What is on the mind of the Travelistic viewer today? Your top five most popular tags and searches tell all…
Among the tags, some obvious choices:
– Beaches
– Shopping
– Nightlife
and some less so:
– Street Vendors
– Pak Klong Talat
Macau has been getting a lot of press lately, as its recent glut of casinos helped it bankroll more than Vegas this year for the first time. There’s more to Macau, though, than the splashy new Wynn and Sands that have ended Stanley Ho’s decades-long lock on the casino business. Only a ferry or jetfoil ride from Hong Kong, Macau has a distinctly different culture–because it was a Portuguese, not a British colony–with unique architecture and cuisine. So, I was really pleased to see a new clip from Indietrekker, all about Macanese street food that can be found in the back alleys of the old city.
Abha Malpani of the Written Road spilled the beans today about a new online travel community that’s just emerged from private beta. Matador Travel is going for one-stop shopping for all your Web 2.0 travel-site needs (‘cept video, ahem): social networking, geo-mapped blog posts and photos, articles, classifieds and travel tips from users. The site’s mission is to bring together all varieties of traveler – adventurers, backpackers, urban tourists, art and music fans – into one big melting pot, with some social consciousness for flavoring. Matador is a member of One Percent for the Planet, with one-percent of their proceeds dedicated to the Surf Rider Foundation. For a site that’s only been in existence for a few months, and shielded from public view, there’s lots of interesting info to be found, and any number of members who blog regularly from home or from the road about their experiences. The site design is also slick and appealing, which will certainly help support their ambitious concept; I’m looking forward to seeing how the site develops. Welcome to the neighborhood folks!
Yesterday a post about an ancient Viking outpost, and today I hear that the tech-savvy descendants of those same Vikings are colonizing the virtual world. The Swedish Institute (SI), an organization charged with promoting Swedish culture in all forms, has announced that they’ll be creating an “embassy” within the online multi-user world of Second Life. Second life claims over 3 million “inhabitants”, who construct avatars and environments for themselves, interact with other users and conduct business in the site’s “Linden dollars.” The Second Life embassy wouldn’t provide visas or passports for traveling in the offline world, but would offer information about how to obtain them, and generally act as an information portal for Sweden. “Second Life allows us to inform people about Sweden and broaden the opportunity for contact with Sweden easily and cheaply,” said SI director Olle Waestberg. Of course, if anyone’s avatar can go to “Sweden” without having to cross a border or get on a plane, is it really worth the trouble and expense of paying for a stamp on your fusty ol’ paper passport? (via Boing Boing)
– “Sweden to set up embassy in Second Life” (The Local)
Previously:
– “Stockholm: The Musical“
There are two approaches to throwing a party to get through the darkest and coldest part of winter: you can embrace the freeze with ice sculptures, ice castles, ice what-have-you, or, you can try to beat back the cold with brute force by burning as many things as possible.
Taking the path of least resistance: Harbin, China and Quebec, Canada. Harbin is in far northeastern China, further north than the dreary Russian port of Vladivostok, and has freezing temperatures for nearly half the year. The locals make the most of it, though, with the world’s largest Ice and Snow Sculpture Festival, which they’ve hosted every winter since 1985. Running from January 5 through mid-to-late February, this year’s edition features 2,000 ice sculptures, illuminated replicas of landmark buildings made of stacked ice blocks, and mammoth snow-sculpture of Niagara Falls. Smaller in scale, but closer to home, Quebec city’s Winter Carnival distinguishes itself with snow baths (??), snow slides, cross-country skiing, dogsled races, and their mascot, the creepy, Stay-Puft-Marshmallow-Man-like Bonhomme Carnaval.
