Travel Articles
December 4th, 2007 at 11:26am
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London’s tube has been described as creaking, overcrowded and overpriced, but ultimately it serves a purpose; somewhat efficiently, it ferries thousands upon thousands of people around one of the world’s most popular cities every day.
Almost everyone who has lived in or visited London will be familiar with its quirks. Walk into any souvenir store in central London and you’ll be able to pick up a mug, tea towel, oven mitt or apron adorned with the iconic phrase: “Mind the Gap”.
Along with “all change please”, “please note that this train will not stop at the next station” and “thank you for travelling on the central line”, “mind the gap” is one of the tube’s most-played recorded messages.
Instructing commuters to mind the gap since 1999 has been the soothing voice of British woman, Emma Clarke. This week however Transport for London announced they would not contract her in the future. Contrary to popular belief that this is the result of her spoof voiceovers on her website, TfL claim it’s because she has publicly denounced their service saying she hates catching the tube.
Emma Clarke has defended herself and shock horror it seems she’s been misrepresented by a journalist from The Mail on Sunday. Oh well - you can decide for yourself: listen to the spoofs or for Londoners living off-shore - make yourself homesick with the real thing.
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December 4th, 2007 at 11:24am
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When cyclone Sidr crashed into Bangladesh the country found itself propelled into the limelight of the western media with yet another bad news story. Within hours of the story breaking my phone started beeping with messages asking if I was ok and if I was going to remain in this ‘devastated’ country. Fortunately, the worst I suffered was a slight leak through one of my windows. But as I turned on the TV of my Dhaka hotel room I began to see why people were so concerned. It appeared that the entire nation had been destroyed.
The first pictures that emerged of the storm were largely filmed the following morning in Dhaka and revealed a battered city. When I drove around the capital that morning I found a very different scene. Sure, there were some trees, power cables and billboards down, but you really had to hunt for these signs of destruction.
Instead I saw a city setting about its daily life - rickshaws and cars filled the roads and people filled the pavements, cafes and parks. I couldn’t help but feel that I was in another country altogether from the Bangladesh splashed across the newspapers. TV news stations reported that the entire country was without power - yet I was watching it on TV. They told us that all the phone lines were down - yet I was using the internet right up until an hour before the storm peaked over Dhaka (and then it was only tiredness that made me log off). And they reported that there was no running water - again, not my experience.
Now as the relief effort moves into full speed I am setting off for the far southwest of Bangladesh, where the cyclone is reported to have caused the most destruction, to see the damage for myself.
- Stuart Butler will report again next week from Bangladesh where he is researching for Lonely Planet. In the meantime you can see what travellers are saying about the cyclone’s impact on the Thorn Tree forum.
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December 4th, 2007 at 11:23am
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Last month the British Sunday Mirror, reporting on a forthcoming BBC documentary, revealed that the 1994 edition of our Middle East guide had been used for planning the Iraq invasion. ‘Former American ambassador Barbara Bodine, who was given the job of helping to reconstruct Iraq, said: “It is a great guide book, but it should not be the basis of an occupation.”‘
Well yes, particularly since they used the wrong book. An older edition, our 1990 West Asia guidebook would have been a much better tool for invasion and rebuilding. We’d sent intrepid Englishwoman Rosemary Hall to research Iraq for that edition and, at the time, we were even thinking about a stand alone Iraq guidebook. Then Saddam invaded Kuwait and it all ended in tears. For him and for us.
To be perfectly honest we don’t write our books with invasion, coups, revolutions and general mayhem in mind. Not that they aren’t regularly used for such non-touristic purposes. In his book Zanzibar Chest, Reuters correspondent Aidan Hartley reported that as the Ethopian rebels closed in on the Soviet-backed dictator Haile Menguitu, the rebel tank drivers were guided into the capital using the Addis Ababa map photocopied from the reporter’s dog-eared copy of Africa on a Shoestring.
I’m happy to hear we played our part in getting rid of one awful dictator (Mengistu’s now in Zimbabwe where Mugabe, another awful African leader, looks after him), but I have to admit our books sometimes get used in ways I don’t approve of. On one occasion a Kashmiri separatist organisation bought a copy of our India book to select a hotel to kidnap Western visitors. Fortunately the resourceful travellers they captured soon managed to escape. In 2003 a Weekend Australian story headlined ‘Terror with help from a Lonely Planet guide,’ reported that two misguided young British Muslims used our Israel guidebook to choose a hostel before making a suicide bomb attack on a beachfront bar.
