Travel Read: 100 Places Every Woman Should Go

by Brenda Yun on

I never knew there could be a book so thoughtful and inspiring for women as this one. Stephanie Elizondo Griest’s second travel book, which lists far more than just 100 Places Every Woman Should Go, is truly an encyclopedia for women travelers. It’s the kind of book that could never have existed fifty years ago, but is so refreshing that free-spirited, female travelers should feel grateful that it exists now, and fully prepared for that next trip into the wide, wonderful world.

Griest’s great book is packed with helpful historical information, inspiring stories, and travel tips. It’s broken up into nine sections — my favorite being the first: “Powerful Women and Their Places in History.” There’s so much worth digesting in each locale described. For instance, I had no idea that the word “lesbian” came from the birthplace of Sappho (Lesbos, Greece). Griest fills each description with great travel tips that often include specific street addresses for particularly noteworthy sights.What I like most about the 100 places she chooses is that she shies away from identifying places that every woman obviously dreams of traveling to, like Venice, Rome, and Paris. Instead, she paves a new path for women, encouraging us to visit Japan’s 88 sacred temples or stroll through the public squares of Samarkand, one of the world’s oldest cities in Uzbekistan.

Griest does not limit her list to concrete or singular places. Sometimes, she finds a way to take us to virtual spots like the Museum of Menstruation or creates lists like “Best Bungee Jumping Locales,” “Sexiest Lingerie Shops,” or “Places to Pet Fuzzy Animals.” These 100 “places” are really all-encompassing, and Griest manages to take us on an imaginative journey around the world, packing all her feminine know-how into each description.

I did find, occasionally, that there were some places missing from some of the identified places in her list. For instance, I was baffled as to why two Russian writers were on Griest’s list of “Famous Women Writers and Their Creative Nooks,” but Emily Dickinson, Virginia Woolf, and Jane Austen were absent. I was additionally confused that cooking classes in India and Thailand were not on the list of “Culinary Class Destinations.”

Griest’s opinions of places are somewhat biased, too. While she does a fairly good job covering the globe, a single locale in French Polynesia or the South Pacific is missing, and some places like Oaxaca, Angkor Wat, and New York are mentioned several times. Her college town of Austin landed on the list, but places like Budapest and Cairo are never acknowledged.

With every list, however, there is bound to be some bias and some personal flair and choice involved, and Griest’s original and creative sensibilities are still well-worth reading about. The great thing about this book is that you can flip to a place description, be perfectly entertained and inspired, and then tuck the book away until the next time you feel compelled to read about the places you can go. Or, you can read it in one sitting like I did and be completely blown away by the amazing places in this one world that it’s hard to imagine why we live in one city for so long and not just pack our bags and get out there and see some if not all of it.

Click here to read my review of Griest’s first travel book, “Around the Bloc: My Life in Moscow, Beijing, and Havana.” My review of Griest’s third travel book, “Mexican Enough: My Life Between the Borderlines” is forthcoming, along with my interview with the author in early January. Feel free to jot me an email (Brenda DOT Yun AT weblogsinc DOT com) if you have a question for Stephanie.

Click the images to learn about the most unusual museums in the world — featuring everything from funeral customs, to penises, to velvet paintings, to stripping.


2008’s best travel writing

by Jeremy Kressmann on

While browsing my local Barnes & Noble earlier this week, I stumbled upon a display of The Best American Series – a collection of books recapping the year’s best writing. Among the collection is a travel-themed edition, curated this year by travel “badboy” Anthony Bourdain.

Gadling has given great reviews to these anthologies in years past, so I decided to pick up a copy. As a fledgling travel writer myself, I’ve found the pieces in this year’s edition to be highly compelling. The featured content covers a surprisingly broad array of topics. Foodies will savor writer Bill Buford’s account of Extreme Chocolate, which finds the author deep in the rainforests of Brazil in search of the perfect cacao beans. Adventurers will want to dive into James Campbell’s look at the Kapa Kapa Trail, a grueling overland route of American soldiers fighting in Papua New Guinea during World War II, in Chasing Ghosts.

For anyone who’s interested in the travel genre, this is a great recap of this year’s best-written and most interesting stories. Travel writing is a well-worn style – pithy descriptions of swank hotels and delicious meals can only take you so far. It’s the stories that are able to rise above the cliches and well worn metaphors to truly give a sense of place and its people that truly does these locations justice.

Let’s continue to encourage this sort of high-quality travel writing. Stop by Barnes & Noble or hit up Amazon and pick yourself up a copy.

Deforestation in Brazil: Cutting down on cutting down

by Brenda Yun on

Hooray! Brazil has supposedly implemented a plan that will cut down on deforestation of the Amazons. This plan will purportedly reduce deforestation by 70 percent over the course of 10 years. With just one look at the rate of deforestation in this country, we can see how this plan is about five years too late, but it’s better late than never.

The world as we know it is rapidly changing and the things we see in ten years will no longer be as we see them today. That is certain, but what isn’t is what will become of those precious natural gems such as South America’s Amazon region — a majority of which is located in Brazil.According to most environmentally conscious individuals, the rate of deforestation in Brazil appears to correlate directly with the economic health of the country. In times of rapid growth, Brazil’s Amazon region suffers; and when its economy is struggling, the region thrives.

