Travel Blog
Human Rights Watch: Cuba Travel Ban Hurts Families
by Jim Benning | 10.19.05 | 4:09 PM ET
They may be blowing in the wind, but Human Rights Watch has issued a major report slamming the U.S. ban on travel to Cuba, as well as the Cuban government’s restrictions on travel for its own citizens.
Email to friend
del.icio.us
Digg
Facebook
Furl
Ma.gnolia
Mixx
Reddit
StumbleUpon
Yahoo! Buzz“I Don’t Hate Southwest Anymore”
by Jim Benning | 10.19.05 | 12:52 PM ET
We can all rest a little easier now. Business traveler David Grossman has changed his mind about Southwest Airlines. (The lesson for all of us? Don’t be a no-frills-discount-airline-that-offers-32-to-33-inch-seat-pitch playa hata.)
‘Survivor Guatemala’: Reality TV With Roots in Antebellum Travel Writing?
by Jim Benning | 10.19.05 | 12:02 PM ET
How we love academic perspectives on American pop culture, especially when they relate to travel and travel writing. This interesting article, written by University of Pennsylvania associate history professor Amy S. Greenberg, argues that Survivor Guatemala: The Maya Empire has more to do with American empire than anything. She traces America’s fascination with the tropics back through history—back, in fact, to antebellum travel writing. “Survivor was a sequel from the start,” she writes. “The appeal of the tropics as idealized location for the triumph of American enterprise and individualism is nothing new and, in fact, is a reoccurring theme in periods of American imperial expansionism.”
Kerouac’s “On the Road” Makes Time Magazine’s All-Time 100 Top Novels List
by Michael Yessis | 10.18.05 | 1:52 PM ET
Time has a funny way of defining “all-time.” The list only reaches back to 1923. Among the other World Hum favorites on the list: Don Delillo’s White Noise, George Orwell’s 1984 and, of course, Judy Blume’s Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret.
The Traveler vs. The Tourist
by Jim Benning | 10.18.05 | 1:15 PM ET
John Flinn explored the familiar tourist-traveler debate in Sunday’s San Francisco Chronicle. His take? “The problem, I think, is that it’s gotten so much harder for status-conscious travelers to feel superior,” he writes. “A generation or two ago, merely stepping onto an airplane or a train or a ship and going somewhere—anywhere—was all it took to give you the backyard-barbecue standing of a sophisticated man of the world. But these days everyone travels—on the trail to Everest I once ran into a vacationing San Francisco stripper—so what can be done to elevate yourself over your fellow travelers? Deride them as ‘tourists.’” On a side note: Hiking the trail to Everest with a San Francisco stripper sounds like a best-selling travel memoir just waiting to be written. It’s Into Thin Air meets The Bird Man and the Lap Dancer!
Going on Armchair Safari — Again and Again
by Jim Benning | 10.18.05 | 11:55 AM ET
I was at home listening to music the other night when the phone rang. It was my mom, and I detected a sense of urgency in her voice. Was there a family emergency? Some new piece of bad news on CNN? “I won’t keep you long,” she said, “but I wanted to let you know there are elephants right now at Pete’s Pond.” Elephants? Really? I thanked her profusely, flipped on my computer and was soon happily glued to the screen, watching live as several elephants roamed among the trees near the Pete’s Pond shoreline, enjoying a tasty breakfast of crunchy green leaves. Ever since I blogged about the WildCam at Pete’s Pond in Botswana, I’ve been hooked, checking in every so often to see what beasts might be roaming within camera view.
Special Offer From T-Shirt Hell: ‘Free Speech or Free Travel’
by Michael Yessis | 10.18.05 | 11:47 AM ET
The ripples from the Lorrie Heasley “Fockers” incident aboard a Southwest Airlines jet a couple weeks back continue to spread. Gridskipper reports that T-Shirt Hell—“vendors of fine frat-wear and gentle social conscience of a generation”—will provide alternate transportation to any travelers kicked off a Southwest flight while wearing one of the company’s T-shirts.
