GADLING’S TAKE FIVE: Week of October 8

by Adrienne Wilson on

Happy Friday the 13th all! Time for a little weekly deja vu… Nothing to be scared or panicked about, just relax and review.

5. Dying to Travel:
If avian flu and pandemic disease worry you dare not look at this plug on the interactive risk maps based off the Maplecroft Avian Influenza Risk Index. They might just reveal that avian flu is closer to you than you think. Or you could just be paranoid.

4. Miracle Camping Tub:
Not going to lie – I want one of these. While trying to help his own friend’s overcome some of their camping woes like showering and staying clean, he points us to a spectacular $6,000 gear piece called the Dutchtub and helps all and anyone out that has $6,000 bucks to spend on the equipment. Until that day arrives for me, bird baths it is!

3. Hidden Gems: Crazy Horse:
The Crazy Horse Memorial found in South Dakota’s Black Hills isn’t the most hidden of gems and I’m sure you may have heard of it at some point in your life, but have you been? If your answer is no then my question is what on Earth are you waiting for? Check out this Native American great in this Hidden Gems review.

2. Slum Tourism:
Some of us avoid slums by all means while others are out with video cam in tow. Could touring someone’s poverty stricken life be the latest in tourist trends or a insensitive means of dropping in and getting out when things get too real, too terrible, and too poor? Check out the story Erik directs us to and see what side of the picket-fence you’re on.

1. French Say NON! to Smoking in Public Places:
I think this one says it all! Cheers to good health prevailing! But, oh, yes, there is that part of French culture you have to worry about as Erik mentions in his blurb, that one must think about and hope isn’t necessarily ruined by the no smoking in public places rule. I think it’s marvelous and the French, they’ll be okay.

Marathon Tours

by Adrienne Wilson on

Only 17 days remain between now and the moment in which I’ll run my first 26.2 mile full marathon in Detroit. Am I excited? Heck yeah, you bet I am. And you probably wouldn’t believe me if I told you this, but I despise running. I hate the high impact and grueling feeling it has on my knees. Don’t get me wrong I enjoy the sense of community and spirit amongst runners, the feeling of achievement and most certainly the opportunity to go places, but it’s so hard for me to remain mentally positive when my body is wondering why I’m pushing it the way I am. Anyhow, what I’m trying to say is if you’re in Detroit or Windsor on October 29, come out and cheer me on! I’ll need the support.

Moving right along now that I’ve managed to squeeze my own shameless promotion into the plug, I suppose I should point running loving individuals or people who may want to get into the sport to this Marathon Tours site. First off, if you’re truly a marathon fanatic you’re probably already aware of this site, but even then I encourage you to check it out and start planning some serious marathon trips. Perhaps you’ve exhausted some of your options, favorite races, scenic routes or whatever. Why not run Antarctica or Dubai? To be quite honest it’s destinations like these and doing some so crazy that may keep into all this running jazz. Seriously, how cool would that be? Marathon Tours makes it easier if you’re looking to head abroad and check out the local scene in places like Iceland, Jamaica, Stockholm, Kenya and Australia. With all the other prep going into the race I’d imagine their services to be a huge load off one’s plate.

Slum Tourism

by Erik Olsen on

Having produced one of their very first travel pieces, I was very pleasantly surprised to see the recent deal between Current TV and Yahoo. Good for them. I have to confess that I rarely watch Current on channel 102 here in NYC, since so many of the pieces are agonizingly hard to watch, especially if you’re like me and don’t really like hip-hop all that much. That said, there are many gems among the hours of programming they feature, and I’ve always hoped they’d do a deal with someone like Yahoo or Google so you could select and watch specific pieces that get rated or passed around on the Web. So here’s kudos to Current and hopes that they keep on gong strong.

And here’s to Current as well for doing a great little story on Slum Tourism. When I was in Bombay, India two years ago, I made a special trip as a journalist to the Dharavi slums on the outskirts of town. This was a soul-slapping experience. The rancid sprawl of this slum, Asia’s largest ,went on forever and ever, as if it was a rank, wrecked city all to itself. And amazingly, while I was there interviewing one of the city’s administrators about the state of the slum, I ran into several tourists, walking around and shooting photos of people who lived in the slum. I hadn’t thought much about it at the time, but what I saw was exactly what they talk about here: slum tourism.

Is this an awful sign of the growing divisions of wealth in the world or an unsurprising reflection of human nature … that is, there have always been forms of slum tourism around, where the rich leave the comfy confines of their lives to “see how the other half lives.” I tend to believe the latter, but I could be wrong.

Word for the Travel Wise (10/11/06)

by Adrienne Wilson on

With it being the Islamic holiday of Ramadan this month I figured this word should come-in-handy if you aren’t already familiar with the term. To learn more about the holiday and the religious practice of fasting and what it means check out this Wikipedia piece. For all those celebrating – Have a happy Ramadan! (I think that’s safe to say?)

Today’s word is a Turkish word used in Turkey:

ezan – the Muslim call to prayer

Prepare ahead of time by visiting this Turkish Class site. Membership is free and you’ll get a lot more than some of the basics they already have listed. Online Turkish is good too, but you’ll have to register and pay to get anything more than hello, how are you and I love you. Stick to the first site and check out this Turkish vocabulary list of body parts. Wiki has an excellent starters piece on background, history and a short list of words. Scope out phrasebooks from Rough Guides, Lonely Planet or grab both.

Past Turkish words: merhaba, iyi volculuklar, sabirsiz, lokanta

Travelistic

by Erik Olsen on

With the explosion in online video, it’s a bit of a surprise that we’ve seen so few companies dedicated to travel vids. There’s Travel Channel which for the most part repurposes stuff that they’ve put on TV. There’s Turnhere, which is a fine site, but also hit or miss when it comes to quality. Also, their films…a generous term…focus on specific cities and destinations. Other than these two, not a lot of serious players have emerged.

Until now? (yes, that’s a question)

It looks like the former CEO of MTVi (MTV‘s former dot-com division), a gentleman by the name of Nicholas Butterworth (of the syrup dynasty?), says he is in “stealth mode” (meaning it’s not ready yet) to develop a new online travel channel called Travelistic that he describes as “YouTube meets the Travel Channel meets YouTube”.

Whether that sounds exciting depends, I suppose, upon how much you enjoy watching people’s lousy home movies or the Travel Channel, and whether you believe that a mix of these two things creates “synergy”, to use a little industry vernacular. Personally, I sometimes find the Travel Channel unwatchable, and YouTube’s offerings work for me about .056 percent of the time. But the online video thing is changing damn awful fast, and someone is going to score big in this arena, so we’ll keep an eye on this one.