Travel Blog
Survey: U.S. Least Friendly Country to Travelers
by Michael Yessis | 11.21.06 | 7:31 AM ET
It’s rude immigration officials and difficulty obtaining travel documents—not to mention the country’s current image in most of the world—that have travelers avoiding the U.S., according to a survey of 2011 non-U.S. residents released Monday by the Discover America Partnership. “Since 9/11 this country has viewed foreign travellers as more of a threat than an opportunity,” Geoff Freeman, the director of Discover America Partnership, said Monday in a conference call with reporters, according to a Reuters report. “They [border officials] do not understand that foreign travellers are also key to our national security: they go home as ambassadors for our country.”
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Yahoo! BuzzThe Critics: ‘Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast’
by Jim Benning | 11.20.06 | 12:27 PM ET
If you love the oudoors, it’s hard not to love Edward Abbey, author of the classic Utah memoir Desert Solitaire. (“Since you cannot get the desert into a book any more than a fisherman can haul up the sea with his nets,” Abbey memorably wrote in “Solitaire,” “I have tried to create a world of words in which the desert figures more as a medium than as material.”) Abbey died in 1989, and now, a publisher has collected 236 letters he wrote over his lifetime, in a collection entitled Postcards from Ed. It was reviewed in Sunday’s New York Times. Writes Jonathan Miles: “If few surprises are embedded in this trim selection of letters, edited by Abbey’s pal David Petersen, it’s because Abbey, on the page, was always Abbey: free ranging, cymbal crashing, an anarchist in mind as well as politics, encased throughout his life in an ever-shaken snow globe of contradictions, provocations, bathroom-wall jokes and fortissimo declarations.” That may be so, but die-hard Abbey fans are sure to add it to their collections.
Compay Segundo House Opens in Havana
by Jim Benning | 11.20.06 | 9:04 AM ET
Ry Cooder’s 1997 Buena Vista Social Club album, and the Wim Wenders documentary of the same name, not only introduced millions of people to traditional Cuban music but launched thousands of visits to the island nation—and for good reason. The music on the album is at once haunting, playful and soulful. No song embodies this more, I think, than “Chan Chan,” written by Compay Segundo, the legendary Cuban musician featured prominently on the album and in the film. He died in Havana in 2003 at the age of 95, and now, his Havana home is being preserved as a tribute to him. It’s sure to become a pilgrimage site for Cuban music aficionados the world over.
The Jekyll & Hyde B&B: What They’re Saying on TripAdvisor
by Michael Yessis | 11.20.06 | 9:00 AM ET
The “charming basement laboratory” is “cute!”, but beware of the limping, slurring innkeeper. World Hum contributor Kate Hahn has a funny rundown of what faux TripAdvisor members are saying about the Jekyll & Hyde B&B in her latest piece for McSweeney’s Internet Tendency.
The Critics: ‘Walt Disney’ by Neal Gabler
by Jim Benning | 11.20.06 | 8:15 AM ET
If the world is slowly but surely becoming one giant theme park, as we often suspect, then Walt Disney is that future world’s founding father. So we think it’s worth pointing out a new biography of Disney by Neal Gabler, the media critic who wrote the terrific book Life: The Movie: How Entertainment Conquered Reality. The New York Times’ Michiko Kakutani recently reviewed Gabler’s Disney biography, observing that Disney has long been derided by critics as “a purveyor of the synthetic, the sanitized, the puerile and the cloyingly cute,” but that recent critiques have been more favorable. Gabler’s book would seem to fall in the latter camp. Indeed, according to the book’s publisher, Gabler is “the first writer to be given complete access to the Disney archives.”
Nigeria’s Airplane House: “Very Strange, but Nice. Very Nice.”
by Michael Yessis | 11.20.06 | 7:50 AM ET
Liza Jammal had a vision for an airplane house long before “Monster House” took on the task. Jammal lives in Abuja, Nigeria, with her husband Said, and, according to Craig Timberg’s story in the Washington Post this weekend, in 1980 she asked her new husband to build her a house in the shape of an airplane to symbolize her love of travel. In the flush of young love, Timberg writes, he agreed.
Cruising: A Dreaded Norovirus Strikes Again
by Jim Benning | 11.19.06 | 10:32 AM ET
That’s what experts believe sickened more than 500 passengers aboard Carnival Cruise Lines’ Liberty ship, which docked in Fort Lauderdale today after 16 days at sea. The Sun-Sentinel paints a grim picture of the scene on the ship: “Anti-viral agents were repeatedly sprayed all over the ship and passengers said a medicinal spell lingered everywhere. Passengers told of three dozen people waiting in line for the infirmary to open every morning.” The story mentions that many cruise industry officials believe norovirus outbreaks at sea “get unfair attention because a CDC study found only 10 percent of the 232 outbreaks investigated from 1997 to 2000 were on ships or vacation settings. The rest took place in restaurants, nursing homes and schools.” Unfair attention? They get more coverage because victims are, uh, stuck on a ship.
Holiday Air Travel Carry-On Primer*
by Jim Benning | 11.17.06 | 12:42 PM ET
The Seattle P-I offers a quick look at the latest rules. It answers the vexing question normally reserved for graduate seminars in contemporary TSA regulations: Can you carry on a 6-ounce toothpaste tube with 3 ounces of toothpaste left in it?