- Tony Wheeler, co-founder of Lonely Planet
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December 4th, 2007 at 11:21am
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In the tradition of Thanksgiving, George W. Bush has bestowed a presidential pardon on one lucky turkey, allowing it to live out the remainder of its days pecking around Magic Kingdom Park at Disney World.
It’s predicted around 45 million turkeys will be eaten this Thanksgiving, so May, the “chosen one” should be very thankful indeed.
Here’s hoping everyone in the USA has a great long weekend and if the thought of family and parade-day floats freaks you out - check out our survival guide here.
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December 4th, 2007 at 11:20am
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Unless they’ve been on the moon for the last year no Londoner could have escaped the hype and publicity surrounding the launch of Eurostar’s first carbon neutral service from its new home at St Pancras International on Wednesday 14th November 2007.
Not being able to turn down the chance of being whisked off to Paris for the day, we jumped at Eurostar’s invitation to join other “Green Pioneers” on its first service and test out the super fast way of getting over to magical Paris. Plus, Eurostar offset all their carbon emissions, so apart from the (large) chocolate bar we shared on the train over, the trip was practically guilt-free.
We excitedly checked in at the recently refurbished and renamed St Pancras International station, which has been fully restored to house the 400-metre-long Eurostar trains.
With a crowd of media and trainspotters looking on the 11.07am train pulled away from its glorious new home on the first ever 186mph (that’s a whopping 300kph) Eurostar to Paris.
As we sped to Paris’s Gard Du Nord we watched the blurred scenery rush by before descending into the Channel Tunnel for the 20 minutes stretch under the English Channel. The buffet car was a disappointment - we would have to take out a small loan to purchase a few snacks to see us through the journey. As we emerged from the Tunnel there was a good old British round of applause, everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves, although this could have had something to do with the free champagne.
The verdict? Comfortable, effortless and the most environmentally-friendly way to travel. With the journey time now only two hours and 15 minutes Eurostar makes flying to Paris look positively outdated. We’ll definitely be popping over again soon…
- Louise MacDonald & Heather Carswell, Lonely Planet UK
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December 4th, 2007 at 11:19am
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Australia: blue skies, big open brown spaces, lots and lots of minerals and one, particularly nasty one…
Chrysotile was once mined to make asbestos - a popular, cheap housing material used in Australia in the 50s, 60s and 70s. Now, it’s widely known that asbestos is highly toxic and leads to nasty lung related diseases, including cancer.
The mine site was in Wittenoom; a town by the same name servicing the workers of what was a booming industry. But since discovering the hazardous effects of asbestos, Wittenoom’s been deserted. Situated in the Pilbara region in northern Western Australia the area still appeals to many travellers - and quite rightly. The gorges and waterfalls of nearby Karijini National Park are naturally spectacular.
Iconic 80s Australian rock band, Midnight Oil released the album Blue Sky Mining in 1987, featuring a track, Blue Sky Mine which cut to the core of the mining industry and made Wittenoom infamous. Its lyrics still resonate with miners and their families who’ve lobbied their incredibly wealthy ex-employers for justice and compensation to cover medical costs and damages.
“So I’m caught at the junction still waiting for medicine
The sweat of my brow keeps on feeding the engine
Hope the crumbs in my pocket can keep me for another night…
And the company takes what the company wants
And nothing’s as precious
As a hole in the ground…”
Where as once curiosity may have seen you risk a side trip to Wittenoom it’s no longer possible. It doesn’t exist. It has been decommissioned, taken off the maps, the electricity - switched off.
So if you’re looking for somewhere to stay try the two campsites in Karijini National Park or the Auski Tourist Village on the Great Northern Highway
And in an interesting aside, if the Labor party (currently in opposition) wins government at the Australian election this weekend, then ex-Oils frontman, Peter Garrett (member for Kingsford Smith) will be the new Minister for the Environment. It will be interesting to see if he stays true to his activist roots.
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December 4th, 2007 at 11:17am
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Forget about the clapboard reminding you that you’re up to take 36 of scene 17, because to enter this festival your entire film needs to have been shot in a single take - editing is a dirty word at the One Take Film Festival (Nov 20-22) currently running in the Croatian capital Zagreb.
First held in 2003, the international festival is held over three days with films of almost every genre in its programme (documentary, fiction, experimental, music video and commercials). There is no restriction on running time - imagination and battery life are the only limits.
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December 4th, 2007 at 11:16am
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Always wanted to own a piece of the world’s most famous tourist attraction? Well one of the Eiffel Tower’s spiral staircases is up for grabs… but it’ll cost you.
The 4.5m, 20-step section, which once linked the tower’s second and third levels, is expected to fetch up to 30,000 euros (US$44,000) when it goes under the hammer at an auction in Paris. The staircase was climbed by Gustave Eiffel to inaugurate his 324m tower in 1889 but was removed in 1983 to make room for a lift.