The residents of Scotland’s Shetland islands, on the other hand, won’t take their cold, dreary winter lying down. On the last Tuesday of every January (that would be Tuesday, the 30th), towns throughout Shetland give themselves over to the fire festival cryptically known as Up Helly Aa, an event that’s one-part Victorian invention, and one-part recognition of the area’s deep Nordic, pagan roots (Shetland is closer to Norway, than to Scotland). The largest event takes place in Lerwick, where nearly 1,000 torch-bearers parade through the darkened streets at nightfall. The torch-bearers are divided into 40 all-male crews, each with matching costumes, and are lead by the “Jarl” and his men, who have spent the previous year making meticulously detailed Viking outfits, and a model longship. The crews proceed through the town, with the longship in tow, and at a designated point they all circle round and pitch their torches into it, burning it to the ground. Then the focus shifts to parties that rage til dawn, held in every large space all over town. The crews visit each fest in turn, performing a song or skit at each one, with drinks on the house. Ain’t no party like a Viking party.
– Festivals
– “Quebec: Winter Carnival”
– “Vikings and Up Helly Aa” (The Scotsman)
– “Severe north China winters a boon for ice artists (BBC)
– “In pictures: Harbin ice festival” (BBC)
Miami: More than the Super Bowl
– “Super Bowl host has serene, artsy sides under the glitz” (SF Chronicle)
- “Party time in Miami: You do have a room, right?” (Chicago Tribune)
Buenos Aires for Vegetarians
– “Steak out in Buenos Aires” (Guardian)
Caribbean Island Guide
– “The 10 Point Caribbean Escapes Plan” (NYT)
China: Hiking the Great Wall
– “Wall to wall adventure” (Sydney Morning Herald)
Italy’s Hippy Hill Town
– “Calcata, Italy: Where Newcomers Gave an Old Town a Second Life” (NYT)
Mexico City Dining
– “In Mexico City, Regional Flavors Unchanged by the Big City” (NYT)
St. Petersburg, FL: Not Just for Oldsters
– “A Fountain of Youth” (Washington Post)
A piece from today’s NYT Travel Section on Madrid has vaulted into the ranks of the paper’s most-emailed. It seems, now that Barcelona has slumped into a deep post-party hangover, that stuffier, but more tasteful Madrid is getting its due. There’s a lot to like: a crop of inexpensive, design-y hotels, Richard Rogers’ sleek new airport terminal, and free access to the world-class collections at the Prado and the Reina Sofia–home of Picasso’s “Guernica”–every Sunday. Take that MoMA. My first stop would be the bar (above) singled out for great nightlife and a roof-deck with views of the gorgeous Basílica de San Francisco el Grande, El Viajero (The Traveler).
Budget Travel Online’s “Web Smart” feature has an interesting piece this month about the business of predicting airline ticket prices. Two sites, Farecast and FareCompare use historical pricing data on your route of choice to determine whether the current fare will likely increase or drop in the near future. Their example has prompted sites such as Expedia and Kayak to include pricing history, but only for searches conducted on their sites. If your route is unusual, there may only be one or two previous searches offered for comparison. The more comprehensive sites, however, aren’t problem-free. FareCompare’s process is described as “difficult” and complicated (can’t say I don’t agree), and ultimately pushes you out to external fare-booking sites like Orbitz, whose surcharges may eat up a lot of your savings. Farecast generates an admirable amount of useful data, but, despite the fact that it advertises 75% accuracy of its results, a recent Seattle Times story found they were only on-the-money 61% of the time. This is offset somewhat by a brand-new Fare Guard feature: for a $10 fee, you can save the lowest fare you find for a week, and, if ticket prices subsequently go up, Farecast will send you a check for the difference between what you paid and the saved fare. As a promotional deal, Fare Guard only costs $3 if you book before February 1. Fare prediction sites might not deliver completely on their promise, but they’re still helping travelers make more informed choices–always a good thing. On that note, here are Budget Travel’s three tips for “Smarter Searches”:
1. These days it’s rarely in your interest to book more than two months in advance. The exception is for high-season flights and routes with infrequent connections, when buying four or more months ahead may get you a better deal. In low season, it’s OK to wait as few as three weeks before departure.
2. No matter how good a fare is at a booking engine, always see if the airline website has a better one. All things being equal, book directly with the airline.
