Travel Blog
Cruising as Canada’s Tourism Cure?
by Eva Holland | 10.09.07 | 7:53 AM ET
Photo by Jean & Nathalie via Flickr, (Creative Commons).
Terrorism fears. New and confusing passport requirements. A slumping U.S. dollar and a surging loonie. These are a few of the reasons put forward to explain Canada’s sluggish tourism industry. But, writes Brian Flemming in a Globe and Mail opinion piece, they’re all flimsy excuses that obscure the real issue: “The real reason for the latest crisis is the failure of imagination of those involved in Canadian tourism, in both the private and public sectors. Until this imagination deficit is cured, Canada will continue to be seen worldwide as a boring, boreal tourist destination.”
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Yahoo! BuzzThree Travel Tips: Traveling With Your Laptop
by Eva Holland | 10.08.07 | 4:33 PM ET
Travel tips are easy to find on the Internet, but some are better than others. Each week, we’ll bring you World Hum-approved travel tips from around the Web.
1) Always back up your files. “Do a regular backup so if something bad does happen, you don’t lose too much data. The easiest way to do this is to buy a laptop with a built in DVD burner. One DVD disc should be more than enough to store your work data. You could also use a CD burner, but you would probably need to carry multiple discs. If you only have a small amount of files you need to backup, a USB flash drive would also do the job.”—Laptop Lifestyle
World Hum Stories Win Lowell Thomas Awards
by Michael Yessis | 10.08.07 | 12:45 PM ET
Congratulations to Catherine Watson and Frank Bures, whose World Hum stories were selected as Lowell Thomas Silver Award winners today in the Society of American Travel Writers’ travel writing competition. Watson, whose latest story for World Hum appears today, won in the best Internet travel article category for Unlocking Beirut. Bures’s How to Use a Squat Toilet was honored in the service-oriented consumer article category.
Extreme Eating in East Berlin With the Stasi
by Michael Yessis | 10.08.07 | 11:11 AM ET
Bless Tom Perrotta for trying to eat local on the road, but after reading his extraordinary tale from a long-ago visit to East Berlin, I can understand why he’s hesitant to do so anymore. The author of “Election” and “Little Children” recalls that after a few beers with some locals, including two uniformed East German soldiers, he was urged to try Hackepeter, a combination of raw beef, chopped onions and raw egg. The food, he writes in the New York Times Magazine, was “quite tasty.” It was what happened afterwards that scared him.
The World Hum Travel Zeitgeist: Cheap Hotels, Cruise Cabins and Chinatown
by Michael Yessis | 10.05.07 | 3:08 PM ET
Travelers craved tips this week. The Zeitgeist is filled with stories about finding the best ways to squeeze the most out of a travel experience.
Most Read Feature
World Hum (posted this week)
Any Tips For Making a Cheap Hotel More Bearable?
Most E-Mailed Travel Story
USA Today (current)
How to Pick the Best Cruise Cabin
Most Read Blog Post
World Hum (posted this week)
Sex and the Stewardess: In Air Travel’s Glamour Days, Men Need Not Have Applied
Most E-Mailed Travel Story
New York Times (current)
When the Best Deals Don’t End in .Com
Most Viewed Travel Story
Los Angeles Times (current)
For Gays in Las Vegas, the Welcome Mat is Out
Most Popular Page Tagged Travel
Del.icio.us (recent)
Top 25 Travel Web Sites
* As selected by Travel+Leisure
Lonely Planet Publishes Guidebook to…Afghanistan?
by Jim Benning | 10.05.07 | 1:23 PM ET
Indeed. The San Francisco Chronicle’s John Flinn leafed through it recently for kicks. He writes: “The accommodations section for Kabul lists guesthouses meeting the United Nation’s Minimal Operating Security Standards, and there’s a helpful list of acronyms: Car bombs are called VBIEDs, for vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices. And then there are DBIEDs—donkey bombs. That these are common enough to qualify for their own acronym is a little troubling. Rather than the typical lecture about the advantages of traveling light, the guidebook advises visitors to pack a ‘quick run (or grab) bag.’ This, it explains, ‘is to be kept with you should you have to leave in a hurry.’ All this raises the question: What in the name of Mullah Omar was Lonely Planet thinking?” LP’s short answer: Stability will come, and with it a market for the book.
