Intelligent Traveler hosts Geotourism Challenge

by Grant Martin on

Got a favorite green tour operator or event? National Geographic’s Intelligent Traveler blog wants to know. They’ve partnered up with Ashoka Changemakers, an open-source community dedicated to social change to sponsor The Geotourism Challenge.

Readers are invited to nominate a type of tourism that “sustains or enhances the geographical character of a place: its environment, heritage, culture, aesthetics, and the well-being of its residents.” And if you post a brief story on how or why you believe in your nominee, you’ll be entered in a drawing for a free week of travel to anywhere that whl.travel, a contest partner, operates. And I know what you’re thinking, yes, they do offer trips to Swaziland. Count me in.

Even if you don’t get the chance to submit a green topic, you should check out Ashoka’s website. It’s a pretty sweet initiative and deserves a read from all of us.

Sleeping with Hitler in a Serbian hotel

by Aaron Hotfelder on

The President Hotel in Belgrade, Serbia, is offering guests the unique opportunity(?) to spend the night with some of the most famous– and most notorious– world leaders of all time. Each room in the hotel is designed around a different president, prime minister, or dictator.

The most controversial is Room 501, the “Hitler room,” outfitted with a portrait of Adolf Hitler wearing a swastika patch. The hotel’s owner, Dusan Zabunovic, claims this room, at roughly $200 a night, is his most requested.

Despite drawing criticism from the Anti-Defamation League over the Hitler room, Zabunovic claims that he hasn’t designed the rooms to glorify the dictator, but to remind people of his brutality:

“All his victims would turn in their graves if nowhere it is reminded what a monstrous criminal he was,” he told ABC news.

Hitler is not the only former autocrat with a room devoted to him. Josef Stalin has his own room, and so does former Yugoslavian dictator Josip Broz Tito, incidentally, the world’s second least popular “Tito.”

Other rooms are dedicated to Fidel Castro, Margaret Thatcher, George Bush Sr. and George W. No word on whether a “Nicolas Sarkozy Honeymoon Suite” will be unveiled.

In 2006, Neil Woodburn checked out another Hitler-themed hotel here.

More weird hotels:


Mumbai “dabbawala” culture

by Abha Malpani on

I never thought I’d be sitting in Madrid, wishing that there was some “dabbawala” to bring me cheap, homemade, Indian food.

“Dabbawala” literally translates to “guy with box”; in this case the box is a tiffin full of food. In India, although fast food is popular, Indians always crave home cooked Indian food and often choose it over street food or McDonald’s. Hectic working schedules make this practically impossible if you don’t have someone cooking for you every morning. Even if you do, the food is cold by lunch time and it doesn’t taste the same when reheated.

The joy of getting hot, home cooked food delivered to you like you’ve specified, at exactly the time you want, is priceless. Mumbai’s dabbawalas make it happen for a fee as little as Rs.250 a month (just over US$6). The food is collected either from homes or from a catering service, then taken to a point where they are color-sorted (the guys are generally illiterate), grouped according to location, and then delivered by train.

More than 200,000 lunches are delivered by about 5000 dabbawalas everyday with an amazing accuracy of menu and time; a recent survey says that they only make one mistake in every 6,000,000 deliveries. There is no day off for the dabbawalas, they have never gone on strike and harsh weather conditions — especially monsoon season — have never stopped them from doing their job well.

What has been awed about the dabbawalas is how they function so accurately, without the use of any modern technology — only recently they have begun accepting orders via SMS. The success of their system has called much attention from business schools as well as tourists and now they have a “Day with the Dabbawalas” itinerary where you can spend a day in Mumbai helping them out — something Richard Branson did on one of his visits to India.

They have been in business for 125 years and it’s one of the systems that truly represents how efficient an Indian city can be, if it wants to.

Cell phone abusers on plane now being arrested

by Grant Martin on

One of my biggest pet peeves is the jokers on the airplane who talk non stop on their phones before departure and practically need to have them wrestled away when the cabin door closes. In addition to the potentially dangerous effect of mobile phone signals on aircraft navigation, its rude to be jabbering away with a ton of cramped unhappy people all around you.

The problem is particularly egregious in business class, where I frequently see passengers hiding their Blackberries when the flight attendant passes by, only to pull them back out and start sending emails right after.

Well apparently the industry is starting to take things more seriously. This past week, the Sydney Morning Herald reports that three Italians departing out of Milan were kicked off an airplane and arrested for refusing to get off their phones prior to departure. Even last week on my girlfriend’s flight between New York and Detroit a guy was booted for talking after the door was closed (as if LGA didn’t have enough delays).

So try to give the crew and your fellow passengers a break if you have to use your cell before departure. Be courteous, keep your voice down and when they close the cabin door, for the love of all that is holy, please turn off your phone.

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Thai flight attendants protest after soap opera airs

by Grant Martin on

A new Thai soap opera about flight attendants is ruffling feathers among flight professionals, who claim that the show portrays them in a “humiliating and demeaning” way.

After a three day premiere on Thai airwaves, union members were so horrified by the show that they asked the country’s culture minister, Khunying Khaisri Sri-aroon, to yank the remaining episodes.

And I totally agree. As one member of the frequent flyer community pointed out, “Soaps [need] to keep the nymphos out of the air and put them back in the hospitals and law firms where they belong!!!”

We here in America would never do anything like that.