3. Try to get an idea of what fare you’re hoping to pay; Farecast and FareCompare reveal the best prices other folks have found. The cheapest seats disappear quickly, so have your exact dates, names of people going, and your credit card handy. Pounce the moment you see a good price available.
– Online Travel Booking
– “How accurate is Farecast’s forecast of airline fares?” (Seattle Times)
– “Buy It Now or Hope for a Better Airfare Tomorrow?” (Budget Travel Online)
There’s a new travel blog in town: Globorati, a daily digest for the luxury-travel minded. Globorati rounds up “jet-set intelligence” for those with too much money, and not enough time to wait for their monthly issues of Town & Country Travel, Condé Nast Traveller, and Wallpaper* to hit the mailbox. According to Cool Hunting, they officially launched today, but there is archived content on the site dating back to November, 2006. Topics hit all the required stops on the to-do lists of the pampered–the latest luxury hotels, resorts, spas and shopping–and their posts are all tagged with one of 15 minimalist categories such as “Air,” “Journey,” “Culture,” or “Tech.” Their picks for today: spas and thalassotherapy on Madeira, or dogsledding and other winter pursuits at Lake Baikal and Norway’s imminent far-north design hotel, The Other Side.
Karrysafe is a line of stylishly functional bags and money-belts designed by Joe Hunter and Adam Thorpe of Vexed Generation, in conjunction with a UK initiative called Design Against Crime. The designs are intended to thwart typical pick-pocketing and bag-theft techniques you might encounter on a day-to-day basis, but I think they’re particularly well-suited to travelers, especially now that so many of us are traveling more adventurously, more cheaply, and with ever-techier gadgets. If you’ve traveled enough, you’ve probably had something lifted at least once, and nothing can ruin a trip faster. It can also happen anywhere–I had a bag snatched from under a table at a pub in London while my back was turned for about 5 seconds. Fortunately I’d remembered to leave passport and rail pass in the safe where I was staying, but I still lost my credit and bank cards and thus, all my access to fresh cash until I could get new ones. Karrysafe bags come with lockable straps that you can use secure your bag to your chair or table, to combat just that kind of opportunistic theft. Some models have “screamer” alarms built into the bag that activate if the strap is cut, others have rolled tops that prevent easy access to main pockets, and velcro seals that announce if your bag has been opened. All bags are made of heavy-duty cordura nylon to protect your bag from being slashed. I think my favorite design might be the Body Safe belt for your phone, cards and cash, which is designed to both fit and look like the the top of your underwear – a big change from the the awkward money pouches and bulky money belts that you know you should wear, but usually can’t stand. Karrysafe’s products are primarily available in the UK, but can be ordered for delivery elsewhere. One of their bags, and a Phone Safe sleeve can also be ordered through the MoMA Design Store. Prices run from $20 – $150, a small price to pay for gear that will protect both your stuff and your peace of mind. (via Treehugger)
As of today, US citizens arriving by air from outside the 50 States, no matter what their point of origin, must have a passport to re-enter the country. (Unless you’re coming from Puerto Rico or the USVI, that is. Loophole!) The same applies to our Mexican and Canadian neighbors hoping to fly through the US. Previously, a driver’s license was considered a sufficient form of ID for short hops to Mexico, Canada and the Caribbean. Passport restrictions on land borders, and for those arriving by boat, won’t go into effect until “sometime before June 1, 2009,” so travel to Mexico and Canada won’t be drastically affected, but the Caribbean Islands will be feeling the pinch. American tourists constitute the overwhelming majority of visitors to the Caribbean, our own backyard beach paradise. That’s likely to change, though, now that weekend-trippers drawn by cheap direct flights will have to shell out $97 for a passport if they don’t already have one. Wendy Perrin, Condé Nast Traveler’s smart-travel guru, reports in the Perrin Post that Caribbean resorts are fighting back by offering price breaks, or even reimbursement to the holders of new passports. If even that doesn’t convince you that the time is ripe to finally join the proud 27% of Americans who have one, you can make like the rest of the isolationists and follow MSNBC’s tips for destinations that still don’t require a passport.
