Travel Blog
Christmas Island
by Ben Keene | 12.08.06 | 9:00 AM ET
Coordinates: 10 30 S 195 40 E
Area: 60 sq. mi. (155 sq. km)
Maybe if he’d given it more thought, Old Saint Nick would have opened his workshop in a slightly more salubrious location than the North Pole. Somewhere like, say, Christmas Island in the Indian Ocean. Very nearly as remote but considerably warmer than Finnish Lapland where he can currently be reached, Christmas Island was so named when a ship owned by the East India Company anchored offshore on Dec. 25, 1643. Granted, the monsoon season might be a slight annoyance and the humidity would require some adjustments to his suit, plus Santa would probably have to trade in his reindeer for a team of red land crabs (roughly 120 million currently reside here), but squeezing in some scuba diving would certainly be easier. At present this small Australian dependency south of Java supports some tourism, limited tropical fruit farming and phosphate mining.
—.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) is the editor of the Oxford Atlas of the World.
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Yahoo! BuzzSurviving the Coup in Fiji
by Jim Benning | 12.07.06 | 2:49 PM ET
CBS is in the midst of filming another series of “Survivor” shows in Fiji, where a military coup has just occurred. Will the show’s production be affected? Apparently not. It is “Survivor,” after all. A CBS spokesman told the Associated Press: “Our producers on location have been assured by the Fiji military that we are safe on the remote island where we are filming and that our cast and crew will be permitted to leave the country safely when the show wraps production.” If they’re lucky, they might even be able to find a completely ridiculous “I Survived Rebel Coup in Fiji” T-shirt, as I did when I visited the country during a coup in 2000. One tip: Ask one of the cashiers in the shops at Nadi Airport. If your experience is like mine, they’ll quietly pull the T-shirts out of the back—contraband, apparently—and sell them for cash only. I still wear mine—the front is pictured above—with pride.
Photo by Jim Benning.
Fifty Works of Art Worth Traveling the World to See
by Michael Yessis | 12.07.06 | 8:29 AM ET
Guardian art and architecture blogger Jonathan Jones asked his readers what 50 works of art are worth traveling a world to see? Or, to put it another way, “What works of art would you want to show a visitor from the Crab Nebula to prove humanity should be spared the interstellar death ray?” He’s posted the list 50 in no particular order. It includes Stonehenge, Michelangelo’s frescoes in the Sistine Chapel, Picasso’s “Guernica” and the Terracotta Army of the First Qin Emperor in China.
‘Oh, Tabernacle!’
by Michael Yessis | 12.06.06 | 7:58 AM ET
You probably shouldn’t say that next time you’re in French-speaking Quebec. “It is too profane,” writes Washington Post correspondent Doug Struck. “So are other angry oaths that sound innocuous in English: chalice, host, baptism. In French-speaking Quebec, swearing sounds like an inventory being taken at a church.”
Stinky Woman Forces Emergency Landing. Headline Writers Rejoice.
by Michael Yessis | 12.06.06 | 7:50 AM ET
American Airlines Flight 1053 made an emergency landing in Nashville earlier this week after a woman struck a match to mask evidence of a troubled digestive system. Translation: She farted and tried to cover it up. It was an embarrassment for the unidentified woman, and an embarrassment of riches for the world’s headline writers. Here’s a sampling of what they came up with to describe the story:
James Fallows in China: ‘Postcards From Tomorrow Square’
by Michael Yessis | 12.06.06 | 7:23 AM ET
Atlantic correspondent James Fallows recently moved to Shanghai, China for an indefinite stay. The December issue of the magazine features a terrific story that mixes his experiences as an expat with an analysis of where China has been and where it’s going. “I have not before been anyplace that seemed simultaneously so controlled and so out of control,” he writes. “The control is from on high—and for most people in the cities, most of the time it’s not something they bump into. What’s out of control is everything else.”
World Hum World Headlines
by Jim Benning | 12.05.06 | 8:30 PM ET
News shorts for curious travelers.
Egypt
Pharaohs’ Tombs Trump Village Homes
Reports the New York Times: “Bulldozers moved Saturday into an Egyptian village near the Valley of the Kings in pursuit of a long-delayed effort to allow archaeologists to begin studying a wealth of tombs in the area.” More than 100 houses have been cleared in the last week. Interesting. In Los Angeles, they’d more likely destroy historic tombs to build new houses.
USA
What’s your travel terror score?
Did you know you had one? “Almost every person entering and leaving the United States by air, sea or land is assessed based on [Automated Targeting System’s] analysis of their travel records and other data, including items such as where they are from, how they paid for tickets, their motor vehicle records, past one-way travel, seating preference and what kind of meal they ordered,” the Associated Press reports. Creepy.