Flight Attendant Wants Day Off, Calls in Bomb Threat
by Michael Yessis | 10.17.05 | 11:45 PM ET
Oh, for the days when this kind of thing would only be done by college students on test days. It was a SriLankan Airlines employee, the Associated Press reports.
Message to Germans: You are Michael Shumacher. You are Katarina Witt. You are Depressed.
by Michael Yessis | 10.17.05 | 8:25 AM ET
Has Germany abandoned Angela Merkel and Gerhard Schroeder for Stuart Smalley? The country has launched a self-help public-service campaign to cheer up its citizens. Seriously. Germany has earmarked $35 million and enlisted its most famous men and women to appear in a series of commercials and magazine ads, relaying the Smalley-esque message that Germans are good and smart and they should like themselves.
The Return Flight: A Snapshot
by Michael Yessis | 10.17.05 | 7:50 AM ET
Thomas Swick has another gem of a column in Sunday’s South Florida Sun-Sentinel, spending 721 well-chosen words on something not too many travel writers write about: the flight home. It’s terrific you-are-there writing.
The Joys of Solo Travel
by Michael Yessis | 10.17.05 | 7:20 AM ET
Rachel Browne has a nice piece in the Sydney Morning Herald about traveling alone. “As writer Alex Garland advised in his backpacker-inspired thriller The Beach, ‘Never refuse an invitation and never resist the unfamiliar’ and there is no doubt the solo traveller is given to doing things he or she would never do if in the company of friends from home,” she writes.
Hurricane Stan and Guatemala, We Hardly Heard About Ya
by Jim Benning | 10.14.05 | 12:24 PM ET
In his essay Why We Travel, Pico Iyer writes that we travel, in part, to “learn more about the world than our newspapers will accommodate.” I was reminded of that recently while traveling in Mexico. Aside from migration-related news, we in the U.S. see little coverage of life south of the border. But it seems that our newspapers don’t accommodate much news about Central America even when it involves a major disaster. That was brought into relief for some recently after Hurricane Stan hit Mexico, Guatemala and El Salvador.
The Not-So-Glamorous Life of a Flight Attendant
by Jim Benning | 10.14.05 | 12:12 PM ET
A USA Today reporter recently shadowed United Airlines flight attendant Laura Brandle for a day. Today’s story about it shows how the work of flight attendants has changed since 9/11/01—and not in a good way. Says Brandle, who has worked at United for more than three decades: “There’s a lot on flight attendants’ minds today. There have been pay cuts. Our duties are more. We are struggling to hold on to what we’ve worked for so many years to attain. And we are the watchdogs: We must suspect everybody and everything and keep our antennae up.”
What Constitutes Good Subway Reading in New York?
by Jim Benning | 10.14.05 | 11:24 AM ET
The Oct. 3 issue of the New Yorker holds the answer. The magazine had a terrific Talk of the Town story featuring a couple of used bookstore employees who visited the Lost Property Unit of New York City Transit to pick up books left behind by passengers. So what did they find? A nice selection of titles, including “Ulysses,” “Romeo and Juliet,” “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” and, lest anyone get the wrong idea entirely, “The Firefighter’s Workout Book.”
Avian Flu Begins to Affect Travel Plans
by Jim Benning | 10.13.05 | 5:35 PM ET
I’d been wondering when we’d start hearing about avian flu fears affecting travel. USA Today offers an account today, noting that some travelers are reconsidering visits to outdoor bazaars and rural areas of Southeast Asia. “It’s just not necessary for me to put myself in a possible situation with this illness,” said traveler Mark Fridkin, who now plans to skip a visit to the Thai countryside. There’s nothing earth-shaking in the story, just a post-SARS here-we-go-again feeling. Among other anecdotes: “The Palo Alto Medical Foundation in Palo Alto, Calif. has seen an uptick in requests for Tamiflu, which might be effective against the avian flu, from travelers bound for Southeast Asia.”