Insiders say this might be the last piece available to the public, as the other 23 sections have already been bought by museums and collectors around the world.
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December 4th, 2007 at 11:14am
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November 19th is World Toilet Day. Sounds like a joke, but it’s deadly serious. Over 2.6 billion people live without any form of toilet, and have to use fields, river-banks, beaches, rubbish dumps or city streets. Another billion or so do have access to a toilet, usually some kind of a wooden platform with a hole in it laid across a deep pit, but it’s often shared - and filthy. This poor sanitation leads inevitably to disease, an issue the World Toilet Organisation is trying to address, with World Toilet Day part of a global awareness campaign.
Although poor sanitation is a serious topic, third-world toilets are also a constant source of, er, material for travellers’ tales. Backpackers love to recall the worse latrine or ‘long drop’ they had to squat over. There are stories about dropping sunglasses, money or passports through the hole into the morass below. And everyone knows someone who heard about someone who fell right in.
I once met a guy in India who described a bout of uncontrollable diarrhoea while staying in a cheap hotel. He crouched for hours in darkness above an overflowing WC, while cockroaches crawled round his feet and a leaking shower dripped stagnant water on his head. ‘It was’, he said, ‘a premonition of hell.’
Of course toilet tales are so amusing because, for most travellers, a few weeks of squatting over smelly holes are part of the experience. We look forward to clean bathrooms back home. But for that 50% of the world population who ARE home, disease-free toilets remain a vital need - which is why awareness campaigns like World Toilet Day are so important.
- Lonely Planet author David Else has travelled extensively in Africa and India and has heard many colourful toilet tales. He is now the author of LP’s guide to Great Britain - and inspecting pristine hotel bathrooms is a speciality.
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December 4th, 2007 at 11:13am
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At altitude, the Buzz-Aldrin-effect is brought on by the body’s deprivation of oxygen. Sure, it may not factor into your planning for a hike up Ben Nevis in Scotland (1343m) or Mt Kosciuszko in Australia (2200m), but take on the Alps, Himalaya, Kinabalu or Kilimanjaro and it pays to have an understanding of the effect ‘thin air’ has on the human body.
The body can react at around the 1500m mark, something I first discovered flying into Nairobi. I was surprised to find out that Kenya’s capital sits 1680m above sea level, even more surprised to realise that on account of this I was suffering from headaches and mild nausea.
Years later I crossed through Taglangla pass in Ladakh which at 5358m is the highest I’ve been, and besides being simultaneously freezing and sun-shy, my body coped fine while I moon-walked amongst the Buddhist prayer flags.
A slow and steady approach helped me adapt, but beyond being sluggish, there are many more serious effects altitude can have on hard-core mountaineers, or the simply unsuspecting. A great guide to altitude has been written by the British Medex club who support Medical Expeditions’ research in high-altitude zones. You can download the guide and view their website (which includes some amazing mountaineering pictures) here.
What’s the highest you’ve been and what effects have you noticed altitude have on your body?
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December 4th, 2007 at 11:00am
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Inspired by our recent travel stories on surfing remote locations and are now ready to pack your board for Liberia or Yemen? Well don’t think about booking with British Airways. The airline has declared surfboards too bulky and has banned them from all flights along with kayaks and windsurfs. Most other airlines charge between 15 and 27 pounds each way to carry surfboards.
Surfers are outraged that British Airways will still allow snowboards and skis on flights. The British Surfing Association (BSA) says surfers would face huge costs and delays if forced to use freight companies. BSA has started an online petition which has been signed by over 8000 people including world no.1 surfer (and British Airways Platinum member) Mick Fanning and there is also a Facebook campaign with around 10,000 members.
What do you think of the surfboard ban? Do you think other airlines will follow suit?
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December 4th, 2007 at 10:59am
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Today, many main roads feel familiar the world over; globalisation bringing us the same stores again and again. So, if you want to feel the pulse of a place it’s often the side streets you’ll find most rewarding.
The labyrinthine streets of Albayzín, Granada’s old Islamic quarter or Manila’s old trading neighbourhood of Quaipo are the perfect antidote to high street sameness.
The latest Lonely Planet Flickr photo challenge captured this very essence, Emilio Navarino’s winning photo taken in the alleys of Sanà, Yemen.
For other off the beaten track ideas, you can see all the entries in the Side Streets photo challenge here.
