Photo contest: Russian style (that means watch out!)

There’s one Russian photo club whose pics are becoming a cult hit in some online circles. Here’s what they do. They issue directions for staging zany, bizarre, or sometimes actually frightful shots (see right), and their members go out and capture the scene. It’s kind of a cool concept, especially since they toy with conventional beliefs (and gravity). For instance:

  • “A Cheating Wife: You need to make a photo of a man, “a lover”, hanging outside the real window. The window should be not lower than a 3rd store of a multi-stored building.”
  • “The Pickles: Make a photo of many jars of pickles. Some of them should have pickled cell-phones. Not less than five cell phones in each jar please”
  • “The Waiter: A man dressed like a water should crawl out of a refuse chute in some multi-stored building, right from the disposal opening. He should hold a tray with some servings and a towel in another hand”

Could this catch on elsewhere? You guys have better ideas for staged shots?

Travelers Aid stations help out weary passengers

Most of my trips through airports go smoothly, but, without fail, I’ll always spot a fellow traveler who is upset for one reason or another. Canceled flights, lost luggage, missed connections, weather delays– these are unfortunately, though inevitably, what all of us must deal with at one time or another. When it’s not me, rather than feeling sympathy for the unlucky victim, I find myself thinking, “Thank God that’s not me.”

Some people are more altruistic than your humble correspondent. Most people. (All people?) This Christmas, hundreds of volunteers will work in airports across the country to make some of our flight-related problems a little more bearable. The volunteers are members of Travelers Aid International, a non-profit, social service institution that has been around since 1851 (when there were significantly fewer problems in airports).

They will be operating booths in 24 airports around the country, performing a wide range of services for distraught passengers. Quoted in a New York Times article, one volunteer said, “It can be as mundane as, ‘Where is the restroom’ or ‘Where can I go smoke a cigarette?’ … But it can also be, ‘My mom was supposed to be on the plane from Peru and I can’t find out whether she was on it.’ And the airlines won’t tell people. But if I go to the airline counter, they may tell me because I have on the Travelers Aid badge.”

She added, “I love people. I have a ball out there.”

Full story here.

Christmas in Saigon

Nothing helps you realize you’re eight thousand miles away from home better than spending the holidays in a foreign country.

Last year, traveling through Southeast Asia with my parents we found ourselves at the Oscar Hotel in downtown Ho Chi Minh City (still called Saigon by the locals), Vietnam over Christmas Eve. An interesting way that tourism has seized the country is the Vietnamese interpretation of Christmas. While about 85% of the population is Buddhist, pretty much everyone identifies with the holiday — or rather Santa Claus. It’s their understanding of what the Westerners know and will appreciate while they’re visiting Southeast Asia.

But instead of decorating their houses, exchanging gifts or getting a Christmas tree, I found that the Vietnamese seem to be most fond of riding around the city square, wearing santa hats, dressing up their children and socializing. Thousands of young Vietnamese youth come out to participate on Christmas Eve. Thousands.

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As you go outside to witness the madness of what’s happening before you, the air fills with the sounds of ten thousand motorcycle engines humming, a two-cycle chorus revolving around you on the streets of Saigon. The heavy tropical air fills with motorcycle exhaust and you get the feeling that you’re in some sort of Cajun voodoo spell, children dressed as Santa flying past you disappearing into a fog, a foreigner in a strange land.

It’s an experience unlike anything I’ve ever seen — something that I think everyone should see once in their lives and something I will never forget. Back at home in Kalamazoo this winter, I breathe the fresh air and watch deer wander in our back yard through six-inch snow. Such a contrast to Christmas past.

Paid security lanes to help frequent fliers

A $100 yearly fee might make the trip through those dreaded security lanes a lot smoother for some travelers at Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson airport (full story here). After TSA background checks, fliers would be issued a Clear card, which would allow them to make it through security in just four minutes. The program was first instituted in Orlando, where about 40,000 people have signed up, and it is under serious consideration at Atlanta’s airport.

This seems like a good idea to me, and I’m certain that some frequent fliers would find the $100 fee a small price to pay to ensure faster movement through security. Plus, it would mean there are that many fewer people in the regular security lines, where I’ll be, thinking of how to spend the $100 I’ll have saved by not buying into this program.

I wonder, would anyone like to see this program implemented more fully? Would you pay the $100 to be able to speed through security for a year?

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Get a refund if your flight falls in price

I posted last week about a bad experience with Kayak. Their chief architect was nice enough to give a helpful response. Anyway, a reader, Sam, then pointed me to Yapta, what he calls “a sexier Kayak.”

We’ve posted about Yapta back in April when they first opened. Unlike Orbitz or Travelocity or Kayak for that matter, it’s not meant to help you find cheap tickets. What it’s good at, aside from centralizing airfare options into one convenient location, is helping you land a refund after you’ve booked your flight if it goes down in price. Apparently most airlines have this secret policy, but they don’t advertise it, and of course, almost no one bothers to look up ticket prices again for a flight they’ve already booked. Until now!

Now it seems after the news of Kayak buying up Sidestep, other travel sites are eyeing Yapta, which is still a fledgling startup. The site’s been fairly successful in the half year it’s been open; a couple weeks ago, they announced a Firefox add-on that makes tracking your purchases that much easier. What you do is input your flight itinerary into Yapta, and they’ll send you an email when it goes down in price. If you don’t think this is a big deal (or big business), just out these stats from a beta trial Yapta did earlier this year. “Yapta found that 34% of purchased tickets became eligible for a refund. The average refund was 16% of the ticket price, or $85. During the beta period that worked out to a total of $28,900 in aggregate potential refunds, or about $100 per beta user,” said the good people at Techcrunch.

The only thing is I’m not sure just how easy or costly it is to get the refund. Newsweek claims that you’ll be charged $100 on most airlines for the flight change.