Travel Blog
Kapuscinski: ‘I Sometimes Call it Literature by Foot’
by Jim Benning | 02.05.07 | 2:05 PM ET
One other note on journalist and travel writer Ryszard Kapuscinski, who died last month at the age of 74. Granta has posted an interview Bill Buford conducted with the writer, which was originally published in 1987.
Email to friend
del.icio.us
Digg
Facebook
Furl
Ma.gnolia
Mixx
Reddit
StumbleUpon
Yahoo! BuzzMexican Migrant Theme Park: Homage or Crass Attraction?
by Jim Benning | 02.05.07 | 9:07 AM ET
Last September, we noted the bizarre theme park of sorts outside Mexico City that aims to recreate the experience of crossing the border illegally, complete with a long hike, fake migra and sirens. The New York Times took a crack at the story Sunday, sending a writer along for the experience. Since operators began offering the four-hour nighttime hikes (or caminatas) a few years ago, about 3,000 tourists, mostly Mexican, have paid about $18 a pop for the experience, writes Patrick O’Gilfoil Healy. “The idea of tourists’ aping illegal immigrants can seem crass, like Marie Antoinette playing peasant on the grounds of Versailles,” he writes. “But the guides describe the caminata as an homage to the path immigrants have beaten across the border.”
The Backpacker Honeymoon: Time for Monogrammed Luggage?
by Jim Benning | 02.05.07 | 8:39 AM ET
World Hum contributor Terry Ward and her fiancé are planning a two-month honeymoon in Europe, which got her wondering: “Should we ditch our backpacks and pony up for matching monogrammed luggage? Are there still adventures to be had my own, wanderlusty way?” In her column in Sunday’s South Florida Sun-Sentinel, she reveals the advice she has received from fellow travelers and even a clinical social worker. (The social worker’s advice on traveling as a couple? “Collaborate: Talk about what you’re going to be doing in advance. And compromise: Make your plans together, don’t let one person lead and the other say ‘OK,’ when it’s not.”)
Problems at Bangkok’s New Airport
by Jim Benning | 02.05.07 | 8:07 AM ET
Perhaps it was all too good to be true. Bangkok’s $4 billion “Golden Land” international airport opened in September to great fanfare. Monks and Brahmin priests even went so far as to apologize to the spirits for any harm done in the airport’s planning and construction. But several months later, all’s not well. Problems ranging from “cracked taxiways to leaky roofs to inadequate bathrooms to luggage snafus” plague the airport, reports the San Francisco Chronicle’s Travelers’ Checks column. It gets worse: “The national airport authority has found some 61 issues at Suvarnabhumi needing repair or redesign that will cost an estimated $45 million and six months to fix.” Meanwhile, the airport can continue operating. Great.
Dave Barry’s Miami: ‘¿Usted Piensa Que Conseguiré Mi Equipaje a Tiempo Para el Tazón Estupendo?’
by Michael Yessis | 02.02.07 | 1:30 PM ET
Super-hyped Super Bowl XLI takes place this Sunday in Miami, as you probably know. Pulizer Prize-winner and sometime travel writer Dave Barry lives in the city, and this week he’s written a guide for all those traveling to South Florida. “Welcome to Miami, Super Bowl visitors!” Barry writes in the Miami Herald. “You are going to have a wonderful time, from the moment you arrive in our magical city, until the moment you discover that your wallet is missing.” Barry’s advice ranges from learning some phrases to communicate with the Spanish-speaking locals to navigating South Beach.
‘On the Road in America’: Can a Reality Travel Show Improve the Image of the U.S.?
by Michael Yessis | 02.02.07 | 1:16 PM ET
The World Hum Travel Zeitgeist: The Explorers
by Michael Yessis | 02.02.07 | 9:38 AM ET
Travelers appear top of mind this week, not destinations. The journeys of Daisann McLane, Bill Bryson, Paulina Porizkova, Martin Sargent, celebrity watchers and Dora the Explorer lead off the Zeitgeist.
Most Read Weblog Post
World Hum (this week)
Daisann McLane: ‘Learning Cantonese’ in Hong Kong
Most Popular Travel Podcast
iTunes (current)
Travel Song Medley by Dora the Explorer
Most Read Story
World Hum (this week)
Paulina Porizkova: A Model Traveler
Most Read Travel Story
USA Today (current)
Oscars Tourism: Celebrity Sightings and a Hotel Within Gawking Distance of the Red Carpet
Best Selling Travel Book
Amazon.com (current)
Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman’s Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia by Elizabeth Gilbert
* We like this book.
