This Photo of the Day is for anyone already tired of winter and looking forward to spring. Titled “Sunrise, Hua Hin Beach” the photo comes from Gadling Flickr pool member Nancie (Ladyexpat) and is part of a set of 27 images captured earlier this month.
Hua Hin is a popular Thailand seaside beach resort about 200 km south of Bangkok.
If a trip through TSA’s Rapiscan naked image scanners has left you feeling a bit violated, we have good news. The controversial machines are being removed, but not because of air traveler complaints or the cries of privacy advocates. Apparently, the company that makes the machines just could not figure out how to make them less invasive.
“It became clear to TSA they would be unable to meet our timeline. As a result of that, we terminated the contract for the convenience of the government,” said the TSA’s Karen Shelton in a Bloomberg report.
Shelton is talking about manufacturer OSI Systems, Inc. that prides itself in “Creating Solutions
for a Safer and Healthier World,” as stated on the company website. Actually manufactured by Rapiscan Systems, a subsidiary of OSI, the machines will now go to governmental agencies instead of airports. It is believed that the machines would not stand up to congressionally-mandated changes by a June 2013 deadline.
“We are pleased to reach a mutually satisfactory agreement with the TSA,” OSI Systems President and CEO, Deepak Chopra* said in a press release this week.
Smartphone travel apps seem to have something for everyone. When new technology can be adapted or designed for smartphone use, developers rush to make an app featuring one version or another of it. Relying on existing data, many travel apps don’t really do anything unique though. Collecting, sorting or regurgitating information that is “nice to have” can be helpful and even entertaining. But some travel apps bring “must-have” features, tasks and abilities to hand, literally enabling the user to positively impact their travel experience with just a few taps.
“There are seemingly millions of smartphone apps out there designed to make traveling easier, but not all of them are very good,” said Brett Snyder, founder of air travel assistance site Cranky Concierge in a CNNreport.
Travelers into mobile applications that aid them on the road know that there is no shortage of location-based apps, tracking our every move, sharing it with others if we so choose and even making an automatic travel log of where we have been.
Crowd-sourcing apps bring a “something is better than nothing” direction to our quest for a good restaurant, hotel, grocery store or other place when traveling. Organization apps help us sort photos, contact information, frequent flier numbers and more. Phone version apps of desktop programs can let us almost bring the office along on the trip too.
None of the above actually do anything though. Other smartphone apps do.
“Every company seems to think that it needs an app to be cool, but not every app is worth the effort,” says Snyder.
Hertz Gold Plus Rewards members, for example, now can upgrade their rental via smartphone. Using their Hertz app for android or iPhone, members are actually doing something: modifying an existing reservation.
Prior to customers’ arrival at the airport, Hertz will send a text notifying them about their reservation. Clicking a link in the message produces three options: switching to a different car at no additional cost, the deal of the day or a selection of upgrades.
Airline apps that allow an electronic boarding pass help us save time at the airport and make a tiny green impression too by avoiding the need to print one. United, American, Delta Airlines and others also allow actually doing something by booking flights via their app. In the air, GoGo’s wireless Internet app provides quick and easy access for connecting.
On the ground, retail apps like the Starbucks version let us store funds to be spent later in a Starbucks store equipped to handle them. That eliminates the need for cash or, more importantly for travel safety concerns, fumbling with a wallet or purse for payment by using that phone that is probably in the traveler’s hand anyway.
In a foreign land, apps that read signs written in a language travelers are not familiar with, then translate it into understandable text can keep us from getting lost. Better yet: talking apps break language barriers by recording and translating an unknown language. I have actually had conversations with people met on the road when neither one of us spoke each other’s language using such an app.
Still, with all that the thousands of apps for smartphones have enabled us to do, there is a need for more.
Searching for apps that actually do something, the Verizon Innovative App Challenge is a creative competition for middle and high school students. Working with a faculty advisor, teams of students developed original mobile app concepts that address a real need or problem in their school or community, as we see in this video:
Do you have favorite travel apps that you just can’t leave home without? Share them with other readers by leaving a comment here.
On my last morning in southwest Colorado, I went to the public library in Mancos to decide if I should spend my last hours in the state trying to track down polygamists at the Warren Jeffs compound just outside town or if should visit Mesa Verde National Park.
“The Jeffs people really keep to themselves,” said a friendly, bearded librarian named Lee.
“And I don’t imagine they’re very keen on giving interviews.”
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Since I’d already met some much nicer polygamists anyway, it was settled; I was off to Mesa Verde, a UNESCO World Heritage site known for its ancient cliff dwellings that were once inhabited by Ancestral Puebloans, sometimes called the Anasazi, who lived in the region from around 600 A.D. until about 1300 A.D.
On a brisk Wednesday morning in early January, I had Mesa Verde (“green table” in Spanish) almost all to myself. I turned up at the visitor’s center just after 10 a.m. and the park ranger said I was the first visitor the day. If you enter the park from Route 160, near Cortez, about a half-hour from Durango, it’s about a half-hour drive (up to 45 minutes if you’re a cautious driver) to see the cliff dwellings and pithouses.
