Travel Blog
Slings and Arrows of Outrageous Fortune
by Alexander Basek | 01.23.09 | 2:31 PM ET
Over at the Hotel Hotsheet, Kitty Bean Yancey is up in arms about the cost of a Singapore Sling at the Raffles in, er, Singapore. Kitty is making a larger point about “hotel sticker shock,” but for our purposes, a pricey Singapore Sling is a fine example of something that’s a struggle for any frequent traveler: the paradox of drinking at the bar of a landmark hotel.
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Yahoo! BuzzTaking Flight
by Rob Verger | 01.23.09 | 12:34 PM ET
iStockPhoto Welcome to World Hum’s blog focused on all things related to air travel. Here I’ll be chronicling the ups and downs of flying in today’s skies.
I’ll confess to a love of flying. It’s a fascinating combination of adventure and boredom, of leaving the earth and coming back, of departure and arrival. My grandfather flew DC-3s for the now-defunct Eastern Air Lines, and whether there’s a genetic component to my love of air travel or not, I don’t know. But I do love it. (Make no mistake—there is plenty that I, like every air traveler, occasionally find pretty miserable about flying, too.)
Camels and Marines in Old China
by Julia Ross | 01.23.09 | 12:30 PM ET
Maybe because I was a history major in college, old newsreels fascinate me. I’ve just discovered a treasure trove of early 20th-century travel films at the Travel Film Archive and spent some time scrolling through several China entries. One 1931 film in particular—Ghosts of Empire-Peking—caught my attention for its unusual variety of street scenes. The film opens with a line of camels trooping through the city gates, then continues with clips of a boy barber at work, a close-up of a Chinese woman’s bound feet and a U.S. marine parade. Not your standard travel promo, but sure makes Beijing look like an interesting place to visit. (via quirkyBeijing)
‘Greenwashing’ Costa Rica
by Joanna Kakissis | 01.23.09 | 11:46 AM ET
Eco tourism is a Costa Rican brand. This lush Central American country has long topped green and sustainable travel lists, marketing many of its accommodations as eco-lodges and eco-resorts. It promotes itself as a tropical paradise with stunning biodiversity and “no artificial ingredients.” While that may be true in the country’s forests and national preserves, the scene at the beach town of Tamarindo is not exactly one for the eco-travel brochures.
The Grateful Dead: Looking Back at ‘a New World’
by Eva Holland | 01.23.09 | 11:15 AM ET
In the wake of the news about a new Grateful Dead tour, the good folks at Rock’s Backpages have dug up a thoughtful look back at the band’s early impact on one suburban teenager. Originally written to coincide with the 2001 release of The Golden Road, the Dead’s box set, Michael Goldberg’s essay recalls his first encounters with the band as a 14-year-old in Marin County.
Italian vs. I-talian vs. New Yorkese
by David Farley | 01.23.09 | 9:47 AM ET
Missy Robbins, the new chef at the posh New York City eatery A Voce, was relatively unknown to the New York City fooderati. That is, until Barack Obama came along. Robbins was the chef at Chicago’s Spiaggia restaurant. Like A Voce, Spiaggia serves up lauded Italian cuisine in a chic setting. And Obama was a regular, thanks, apparently, to Chef Robbins’ wood-fired scallops, among other menu items. With the circus surrounding the Inauguration, I decided to dine at A Voce a few days ago, hoping I’d get a chance to taste what kept Obama coming back to Spiaggia again and again (he was just there last month, in fact).
Morning Links: Buffalo-Wing Boycott, Nashville’s English-Only Measure and More
by Michael Yessis | 01.23.09 | 8:18 AM ET
- Nashville votes no and nyet and nein to English-only ballot measure.
- Video: Spending Time With Poster Boy, a street artist who prowls the New York City subway system.
- Even the U.S. Marines are avoiding Tijuana these days.
- A different take on Mexico: How U.S. media perpetuates cliches about the country.
- An exhibition of Robert Frank’s The Americans recently opened at the National Gallery in Washington, D.C. Slate has a slideshow.
- Aboard the slow train through Senegal.
- Aboard the other bullet trains of Asia.
- Are high-end adventure outfitters rising “above the global financial crisis and recession”?
- Buffalo-wing lovers in Buffalo, New York, call for a Buffalo-wing boycott on Monday. It could get worse: Supplies are so low and prices so high for wings that there may be a shortage on Super Bowl Sunday. What will we ever do, particularly with all the accompanying blue-cheese dip?
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Checking In
by Alexander Basek | 01.22.09 | 8:01 PM ET
iStockPhoto Salutations! My name is Alexander Basek, and I’ll be blogging about hotels on World Hum. “But Alexander,” you interject, “do we even need a writer to cover hotels now that there’s Facebook, TripAdvisor and Twitter? The wisdom of crowds! Web 2.0!” Hold on: I love me some new media. I even got some hotel advice—unsolicited, useful hotel advice—from Twitter last week. That said, recommendations are a lot better when you know where the recommender is coming from, and once you get to know me, that’s what I aim to give you.