– Passports
– US Passport Home (Department of State)
– Passport Canada
– Documents for Mexican Nationals (Consulate of Mexico)
– “New Passport Rules to Go Into Effect (Washington Post)
– “Puerto Rico poised to profit from new passport rules” (Seattle Times)
– “Where to go when you don’t have a passport” (MSNBC)
We’ve had a bunch of diving clips uploaded to Travelistic, lately. So, as I was perusing the interwebs today, the site Divester jumped out at me from the daily digest of travel media. It seems like a great resource for the scuba and snorkel community, with multiple fresh posts daily. The topics range from hard news–marine conservation, the latest studies on decompression illness (aka the bends)–to daydream-inducing reports from locations around the globe, and fresh videos-of-the-day. Since diving can be a great way to give your beach vacation a sense of purpose, they also have a thoughtful breakdown of their content on various diving areas by region and type: Red Sea, Atlantic, Pacific, Caribbean, Lakes, etc. Now all I have to do is get certified…
UPDATE 2.1.07: Sad news, it appears that Divester is no more! And I only just found about it… Hopefully their archives will be hanging around.
Cancún for Anti-Tourists
– “36 Hours: Cancún” (NYT)
India
– “Surfacing: Hyderabad, India” (NYT)
Kabul
– “The Mysteries of Kabul” (NYT)
Nepal
– “Nepal at peace” (LA Times)
Northwest Skiing
– “A whimsical, wintry world apart” (Houston Chronicle)
Sardinia
– “Italian dining and decadence in Sardinia” (Times of London)
Scotland
– “A wee dram on a Scottish whisky trail” (Times of London)
Bargain Shanghai
– “In Shanghai, Balancing the Past, the Future and a Budget” (NYT)
South Carolina Kayaking
– “ Heaven and High Water in South Carolina’s New Wilderness” (NYT)
Not content to simply smash records, scale imposing peaks, and cross the earth’s most forbidding terrain, a new breed of adventurer has emerged that’s determined to do it all without any mechanical help. Team N2i is currently traversing Antarctica, heading for the Pole of Inaccessibility–the point furthest from the coast in any direction, and getting there by ski and kite pulk. If cruising across the ice by kite doesn’t sound so bad to you, remember that wind-power in Antarctica can equal a wind-chill of -50º or lower, then multiply that by the 1,100km the team plans to cover in sections of 100k and 14-16 hours per day. The pole has only been reached once before, in 1958, by a Russian team that left behind a meteorological station and a bust of Lenin as a time capsule. Team N2i left in December, and are now only 147k from the pole; you can see their current GPS location on this nifty interactive map on the their site, and read updates posted via satellite link.
Even more amazingly badass are Colin Angus and Julie Wafaei, who circumnavigated the globe completely under their own power, by foot, oar, ski and bicycle, from June, 2004 to May, 2006. In the process they rowed across the Atlantic from Portugal to Costa Rica, becoming the first to ever do so. For this feat, and many others, National Geographic Adventure named them the “Adventurers of the Year.” Our travel news show, The Map, caught up with Colin and Julie in New York at the Adventures in Travel Expo. Take a gander at this week’s brand-new episode for clips of the interview.
