Travel Blog
Rolf Potts on “The Tourist Who Influenced the Terrorists”
by Michael Yessis | 10.04.06 | 7:12 AM ET
The new issue of The Believer features a story by World Hum contributor Rolf Potts about Sayyid Qutb, whose Islamist writings influenced Ayman al-Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden and their followers. Potts looks at Qutb, who spent part of the late 1940s studying in Colorado, through the lens of travel. “Considering that Qutb’s rejection of Western values was informed by such a willfully cartoonish misinterpretation of American culture,” Potts writes on his weblog, “it’s natural to wonder how his beliefs might have been tempered had he been a more engaged traveler.” Unfortunately, only a piece of the Believer story is available online.
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Yahoo! BuzzHow to Survive a Plane Crash
by Michael Yessis | 10.04.06 | 7:10 AM ET
From a BBC primer: “Most people believe that if they’re in a plane crash their time is up. In fact the truth is surprisingly different. In the US alone, between 1983 and 2000, there were 568 plane crashes. Out of the collective 53,487 people onboard, 51,207 survived.” And those figures don’t reflect this amazing story.
Rockers for Immigrant Hotel Workers’ Rights
by Jim Benning | 10.03.06 | 6:52 PM ET
It’s a rock-‘n’-roll-travel day here at World Hum. We’ve already reported on Dave Navarro and the sexiness of travel and Rush drummer Neil Peart’s travel-writing talk, and now comes word that Audioslave guitarist Tom Morello is down with the plight of Los Angeles immigrant hotel workers—so down, in fact, that he was one of 400 protesters arrested near LAX last week. Morello and his band are no strangers to the world of rock-travel news: Last year, Audioslave made history as the first American rock band to play Cuba in 26 years. News of Morello’s arrest was reported on the Web site of his lefty non-profit, Axis of Justice, which also offers music recommendations—French rocker Manu Chao, who sings in Spanish, Arabic, Galician and Portuguese, among other languages, makes the list.
Culture Shock and the Meaning of Pain
by Jim Benning | 10.03.06 | 6:20 PM ET
If you see a motorist on the Florida highways leaning on the horn like a driver in Ho Chi Minh City, or searching for shops curiously advertising “pain,” or trying to bribe a state trooper as though he were a Balinese cop, look closely. It’s probably World Hum contributing editor Terry Ward. On Sunday, in her South Florida Sun-Sentinel travel column, she explored the culture shock she experiences upon returning home from trips abroad. Ward has some amusing anecdotes. “Last year, the day after I returned from a summer in France, I found myself eagerly turning into the parking lot of a chiropractor’s office after spotting a large sign labeled ‘Pain?’ Yeah, I wanted some pain. I could almost smell the pain au chocolat baking, flaking off in sweet papery layers. My brain, still stuck overseas, had misread the sign as the French word for ‘bread.’” That’s rough, Terry. As a fellow pain-lover, I feel your pain.
Joe Sharkey on “The Most Harrowing 30 Minutes of My Life”
by Jim Benning | 10.03.06 | 2:36 PM ET
Incredibly, New York Times reporter Joe Sharkey was aboard the corporate jet that collided with a Boeing 737 over the Amazon on Friday. The plane he was on landed safely, but the 737 crashed, killing all 155 people aboard. In today’s New York Times, Sharkey recalls the collision and the events that ensued, including an emergency landing in the middle of the rainforest. It’s a riveting account—the kind of frightening tale few people survive to tell. “With the window shade drawn, I was relaxing in my leather seat aboard a $25 million corporate jet that was flying 37,000 feet above the vast Amazon rainforest,” he writes near the top of the story. “The 7 of us on board the 13-passenger jet were keeping to ourselves. Without warning, I felt a terrific jolt and heard a loud bang, followed by an eerie silence, save for the hum of the engines. And then the three words I will never forget.”
Dave Navarro and the Sexiness of Travel
by Michael Yessis | 10.03.06 | 7:29 AM ET
Note to Man Questioned at Sea-Tac for Speaking Tamil: Do Not Stop Speaking Tamil at the Airport
by Michael Yessis | 10.03.06 | 7:15 AM ET
According to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, a 32-year-old man was overheard at Sea-Tac Airport speaking Tamil. An off-duty airline employee alerted the flight crew, who alerted airport officials. The passenger, who isn’t named in the story, was eventually released and put on a later flight. Before he departed, he told the Port of Seattle authorities that he “would not speak in a foreign language on his cell phone at an airport in the future.” To which we say, please do continue to speak Tamil at the airport. Hearing people speak other languages is one of the joys of travel, and hearing Tamil in particular is one of the inspirations for this Web site.
