How To Get Souvenirs From A Place You’ve Never Been

Planning a trip to Tehran anytime soon? You probably aren’t, due to heavy restrictions on travel to Iran, but you can get a taste of Persian culture with a trip to your mailbox. ABoxFrom.com is a service that compiles a box of souvenirs from far-flung places (the previous box was from Seoul, South Korea) and mails them to you in beautifully-decorated boxes.

The Tehran box is 40 Euro, including tea, a paper map and a handmade basket. They may seem like ordinary objects, but each item was carefully chosen with the help of locals, and for its importance in the country’s culture and history, nostalgic and new.

Airplane Food Just Got Worse: Air China Serves Expired Food On Domestic Flight

Over 20 passengers on an Air China flight were sick after eating expired beef pancakes on a domestic flight to Beijing. One passenger shared a photo of the out-of-date food on Chinese social network Weibo showing the expiration date of October 2, four days before her flight. An official statement by the airline claimed that incorrect packaging was to blame for the “misunderstanding,” and that any leftover or expired food is regularly discarded. The passenger claimed that flight attendants refused to acknowledge the issue or warn anyone eating the bad meals.

Food poisoning is fortunately rare on airlines, but it does happen. Earlier this summer, Delta passengers on an Istanbul-New York flight suffered possible food poisoning and were met by medics on arrival at JFK. A Miami family sued American Airlines in 2011 after a man died allegedly due to food poisoning on a flight from Barcelona.

Read our advice on dealing with food poisoning while traveling, in the air or on the ground.

Dubai To Build World’s Largest Lagoon For $7 Billion

Dubai has a lot of big things. At 688 feet, the Dubai Eye will be the tallest Ferris wheel in the world and part of the $1.5 billion Bluewaters Island entertainment project. At almost 12 million square feet, the Dubai Mall sits in the shadow of the world’s tallest building, the Burj Khalifa. Now, a multi-national company plans to build the world’s largest man-made lagoon to the tune of $7 billion.

The yet to be named project will be nearly four times bigger than the current largest lagoon and have swimming, water sports and other water based leisure activities. If all goes as planned, developer Crystal Lagoons Corp that holds patented technology for building giant crystalline lagoons, hopes that their project will quickly become a popular warm weather destination.

“Caribbean landscapes are no longer exclusive to tropical destinations,” said Crystal Lagoons CEO Kevin P. Morgan in an Economic Times report.

Crystal Lagoons has bigger plans, too. “Based on our track record in the Middle East, we have proven that our technology can add value to a top destination, making beachfront real estate a reality anywhere in the world,” said Morgan.

Yawning Travelers Rewarded With Free Coffee In Airport Ad Campaign



Goodness knows the number of times we’ve walked through endless airport terminals feeling like a zombie – jet lagged, disoriented, and in need of a serious caffeine fix. Well, a new airport advertising campaign is rewarding bleary-eyed passengers with a free cup of joe, just for yawning.

The Douwe Egberts company placed a coffee vending machine with facial recognition technology in South Africa’s O.R. Tambo International Airport. The machine was activated by yawning, and any passenger who figured out the trick was gifted a steaming hot coffee.The coffee campaign is just one of many kooky tactics being used by advertisers to target airport passengers. According to CNN, companies believe fliers are the perfect captive audience for advertising –- after all, we’re trapped in the airport, feeling stressed, bored and ready for a distraction. Not to mention that if you can afford a flight, you probably have a higher degree of disposable income to spend on whatever advertisers are trying to tempt you with.

The strategy is exactly what Heineken was banking on when it launched it’s “Dropped” campaign at New York’s JFK airport a few months back. The company gave travelers the chance to drop their current travel plans, spin a “departure roulette” wheel and travel to a new destination instead.

Medieval Birthplace Of Whiskey To Start Distilling Again

A medieval Scottish abbey that’s hailed as the birthplace of whiskey will soon be the site of a modern distillery.

Lindores Abbey near Fife, Scotland, is the first place on record to have distilled whiskey, when in 1494 it received an order from King James IV. The abbey, founded in the 12th century, has been a ruin for centuries, first being sacked by a mob in 1543, and then thoroughly destroyed by John Knox, founder of Scottish Presbyterianism, in 1559.

Now the Scotsman reports that the owners of the land have launched a £5 million ($8.1 million) project to build a whiskey distillery on the site. Water will come from the abbey’s medieval well and the barley will come from adjacent fields. The distillery will open in two or three years and will include a visitor’s center.

Of course it takes time for whiskey to mature, so landowner Andrew McKenzie Smith is also looking into making gin and flavored liqueur, which mature more rapidly. The Smith family hopes the abbey’s legendary status among whiskey aficionados will bring in business, and are looking into teaming up with Historic Scotland to restore the abbey.