Some of the best travel photos tell a story or capture a stranger in a private moment. This candid portrait of a woman in Tel Aviv, Israel reading in a window by Flavio@Flickr does both beautifully. What is she so absorbed in reading? It could be an alarming news story or a love poem, or she could just be catching up on the latest Lindsay Lohan antics. At any rate, her image tells an interesting story and invites the viewer to contemplate what could be going on inside the window.
In addition to making awesome song parodies and being a fun celeb to follow on Twitter, Weird Al Yankovic has been a passionate polka advocate for his entire career. It’s no wonder when you see how much joy this gentleman is experiencing playing the polka, captured by Flickr user Adam Baker in Krakow, Poland. More music could benefit from accordions; they’re portable, fun to play, and make a regular afternoon at the park feel like a party. Dancing monkey optional.
Taken a photo of someone in a moment of pure joy in your travels? Upload it to our Gadling Flickr Pool and we might choose your snapshot to feature as a Photo of a Day.
While you visit Gadling and read my rant about $45 carry-on bag fees, other air passengers are having having fun turning excess baggage into a challenge – not a complaint.
Take for example Joan Collins – Because she travels a lot between London and the United States, she says she feels “compelled to travel like a packhorse”.
And she isn’t kidding either – each trip involves a professional packing firm, 30 Louis Vuitton cases and baggage transport fees for all those bags.
Think about that for a second – every single time she flies between her two homes, she carries clothes, accessories, books, CD’s, DVD’s and a bunch of other household junk.
Lets put this into numbers for a moment – her luggage firm charges $183 for each bag. Thankfully this price does include door to door service, but the total bill is $4,966 each time she travels (she gets a nice discount when she transports more than five bags).
Of course, that is nothing compared to the estimated value of her Louis Vuitton luggage – with an average price of $6000 each, her collection of monogrammed luggage is worth about $180,000. Kind of makes me worry a little less about paying $25 to have my bag placed in the hold.
I do have a tip for her: if you buy two of everything, you won’t have to transport it between your two homes each time you travel.
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With all the regulation shifts, evacuations and the recent terror attempt on Christmas Day, it’s a stressful time to fly.
Stress affects all of us; passengers, airport staff, pilots and yes, even superstars. Perhaps it was stress that got to Britain’s Got Talent prodigy Susan Boyle at Heathrow Airport on Tuesday.
According to HolyMoly, Boyle suffered a complete mental breakdown in the British Airways lounge. She grabbed a mop from a cleaner and began using it as a microphone, then polished other lounge guests’ shoes with it. BA employees reportedly tried to stop her, and she took off running, eventually bursting through the doors of the usually-peaceful lounge screaming “I’ve escaped! I’ve escaped!”
“A BA official had to sit with the singer until she regained composure and boarded the flight to Chicago,” reports HolyMoly, adding that the singer is heading to the US to appear on Oprah. Chelsea Handler mentioned this week on Chelsea Lately that the star is also working on a line of Susan Boyle products like t-shirts and mugs. While the TV circuit and souvenir development are normal celebrity activities, stress may be piling up on Boyle, who has a history of mental illness and has become very famous very fast.
If this were any other celebrity, we’d assume it was drugs — and we’d probably be fed a bogus story about a bad reaction to a sleeping medication. We wonder how the Boyle PR camp will spin this.
So, after many differing reports on what Lindsay Lohan was doing in India (including ours, when we heard gossip that the whole thing was a liecation), the rumored BBC documentary previews, such as the above, are starting to appear.
Lohan indeed went to India in December 2009, allegedly to investigate both sides of the rampant child trafficking trade, from interviewing the parents in poverty with little choice but to sell their children and turn a blind eye to what happens to them to meeting survivors of the horrible industry, which regularly leads to physical and sexual abuse, as well as slavery.
“As Delhi proudly prepares to host the 2010 Commonwealth Games, Lindsay meets young boys who work 16-hour days under the constant threat of beatings, for a fraction of an adult wage.
To find out why a parent would send their young child away to work, Lindsay travels to rural West Bengal, where the picturesque Sundarbans belie the abject poverty made worse by annual floods.
Lindsay meets a reformed trafficker who would make a quick buck luring young girls away from naïve parents with offers of gainful employment.
In Kolkata, Lindsay visits a shelter where young girls promised domestic work for India’s burgeoning middle classes were trafficked into brothels and forced into prostitution.“
While we’re not sure Lindsay Lohan has the skills or qualifications for in-depth investigation, she’s definitely raising awareness about child trafficking, and for that we commend her. The topic is especially relevant now, as India is currently considering legalizing prostitution. If you’re interested in helping child and human trafficking survivors in India and around the world, visit madebysurvivors.com, where you can purchase goods which keep survivors employed, learn how to host your own home party or community event to raise awareness, sponsor a child, and more.