Video: Neil Peart on “Roadshow”
by Michael Yessis | 10.03.06 | 6:29 AM ET
Neil Peart, drummer for the Canadian trio Rush and author of the current best-selling travel book on Amazon, Roadshow, consented to a rare television interview broadcast this week on that hard-hitting literary channel, VH1 Classic. The interview mostly covered his book and his travels, and has already been YouTubed. See it below.
Happy Birthday Jan Morris
by Jim Benning | 10.02.06 | 3:44 PM ET
The prolific author, who has written often about her travels, turns 80 today. The Guardian pays tribute: “[S]he is one of the great pioneers of modern travel writing, displaying quirkiness, cultural curiosity and evocation in her essays and books.” Morris’s Trieste and the Meaning of Nowhere made World Hum’s list of the all-time Top 30 Travel Books.
Profiling Lonely Planet’s Tony Wheeler
by Jim Benning | 10.02.06 | 3:11 PM ET
Linda Watanabe McFerrin profiles the guidebook publisher in Sunday’s San Francisco Chronicle. One interesting tidbit in the story I don’t recall coming across before: Lonely Planet guidebooks, she writes, “have been used to plan rebellions and successfully depose dictators. According to Reuters correspondent Aidan Hartley (in his book ‘The Zanzibar Chest’), Ethiopian rebels informed advance troops with a map of Addis Ababa torn hastily from his copy of Lonely Planet’s ‘Africa on a Shoestring’ when they overthrew the Mengistu dictatorship.” Perhaps there’s another guidebook to be done: “African Coups on a Shoestring.”
Related on World Hum: When You’ve Launched a Guidebook Company Celebrating Bohemian Charm, Should You Fly Business Class?
Dancing for Tourism on Bali
by Jim Benning | 10.02.06 | 2:51 PM ET
Reports Reuters via CNN.com: “About 5,000 people danced in a trance outside a Balinese temple on Friday in a colossal show aimed at reviving the Indonesian island’s tourism industry, still feeling the pinch of last year’s deadly bombings.”
Seven Travel Stories to Tell Before You Die
by Jim Benning | 10.02.06 | 6:43 AM ET
I’ve never been too enamored of the 1,000 Places to See Before You Die approach to travel—or at least the approach that the title of the book suggests. Among other things, it emphasizes quantity over quality. But the San Francisco Chronicle’s John Flinn has offered a modest alternative checklist that I can get behind: seven travel stories you should be able to tell before you die. It puts the emphasis where it belongs, I think: on experiences and stories. Flinn just concluded a series of columns exploring the seven stories he believes are essential for every traveler, and he recounted his own version of each. “Go ahead and visit every one of those ‘1000 Places to See Before You Die,’ as catalogued in the best-selling book,” he wrote. “But spare your friends the description of the Taj Mahal. Yes, it’s beautiful. And, yes, of course, the Great Barrier Reef is awesome. Everybody knows this. And we don’t need to hear about the seventh hole at Pebble Beach. What we want to hear are stories.”
Frequent Flier Uses Miles to Reserve Virgin Galactic Space Flight
by Michael Yessis | 10.02.06 | 6:38 AM ET
The cost for Londoner Alan Watts, according to an AP story: 2 million miles. Watts will be among the first 1,000 people on Virgin Galactic’s space flights, which are scheduled to begin in 2009.
Kelefa Sanneh on “The Hold Steady States of America”
by Michael Yessis | 10.02.06 | 3:02 AM ET
We mentioned last month that the title of The Hold Steady’s new album—“Boys and Girls in America”—comes from Jack Kerouac’s On the Road. The album comes out this week, and today New York Times music writer Kelefa Sanneh profiled the gruff, beery band from a great angle: He looked at the band as travelers and prowlers of America’s “shady neighborhoods.” Online, an interactive map of The Hold Steady’s America features clips from songs about cities across the country, including Chicago, Minneapolis and Ybor City in Tampa, Florida.
World Hum’s Most Read: September 2006
by Michael Yessis | 10.01.06 | 9:20 PM ET
Our 10 most popular stories posted last month:
1) Oprah Takes a Road Trip, Pumps Gas For First Time Since 1983
2) How to Use a Squat Toilet
3) Lost City of the Silk Road
4) “Getting Stoned With Savages”: The Adventures of Flip-Flop Man in Vanuatu and Fiji
5) The Art of Pool Crashing in Las Vegas
6) Happy Anniversary “On the Road”
7) Stephen Colbert’s New York City Travel Tips for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
8) Are Myanmar’s Ruins the Next Disney World?
9) Booking a U.S. Flight? Simply Call India.
10) The Winding Road to Joshua Tree