*Add: Washington Post on the latest carry-on rules in Europe.
Gifts for the Traveler: Photo Books
by Jim Benning | 11.17.06 | 11:31 AM ET
‘Tis the season when intriguing travel-related photo books hit bookstores, offering travelers a raft of gift ideas. We already noted the recent release of Middle of Nowhere, Lonely Planet’s celebration of picturesque, far flung places. Yesterday, the San Francisco Chronicle’s Regan McMahon suggested several other intriguing titles. For starters, McMahon noted Hans Kemp’s Bikes of Burden, featuring photos of motorbikes pressed into delivery work in Vietnam. “In each sharp color photo, one can barely see the rider as items from ducks to hula hoops to fish to wooden cabinets to topiary are piled high on the two-wheeled vehicles,” McMahon writes. “My favorite: a shot from behind of a towering stack of live fish floating, one each, in water-filled, gallon-size baggies, with the driver completely obscured.”
Seven New Wonders of the World Fever: Catch It
by Jim Benning | 11.16.06 | 7:36 PM ET
Yesterday, we noted USA Today’s list of Seven New Wonders of the World, and we briefly mentioned another list of Seven Wonders in the works. Today, CNN.com published a story about that other list, and according to the report, it’s generating loads of interest. More than 20 million people so far have cast votes for their favorite wonders in a global competition started in 1999 by Swiss adventurer Bernard Weber. A panel of architectural experts, including former UNESCO chief Federico Mayor, helped narrow down the nominations to 21 sites, from Machu Picchu, the Great Wall of China (pictured) and Turkey’s Hagia Sofia to Petra, the Statue of Liberty and the Eifel Tower. The public can vote until July 6, 2007. The winners will be named the next day.
Are the Most Challenging Trips Also Fun?
by Jim Benning | 11.16.06 | 2:31 PM ET
The answer, of course, depends on who you ask. In Sunday’s Chicago Tribune, Sophia Dembling offers her take: “[S]ome trips are so challenging, it’s hard to call them ‘fun’ at the time, no matter how rich they may be. Those trips, in a way, improve when they’re over and I’m back home sorting through what I’ve seen, done and learned. Then I’m always glad I made the effort. And make no mistake, it is an effort. Always.”
USA Today’s Seven New Wonders of the World
by Jim Benning | 11.15.06 | 4:00 PM ET
Photo courtesy of freestockphotos.com.
The newspaper, along with “Good Morning America,” recently consulted six panelists, from an astrophysicist to travel writer Pico Iyer, to update the Seven Wonders of the World. The news organizations are now revealing the wonders—one each weekday—through Friday. Making the list are Potala Palace and Jokhang Temple in Lhasa, Tibet (“they form a dramatic double act of spiritual power, architectural splendor and faith enduring against all odds”); Old City, Jerusalem (“for its central place in religious history and struggles for tolerance”); the Polar ice caps (“it is becoming increasingly clear that the mind-blowing expanses of frozen water at the top and bottom of Earth hold the key to the future of life as we know it”); and Hawaiian Marine Monument in the Pacific (“It is the largest protected area on the planet”). Today, the newspaper added the Internet to the list, and World Hum’s own Michael Yessis, who also happens to be an editor at USA Today, explained the unorthodox choice.
L.A. Comic vs. the Transportation Security Administration
by Jim Benning | 11.15.06 | 2:25 PM ET
Oh TSA, why do you seem to torment so many travelers, even funny people? U.S. Army veteran Tom Irwin, who performs the one-man stage show 25 Days in Iraq, had little trouble getting cleared to visit the White House last summer. But somehow, he wound up on the TSA’s security radar. As a result, the Los Angeles Times reports today, Irwin has had a tough time checking in for flights, encountering one mysterious and frustrating delay after another.
Borat and the ‘Real Kazakhstan’
by Jim Benning | 11.14.06 | 8:55 PM ET
What do real Kazakhs make of Borat, the faux journalist claiming to be from Kazakhstan? “Those few Kazakhs who are aware of him are mainly from better-off families who can watch MTV (where Borat infamously hosted the 2005 Europe Music Awards),” writes John Noble on Lonely Planet. “Many people here realise that Sacha Baron Cohen’s target, through Borat, is not really Kazakhstan but prejudice wherever it occurs, and may feel that their government’s steps to counter Borat (such as revoking Cohen’s right to use the .kz website domain) have been unnecessary. But few feel that his insults to their country can be ignored indefinitely.”
MTV, Like, Enters the Travel Guidebook Biz
by Jim Benning | 11.14.06 | 3:11 PM ET
The network has teamed with Frommer’s to produce guidebooks aimed at young budget travelers, according to an AP report. MTV Italy and MTV Ireland are the first books published in the series, with additional Europe titles due out over the next year. “The ‘best of’ recommendations in ‘MTV Italy’ include ‘most awesome ancient ruins’ like the Colosseum and Roman Forum, best seen, according to the guide, after dark when the floodlights come on,” the story reports. “Best churches, according to ‘MTV Italy,’ are St. Peter’s Basilica, the Duomo in Florence and St. Mark’s Basilica.” We’re all for any books that can inspire young Americans to head overseas for the first time. MTV guidebook readers will no doubt discover that Europe is packed with fly hostel-cribs, seriously awesome ruins and people as beautiful as those in Laguna Beach—I mean, on “Laguna Beach.”
