Travel Blog
The Travels of Jiang Zemin
by Michael Yessis | 08.22.06 | 7:39 AM ET
Former Chinese president Jiang Zemin visited more than 70 countries during his 13-year rule, and he apparently chronicles a great deal of those trips in a 654-page travel book that came out recently. The book is called “For a Better World: Jiang Zemin’s Overseas Visits,” and according to an AP story, it’s more about Jiang’s “desire…to be remembered as the leader who presided over China’s rise to unprecedented importance in trade and global affairs” than his desire to be the next J. Maarten Troost. Via Gadling.
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Yahoo! BuzzJ. Maarten Troost: “It’s the Writing, Not the Travel”
by Michael Shapiro | 08.21.06 | 2:51 PM ET
World Hum Wants to Post Your Travel Photos
by Michael Yessis | 08.21.06 | 12:44 PM ET
Help World Hum become less visually challenged by submitting your travel photos to our new Flickr photo pool. We’re looking for striking images from travelers around the world to illustrate our dispatches, weblog posts and photo galleries. If you want to become a fully credited photo contributor to World Hum, please add your images to the pool.
The Shameful Rise of “Shrinking-Vacation Syndrome”
by Michael Yessis | 08.21.06 | 7:58 AM ET
Orlando Tops List of Angriest U.S. Cities
by Michael Yessis | 08.21.06 | 6:55 AM ET
Say it ain’t so, Mickey Mouse! Orlando, Florida, home of Disney World, ranked at the top of Men’s Health’s list of angriest cities in the U.S. How can one of the self-proclaimed happiest places on earth be located in the angriest city in the U.S.? The story on the magazine’s Web site gives no explanation of how it arrived at its list of the 100 angriest cities, so if you live in one of them, don’t get too angry about your arbitrary designation. Use it as an excuse to get yourself to Vanuatu fast. The country was recently selected as the happiest country on the planet. Or, perhaps even better, head to the Florida Keys to that other happiest place in the world: Margaritaville. Thanks for the tip, Eli.
William T. Vollman on Hopping Trains
by Michael Yessis | 08.20.06 | 7:56 AM ET
In an interview in The Independent, William T. Vollman reveals that he’s working on a book about riding freight trains across the United States. The notoriously on-the-edge author tells Matt Thorne, “It’s really fun to think about the connections with the Beats, rereading Jack Kerouac, but also Jack London and Mark Twain, travelling fast through the country, that solitary, wild American experience.”
John Burdett on Thailand, Sex and ‘The Quiet Farang’
by Michael Yessis | 08.19.06 | 2:00 PM ET
The arrest of John Mark Karr in Bangkok for allegedly murdering JonBenet Ramsey almost 10 years ago has put Thailand’s reputation for sex tourism and as a haven for western drifters, or farang kee-nok, in the spotlight of American media. In an opinion piece in today’s New York Times, John Burdett, author of the crime novel Bangkok Tattoo, weighs in on why Thailand has, in the words of one Bangkok teacher he spoke to, become the place where farang go after they kill or rape somebody in their own country.
Amy Tan: “It’s a Wonderful Discovery of Who You Are When You’re Dislocated”
by Michael Shapiro | 08.18.06 | 9:54 PM ET
Editor’s note: Travel writer Michael Shapiro is in Corte Madera, California for the annual Book Passage Travel Writers & Photographers Conference. He’s on the conference faculty and is writing about the gathering for World Hum.
I first met Amy Tan last September, at a benefit for New Orleans’ residents who were suffering from the ravages of Katrina. Tan and her husband arrived with a couple of Yorkies, each well-behaved dog in its own little basket. She was one of two dozen San Francisco Bay Area writers last year who turned up on a moment’s notice to read at Book Passage.
‘Snakes on a Plane’ = Movie. Bees on Planes = Serious, Real-Life Problem.
by Michael Yessis | 08.18.06 | 7:07 AM ET
Okay, snakes have been found on planes not carrying Samuel L. Jackson. But bees are becoming a major problem at airports across the United States. “Africanized honey bees—the infamous ‘killer bees’—are increasingly making unscheduled layovers at airports across the Southwest,” writes the Wall Street Journal’s Nick Timiraos. “The aggressive bees, which entered the U.S. from Mexico in the early 1990s, like to travel across open spaces and stop to rest whenever the queen gets tired. Airports have few trees or other natural rest stops. That makes planes, jetways, baggage-loading equipment, terminals and parking garages popular for stopovers.”
