A few extraordinary photos from a drive across the ‘stans.
Category: Travel
Vietnam’s Growth as a Tourist Destination
Paul Chong was searching for paradise on a beach in Vietnam.
Mr. Chong, the head of business development at Singapore’s Banyan Tree Hotels & Resorts, came here on a weeklong mission last August to scout sites for a luxury resort. He had journeyed by car and plane up the coast from Ho Chi Minh City before arriving at a tiny fishing village near the central city of Da Nang. In a remote cove reachable only by rowboat, he and three colleagues explored a two-mile stretch of beachfront.
“We fell so much in love with the site that we didn’t leave until it was pitch black,” Mr. Chong recalls. In March, Banyan Tree won a license to begin building the Laguna Vietnam, a $270 million complex of hotels, villas and spas.
World’s Most Beautiful Beaches
Lots of pictures.
Saying No in Saudi Arabia
‘A guest is a gift from God’ goes the popular Arab saying. The hospitality of the Middle East is legendary, and Saudi Arabia had proved no exception. During our weeks on the road and over the course of the 11,250km we clocked up, our car had become so stuffed full with presents that I now called it ‘Abdullah’s mobile bazaar’.
We stocked everything from the choicest dates and most luxuriously packaged boxes of chocolates to lavish coffee-table books, the finest coffee beans and even a pearl necklace. Saudi generosity was overwhelming, and it did not seem in any danger of dwindling.
The Red Sea port of Jeddah was our final destination. Considered the most cosmopolitan town in the Kingdom – and somewhat wild, degenerate and dangerous by the country’s more conservative kinsmen – Jeddah had a palpably relaxed, seen-it-all air. On the private beaches outside town, we even came across bikini-clad girls on jet skis.
Fascinating.
Fabulous Gallery of Recent North Korea Photographs
Yannis Kontos pays a visit, by Marianne Fulton:
If one is tempted to think photography isn’t important – witness North Korea.
Photojournalists are not welcome and their attempts to obtain a visa are rejected, as were those of Yannis Kontos. He tried for three years to travel to North Korea as a professional photographer. He wrote in his November 2006 Dispatch [http://www.digitaljournalist.org/issue0611/dis_kontos.html] that his luck changed when he traveled as a tourist. But tourist cameras are also restricted to choreographed events and sites.
Kontos described his working conditions while trying to capture everyday life, in part:
“Almost 80 percent of my pictures were taken in secret using several different methods to avoid the attention of my minders. Frequently acting and feeling like a spy using my camera’s self-timer, most of the time I was shooting without looking at the viewfinder, even from inside a bus or a train. I managed to catch the mood of the country and little by little I collected enough material for a story. Every night, I was downloading my pictures in secret to my MP3 player, unbeknownst to my roommate. …
Red Tape for Tourists visiting the US
America is rated the world’s most unfriendly destination for foreign travellers in a recent global poll. The War on Terror (which includes a $15 billion fingerprinting program that humiliates every visitor to America’s shores and has yet to catch a single terrorist) has destroyed America’s tourist industry, killing $94 billion worth of tourist trade, and 194,000 American jobs.
There’s something to this challenging issue. A driver on Hong Kong told me recently that passengers destined for most countries, other than the USA can check in (and check luggage) downtown, then take the train to the airport and go right to the gate. The security “friction” does have significant costs all around.
Hoi An Market
“Save the Cookie”
Midwest Airline’s website dedicated to remaining independent. An Airtran takeover would be a disaster…
Comical Cingular (AT&T)
Where to begin?
Prior to a recent Asia trip, I needed to obtain a SIM Card for my old Cingular (AT&T) phone that would work while on travel. (I now use a Verizon phone due to our experience with Cingular’s poor network coverage – dropped calls on John Nolen Drive, for example).
I called Cingular and explained my requirements: a prepaid SIM Card that would work for 30 days while on travel overseas. The telesales representative explained their different services, including data, worldwide calling and various monthly minute plans.
I provided my credit to close the transaction and a few days later, the Cingular SIM card arrived. I also requested the codes to “unlock” my old phone. Unfortunately, despite our prior long term Cingular arrangement, they insisted that I had to use the phone for 90 days before they would provide the unlock keys. This would prove to be a problem when I found that the SIM card Cingular sold me did not, in fact, work internationally.
Fortunately, a friend let me use an old phone, which would accept any SIM Card – easily purchased in most countries.
I called Cingular upon my return to express my disappointment. Farrah in Halifax was as helpful as could be expected, given their organization. She phoned their “sales” department to see if I could obtain a refund. The “sales” person told her that they “don’t sell SIM Cards”! I mentioned that while I’m unhappy with Cingular, I’m glad she had that experience with sales, particularly while I was on the line.
Bottom line: If you are looking for a world phone, look elsewhere. I’ve heard good things about T-mobile, though your mileage may vary.
Private Room Websites in Europe
If a “private homestay” is the key to an affordable visit to London, the same is true in Paris and Rome. Different from bed and breakfasts, homestays are the rental of a single room in a house or apartment whose owners are supplementing their income by taking in transient visitors. Such lodgings are available for as little as $35 to $40 per person per night, as compared with at least double that price (and sometimes more) for a room in a modest, commercial guesthouse or tiny hotel.
In my April 1 column, I listed several organizations that make such rooms available in London, such as www.happy-homes.com and www.athomeinlondon.co.uk. Immediately, I received letters requesting similar Web sites for low-cost private homestays in France and Italy.
— Paris room rentals: The notion of taking a foreign visitor into one’s apartment was once anathema to the average, privacy-seeking Parisian. To do so just wasn’t “French.” In a cultural shift that I won’t try to explain, slightly more than 200 Parisian families now have begun renting rooms in their homes or apartments — and these make up the inventory of three Parisian bed-and-breakfast services (more commonly known as chambres d’hôtes) offered to tourists from around the world.