– “UK polar team set to make history” (BBC)
– “Adventurers of the Year: The New Magellans” (National Geographic Adventure)
Now that even adventurous, independent travel is a proper industry, it sometimes feels like there’s little in the world that hasn’t been done before, whole trips predigested as a list of “destinations” before you even set out. That is, until you meet someone who has tossed out any idea of the “right” way to travel, 
and gone to a different part of the world to work, or just to roll around and see what happens. “Where Have You Been?” is a monthly NYC event for travelers with a different slant on the business of going elsewhere, and a good story to back it up. Every edition features one adventure story, one activism story, and one wild-card entry – told by the travelers, and accompanied by photos or video. Jeff Stark presides; he’s the man behind the Nonsense NYC list of “independent art, weird events, strange happenings, and senseless culture.” I hit up Wednesday night’s event at Bluestockings bookstore on the Lower East Side, which was packed to the door with the biggest crowd Stark says they’ve had yet. Traveling as part of a spectacle, instead of as an “invisible” pseudo-anthropologist, was the unofficial theme of the night: First up, members of NYC’s Black Label Bike Club told stories from a two-month tour they took on tall bikes through rural Thailand, without a plan, or even a good map. Try blending in when you’re riding one of these. Selena McMahan of Clowns without Borders was next, and shared some of her experiences performing for children in impoverished areas of South Africa hard-hit by the AIDS crisis. You can find out about the organization here, or check out Selena’s blog here. Stark closed the night with a hilarious story about an art piece gone, horribly, horribly wrong at Robodock, a festival that’s Europe’s answer to Burning Man. Next month’s installment sounds very promising, with potential tales including a visit to communities living in the shadow of Manila’s trash dumps, and a brush with death-by-wild-boar in France. Just make sure to get there early.
(Image via Selena McMahan’s’s photobucket)
The saturday before last, it hit 70º in New York City–out on the street I saw countless people in t-shirts and flip-flops, and at least one guy running around shirtless, all this on January 7. But lately things have been suitably wintry. Today we’ve got temperatures in the 30s and flurries drifting down. It would be a relief, if I hadn’t just found out that it snowed in Los Angeles yesterday:
Meanwhile, Neil Woodburn at Gadling is reporting that the European ski season has been scotched by warm temperatures and lack of snowfall. The conditions have forced the cancellation of an upcoming World Cup downhill event at Chamonix, and several others as well. Somebody stop this crazy thing, I want to get off.
– “It’s winter for a day as snow dusts parts of L.A.” (Newsday)
In May 2004, Jono Lewarne and a childhood friend set out from the UK for a 12-month round-the-world trip. Little did he know, then, that it would turn into an odyssey that would run through April 2006. Starting in San Francisco, they headed across the Pacific, splitting a month between the Cook Islands and Fiji. A three-month roadtrip of New Zealand followed, and then Australia, where a free place to stay and a pressing need for cash led them both to eventually apply for work visas – which they got in a snap. Instead of a trip, Jono got a new home base, living and working first in Brisbane, then Perth, and using Oz as a launchpad to travel through Thailand, Laos, and Vietnam during the next year. His camera, of course, went with him everywhere, and so far he’s uploaded fantastic footage from Australia, Fiji, Laos, Vietnam, Thailand and New Zealand to Travelistic:
A week from today, all Americans returning to the US from abroad, even if that means the Caribbean, Mexico, or Canada, will have to fork over a passport in order to be readmitted to their home state. The new rules are a bit of a mixed blessing: at $97 per new passport for adults, that little blue booklet does not come cheap – this seems to be a bit of a cash cow for our “security”-expense strapped government. At the same time, only 27% percent of eligible Americans currently have a passport, compared with, say, 71% of UK residents. That may be a factor of how small a country the UK is in comparison to the US, and how easy to leave (those Brits sure do get around), but passports are no longer required for travel within almost of Europe for EU residents. If this is what it takes to make our fellow countrymen just a little more international (something Lonely Planet has been campaigning for for years), then so be it.