South Queensferry, Scotland
by Ben Keene | 08.18.06 | 6:42 AM ET
Coordinates: 55 59 N 3 23 W
Population: 9,370 (2001 est.)
Mad dogs and Englishmen may be unable to resist the midday sun, but it’s the Scottish who will venture into the heat covered head to toe in 10,000 prickly seed pods from the burdock plant. For centuries now, August in Scotland has marked the reappearance of a strange creature known as the Burryman, a somewhat masochistic, yet tradition-bound resident of South Queensferry, who spends a day wandering the streets (assisted by two attendants) petitioning neighbors for whiskey and money. In the words of John Nicol, this year’s lucky honoree: “It is agony to wear the suit as it is as uncomfortable as it looks.” Once a flourishing port just northwest of Edinburgh, the small town of South Queensferry is also the site of the Forth Rail Bridge, an 8,296-foot engineering marvel spanning the Firth of Forth that was the largest such structure on the planet upon its completion in March of 1890.
—.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) is the editor of the Oxford Atlas of the World.
Talking Travel Writing with Tim Cahill
by Michael Shapiro | 08.18.06 | 1:33 AM ET
Interviews with Jason Roberts, Daniel Kalder and Robert Sullivan
by Frank Bures | 08.17.06 | 6:06 PM ET
Recently the radio show To The Best of our Knowledge aired a great hour-long program on travel. It included interviews with Jason Roberts, who wrote A Sense of the World: How A Blind Man Became History’s Greatest Traveler, and Robert Sullivan, who talked about his new book Cross Country. Sullivan spoke about his worst trip ever, which was fun, but the best segment was an interview with antitourist Daniel Kalder, author of Lost Cosmonaut, on his travels around Russia.
An End to the Hostile Hostel?
by Sarah Schmelling | 08.17.06 | 11:57 AM ET
The cramped, shared spaces. The mysterious substances you step in as you traverse the maze of hallways to the tiny bathroom. The odd odors coming from the snoring stranger in the bunk below. Could all this fun at hostels become a thing of the past? According to an article in Sunday’s San Diego Union-Tribune by Bob Tedeschi, longtime backpacker haunts have greatly improved during the past few years, thanks to a push from hostelling organizations around the world. New amenities include Wi-Fi access, smaller and sometimes private suites, Jacuzzis and garden views—not to mention higher standards in cleanliness, safety, and even property-manager helpfulness. Proponents of the push, like Hostelling International, which represents 4,000 hostels in 60 countries, now send inspectors regularly to member affiliates to ensure they conform with high-level requirements. “They’re absolutely getting better,” Mark Vidalin, marketing director for Hostelling International USA, told Tedschi. “There’s been a recognition that hostelling has reached critical mass and gone beyond just cheap places to stay.”
Shredding Morocco’s Sand Dunes
by Terry Ward | 08.17.06 | 11:50 AM ET
I could practically feel the grit of sand in my teeth and the harsh desert sun beating down while reading Patrick Steel’s sensory-overload account in the Guardian of carving Saharan dunes atop a snowboard in Morocco. While duneboarding is nothing new on the extreme sports circuit, the story brought back memories of my own failed attempts at riding sand. So many times—New Zealand, Uruguay and Australia all come to mind—I have followed my guidebook’s suggestion to rent a board and cruise down the nearby dunes only to fail miserably. The sand sticks to your board in a way snow never would, and when you catch an edge it’s all the more miserable.
British Tabloid Travel Headline of the Day: ‘Boy, 12, Makes a Mockery of Air Security’
by Michael Yessis | 08.16.06 | 10:37 PM ET
The story from the Daily Mail: “A top level security probe is under way after a 12-year-old boy walked on to a plane unchecked with no documents at the height of the terror scare. The boy boarded a plane at Gatwick on Monday despite airport security being on red-alert.”
