Happy Fourth of July

World Hum’s Most Read: June 28-July 3

What We Loved This Week: Def Leppard in Greece, Austrian Competence and Freedom in Colombia

The LAX Theme Building, Then and Now

As a Woman, Can I Really Travel Without Much Fear for my Safety?

Vagabonding traveler Rolf Potts answers your questions about travel

Inside Slum Tourism

With mixed feelings, Rob Verger recently signed on for a tour of Rio de Janeiro’s favelas. He looks back on the experience—and the photos he was allowed to take.

Break Bread and Brie in France

Great cheese abounds in the land of Gaul, but dig in and you risk committing any number of faux pas. Terry Ward explains how to partake of the nation’s famed fromage with savoir faire.

10 Wanderlust-Inducing Summer Concerts

Call it world music or global pop or the sound of the world hum. Ben Keene reveals 10 acts on tour that are sure to transport you. Plus videos.

Bryan Mealer: ‘War and Deliverance in Congo’

The former AP correspondent traveled up the Congo River. Frank Bures asks the author of “All Things Must Fight to Live” about following in the wake of Joseph Conrad. 

A Journey Into ‘The Second World’

Some bureaucrats joke that they would never claim expertise about countries they had not at least flown over. In an excerpt from his new book, Parag Khanna argues that real global understanding can only come from serious travel.

‘The Worst Guidebook Writer Ever’?

Lonely Planet author Robert Reid reviews Thomas Kohnstamm’s “Do Travel Writers Go to Hell?” and weighs in on the controversy surrounding it

So Long, Forbidden City Starbucks. Help Us Pick a New Wonder.

What about the KFC/Pizza Hut in Luxor, Egypt? I hear it has great views…

I vote for the falafel/kebab vendor and the Irish pub. Both can be found just about everywhere. I know a lot of travelers disapprove of eating comfort food and watching your favourite rugby team when you’re supposed to be experiencing something new, but the ability to keep some constants in your life even while moving around from continent to continent is a sign of a shrinking world, isn’t it?

I would nominate as one of the new seven wonders the World the rock carved church og St. George in Lalibela, Ethiopia.

Why not just substitute one Chinese branch of Starbucks for another?  The perfect choice would be one in Shanghai that is also near an iconic site once considered holy--it is around the corner from the building (now a museum) where, according to the official Chinese Communist Party story, that organization held its First National Congress in 1921, in a part of the city that was then a French colonial district.  Adding to its fittingness for the title, this Starbucks is in the Xintiandi (New Heave and Earth) entertainment and shopping development, a newly built area that mimics a style of architecture with mixed Western and Chinese roots that became popular in Shanghai early in the 1900s (and the new buildings even use some of the bricks from the old buildings in that style that were torn down as the development was constructed).  Xintiandi is nothing if not cosmopolitan, as it was bankrolled by a Hong Kong developer, designed largely by an American architect, and includes among its restaurants and shops a local outlet of Shanghai Tang (a clothing company started in Hong Kong), Che’s (an eatery and bar that pays homages to the Latin American revolutionary, yet also trades on the mystique of colonial old Havanna), and at its edge a branch of Dintaifeng (a restaurant chain that specializes in Shanghainese food but was launched in Taiwan and now has branches in L.A., Tokyo and Beijing).
In my new partly travel-themed new book, China’s Brave New World--And Other Tales for Global Times (Indiana University Press, 2007)--sorry for this bit of shameless self-promotion--I suggest that the fact that this Starbucks hasn’t generated protests might tell us something significant about the difference between reglobalizing Shanghai (in which the arrival of coffee culture is seen partly as a resumption of an interrupted old cosmopolitan trajectory in a one-time “Paris of the East") and its rival city to the north.

I vote for the ubiquitous Coke signs that can be found absolutely everywhere in the world.  From Times Square in New York to a remote dirt-roadside shop in rural Morocco (without power), I don’t think I’ve ever been anywhere without seeing a Coke sign.  They far outreach McDonald’s, Lebanese restaurants (well barely), or Starbucks (trust me, I’ve tried to find Starbs to no avail in many countries)!  No matter what though, you can always find the Coke sign and usually (but not always) an associated (usually warm) bottle of Coke. 

Oh, and in relation to the previous suggestion of Pizza Hut/KFCs in Egypt (of which there really are an astounding amount, including in Giza at the rear entrance to the Pyramids), there’s little shop just below the Sphinx across the wall and they most certainly have a Coke sign too!

What about the Polar Ice caps of the North and South Pole. As we humans continue dominating in our economy, culture, and the growing globalization. We may or may not think about the consequences that we effect in our world. The polar ice caps are shrinking that would truly affect the world we live in; ecosystem incredibly altered, human settlement eaten up by the water, and many more atrocities.
This would be one of the greatest seven wonders of our growing modern world as it shows how our growth as a human society has affected the place we call home.

The Baroque sculpture-studded, 650-year-old Charles Bridge in Prague.

I like the Irish pub idea.

Guess I’ll have to be the eco-villain and nominate the Airbus A380. Sure, you’ll leave a Sasquatch-size carbon footprint when you fly this mother. But like it or not, the superjumbo jet = shrinking planet.

By the way, are you guys awarding a prize to the winner? If so, my worldhum t-shirt size is XL.

That Starbucks looks more like a cupboard! How can it be a new wonder ;)