Travel Blog
Q&A With Cash Peters: “A Vagabond in Vogue”
by Michael Yessis | 08.02.05 | 11:48 PM ET
U.S. News and World Report’s Joshua Davidovich has filed a Q&A with Cash Peters, host of the new Travel Channel show Stranded. Each week, the producers of the show strip Peters of money and possessions, and drop him into a location somewhere in the world. Peters lands with no idea where he is. Peters tells Davidovich that he has a goal for the show: “I’m trying to inspire an anticynical belief. I went to one place where everybody is rich and they were all supposed to be jolly and playful, but everybody was angry. But most ordinary people are genuinely nice. This has confirmed for me that people are good at heart. When I was in the jungle where they have nothing, they gave everything. It was incredible.” Stranded airs Monday nights at 9 p.m. in the U.S. I’ve been on the road so I haven’t caught the show yet, but I’ve got the DVR set for next week.
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Yahoo! Buzz“The Longest Day”
by Jim Benning | 08.02.05 | 1:06 PM ET
Michael Shapiro was in London when his wife called with the bad news: Shapiro’s father, who was battling cancer, had taken a turn for the worse. Shapiro needed to return home soon. On the Travelers’ Tales Web site, he offers a touching account of his race to get back home. Shapiro is the author of A Sense of Place: Great Travel Writers Talk About Their Craft, Lives and Inspiration.
Dispatches from Mali
by Jim Benning | 08.02.05 | 12:38 PM ET
Cynthia Barnes is filing travel stories from Mali this week for Slate. “This is my first visit to Africa,” she writes in the first installment. “As long as I’m making the trip, I plan to stay awhile. Normally, I’m the queen of the quickies. My professional specialty is swinging through somewhere like Shanghai and churning out facile features that suggest insider expertise but are actually the product of 48-hour press tours. I want, for once, to go slowly. To meet someone besides the local tourism authorities. To understand a tiny piece of one place. To have an adventure that’s at least a little unscripted. My return flight is 10 weeks from now.”
Andy and Alex in Italy
by Jim Benning | 08.02.05 | 12:16 PM ET
Ever since I interviewed Rick Steves’ 18-year-old son, Andy, before he left on his first parent-free trip to Europe, I’ve been reading the travel weblog he keeps with his buddy, Alex. It’s a good weblog, and reading it reminds me of the giddy sense of discovery I felt on my first solo trip to Europe. It’s a nostalgic, vicarious thrill. Yesterday, Alex broached a subject they hadn’t addressed much: girls. You have to appreciate his honesty.
Travel Photo Tips
by Jim Benning | 08.02.05 | 11:44 AM ET
CNN.com offers some good tips on taking travel photos.
“Fear Is Not Going to Stop Me”
by Jim Benning | 08.02.05 | 11:35 AM ET
Terrorist attacks don’t always deter travelers these days the way they once did, according to an interesting story in USA Today. “It was once widely held that terrorism devastated tourism,” the paper reports. “But as travelers grow accustomed to a new era in which suicide bombers can strike anywhere, tourists are proving increasingly resilient. Tourist-driven economies, once leveled for months or even years after tragedies, are bouncing back much more quickly than in the past.”
Chasing the Book
by Jim Benning | 08.02.05 | 11:08 AM ET
Investigating International Sex Tourism*
by Michael Yessis | 08.01.05 | 1:45 PM ET
National Magazine Award-winner Sean Flynn begins a three-part investigative series on sex tourism in the August issue of GQ magazine. In part one, Flynn travels to the Philippines, where he talks to some of the young women—girls, really—involved in the sex trade, as well as the men who fly in from around the world to be with them.
The Critics: “No Reservations”
by Jim Benning | 08.01.05 | 1:43 PM ET
New York Times critic Virginia Heffernan likes chef Anthony Bourdain’s new travel show, No Reservations, which debuts tonight on the Travel Channel. The show features the author of “Kitchen Confidential” traveling the globe, from Iceland to New Jersey, eating. (The travel show is not to be confused with a new sitcom in the works for Fox this fall based on “Kitchen Confidential.”)
*Well, Duh
by Jim Benning | 08.01.05 | 1:09 PM ET
That was the response from a number of gay and lesbian newlyweds in Canada to a government travel warning that they might not be welcomed with open arms in other countries. Canada’s foreign affairs office issued the warning, noting that other nations may not recognize the same-sex marriages now legal in Canada, and may not even tolerate same-sex couples.
Gadling’s Erik Olsen on Current TV
by Jim Benning | 08.01.05 | 12:31 PM ET
Sometimes the blogosphere and the non-blog world meet in ways worth pointing out. In this case, Erik Olsen of the Gadling travel blog notes that a video he shot at Varanasi, India, will air today on Al Gore’s highly publicized new cable network, Current TV. The video was a finalist in a network contest, and a recent Time magazine story about the network called Olsen’s piece “a gripping, sensitively shot video of Indian families cremating their loved ones on the Ganges.” To which Olsen responds, “That’s positive, right?” We’d say so, Erik. Congrats.
“Travel Removes Us From Our Everyday Lives But Not Real Life”
by Jim Benning | 08.01.05 | 11:52 AM ET
In Sunday’s paper, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel’s Thomas Swick offers a thoughtful reflection on this year’s summer vacation season, with its terrorist attacks and hurricanes.
The Politics of Travel Warnings
by Jim Benning | 08.01.05 | 11:38 AM ET
The Seattle Times’ Carol Pucci asks a great question: Why did the recent London bombings result in only a “brief and restrained” travel advisory from the U.S. State Department, while the terrorist attack in Egypt prompted a much more strongly worded advisory? Could it be—gasp—that politics are involved? It’s not a new question, but it’s as relevant as ever. Any traveler who has spent more than a few minutes studying State Department pronouncements for various countries could come up with numerous perplexing inconsistencies.
Groan-Inducing Headline of the Week: “The InciDENTAL Tourist”
by Jim Benning | 07.29.05 | 12:49 PM ET
It tops an interesting story in USA Today about, yes, dental tourism, also known as “tooth tourism.” Medical-related travel is nothing new, but apparently “tooth tourism” is the latest twist on the trend, especially in parts of Europe.
The Endless Road Trip
by Michael Yessis | 07.28.05 | 11:40 PM ET
It’s not easy being a member of the Samurai Bears. The Golden Baseball League team, which consists solely of Japanese players and has no home field, is in the midst of a 90-game, 96-day road trip around the American southwest. “I can’t believe we’re actually doing it,” pitcher Takaaki Igarashi said through an interpreter during a postgame interview with Ben Bolch of the Los Angeles Times. “It’s not that it’s really hard. I just get sick of eating hamburgers all the time.” Bolch caught up with the Bears during a recent stop in Southern California, and he chronicles a journey “fraught with comical misadventures and lost-in-translation moments.”
