Ten Most Overrated US Tourist Traps

by Aaron Hotfelder on

Chuck Thompson Day here at Gadling continues… Over at the website of his new book Smile When You’re Lying, Thompson presents his Top 10 Most Overrated U.S. Tourist Attractions. He makes a number of interesting picks, and I can’t say I disagree with them. Here are just a few:

Graceland: “Or any spot dedicated to Elvis kitsch. If the man wasn’t over-marketed before, he is now. When did Presley go from American icon to white trash icon? Blame Graceland.”

New York City’s Ground Zero: “Six years later, the smoking hole in the ground is a national disgrace, a monument to American litigiousness, lack of national will, and craven political leadership.”

Architecture in Las Vegas: “We went to the moon in 1969. Big fountains and replicas of pyramids built 4,500 years ago aren’t that impressive. Nor is a city where you can’t walk to the building next door without burning 600 calories.”

More here.

In my opinion, as a general rule, any tourist attraction that is designed and built with the intent to be a tourist attraction is automatically suspect. My hometown’s Gateway Arch certainly fits that bill, though its not without some appeal (to somebody, somewhere). What are your picks for most overrated tourist traps?

Travel tip: Do not hide monkey in hat during flight

by Grant Martin on

Next time you want to bring your favorite animal friend on your flight, consider getting a cage or maybe at least a box. As a man this week flying from Lima – New York City just established, it’s not a great idea to store your furry friend in your hat.

Somehow he was able to smuggle the animal through security in Peru (although we’re not sure how tight that is) then get through customs in Fort Lauderdale with the primate in tact. Only on the flight from Fort Lauderdale to New York was the animal discovered when it crawled out of the man’s hat and onto his pony tail. By the end of the flight, the poor monkey was dead.

The authorities are still trying to determine the cause of the animal’s death. After the CDC quarantine, they did however determine that the monkey was not sick. Perhaps it was because he was stuck in a man’s hat for an entire day.

A country you’ve never heard of (continued)

by Jerry Guo on

Here’s a bit more about Nauru, the third smallest country in the world, for readers who were intrigued by my post from last week on it.

Curiously, there are plenty of immigrants who’ve made it to Nauru (of all places!). Australians work as doctors and engineers, the Chinese run the restaurants and shops, and Polynesian immigrants hold the rest of the jobs. In total, 4,000 out of the 12,000 inhabitants are foreigners. That was fine when phosphate paid the locals’ bills. But now nine in ten natives are overweight and unemployed. One in two has diabetes. And one in three kids have never received any schooling; those who do well in academics inevitably leave the country. Perhaps it’s no wonder that the most popular event of the past few years was a “Big is Beautiful” beauty pageant. Aside from that, the most popular pastime seems to be driving around the island’s eleven miles of roads drinking beers.

Ironically, when a British captain discovered the place in 1798, he named it “Pleasant Island”. Over the next 150 years, Westerners decimated the local population through disease, civil war (they gave firearms to the twelve local clans and encouraged them to kill each other), colonization, and of course, phosphate mining. By the end of World War II, there were only 600 Nauruans left and two-thirds of the phosphate was already gone. But with independence in 1968, the government lavished money on everyone, along with luxuries like three television channels, a golf course, and free health care. In the 1990s, all that disappeared along with the phosphate.

But there’s also plenty of rich history here, in particular, the legacy of environmental exploitation and how that has led to their plight today. While their neighbors have adjusted to globalization, Nauruans are still trying to make something out of their eight-square-mile speck of land.

One for the Road Looks Ahead: Ten Travel Books on Tap for 2008

by Kelly Amabile on

As the year draws to a close, instead of compiling a list of favorite books from 2007, I’ve decided to focus this last post on what’s to come. Looking forward, there are some interesting travel titles set for release during 2008. Maybe you’ll find something among these to add to your “must-read” list for the new year:

For Louisiana lovers:
Poor Man’s Provence: Finding Myself in Cajun Louisiana by Rheta Grimsley Johnson (John F. Blair Publishers, January)

For intrepid explorers:
Near Death on the High Seas: True Stories of Disaster and Survival, edited by Cecil Kuhne (Vintage, March)

For jet-set shoppers:
Suzy Gershman’s Where to Buy the Best of Everything: The Outspoken Guide for World Travelers and Online Shoppers (Wiley, April)

For travelers who like to stay close to home:
Isolarion: A Different Oxford Journey by James Atlee (University of Chicago, Spring)

For gamers:
The Gaming Life: Travels in Three Cities (University of Michigan, May)


For a really good laugh:
Lost on Planet China: The Strange and True Story of One Man’s Attempt to Understand the World’s Most Mystifying Nation, or How He Became Comfortable Eating Live Squid by J. Maarten Troost (Random House, June)

For fans of fiction:
Mr. Fooster Traveling on a Whim by Tom Corwin (Flying Dolphin, June)

For travel-with-a-purpose types:
The Great American Attraction: Two Brits Discover the Rolliking World of American Festivals (Three Rivers Press, August)

For lit-minded travelers:
From a wonderful travel lit press in the U.K., three new titles in their Poetry of Place series: Rome, Dublin and England (Eland Books, November)

For inspiration:
Traversa: A Solo Walk Across Africa from the Skeleton Coast to the Indian Ocean by Fran Sandham (Overlook Press, Winter)

This is merely a quick preview of what’s sure to be another year chock full of travel book choices. There’s plenty more on the publishing horizon, including innovative “beyond the book” projects like the recently launched “networked novel” Flight Paths. The sky’s the limit when it comes to reading journeys! Regardless of what you read in new year, I hope the experience takes you to great places.

Times of India and circle of peace: An expat story

by Jamie Rhein on

Even though this was Martha’s week to cover The Amazing Race, I was once again drawn into the foray of the global dash. When the teams were told to pick up The Times of India when they got to Mumbai, I flashed on my own The Times of India connection. It links to the theme of Aaron’s recent expat post and the question of expats and lifestyle.

The expat question is a complicated issue that I have thought about with every place I’ve lived overseas. One notion, I think, has something to do with intention and motivation for living in a country. We didn’t move to New Delhi, India, for example, with the intention of making India a permanent home. I also think it has to do with economics. Expats, in my mind, have more money and perks, in general, than they do when they live in their own country.

Our expat life in India was due to the teaching jobs that took us there. As expats, we were more immersed in India than if we were just traveling there, but we always knew we would eventually move on, so the experience was not the same as if we thought we’d live there for years and years. What people do with their expat experience, however, has to do with how they view living in another culture. Some people live totally surrounded by other expats, often people from their own country. Others, like us, do what they can to make the country that is not theirs feel like home and to take part in the culture as much as possible. Also, when we lived in India, our jobs offered another unique perspective.

When you work with young people like we did as teachers, one goal is to help them see themselves as part of the world community. Kelly wrote about this somewhat when she visited her friends in China and wrote about it in her series, Chinese Buffet. Often, the view happens to be of a place of privilege, but in international and American schools where kids of many nationalities come together in classrooms there is an opportunity to envision a world where everyone might get along.

There are several times when I taught overseas when this vision was evident, but the most powerful was September 11, 2002. Considering the news from Pakistan this past week, I’m reminded about that day, the hope that was generated by a bunch of middle-schoolers, and an essay I wrote about it.

The essay was published in The Times of India and since I found the link, here it is. I have no idea what happened to the paragraphing when the paper put it on-line, but you’ll get the idea. Consider this a story to carry over to the new year. It’s an expat story that offers up the potential for peace. At least if the kids who made the wooden doves that day remember what it felt like.