I took the six-mile Mesa Top Loop and after stopping at a few pithouses, which were used as dwellings from about 550-750 B.C, I felt like I should have pursued the polygamists. The pithouses are primitive homes that are essentially shallow pits dug into the ground and you need a fairly active imagination to appreciate them.
But after catching a glimpse of the Balcony House, the Cliff Palace, the Square Tower House and some of the other cliff dwellings, I was glad that I made the effort to visit the park. There is something undeniably powerful about seeing these ancient dwellings, perched precariously in a stunning alpine setting that inspires you to want to learn more about Native American history.
Historians believe that the population of this area may have reached several thousand people in the 12th and 13th Centuries, and most of the cliff dwellings you can see today were built between 1190-1270. The largest is the Cliff Palace, which has about 150 rooms. The fact that the Ancestral Puebloans went through all the trouble of constructing these elaborate dwellings only to abandon the area only 100 years or so later, tells us that they were likely compelled to leave because of severe drought or the reality that they’d depleted all of Mesa Verde’s natural resources.
It’s difficult to prioritize one’s time in the Four Corners region on a short trip, as you have three national parks within three hours of Durango – Mesa Verde, Canyonlands and Arches, plus Monument Valley, the Four Corners monument, not to mention all the ski resorts and other sites in the area. I’m not a huge fan of archaeological sites, but I wouldn’t leave this region without spending at least a couple hours visiting Mesa Verde because it will remind you that although we aren’t really the “young country” we’re made it out be.
This humble little building in a back alley of Tangier is the final resting place of the greatest traveler in history.
Ibn Battuta was born in Tangier in 1304. In 1325 he left to go on the Hajj and ended up visiting not only Mecca, but crisscrossing much of the Middle East and sailing far down the east coast of Africa. Then he headed east, passing through central and Southern Asia and making it as far as Beijing before coming back and taking a jaunt through much of western Africa.
While I’m not too keen on citing Wikipedia as a source, it does have some detailed maps of Ibn Battuta’s journeys. In all, he traveled an estimated 75,000 miles, three times as much as Marco Polo, but is far less known in the West because Marco Polo was European and Ibn Battuta was Arab. So it goes.
Reading his accounts shows you that travel hasn’t really changed all that much: loneliness, illness, hospitality and fascinating sights were the hallmarks of adventure travel then as they are now. He had only made it as far as Tunis when he first became aware of the crushing loneliness travel can bring. He was with a group of fellow pilgrims who all had friends in the city. When they arrived everyone was greeted except poor Ibn Battuta. He started to cry and one of his fellow pilgrims took pity on him and talked with him to cheer him up. Again and again in his accounts, he talks about the hospitality and kindness he found on the road.
Later he visited Alexandria and was perhaps the last writer to describe the famous lighthouse, one of the wonders of the ancient world. It was already in bad shape when he first saw it, and when he saw it again in 1349 it had crumbled into total ruin.
Of course he had some troubles along the way. He mentions getting sick numerous times and was lucky not to catch the Black Death that was raging through the Middle East at the time. In Egypt he had a run-in with some hyenas that rummaged through his bags and stole his supply of dates! In Niger he had a more serious incident. He went down to the river to relieve himself and a local had to save him from a crocodile.Like any good traveler, Ibn Battuta was intensely curious and loved to see the sights. His description of the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem is especially moving for me, because it was that building that first turned me on to Islamic architecture. He also describes the Ummayed Mosque in Damascus as the “most magnificent mosque in the world.” I’d have to agree.
In the Maldives he learned to love coconuts (which he said “resembles a man’s head”) and lived on them during his year-and-a-half stay. Ibn Battuta understood some important things about travel: go slow and try the local food.
Ibn Battuta’s enthusiasm for travel is apparent even 700 years later. He talks of his amazement at seeing a meteorite, has the balls to ask the Byzantine Emperor Andronikos III to assign him a tour guide to show him Constantinople, and is shocked to see the Muslim women of Mali walking around naked.
There was no way I was going to visit Tangier and not pay my respects at the grave of one of my heroes, so one afternoon we headed out into the labyrinthine alleyways of the Old City. We finally found the tomb at the intersection of three lanes. There was a little historic marker on the outside, but otherwise nothing to mark the burial place of Tangier’s most famous native son.
This is typical in Muslim cultures. Most graves don’t even have an epitaph, and it takes someone pretty famous to have an identifiable tomb. Inside a caretaker was chanting in Arabic. He greeted us cordially and then went back to chanting.
As you can see from the photo below, there’s not much inside except the tomb draped with a carpet and some nice tiles on the interior. If my expression looks a little pained it’s because as we were taking photos, the caretaker let out a loud and quite toxic fart. It ruined the atmosphere of the place – literally.
Considering the dangers and hardships Ibn Battuta went through on his journeys, it was a small price to pay to see the tomb of the greatest traveler who ever lived.