Travel Blog
Surgeon General’s Warning: Eating Animal Penis in China May Not Be For You
by David Farley | 01.08.09 | 11:35 AM ET
Yes, that’s potential future surgeon general Sanjay Gupta in this video eating, as he calls it, China’s “eclectic cuisine.” And by that he means: stud bull penis, deer penis, lamb testicles, and our personal favorite, Russian dog penis. Yes, Mr. Gupta visits China specifically in search of edible tiger parts, and even more specifically in search of edible tiger penis. But Dr. Gupta seems to get more than he bargained for when he sits down at the table in front of a platter of chopped up animal members.
Tiger penis, they say, helps give virility to a certain part of a man’s body. Not that we’d know—we only eat non-endangered animal penis here at World Hum.
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Yahoo! BuzzKraftwerk Cofounder: Auto-Gone
by Eva Holland | 01.08.09 | 10:34 AM ET
The Telegraph is reporting that band co-founder (and Krautrock pioneer) Florian Schneider has left Kraftwerk after four decades. It’s just the excuse we need to cue up the band’s 1974 hit song “Autobahn,” which is meant to re-create the experience of highway driving:
Morning Links: Walking Across the U.S., Rebranding France and More
by Michael Yessis | 01.08.09 | 9:29 AM ET
- Video: Slate interviews “an Algerian man who just walked alone across the United States with nothing but $217 and a backpack.”
- Some “serious soul-searching in French tourism circles” helped inspire the country’s new rebranding campaign.
- Mapped: 50 United States and their Mottos. Intelligent Travel talks to the map’s creator, Emily Wick.
- Rick Steves in Iran: The preview.
- Cheap flights abound for the New Year, but, by historical standards, they’re not as cheap as you might think.
- Peter Hessler takes a road trip to the Tibetan Plateau. (It’s only an abstract, unless you’re a New Yorker subscriber.)
- USA Today looks at Twitter and travel.
- Want more Twitter in your life? Maybe attend a Twestival.
- Cunard reveals its 2009 Queen Mary 2 voyages with “literary luminaries” on board. Among the writers on the transatlantic crossings: Kathryn Harrison and Oscar Hijuelos. It is my duty to tell you that if you’re interested in going, you should first read this (pdf).
Where We’re Eating: New York, Czech Republic
by David Farley | 01.07.09 | 4:46 PM ET
Nation Branding for your iPod? Canada Votes for a National Playlist.
by Eva Holland | 01.07.09 | 11:52 AM ET
Call it change you can listen to: CBC Radio is hoping to get some made-in-Canada music onto incoming President Obama’s iPod.
The Canadian broadcaster is accepting nominations for a “definitive Canadian playlist”—dubbed “49 Songs from North of the 49th Parallel”—to be unveiled on Obama’s inauguration day. “One of the best ways to know Canada is through the depth and breadth of our artistic expression,” said a CBC representative. “We’re excited about the new president, and we want him to be excited about us.”
So how do you go about compiling a definitive national playlist? CBC producers will whittle the suggestions from the public down to a manageable 100 most-nominated songs, and then online voting will cut the shortlist down to the final 49.
Sure, the project seems a tad goofy—realistically, Obama will have bigger things to worry about on Jan. 20 than whether he prefers Stompin’ Tom Connors or Gordon Lightfoot—but it got me thinking about music and national identity.
Morning Links: Robots Around the World, ‘Pizza Huh’ and More
by Michael Yessis | 01.07.09 | 9:34 AM ET
Design by Open. - ReadyMade asked artists to “reimagine” Depression Era WPA posters. Open created a great one (pictured).
- McDnoald’s. Bucksstar Coffee. Pizza Huh. Is someone in China building a shopping mall filled with fake brands, or is it all just fake?
- Barack Obama: Restaurant critic. He loves his peach cobbler at Dixie Kitchen in Chicago.
- World Hum contributor David Farley talked travel with Arthur and Pauline Frommer.
- Voting begins on the New 7 Wonders of Nature. There are 261 nominees.
- An American tourist was stabbed outside a bar in Rome.
- Happy 50th birthday, Alaska.
- Farewell to the SS Catalina.
- Another farewell to the San Francisco Chronicle’s John Flinn.
- Jon Bowermaster started a two-month residency at Gadling, writing from Antarctica. He calls the continent “the beating heart of Planet Earth.”
- Why not measure the world’s countries by robot density? Here are the top 10. (Via Passport)
- This may be the least scenic hot tub in the world. I prefer this view.
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The Road Less Eaten
by David Farley | 01.06.09 | 2:52 PM ET
America’s relationship with food from around the world has traveled a long way in the last few decades. Case in point: Weight Watchers “Worldwide Favorites” recipe cards from 1974. Say what you will about globalization, at least we no longer have to endure these fish “tacos” (their quotes), an anything-goes orgy of tomatoes and cheese, or ashen-gray Fish Balls or Fluffy Mackerel Pudding.
I’ve never been to Polynesia, but something tells me the combination of ingredients in the Polynesian Snack—fruit, buttermilk and sprouts—would make an islander eat sand before laying hands on anything from this recipe book. We’ve come along way, baby.
