Photo of the Day (11.14.09)


Nothing makes a more beautiful photo than rolling sand dunes at sunset. Having recently experienced the tranquil oasis of Huacachina in Peru, I now fully appreciate the dry, natural beauty of the world’s deserts.

This particular photo was taken in Tunisia but expert photographer kellinasf. The warm colors and grooved textures of the sand contrast so well with the cool blue sky. The grooved dune side in the left shadow also adds to the photo’s richness, don’t you think?

If you have some great travel shots you’d like to share, be sure to upload them to the Gadling pool on Flickr. We might just pick one as our Photo of the Day!

Lonely Planet’s Blue List

Here at gadling, we’re all about finding new travel ideas. And equally, we’re about pointing you to places where those ideas are most abundant. Well, where abundance is concerned, I have just closed the covers on a cornucopia of ideas that, frankly, has me feeling a little exhausted right now.

Lonely Planet’s new edition of its Blue List series is a compelling page turner that, if you’re like me, will cause an immediate shortage of yellow post-its. Those post-its now cling to the inside pages of my Blue List guide, making it look a bit like a paper peacock flattened by a semi.

The Blue List guide, subtitled “The Best in Travel 2007” provides page after page of sumptuous photos and informative text about interesting places and things to do in them all over the globe. The ideas start off with a calendar section that groups together events by month. For example, December has the Festival of the Oases in Tunisia and the Hornbill Festival in India. Chances are, you’ll have to Google these for more info, but they’re a fine start.

Other recommendations in the book are broken out by activity, so if you are, for example, a fan of scuba diving, you can get a good idea of the top trips for bubble blowers. The books lists the Cocos Islands in Costa Rica and Chuuk lagoon in Micronesia among their top spots. Or let’s say you have long believed in UFOs and want to design a trip for you and your ET-loving friends? Well, you can do that, too, with their paranormal trips section.

Then savor my favorite section, called the Go List, which breaks out LP’s top picks for places to visit in the coming year. We’re NOT talking Florida and Vegas here. We’re talking about exotic, less-explored locales like Maluku, Indonesia and Gabon. Then there’s a section on gadgets and the best places to wed and dark travel and, well, more and more.

If I have any complaints, it that while the book really whets your appetite, you don’t leave feeling completly satisfied. In fact, you leave a bit hungrier than before. But as I say, maybe that’s what Google, or LP’s country-specific guides are there for. Either way, keeping to their fine tradition of helping you REALLY get out there, the good folks at Lonely Planet have done a fine job with this new book.

The Doctor is Out

Thailand used to be a destination for exotic travel, perhaps even for sex travel. Now, it is a well-established member of the ever-increasing ranks of surgery destinations. Yes, travel is not just for the well or even the well-heeled, now it’s for the wellness-seeking. too. It’s not just cosmetic surgery, either. While cosmetic surgery comprises about 80% of the travel, laser eye surgery and fertility treatments make up reasons to travel, too.

A while back, our own Erik Olsen blogged about a crazy offer to get extra frequent flyer miles to get your eyes done, and also posted an article by Casey Kittrell about medical tourism. Then, earlier this year, I wrote an article about growing cosmetic surgery tourism to the Czech Republic. Since then, the pace of this traffic has exploded, and the places have gotten even more exotic. So much so, it’s worth revisiting this issue: according to the National Coalition on Health Care, over half a million Americans left the country last year for medical or dental work. A recent article even noted a man sent by his North Carolina company to New Delhi, for gall bladder and rotator cuff surgery, to save $50,000!

Tired of travelocity? A host of surgery-tourism companies have set up shop all over the internet. Costmeticsurgerytravel.com squatted on a good web address, offering “medical travel concierge” service, as well as assurance that the doctors in foreign lands are “appropriate for your procedure or treatment.” Prague a little to run-of-the-mill for you? Try Tunisia, for example, through Cosmeticatravel.com. Or Turkey or El Salvador, through Medretreat.com. Or Brazil, through Medicaltourism.com. A quick google search turns up a page-topping, paid ad for medical tourism to “Bumrungrad” hospital. Is that where you get that hemorrhoid treatment done?

Follow up: The NY Times just posted an article on the same topic.

Inside Africa Vol. 1 & 2


TASCHEN books are some of my favorite to collect. If I had hundreds of dollars to blow I could easily do so on their website, but for now I’ll have to place some of these titles on my Christmas wish list or refrain from doing so much running to and fro’ to buy a few more. Of the more recent releases I’d like to take a peek at the Inside Africa titles. The two volume set puts the diversity of African living in the reader’s face. I’ll be one of the first to admit (and this is very sad because I have so many African friends), but when I think of dwellings found in various African places I don’t think modern for the majority. I see mud, clay, and earthy homes with wells and without running hot water. SO WRONG. While a good portion of countries may have tribes and villages with housing of this nature there are tons of luxury lodges, artist studios, minimalist houses, and so-forth. These two sets claim to have a good mixture of both and more, but with the eye-popping ink and paper stock TASCHEN uses I’m sure anyone flipping through the book would want to stay in a clay hut. Deidi von Schaewen is the photographer and it took a period of four years and fifteen countries to make it these Inside Africa volumes happen.

Countries featured include Egypt, Kenya, Botswana, Morocco, Réunion, Seychelles, Tanzania, Tunisia, Benin, Burkina Faso, Togo, Nigeria, and Senegal to list only a few.

Photo of the Day (6/13/2006)


Don’t confuse this photo called “Sun setting over the great lake” with the other great lake that you know. The one in Utah. This shot comes from laurenz and is a lovely shot of Tozeur, Tunisia. I was almost tempted to hark back to the Apocalypse photo, since this has such a fire and brimstone feel to it. But hey, I won’t go that far.