– US Passport Home (Department of State)
– “Passport deadline sparks heated debate” (MSNBC)
Laos
– “The Centuries-Old Allure of Laos’s Relaxed Capital” (NYT)
Colorado Skiing
– “Out of Bounds, Within Limits in Silverton, Colo.” (NYT)
Venezuela
– “In Angel Falls, Venezuela, a Forest of Islands” (NYT)
New Mexico
– “Albuquerque rising” (LA Times)
Tokyo for Cheap
– “Stretching your yen in Tokyo” (LA Times)
Iran
– “Intrigued By Iran” (SF Chronicle)
From May to August of this year Kate Harris, Mel Yule, and Ben Rawluk loaded up their bikes and set out across Western China, following the trail of Marco Polo through Xinjiang Province and Tibet. Along the way they sweated through 4,000 k of remote and challenging terrain and raised thousands in support of Kham Aid, a non-profit working on cultural preservation the Tibetan regions of China. Kate recently uploaded a preview of their videos to Travelistic:
Royal Nepal Airlines has some ‘splaining to do. They have the unenviable job of trying to drive tourism to the country after it’s recent political woes. So, perhaps the stress of the operation can explain this: A recent ad campaign sporting the tag line “Have You Seen Nepal?” featured, instead of pictures off the majestic Himalayas, a shot of Machu Picchu. Guess they haven’t seen Nepal either. According to Reuters: “Peruvian mountaineer Ernesto Malaga, who was visiting India last month, noticed the blunder on a poster hanging on a wall in the airline’s office in New Delhi.” The story tries to play down the magnitude of the error, making polite noises about how high-altitude Incan sites and Himalayan temples don’t look all that different. After all, it’s not as if Machu Picchu is a world wonder, or one of the most photographed places on the planet. Royal Nepal has publicly apologized to the Nation of Peru.
– Nepal
– Machu Picchu
Mark and Nate are two guys from Vancouver, who like to “get the hell out whenever there’s a chance.” Their adventures began with an ill-fated High School band trip, and after a hiatus for degrees and solo travels, they joined forces as the “GoodTimes Club” for a four-month trek through Japan, the Philippines, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam and Hong Kong, and excursions closer to home. You can see the results right here on Travelistic. Mark tells me that they’re currently brainstorming a more extended traveling and vlogging project, with a website to follow. More news on that coming soon.
Just a heads-up video travelers – the deadline on Travelistic’s Holiday Video Contest has been extended until January 31, so send us your best clips of festive fun and wintertime mischief. Find out all about the rules and prizes here, and how to hook up a winning video here.
If you’ve ever visited a great ape exhibit at the zoo and had the painful awareness that there are very sentient creatures on the other side of glass, well, the Adelaide Zoo hears you. Reuters reports that they’ve opened a new primate exhibit featuring homo sapiens, as a move to raise awareness about primate conservation, and where exactly we fall in the scope of the animal kingdom. The humans are in residence from now until January 28, in four groups that will stay a week each, spending their days in a glassed-in enclosure designed for orangutans. Unlike their neighbors, however, they’re allowed to go home at night, and they’re also asked to abide by certain, er, behavioral guidelines: no fighting, no nudity and no “rude behavior.” And this despite the fact that the humans are being mic’ed and broadcast via webcam as a sort of “Big Brother goes to the zoo.” Apparently some visitors find this less-than thrilling:
”’They’re completely mad,’ said one visitor to the exhibit, as the humans, who are allowed home at night, played up to the crowds and checked each other for imaginary lice. ‘It’s not as exciting as the animals actually, they’re not really doing very much,’ another onlooker said, clearly unimpressed by the volunteers’ shenanigans.”
Possibly better entertainment are the reasons the volunteers listed in their bios for getting involved: Monkey-girl Lisa P, 32, from Group 4 says: “I’m just gonna let loose, I’m completely hyperactive.’’ While Andrew, 26, from Group 3 admits: “I’m really hairy, so I thought I’d fit in at the zoo no problems.”
Couchsurfing.com is having a bit of a moment right now. The website, which networks travelers with those willing to share some free lodging for a few nights, was just featured in the Orlando Sun-Sentinel in a piece by World Hum contributor Terry Ward, and in Good magazine. Ward’s first foray into the network, on a trip to Limerick, Ireland, was a completely positive experience that reminded her of “how many times having a little faith in people has opened up [her] world while traveling.” With 152,870 users and hosts worldwide, that’s a lot of consciousness-raising going on. Here on Travelistic, our friends Eric and Bobby of The War on Them, are traveling around the world as cheaply as they possibly can, using Couchsurfing as their primary mode of lodging. Look for future episodes to see the surfing experience in action. Or, you can check out Kelly Loudenberg’s interview with the site’s founder, Casey Fenton, in her clip on Montreal.