The Grateful Dead: On the Road Again
by Eva Holland | 01.06.09 | 11:39 AM ET
The surviving members of the Grateful Dead—whose classic track, “Truckin’,” recently landed at No. 28 on our list of the Top 40 Travel Songs of All Time—will reunite this spring for a new American tour, the CBC reports. Cue the inevitable headline: The Dead Keep On Truckin’.
Morning Links: T-Shirt Justice, Route 66’s International Appeal and More
by Michael Yessis | 01.06.09 | 8:35 AM ET
- The TSA and JetBlue settled with Raed Jarrar for $240,000, more than two years after he was forced to remove a T-shirt with the words “We Will Not Be Silent” in both Arabic and English before boarding a flight.
- Have centuries-old diaries of a “British explorer who saved the real-life Robinson Crusoe” been found?
- Route 66: It’s huge in Belgium and Sweden and the Czech Republic and Norway and…
- A Moscow to Atlanta flight ended up in Newfoundland because of an unruly passenger.
- Air India dismissed “overweight” flight attendants.
- New York City’s 86th Street subway station: It’s “the noisiest, if not the most unlikely, museum in the city.”
- A happy third birthday to Perceptive Travel.
- Chris Patten on “the joys of an Asia-Pacific book tour.”
- Authorities interrupted a German pair’s destination wedding. That’s apparently what happens when the couple consists of a 5-year-old boy and a 6-year-old girl who try to take off for Africa while their parents are sleeping.
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Tonight: New Season of ‘Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations’
by World Hum | 01.05.09 | 4:53 PM ET
The new season kicks off tonight at 10 ET on the Travel Channel as Bourdain heads south of the border to Mexico with Carlos, head chef of Les Halles in New York City.
5 Money-Saving Resolutions for ‘09
by Eva Holland | 01.05.09 | 3:21 PM ET
‘Tis the season for budget travel tips. With the recession well and truly upon us, it seems everyone in the travel industry is looking for a money-saving angle. At About.com, Mark Kahler offers a list of helpful budget travel resolutions to kick off the New Year. My favorite is No. 5—“I will visit a National Park”—but all are practical.
(Via BlogHer)
Cuba’s Hemingway Museum Goes Digital
by Eva Holland | 01.05.09 | 2:58 PM ET
American Hemingway scholars don’t have to wait for a lifting of the Cuba travel embargo to gain more insight into the writer’s work: The island’s Hemingway Museum is digitizing large chunks of its invaluable collection, reports the Cuban News Agency.
When the author died in 1961, he left behind thousands of pages of manuscripts, maps, letters and photos at his farm outside Havana—all of which were apparently donated to the newly minted Cuban government by his wife. Government preservationists have already digitally reproduced more than 3,000 of the roughly 15,000 documents in the bequest.
(Via The Book Bench)
‘Beyond the Great Wall’: Exploring China’s Edges
by Julia Ross | 01.05.09 | 11:53 AM ET
Inspired by a recent New Yorker profile of the food writer/adventurer couple Naomi Duguid and Jeffrey Alford, I ordered a Christmas present for myself this year: the duo’s wonderful cookbook and travelogue, Beyond the Great Wall: Recipes and Travels in the Other China. It’s an affectionate look at the cultures and foodways of China’s outlying regions, including Tibet, Yunnan and Xinjiang.
The recipes, for simple dishes like Ginger and Carrot Stir-Fry, are surprisingly low maintenance. But my favorite sections are Duguid’s and Alford’s recollections of traveling in China in the mid-1980s, when the country was just opening up to foreign tourists. Alford, who taught English in Taiwan in 1982, remembers the mystique China held for Westerners at the time:
“Every once in a while I’d hear a story about someone visiting ‘the Mainland,’ traveling independently, but it seemed very hard to believe. The rumor was that a visa could be arranged in Hong Kong from a travel agent in Chungking Mansions, a low-life building full of bottom-end hostels, Indian restaurants and drug deals. It all seemed a bit unlikely—it was ‘Communist China,’ after all.”
New Year’s Resolutions, Kerouac-Style
by Eva Holland | 01.05.09 | 11:47 AM ET
In a sea of predictable New Year’s resolutions (yup, I’m headed back to the gym more often, too), Nerve.com’s Scanner blog offers something different: 30 pieces of advice straight from Beat legend (and World Hum favorite) Jack Kerouac. They’re largely aimed at writers, but they contain plenty of wisdom for travelers, too.
Couldn’t we all resolve to “believe in the holy contour of life” or to “keep track of every day the date emblazoned in yr morning”?
R.I.P. Alfred Shaheen, Aloha Shirt Revolutionary
by Michael Yessis | 01.05.09 | 8:44 AM ET
He’s credited with advances in manufacturing aloha shirts and raising “the garments to the level of high fashion with artistic prints, high-grade materials and quality construction.” He also designed the shirt Elvis wore on the cover of the “Blue Hawaii” soundtrack. Shaheen was 86.
