Travel Blog
Leonardo DiCaprio Buys His Own ‘Beach’
by Jim Benning | 07.28.05 | 9:51 PM ET
In the travel film “The Beach,” Leonardo DiCaprio plays a young backpacker in Thailand who ditches Bangkok’s Khao San Road in search of an idyllic island. That, of course, turns out to be a big mistake. But it looks as though DiCaprio himself is still itching for the island good life. According to reports, he has purchased a private island off Belize for $1.75 million.
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Yahoo! BuzzWorld Hum Newsletter
by Jim Benning | 07.28.05 | 5:11 PM ET
We’d like to interrupt this travel weblog to point out the new-and-improved but vasty under-promoted World Hum newsletter. It gets only a tiny link at the top of the page. Frankly, it deserves better. So here goes: If you’d like to receive an e-newsletter once or twice a month with updates on the latest World Hum offerings, you can subscribe by simply entering your e-mail address. It’s too easy.
For Sale: Private Island. Electricity Not Included. $350,000.
by Jim Benning | 07.28.05 | 1:28 PM ET
Who among us hasn’t dreamed of living on a paradisiacal private island—the kind of place where you can relax under a shady palm with a frosty margarita and forget about deadlines and bills and the “global struggle against violent extremism”? For those with the cash and the nerve, Islands magazine has just identified the go-to guy. His name is Farhad Vladi, and he is an impeccably dressed, German-raised private island broker who has sold more than 1,500 islands around the globe over the last 30 years.
Public Radio’s “Bookworm”
by Jim Benning | 07.27.05 | 4:51 PM ET
“Let Your Passions Guide You. They Are Unique…Let Them Subsume You.”
by Jim Benning | 07.27.05 | 11:38 AM ET
That was the message that writer Jeffrey Tayler delivered to students enrolled in Rolf Potts’ writing course in Paris earlier this month. His lecture has been published on Potts’ weblog, and aspiring writers and fans of Tayler’s work will find it both inspiring and instructive.
In addition to offering advice, Tayler recounts his own path to the writing life, emphasizing the importance that passions played along the way. “I mean passions for subjects that fascinate and thrill you the way a good novel or poem or even movie does,” he told them. “These passions drove me to acquire knowledge and accomplish the things I would write about. Most of all, they focused my energy.” Tayler, of course, is an Atlantic Monthly correspondent and the author of a number of books, including “Facing the Congo” and his latest, Angry Wind: Through Muslim Black Africa by Truck, Bus, Boat and Camel.
The Op-Ed Page is the New Travel Section
by Michael Yessis | 07.25.05 | 10:00 PM ET
We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: Sometimes the best newspaper travel stories don’t appear in the travel section. For the third day in a row, a great travel story has appeared in the op-ed pages of either the New York Times or the Los Angeles Times. On the heels of Bob Greene’s excellent Saturday piece in the New York Times, columnist David Brooks took a break from political mudslinging Sunday with a column about flying with children. It’s not a subject that immediately brings to mind Picasso, but Brooks makes the comparison with his trademark wit.
The Critics: “Kiss & Tango”
by Jim Benning | 07.25.05 | 2:59 PM ET
In Sunday’s Los Angeles Times Book Review, Susan Salter Reynolds reviews a new travel memoir, “Kiss & Tango: Looking for Love in Buenos Aires,” by Marina Palmer. The book chronicles the author’s move from New York to Buenos Aires, where she takes up tango dancing, studying the moves by day and hitting the tango clubs by night, hoping to become a professional dancer. Salter Reynolds likes the book. “Palmer’s effervescence is so contagious that a reader feels she has actually lived the life (hangovers and all),” she writes (scroll down one item on the page). “Armchair tango. Now that’s escape.”
“The Day My Plane Troubles Became Entertainment”
by Michael Yessis | 07.23.05 | 12:37 PM ET
Picture this: It’s the middle of your Southwest flight out of Chicago, and the captain’s voice comes over the intercom. He says he’s returning to the airport. The problem lies with the control stick. It’s shaking violently, a sign universally acknowledged by pilots that the plane may stall. You grip the armrests. Your heart races.
The Onion Does Travel
by Jim Benning | 07.22.05 | 12:58 PM ET
Over the years, we’ve pointed out a number of hilarious travel-related stories from “America’s Finest News Source.” Now, The Onion has published a special section devoted entirely to travel. It features the lead story, “United Nations Condemns American Tourist Traps as Inhumane” and a host of other articles, including “Woman Who ‘Loves Brazil’ Has Only Seen Four Square Miles of It.” I agree with Erik Olsen at Gadling, who found the stories “funny. Not gut-busting funny.” But of course, it’s always good to see The Onion have some fun with travel.
Transitions Abroad’s New Travel Writing Portal
by Jim Benning | 07.22.05 | 11:15 AM ET
Transitions Abroad has put together a terrific resource page for aspiring travel writers that features a moderated forum, as well as links to interviews, blogs, market leads and travel writers’ organizations. The page also includes book suggestions from a number of writers and editors, inlcuding yours truly. Travel writing is an awfully tough way to make a living, so it’s great to see that Tim Leffel, the mastermind behind this portal, introduces it with an unflinching look at the difficult realities of the business.
Planet Theme Park Takes Two Steps Forward, One Step Back
by Michael Yessis | 07.20.05 | 9:52 PM ET
Lots of news in our ongoing effort to chronicle the world’s transformation into a giant theme park. Boing Boing reports that a Michigan man named Wally Wallington is reconstructing Stonehenge in his backyard. Discovery Channel Canada has the video. Across the Atlantic in Kent, England, the BBC has word that work has begun on Dickens World, a theme park based on the “life, times and books” of novelist Charles Dickens. The park is scheduled to open in April 2007. No word on whether the laborers are exploited children.
Travel Industry Lingo 101
by Jim Benning | 07.19.05 | 3:58 PM ET
What’s the difference between a “direct flight” and a “nonstop flight”? What’s a “spoke”? USA Today’s Bill McGee offers a brief guide to industry jargon and coins a few terms of his own.
“Africa is the Last Place Where People Can Go and Find Someone Who Will Listen to Them”
by Jim Benning | 07.19.05 | 1:23 PM ET
The Telegraph just published an article about Paul Theroux, who is promoting his new novel, “Blinding Light.” The article’s author sat down with Theroux at a Boston hotel, expecting the novelist to be cranky, but found him “curious, patient - if inadvertently evasive - and solicitous.”
Interview with Emma Larkin
by Michael Yessis | 07.19.05 | 9:51 AM ET
Emma Larkin, author of “Finding George Orwell in Burma,” will appear on National Public Radio’s All Things Considered this afternoon. Audio for the radio program is scheduled to go online at 7:30 p.m. ET.
Deconstructing the Airport Novel
by Michael Yessis | 07.19.05 | 12:53 AM ET
“Airport novels represent a literary genre that is not so much defined by its plot or cast of stock characters, as much as it is by the social function it serves.” So begins a great deconstruction of the airport novel on an odd site called News Axis. I can’t figure out who to exactly to credit for Wikipedia. The highly amusing three-page overview, includes a brief history of the genre and a great eye for detail.