Most Popular Travel Story
Netscape (current)
Area-Daily.com Launches
Most Popular Page Tagged Travel
Del.icio.us (recent)
Farecast
Top Travel and Adventure Audiobook
iTunes (current)
A Walk in the Woods
Most Dugg Travel Podcast
Digg (current)
Martin Sargent: Web Drifter
Is the U.S. Treating Tourists Like Terrorists?
by Jim Benning | 02.01.07 | 10:54 AM ET
Whenever I fly home from a trip overseas and am herded into immigration and customs lines at the airport, usually by stone-faced officers hollering instructions at the top of their lungs, I’m always struck by just how cold and unwelcoming the feds make the arrival process. I don’t expect to be greeted with chocolates by security officials, but I just don’t encounter the same level of hostility when I arrive in other countries. I always wonder what’s going through the minds of travelers coming to the U.S. for the first time. According to a CNN report, it turns out that many potential visitors may not be coming to the U.S. at all because of just such issues here and at U.S. offices abroad. Overseas travel to the U.S. has dropped 17 percent since 9/11. Travel industry leaders blame the government and are calling for changes. “International travelers will tell you that they find that they are treated like criminals, that they are barked at by U.S. officials,” said Geoffrey Freeman of the Discover America Partnership. “They simply feel unwelcome and that is leading them to choose other countries.”
World Hum’s Most Read: January 2007
by Michael Yessis | 02.01.07 | 8:20 AM ET
Our 10 most popular stories posted last month:
1) Paulina Porizkova: A Model Traveler
2) How Do I Land a Travel-Related Job?
3) For Sale: World’s Smallest Island Nation
4) The World Hum Travel Zeitgeist: Cheap Flights and Covered Bridges
5) Travel and the Legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr.
6) ‘Has the Romance Gone Out of Travel?’
7) Tom Bissell in Estonia: ‘It Feels, In a Word, Sane’
8) ‘The Soccer People’: Heartbreak and Triumph in Clarkston, Georgia
9) ‘The Ice Cave’: Journeys Into the Wild
10) National Geographic Adventure’s Top 2007 Destinations
Three Travel Books: Marie Javins’s Picks
by Frank Bures | 02.01.07 | 7:09 AM ET
Marie Javins is the author of Stalking the Wild Dik-Dik: One Woman’s Solo Misadventures Across Africa. World Hum reviews the book this week, and we asked Javins for three travel book recommendations. Here’s what she told us:
Facing the Congo by Jeffrey Tayler.
Javins says: “At first, I thought Tayler was a madman. Why else attempt to recreate Stanley’s canoe trip down the Congo against a backdrop of encroaching civil war? But his descent from optimism into humility won me over. In a genre where so much is about rough-and-ready bragging rights, Tayler accepted that he was in over his head. In the words of Shackleton: ‘Better a live donkey than a dead lion.’ Engaging, dramatic, and honest.”
Remembering Kapuscinski: ‘He Was a Deity’
by Jim Benning | 01.31.07 | 2:13 PM ET
Fittingly, the death of acclaimed Polish journalist and travel writer Ryszard Kapuscinski last week prompted a number of remembrances and appreciations. “He was a deity in Poland, where I lived and reported for about half of the 1990s, and he was a deity among correspondents in Africa, where I spent the rest of the decade,” recalled Neely Tucker in the Washington Post. “Correspondents in Africa have two authors on their shelves: Graham Greene and Kapuscinski.”
Egypt: We Don’t Need Your Vote to be Among the New Seven Wonders
by Michael Yessis | 01.31.07 | 8:38 AM ET
While Petra and other candidates for the New Seven Wonders of the World status are working hard to solicit votes, officials in Egypt are fuming about the Pyramids of Giza even being nominated. Why should the pyramids have to compete in a contest to become a new wonder when they’re the last remaining wonder from the original seven?
Record Travel in 2006
by Jim Benning | 01.30.07 | 7:01 PM ET
More people traveled internationally in 2006 than in any previous year, according to the World Tourism Organization. The numbers were up 4.5 percent from 2005. Perhaps most interestingly, the AP notes, “Africa posted the biggest growth rate in 2006 at 8.1 percent, benefiting from travelers’ fears of terrorism elsewhere in the world.” Go Africa.
Tom Bissell: ‘Ramblin’ Man’
by Jim Benning | 01.30.07 | 6:49 PM ET
Writer Tom Bissell gets the profile treatment in Publisher’s Weekly. Bissell is the author of Chasing the Sea: Lost Among the Ghosts of Empire in Central Asia and the forthcoming “The Father of All Things,” among other books. His essay Truth in Oxiana and his story War Zones for Idiots have appeared on World Hum.
Is Getting a Passport Patriotic?
by Jim Benning | 01.30.07 | 4:02 PM ET
John Flinn thinks so, and he’s baffled that only 20 to 25 percent of Americans have passports, especially given their illustrious history in the U.S. “After the revolution…citizens of the newly minted United States of America considered foreign travel to be one of their inalienable rights. Just about any public official—even mayors—could, and did, issue passports,” he writes in Sunday’s San Francisco Chronicle. While a right to a passport is not covered in the Constitution, Flinn notes that courts have always upheld a citizen’s right to travel. “As an American in 2007,” he writes,” you have the freedom and ability to see more of the world than even the crowned heads of Europe could in the 19th century. Don’t blow this opportunity. Go get your passport. Now.” Hear, hear.
Related on World Hum:
* It’s Jan. 23. Do You Know Where Your Passport Is?
* Need a New Passport? Bill the Caribbean.
* National Passport Month: It’s About Time, No?
Photo by Michael Yessis.