Time’s running out for you to enter, people! We know you’re a globetrotting bunch, and quite gadget-happy too, so I’m sure that there are some superstar clips of holiday activities out there just waiting to be featured. Did you party like a local in Rio on New Year’s? Have a balmy weekend of hiking instead of skiing in the Alps? Sit around at home eating grandma’s fruitcake? Go pagan by creating your own four-alarm midwinter bonfire?
What do jagged, post-punky rock music and the oft stuffy discipline of food writing have in common? Listen to Terry Gross interview Alex Kapranos, frontman of Scottish group Franz Ferdinand, about his gustatory adventures on the road, to find out. According to World Hum, Kapranos has just published Sound Bites a book of columns he wrote for the UK Guardian about eating while on tour. Sounds odd, but apparently, Kapranos worked for long years in the restaurant industry before hitting the musical big time. He also met fellow band member Bob Hardy while working in the kitchen. Kapranos is kind of an inverse Anthony Bourdain, a culinary guide for the asymmetrical-bangs set, instead of a “rock-star” chef. When asked about his most adventurous food experience, Kapranos’ response is the well-worn fugu. He saves himself from cliché, though, downplaying it as “tasty, but not worth the chance of death.” Overall he strikes a good balance of the effete and honest, and is an entertaining storyteller (his descriptions of his band members’ eating habits are priceless), and gets special props for namechecking my local doughnut shop.
(It really is that good, but man, there goes the neighborhood.)
– “Holiday Books: Music” (NYT)
– Food
Vegas is a conventioneer’s town, and no convention/ trade show is larger than the Consumer Electronics Show (CES). This year’s edition has 2,700 exhibitors from across the globe, who will be meeting and mingling with the tech media to decide our collective gadget fate for the next 12 months. Travelistic’s Liza de Guia is on-site to scope out the best of what’s available for you flashpacking travelers. Stay tuned for her behind-the-scenes scoop in new episodes of The Map.
– Las Vegas
– gadgets
2007 Travel Forecast
– “The fabulous 50 for 2007” (Guardian)
Atomic Tourism in the Southwest
– “Strange Love” (NYT)
Australian Rail
– “A trip to the Red Center of Oz” (LA Times)
Guatemala: Apocalypto Tourism
– “Atop the world of the Maya” (LA Times)
India
– “Kochi, Kerala’s Friendly Gateway, Is No Backwater” (NYT)
Morocco
– “From Spain to Marrakech” (Chicago Tribune)
Mozambique
– “Save me a slice of paradise” (Guardian)
Patagonia
– “Cruising With Penguins” (SF Chronicle)
The Peruvian Andes
– “Winging It in the Andes of Peru” (Washington Post)
Uruguay
– “The Frugal Traveler: Feeling at Home Among the Elite in Uruguay’s Punta del Este” (NYT)
Hokkaido is one of the northernmost Japanese islands, and its frosty climate and largely rural, mountainous landscape have made it the national winter wonderland. The locals play up the chill with Quebec-style carnivals – snow mazes, ice villages, frozen waterfall festivals – and it’s got all the picturesque cold-climate necessaries like mountains with reliable fresh powder, hot springs, and ice floes drifiting down from through the Sea of Okhotsk. The only thing that’s missing from this perfect picture? The Northern Lights. So, with typical Japanese ingenuity, they’ve decided to make their own. From February 5 to March 21, the skies above Shiretoko Hot Spring will light up with a laser show designed to mimic the polar aurora, only better, because their version comes with a stirring soundtrack and is guaranteed at 8:00 pm every night! Take that, Arctic Circle! (via Jaunted)
Elsewhere:
– Aurora Borealis Forecast (University of Alaska Fairbanks)
A good guidebook can go a long way towards making or breaking a trip, but the best travel experiences still come with the thrill of discovery attached: secret spots and personal landmarks known only to locals, with directions sketched out in hand-drawn maps. Paris-based photographer Ami Sioux has taken that idea and transformed it into an art project. Sioux followed maps created by locals she met of their favorite spots in five different cities: Reykjavik, Berlin, Paris, Tokyo and New York, and photographed what she found at the end of the trail. Scintilla Ltd., is publishing books of the results from each city, starting with REYKJAVIK 64°08N 21°54W this December. I love the contrast of the precision of geographic coordinates in the title with the vagueness of these out-of-the-way places, which can’t be found on ordinary maps, but really matter to at least one person. (via Cool Hunting)
American-style processed foods in stores in non-english speaking countries can create a kind of comforting background noise when you’re traveling – all the tacky, hyper-saturated branding and preservatives of home! That is, until you start reading the labels, at which point you may feel that you’ve stepped through a wormhole into a parallel, and unintentionally hilarious dimension. My favorite that I’ve collected is a French lemon-lime soda bearing the unfortunate name “Pschitt!” (which I assume is supposed to transcribe the refreshing sound of opening a carbonated beverage), but there have been many, many others. Flickr user Steve Portigal has done us all a favor by collecting photos of the most bizarre and badly named goods he’s encountered into the Museum of Foreign Grocery Products. A trip through these snackfoods from the mirror world is sure to leave you wondering whether “Hamster’s Lunch” is intended for consumption by humans or rodents, and what exactly makes Men’s Pocky so gender-specific.