Spain
Bona tarda or buenas tardes?
The Los Angeles Times explores the pitched battle over languages in Catalonia. “Some ATMs in Spain offer a choice of six languages, four of which are the Spaniards’ own.”
Japan
Ping, Ka-Ching, Ka-Boom!
Money raised from Japan’s pachinko habit just might be supporting North Korea’s nuclear program, the Los Angeles Times reports. “The machines rake in more than $200 billion a year, some of which finds its way to North Korea.” As a result, some players are souring on the game.
USA
Bright lights, big city, mucho vino
Novelist Jay McInerney has a great side gig: traveling the world to write about wine for Home & Garden. Now, a number of those columns have been collected in a new book, A Hedonist in the Cellar: Adventures in Wine. His interest in wine “started with literature, really—as with so many other things,” he says in San Diego Reader. Among the inspirational books: Hemingway’s “The Sun Also Rises” and Evelyn Waugh’s “Brideshead Revisited.”
Around the World in 20 Geography Questions
by Michael Yessis | 12.05.06 | 9:12 AM ET
This might be the slickest, most addictive geography quiz we’ve seen. How many countries can you place on the map in the time allotted?
‘Mapping the Imagination’ with Simon Winchester, Peter Turchi and Madhur Jaffrey
by Michael Yessis | 12.05.06 | 8:56 AM ET
Here’s something for anyone who gets a thrill from looking at a map: The public radio show “To the Best of Our Knowledge” devoted an hour this weekend to stories about maps and the imagination. Among the segments: “Maps of the Imagination” author Peter Turchi talks about map-making and writing and Simon Winchester discusses the man behind his book “The Map that Changed the World.”
Why Are Cruisers So Susceptible to Viruses?
by Michael Yessis | 12.05.06 | 8:47 AM ET
Another cruise ship—this time Royal Caribbean’s Freedom of the Seas, the world’s largest—recently returned to port with hundreds of passengers reportedly ill from a norovirus. Its the latest ship to succumb to gastrointestinal bug, and yesterday Slate’s Explainer spelled out why these travelers keep on getting sick. The reasons: Close quarters, questionable food and water safety in some ports and the influx of new passengers.
New Hope for Legal Travel to Cuba?
by Jim Benning | 12.04.06 | 9:22 AM ET
In our just-published interview with Pico Iyer, the author cites Cuba as his favorite place to visit, describing it as “the most complicated place I have ever been, the happiest, the saddest, the most idealistic, the most cynical, the most confounding.” The vast majority of Americans can’t visit Cuba thanks to the decades-old embargo, of course, but there appears to be a growing chorus of people calling for an easing of the travel ban, and not just because Fidel Castro missed his 80th birthday bash, prompting fresh speculation that his dictatorial days are numbered.
Exploring Nevada’s Edwards Creek Valley
by Jim Benning | 12.04.06 | 9:20 AM ET
Boston Globe travel writer Tom Haines and photographer Essdras M. Suarez have teamed up for some ambitious projects—their China series published several months ago comes to mind. In their latest, the two visited remote Edwards Creek Valley in Nevada during and after a round-up of wild mustang horses. Haines’s evocative story about the valley appeared Sunday. He and Suarez also put together a few compelling narrated slide shows with stunning photos.
The Critics: New York Times Holiday Travel Book Picks
by Michael Yessis | 12.04.06 | 8:46 AM ET
Postcards from ‘The Edge’
by Michael Yessis | 12.04.06 | 8:31 AM ET
Apparently U2’s guitar player The Edge has been sending postcards to his mum since the band started. McSweeney’s recently posted excerpts, including this from 1996: “I am writing you this from Japan. The picture on this postcard is of a monastery. We went there to visit. Bono kept asking what things were called in Japanese. The monk would say a word and Bono would repeat it. Except poorly. And in this annoying reverential whisper. He thinks the monks are so serene, but what Bono doesn’t know is that they are, in fact, killing machines. Any one of them could crumple Bono’s windpipe with a single swift blow to the throat. Bono would stagger around gasping for air before he collapsed in a Zen rock garden, dead. And that would be ironic. Because Bono talks so often about how much he loves to ‘rock.’”
John Flinn Does the Tonight Show
by Jim Benning | 12.04.06 | 7:51 AM ET
In the audience, that is. The San Francisco Chronicle travel editor writes that it’s easier getting tickets to TV show tapings than ever. He even appeared on TV briefly after Jay Leno’s monologue. As he explains in Sunday’s paper, he was the guy next to the three firefighters.