Voting is open on the All that Glisters challenge, and entries to the Morning photo challenge are being fielded now. So, check out the Lonely Planet Flickr group here>>
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December 4th, 2007 at 10:58am
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It is eighteen years today since the fall of the Berlin Wall. But it seems that memories are fickle. When I was heading there recently a friend, an educated one I might add, said to me, “Berlin, is that the place that had the Wall?” I was incredulous. A walk around Berlin’s city centre however leaves you in no doubt about the presence of the Wall that was once the front line between east and west.
Although there isn’t much of the Wall left now a few small sections do still stand. What is most surprising is its height, or lack there of. But somehow the crumbling grey, graffiti clad ruins, which should be about as imposing as a school-ground fence, are intimidating. And the narrow line of cobbles that marks the Wall’s entire course through the city feels like the faint scar of a healed wound, permanently etched into the fabric of the city and always there as a visible reminder.
In the city centre is the Berlin Wall’s most iconic site, Checkpoint Charlie. A replica American military post has been put up in the middle of a narrow street full of shops. There are even a couple of people dressed up as guards, grimacing menacingly to the delight of tourists who get their photo taken with them. The Mauer Museum tells the story of the 30 year life of the Wall including tales of some of those who died trying to flee the Communist regime in the East.
The first bit of the Wall left standing that I come across is in Potsdamer Platz; a huge shapeless square which is now a temple of modern glass and corporate architecture. There are just half a dozen individual rectangular segments of the Wall here, with descriptive panels between each one. The sections look temporary, like pre-built Lego pieces, which perhaps explains how the East Germans managed to erect the Wall so suddenly and so devastatingly in 1961. Over 200 people died trying to cross and north of Potsdamer Platz, near the Reichstag building, is a row of placards hung on an iron fence to some of those unfortunate would-be escapees. Candles burn for a few. This is after all, recent history.
- Danny Chapman
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December 4th, 2007 at 10:54am
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Besides beating Namibia and recording their first-ever win in the Rugby World Cup this year, Georgia hasn’t been in the news much since the Rose Revolution of 2003 saw now-President, Mikhail Saakashvili catapulted democratically into the country’s top office.
Now however, Georgia - popular with overlanders - is bracing itself for renewed uncertainty with a state of emergency declared from its capital Tbilisi. Everything and everyone from Moscow, the media, to poverty and corruption is being blamed for the deterioration in public affairs.
The Trabant trekkers - a crew of travellers from Holland, England, America, Spain and Hungary - have just crossed the country as they overland from Germany to Cambodia raising money for charity. Now in Tajikistan, their blog speaks of a different Georgia.
Standing at the intersection of Europe, Asia and the Middle East, it is unfortunately the same geographic reasons making it attractive to overlanders, playing into the geo-political problems: challenging terrain, disputed borders and a myriad of different ethnic groups.
As the Trabant trekkers can testify - it is a very interesting country, going through troubled times. Stay attune of the news, and catch the discussion on the Thorn Tree Forum.
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December 4th, 2007 at 10:51am
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It’s unclear whether the difference between emergency rule and martial law is only semantics (particularly when your President is also the Chief of Army Staff), but it’s easy to see that travel to Pakistan right now is not to be taken lightly.
Sure the Karakoram Range and its famed mountain-highway may seem remote and utterly removed from events in Islamabad and Lahore, but it pays to be well aware of the security situation throughout the country.
With the local media’s output affected by Musharraf’s declaration, and amid reports of journalists being arrested, it may be difficult to access extensive and unbiased information in the region.
Although the real reason for the state of emergency is sketchy, the debate is ongoing as to whether it will worsen or improve the country’s already troubled situation.
Make sure if you have travel planned in the region that you check the latest news reports and read what travellers are saying about it on the Thorn Tree Forum.
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December 4th, 2007 at 10:50am
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For many Victorians it’s a much needed day of rest; an opportune time to take a long weekend - or to binge-detox between Saturday’s Derby Day and Tuesday’s Melbourne Cup.
For the uninitiated, Australians stop work at 3pm on the first Tuesday in November… for a horse race. Victorians get the day off altogether.
Offices are swamped with sweep-stakes and sweet-bakes, while the TAB drowns in millions from amateur gamblers. Spotlight’s stock of feathers, fascinators and hats dwindles to a few scruffy and scraggly left-overs and men step out in their pressed finest, or sometimes their pyjamas (hoping to make the nightly news).
Billed as ‘the celebration that stops a nation’ travellers are not so much warned, but rather advised, to join in the revelry. This year, tickets to the Melbourne Cup at Flemington Racecourse must be pre-purchased. If you can’t make it to Melbourne, then don’t worry, there won’t be a pub in Australia with the TV turned off (or tuned in to the disastrous fashion channel) at 3pm tomorrow.
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