No liquids! No presents! Babies in the X-ray machine! The airport security follies don’t appear to be ending anytime soon. According to this week’s “On the Road” column in the New York Times, snow globes, long a favorite of tacky souvenir purveyors and collectors the world over, are now contraband at the airport due to restrictions on liquids and gels in carry-ons. And no, the TSA isn’t joking: “Snow globes, regardless of size of amount of liquid inside, even with documentation, are prohibited in your carry-on.” Bruce Schneier, a security expert quoted in the piece, says that the agency’s focus on minutia like this just causes a lot of unnecessary hassle, and doesn’t actually make us any “safer” (no, really?!)
“The notion that we can stop the bad guys by focusing on tactics [is] moronic. I pick a defense, you see my defense, and then you, the bad guy, decide what to do. That’s a game we can’t win. Screeners are so busy looking for liquids that they’ve missed decoy bombs in tests. We’ve defined success so weirdly. When T.S.A. takes away some frozen tomato sauce from grandmom because it might become a liquid, they think of it as a success. But that’s a failure. It’s a false alarm.”
Oh, and they also have special rules concerning monkeys (scroll down).
Previously:
– Airport Security
– Souvenirs
(Image via Vaguely Artistic’s photostream)
Erik Olsen over at Gadling posted about our travel news show The Map today, saying it’s “like you’re getting the real scuttlebutt, as opposed to a more stale corporate feel.” Can’t say we don’t agree, Erik, and thanks for the shoutout. For a case in point, see all of Liza’s fresh, non-corporate experiences on Jost van Dyke in last week’s episode:
This image of Manila comes from a Forbes special on the most densely populated, congested cities on earth. With a total population of 10 million in the metropolitan area, Manila may not be the largest city on earth, but its city center squeezes a staggering 41,000 people into each square kilometer. In comparison, Mumbai, which has become virtually synonymous with urban density, has just under 30,000 people per km squared by Forbes’ reckoning, and doesn’t make the list of the most congested cities. They are, in descending order: Cairo, Lagos, Macau, Seoul, Dhaka, Buenos Aires, Jakarta, Kaohsiung and Santo Domingo. Attempt driving in any of them at your own risk.
2006 Wrap-Ups
– “The 25 Most E-Mailed Travel Articles of 2006” (NYT)
– “Passports from 2006” (Chicago Tribune)
– “Bon voyage, bad voyage” (Globe and Mail)
Oaxaca
– “Once again, Oaxaca begins to right itself” (LA Times)
Portland’s Pearl District
– “New luster in Portland’s Pearl” (LA Times)
St. Petersburg
– “Holiday on Ice in St. Petersburg, With a Shot of Vodka on the Side” (NYT)
San Antonio
– “A Side of San Antonio That Nearly Forgets the Alamo” (NYT)
Santiago
– “The new song of Santiago” (LA Times)
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