yessis | 06.08.06 | 7:25 AM ET
John Ward Anderson has a good story in today’s Washington Post about Aguaviva, Spain, a small village with a dwindling population that has sought to recover by recruiting residents from around the world. “The woman who runs the city hall cafe in this remote Spanish hill community is a Romanian. Down the road, Italians and Argentines make electric cables in a small factory. The local school is bustling with foreign-born children, who make up more than a third of the students,” he writes. “While much of Western Europe shuns immigrants, this town seeks them. They are seen as key to reversing a decades-long drop in population that has brought slow death to so many other Spanish villages as residents fled to the cities for a better life.”
Colbert to College Graduates: “Don’t Go to Europe to Find Yourself”
by Michael Yessis | 06.07.06 | 6:15 AM ET
Last night on The Colbert Report, Stephen Colbert offered some “Sound Advice for College Graduates” based, it would appear, on a painful personal travel experience. If the clip ends up on YouTube, we’ll post it. (Update: It’s been posted temporarily on the Comedy Central Web site) Until then, here are Colbert’s words of travel wisdom in their entirety: “Don’t go to Europe to find yourself. Who told you were over there anyway? You’re far more likely to leave yourself there along with some electronic equipment that gets stolen at a youth hostel in Paris on your last night there.”
Podcasts with Tim Cahill and Simon Winchester
by Jim Benning | 06.06.06 | 2:03 PM ET
Travelers’ Tales has added podcasts to the offerings on its Web site, debuting interviews by executive editor Larry Habegger with travel writing heavyweights Simon Winchester and Tim Cahill. I agree with Jen Leo’s assessment: If you can get past some stiff introductory remarks, there’s some good material inside. I enjoyed hearing Simon Winchester discuss the awful review that his recent book, “A Crack in the Edge of the World,” earned in the New York Times. “Let it ruin your breakfast,” he said, “but don’t let it spoil your lunch.”
Signspotting’s Five Finalists
by Jim Benning | 06.06.06 | 1:16 PM ET
Voting is open for Signspotting’s Sign of the Year award. Among the five finalists is Josh Kaplan’s shot of this sign along the road to Ngorongoro Crater in Tanzania. Who knew invisibility was such a problem in Tanzania? The person with the winning photo gets a ‘round-the-world plane ticket.
Traveler’s Literary Companion Series Adds Titles on Mexico and Japan
by Frank Bures | 06.06.06 | 12:32 PM ET
When asked how he prepares to travel to a country, Ryszard Kapuscinski said he reads the literature. Of course, not all of us have time to read an entire canon before every journey. Fortunately, Whereabouts Press has made sampling literature from some countries much easier with its Traveler’s Literary Companion series. Building on the strength of previous editions on Italy, Cuba, Vietnam and other places, the publisher has just added collections on Mexico and Japan. While the guides aren’t comprehensive (Haruki Murakami is notably absent from “Japan,” for example) they do offer a good way to get a feel for a place. They’re also a fine introduction to these countries’ writers, from greats like Carlos Fuentes and Kawabata Yasunari, to lesser known authors like Hino Keizo and Bruno Estanol.
MacLean: ‘Travellers Have Poisoned Tradition and Helped to Pervert the Unique Into the Mundane’
by Michael Yessis | 06.06.06 | 12:31 PM ET
Are we that bad? Rory MacLean, author of the forthcoming book “Magic Bus: On The Hippie Trail From Istanbul To India,” believes so. He takes several shots at modern travelers in an essay in the Guardian, charging not only that they damage cultures like a “fast-mutating virus,” but that they generally seek adventure through physical challenges instead of the spiritual quests embarked upon by earlier generations of travelers. MacLean bookends his piece with some words from one of those travelers, Desmond O’Flattery, a longtime expat in Kathmandu and generally bitter man who laments that his adopted city is full of travelers with Lonely Planet guidebooks. “I mean, at their age we wanted to get into each other and society, not to live in a melt-down world,” he tells MacLean. “We didn’t have guidebooks, we didn’t even know the name of the next country.”
Inside Japan’s “Healing Industry”
by Michael Yessis | 06.06.06 | 12:40 AM ET
Anthony Faiola has an interesting piece in today’s Washington Post about the rise of Japan’s “healing industry,” one of the country’s fastest growing economic segments. “Luxury day spas and high-end massage clinics have grown 11-fold over the past four years into a $1 billion business, according to Yumiko Arimoto, an analyst at Mitsubishi UFJ,” he writes. “The spas offer treatments such as aromatherapy and Hawaiian Lomi Lomi massages, some costing $300 or more per hour.” It’s a little bit California, Faiola writes, and a whole lot Japan.
Eastern Europeans in Margaritaville
by Jim Benning | 06.05.06 | 2:35 PM ET
In all our top-30-books-posting fervor in recent weeks, we fell behind in our newspaper reading and failed to note a few worthy articles, including Thomas Swick’s piece in the South Florida Sun-Sentinel about exploring the Eastern European community in Key West, of all places. “Ever since my first visit to Key West in 1991, when I brushed up on my Polish with my Pier House chambermaid, I have been intrigued by the city’s Eastern European workforce,” he writes. “I like the seeming incongruity of Slavic conchs, the cloud-covered contracted to a subtropical isle, the children of socialism adrift in Margaritaville.” Swick is the author of, among other books, Unquiet Days: At Home in Poland.
Changing Times in Bangalore, India
by Jim Benning | 06.05.06 | 1:15 PM ET
The Los Angeles Times’ Vani Rangachar recently traveled to Bangalore, which is (somewhat famously) transforming as a result of a high-tech boon. She discovered a city unlike the one she’d visited as a child, when milk was sold, still warm, by a man milking a water buffalo in front of her grandmother’s house. “Those water buffaloes had long since vanished from Bangalore’s streets,” she writes in a compelling story. “High-rise apartment buildings tower where there were farm fields. In a city that once had no grocery stores, there is now a Food World, with milk and vegetables in refrigerated cases, freezers full of prepared foods and shelves stocked with Skippy. And my cousins do more than visit temples when they vacation. They relax at beach resorts, go white-water rafting or rent houseboats on a mountain lake.”
John Flinn on World Cup Diplomacy
by Jim Benning | 06.05.06 | 12:57 PM ET
In Sunday’s paper, the San Francisco Chronicle editor recalls his own travels in Europe during World Cups past and offers hard-won wisdom for Americans heading abroad during the competition this summer. “Inevitably, you’ll be chided for America’s lack of passion for the game,” he writes. “It’s best to just shake your head sadly at this inexplicable moral failing. It’s wise not to point out, as I once made the mistake of doing, that if the United States was as bonkers for soccer as the rest of the world, there’s a pretty good chance we’d come to dominate the sport. The rest of the world, I said, should be grateful that most Americans find the game stultifyingly dull. This line of reasoning didn’t play as well among Europeans as I’d hoped.” We’re shocked.