Related on World Hum:
* Q&A With Paul Kvinta: Travels with Rory Stewart in Afghanistan
* Rory Stewart on Afghanistan: ‘The Problem is That We Act on the Basis of Our Own Lies’
* No. 17: ‘A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush’ by Eric Newby
Q&A With George Saunders: The Outtakes
by World Hum | 10.05.07 | 12:36 PM ET
Last week’s Q&A with “The Braindead Megaphone” author George Saunders took some intriguing turns, some of which didn’t make it into the final version. In these outtakes, Saunders and interviewer Frank Bures talk about the writing process, travel as transformation, “noble confusion” and why it’s not always necessary to be “Johnny Authority.”
What’s it like when you come back from a trip and sort through your material?
English Adventurer to Arrive Home After 13-Year, Self-Powered Journey
by Joanna Kakissis | 10.05.07 | 12:17 PM ET
After spending well over a decade traveling the globe by foot, skate, bike, paddle and crawl, 40-year-old English eco-adventurer Jason Lewis is expected to arrive in Greenwich on Saturday morning, completing his quest to journey around the world under his own power. Lewis, once a self-employed cleaner, traveled across five continents, two oceans and one sea before reaching the English Channel last Sunday.
Researchers Who Touted Viagra as Jet Lag Fighter Win Ig Nobel Prize
by Michael Yessis | 10.05.07 | 12:06 PM ET
Congrats to the Argentine scientists on their ground-breaking research and the hamsters who were fed the anti-impotence drug in the name of science—and comedy.
Related on World Hum:
* Latest Weapon in the War on Jet Lag: Viagra?
Earth and the Meaning of Sputnik
by Jim Benning | 10.05.07 | 11:14 AM ET
In all the hoopla this week around the 50th anniversary of the launch of Sputnik, it was one passage from the Economist that, for my taste, put the legacy of the satellite into perspective. “In the 1950s many people imagined that in the decades to come the new frontier would be beaten back by pioneers bent on interplanetary colonisation. By the end of the millennium there would be a moon base at the very least. Probably, there would be hotels in orbit…As it turned out…[p]eople have hardly travelled anywhere at all…Instead…most of the satellites in orbit round Earth look down, rather than up, and the biggest mental change wrought by spaceflight has been not an appreciation of the vastness of the universe, but rather of the smallness, fragility and unity of Earth.”
Related on World Hum:
* Space Traveler ‘Didn’t Even Visit the Moon, for Christ’s Sake’
* ‘Galactic Suite’ Space Hotel Planned for Earth Orbit
Photo by NASA.
‘Eat, Pray, Love’ Author Elizabeth Gilbert Does ‘Oprah’ Today
by Jim Benning | 10.05.07 | 10:43 AM ET
Elizabeth Gilbert goes where few travel memoir authors have: “The Oprah Winfrey Show.” Gilbert is featured on today’s broadcast, and according to Oprah.com, “It’s the show Oprah’s been waiting months for.” The site adds: “Oprah says she has seen women carrying this New York Times bestseller with them everywhere. ‘I’ve been counting down the days to this show!’”
Related on World Hum:
* Elizabeth Gilbert: ‘Eat, Pray, Love’
* Three Travel Books: Elizabeth Gilbert’s Picks
Do Conjoined Infants Need Two Seats?
by Michael Yessis | 10.04.07 | 11:33 AM ET
First Delta said yes. Now it says no, and the 1-year old Bailey twins of Queen Creek, Arizona will soon be traveling with their parents to Baltimore without the need for an extra seat. According to the Arizona Republic, Delta made the change after a reporter from the paper got wind of the story and called the airline.
R.I.P. Tony Ryan, Founder of Ryanair
by Michael Yessis | 10.04.07 | 10:21 AM ET
Where in the World Are You, Eli Ellison?
by World Hum | 10.03.07 | 5:03 PM ET
The subject of our latest nearly up-to-the-minute interview with a traveler somewhere in the world: writer and prolific World Hum commenter Eli Ellison. His response landed in our inbox today.
Where in the world are you?
Sal Paradise in 2007: ‘He’d be a Grad Student With an Interest in Power Yoga’
by Michael Yessis | 10.03.07 | 4:56 PM ET
Couldn’t resist another couple links to late-arriving pieces about the 50th anniversary of “On the Road.” The first one’s a chuckler from New York Times columnist David Brooks. He imagines how the book’s protagonist, Sal Paradise, would act if he were alive now: “He’d be driving a Prius, going a conscientious 55, wearing a seat belt and calling Mom from the Comfort Inns.”