British Man Jailed for Mutilating Antique Maps, Travelogues
by Eva Holland | 01.22.09 | 4:10 PM ET
A wealthy British book collector has been sentenced to two years in prison for stealing from the British Library. Farhad Hakimzadeh had used a scalpel to slice pages and maps out of more than 150 rare books, most dating to the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries. His subject matter of choice? “The engagement by West European travellers with Mesopotamia, Persia and the Mogul empire—roughly the area from modern Syria to Bangladesh.” A British Library staffer called Hakimzadeh’s actions “an attack on the nation’s collective memory of its own past,” and added that he had damaged “our historical record with how this country has engaged in that part of the world.”
Sadly, cases of high-profile book vandalism and theft aren’t uncommon—but they never fail to shock me. (The theft, also from the British Library, of some of the first-ever maps of Canada a few years ago hit especially close to home.) I don’t want to get too Orwellian here, but something about the theft and destruction of irreplaceable historical documents, the literal dismantling of our physical historical record, strikes me as deeply sinister. It’s a relief to hear that there’s now one less perp running loose in the stacks.
On Asia: Points East
by Julia Ross | 01.22.09 | 1:56 PM ET
iStockPhoto If this is indeed the “Asian century,” count me as an early adopter. I’ve quit two full-time jobs to explore the world’s most diverse continent, and they were the two best decisions I’ve ever made. To an Asia hand, the lavender fields of Provence might be pleasant, but it’s the chanting of novice monks, the mystical tinkling of the gamelan, a bowl of spicy dan dan noodles that really get the blood pumping. I’m drawn back, again and again, and I don’t know if I’ll ever kick the habit.
My (unlikely) introduction to Asia began in arid, post-Soviet Uzbekistan in the late ‘90s. As soon as my conference in Tashkent wrapped up, I hopped a bus to the Silk Road city of Samarkand, where blue-tiled madrassas dazzled against an azure sky. They were like nothing I’d seen, a window into an ancient time when Tamerlane traipsed across the steppes.
More Exotic Foods Just to Let You Know You’ve Made it to Asia
by David Farley | 01.22.09 | 12:30 PM ET
Our fascination with curious animal parts continues. We just can’t seem to get enough of the rooster balls. Or deep-fried grasshopper, roasted bats and cooked canine for that matter. Nellie Huang over at Matador Travel gives us a lowdown on the top 10 most “exotic Asian foods.” All this makes me wonder: what do people in other parts of the world consider “exotic” American food. If we believed what we saw on TV advertisements—specifically, Burger King advertisements—then the hamburger, in all its boring bread-meets-ground-beef incarnation, is it (sorry Josh Ozersky). Saturday Night Live’s recent parody of said BK commercials is worth a view.
State-by-State Home Improvement
by Jenna Schnuer | 01.22.09 | 11:56 AM ET
Photo by Jenna Schnuer. Yeah, there are a few things here and there from places far, far away but, looking around my apartment, I realized that most of my art/knickknacks/stuff was hauled home in my carry-on, checked baggage or the trunk of a rental car from a trip to one of the 50. OK, I shipped the bear lamp home. This is some of it ...
Travel Movies Go to the Oscars
by Eva Holland | 01.22.09 | 10:39 AM ET
Yes, the Oscar nominations are in. And while this year’s crop of nominated travel flicks won’t exactly be waltzing down the red carpet with all eyes on them—as expected, the films that made noise at the Golden Globes got significantly less love from the Academy voters—a handful may yet manage to sneak in one of the side entrances and grab some hardware.
Canada: It’s Cheap Again!
by Eva Holland | 01.22.09 | 10:14 AM ET
Arthur Frommer points out that with everyone watching Europe’s two heavyweight currencies draw closer to parity, some other currency shifts have gone unnoticed. “We’ve been so focused on the Euro and the Pound,” he writes, “that most of [us] have failed to notice that the currencies of Canada and Mexico have plunged in value.” After rising to par last year, the Canadian dollar has dropped back to $1.25 per 1 US dollar, while in Mexico a single American dollar will now net you 14 pesos. The lesson here for American travelers? Head North. Or South. Either way, as Frommer says, “you now enjoy a bonanza.”
Morning Links: ‘Killer Blueline Buses,’ the Idea of America and More
by Michael Yessis | 01.22.09 | 8:07 AM ET
- Revealed: confessions of a hotel housekeeper.
- No little bottle of lotion in your hotel room? No fruit in your breakfast buffet? Blame the economy. Hotels are.
- “Killer blueline buses” pose a dilemma in Delhi: They’re dangerous, but they’re needed.
- MediaShift looks at Phil Balboni’s vision for GlobalPost.
- GlobalPost asks its correspondents “What does the idea of America mean to the world?”
- Newley Purnell posts about Matt Gross and multimedia travel journalism—with a World Hum shout out, too.
- Theodore Dalrymple on the “disturbing reality at a Paris Metro stop.”
- Nathan’s says its flagship hot dog shop will remain in Coney Island. Glad to hear the site of some great childhood memories is being preserved.
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