That is only part of the picture, however. The rest of the puzzle has to do with what Time Magazine calls “The Clean Energy Scam.” Farmers interested in entering the clean energy market are turning the Amazon rainforest into soybean fields. These fields will later be converted into biofuel — a “green” product, yes, but one that is not “green” for the environment. In fact, the “savannization” of the Amazons is downright destructive and anti-environment.

While I really hope Brazil gets its act together to correct its anti-environment policies, I am doubtful that they can follow through with this deforestation plan. Of course, I do hope I’m proven wrong. In ten years, I would still like to see the Brazilian Amazon — not a Brazilian soybean field in its place.

What can we do to see that this new plan remains in tact? Brazil’s Environment Minister, Carlos Minc, says the Amazon Fund, an initiative implemented earlier this year to gather funds for the preservation of the country’s Amazon region, must be a top priority. Brazil hopes to begin using the Fund’s money next year.

“Let’s build a city… there!” The world’s 4 least impressive planned capitals

by Aaron Hotfelder on

Cities tend to develop the way living organisms do– they begin their lives as small and simple creatures, they eventually flower into maturity, and some occasionally decay and die out. Cities are located where they are– Paris is on the Seine, Sydney is on the Pacific coast– not because central planners decided that’s where they should be, but because of the choices of individuals. The decision was made from the bottom-up, not from the top-down.

But it doesn’t always happen like this. Sometimes well-meaning bureaucrats, or even megalomaniacal dictators, decide that a city should develop the way they want it to– in exactly the place they want it to. The results are almost universally disappointing.

This problem is especially acute with capital cities, which are often thought to represent countries in important ways. Because of their symbolic nature, government oficials like to locate capitals in just the right place. Their intentions are often pure, but (to paraphrase an old saying) the road to a bad city is paved with good intentions.

Here are the top four worst planned capital cities in the world:

4. Brasilia, Brazil

Brazil’s capital is one of the best examples of a planned city gone awry. In the late 1950s, Brazil’s president ordered the construction of a new city, Brasilia, which would be the new, more centrally-located capital. At first, the city grew wildly, and its rate of growth (over 2%) is still above that of most large cities. But Brasilia is not thought of very highly by its residents, other Brazilians, or tourists.

The city was built more for the automobile than the pedestrian, so getting around can be difficult, confusing, and expensive. On the plus side, Brasilia is known for its impressive modernist architecture– it’s a UNESCO World Heritage site. Still, the city is too cold and impersonal to be thought of as anything but a massive disappointment.

3. Astana, Kazakhstan

If there’s one fact about Astana that shows how characterless it really is, it’s this: “Astana” literally means “capital city.” Charming!

Though Astana has existed under different names for almost two centuries, it was only a small mining town until the mid-1950s, when Nikita Khruschev decided it would become an important grain-producer. After replacing Almaty as Kazakhstan’s capital in 1997, Astana has experienced a dramatic transformation, with a population that has doubled to 600,000 residents.

Like Brasilia, Astana boasts some impressive architecture, but is still rather bleak and humorless. Dozens of ambitious construction projects are underway, however, so the city’s future is not without some hope.

2. Belmopan, Belize

What if the government moved the capital city and no one came? That was more or less the situation when Belmopan became Belize’s capital in 1991 after a hurricane destroyed the previous capital, Belize City. Home to only 8,100 residents, mostly government officials, Belmopan is the quintessential government town, lacking virtually any flavor or charm.

My Lonely Planet guidebook describes the city’s tourist appeal thusly: “Travelers arriving in Belize’s capital are faced with that most basic of all existential questions: What am I doing here? Thankfully, the town provides a ready answer: changing buses.”

1. Naypyidaw, Myanmar (Burma)

Naypyidaw became Myanmar’s capital only three years ago, after the ruling military junta apparently decided that Yangon had become too crowded and congested. However, some suspect that the real reason the capital was moved to such a remote locale was to make invasions and rebellion more difficult. One Indian journalist wrote that Naypyidaw was “the ultimate insurance against regime change, a masterpiece of urban planning designed to defeat any putative ‘color revolution’ – not by tanks and water cannons, but by geometry and cartography.”

Last year, the New York Times euphemistically called the new capital a “work in progress,” and noted that the city may be the world’s only capital without cell phone service or international flight connections.

The Louvre of Soccer Opens in Brazil

by Josh Lew on

It is no secret that Brazil is obsessed with soccer (or, if you really want to be politically correct, “football”). It is often referred to as a religion or art form rather than a mere sport. It is a bit surprising that it wasn’t until very recently that a museum dedicated to the game was opened. The Museu do Futebol at Pacaembu Stadium in Sao Paulo is watched over by a huge mural featuring soccer legend Pele. Inside, there are more than 100 “artifacts” from Pele’s career and life, including the ball he used to score his 100th goal and a small box he used as a shoeshine boy in his youth.

Perhaps more interesting are the exhibits about the history of soccer in Brazil. It began as a sport for wealthy people of European descent and grew to become the passion of a majority of the country’s citizens, regardless of ethnicity or socio-economic status. A member of the Roberto Marinho Foundation, which funded the museum’s construction likened it to one of the world’s most famous museums: “The Louvre has the Mona Lisa. We have our own piece of art — Pele.” An over the top comparison, to be sure. But it shows just how serious soccer is taken in this nation of 190 million people.

[Via Reuters]