Gadling Podcast: Joshua Berman

by Erik Olsen on

The whole guidebook writing thing has long intrigued me with its double-sided nature. On the one hand, being in a foreign locale, and having your job consist of reporting on the food, lodging and fun in that place seems like a dream job. On the other hand, spending an entire day peeking under mattresses and checking the cleanliness of bathrooms, well, I don’t care WHERE you are, that can kind of get old.

Well in today’s podcast, we talk about the job of writing guidebooks and a whole lot more. Out guest for today’s podcast is guidebook writer Joshua Berman, the author of several guidebooks in Central America as well as a brand-new book called Living Abroad in Nicaragua, released by Avalon Publishing this month. I’ve blogged about the Living Abroad series before, and I have to say it is a very handy guide for those who are considering making a move to any of the various countries for which there are books. But Joshua is also the writer, or co-writer, as the case may be, in two other guidebooks from Moon Guides (also under Avalon Publishing) Moon Guides Nicaragua and Moon Guides Belize. he also runs the wonderful Web site stonegrooves.net which chronicles his recent travels with his wife as a volunteer worker in places like India and Pakistan.

So turn up the speakers or put this thing on your ipod and take a listen.

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Free Accommodation in Paris

by Iva Skoch on

If you are into mixing culture with adventure travel, Paris is the new hot location. Apparently, you can pitch your tent right on the banks of the Seine these days.

Friends who just honeymooned in Paris sent me this picture, actually a series of pictures. Look closely – yes, those are all tents of the homeless along the Seine.

This is what they said: “How on Earth can these folk camp around The Pompidou Center? At the shore of the Seine beneath the Musee D’Orsay? With dogs. Fires. Reading newspapers. Playing instruments with competence. One bloke in the Palais de Tokyo was charging his phone, playing Nintendo GameBoy, rolling smokes and sipping a six pack of Belgian blond beer. Is this a common phenomenon for…art galleries?”

Well, after a glasses of chilled Chablis, I guess you could call this a postmodern approach to housing. I hear that the views are great, but the service is so so. And, of course, it is always BYOB.

BT Blogger Blab Redux

by Erik Olsen on

OK, so I have to finish up from my last post about the Budget Travel blogger roundtable I participated in last week at the Tribeca Cinemas here in New York City. So, yes, it was all very interesting and informative and I was able to chat with lots of folks who, in some form or another, have made travel part of their jobs. The BT folks did a marvelous job making us feel important and learned, even if nothing could be further from the truth. But I want to talk about my dinner after the event. You see, at the bloggers blab session, I spoke with a nice young lady who happened to work for one of my favorite outfitter companies around: Mountain Travel Sobek.

Over the years I’ve received through the mail several Sobek catalogs, and let me tell you, if you’ve ever wanted to be inspired and beaten down depressed at the same time, get your hands on one. The catalog is filled with the most wanderlust-inducing photos and trips you will ever see. Sadly, you will probably not find the time or the money to do many of them. But anyway, the company was started over 30 years ago by a group of guys who wanted to help people see the world, to EXPERIENCE it. One of these guys is named Richard Bangs

Bangs went on to do many other notable things with his career, and I’ve followed several of them over the years. First of all, he founded Terra Quest and then went on to become a founding executive at Microsoft’s Expedia, the online travel site that was sold off to (I believe) Barry Diller’s Interactive Corp. Then he started what I still regard as one of the best online travel magazines ever put together: Mungo Park. What’s sad is that the site no longer seems to be available and instead links to the Expedia site. Tragedy that, because the stories would still be lovely to read now. Mungo Park did some killer trips and pioneering Web journalism: they went riding motorcycles with Lyle Lovett in Chile, to the Triobriand Islands with Dr. Ruth, to Newfoundland with Martha Stewart. Oh, how we might long for the days when Microsoft threw money at online content.

Anyhow, Bangs then, or at some point thereafter, went on to do many other things, but most recently he hosted one of the first multi-media-based travel shows on Yahoo. This was at the time when Yahoo was all about original content and their newly-hired TV exec Lloyd Braun headed up a couple of Web-only programs. Kevin Sites’ Hot Zones was one of them, and the other was Richard Bangs’s Adventures. We’ve blogged about the show a bunch of times here. Why? Because it was great, absolutely great. But there was a problem with it: you couldn’t see it on a Mac. The Yahoo yahoos for some impossible-to-comprehend reason didn’t support Macs. Retarded! And then just recently, as we dutifully reported, they pulled the plug on Bangs’s show in part because it wasn’t getting the traffic they expected.

Double-retarded.

So anyway that is a LONG way to go (if you’re still reading) to discover that I arrived at dinner that night, and who is seated next to me at the table, but Richard Bangs. Imagine my delight. Honestly, this was like meeting Jay-Z or Steve jobs for some people. And there I was for the whole evening, quaffing beer and talking about travel, the Internet and all manner of other things with Bangs. A real treat, let me tell you.

Well, I’ve gone on long enough, but I have to say it was exciting for me and if you’ve read this far, well, thanks a lot. And do me a favor and send Yahoo a nasty note telling them how lame they are.

Chasing Crusoe Webumentary

by Erik Olsen on

Sometimes we find links to interesting sites in the most unlikely places. I happened to be surfing through some of the finalists for the Online Journalism Awards, a great place to see what is happening in the world of online journalism. Pawing through various sites and stories on Iraq and New Orleans, I then stumbled across this finely done documentary site that examines the lives and times of the mythical Robinson Crusoe and the Scottish sailor Alexander Selkirk, the latter of which is thought by many to be the inspiration for Daniel Defoe’s classic novel.

This is a travel story, but perhaps it might fall under the rubric of “unintentional travel” if there is such a thing. I imagine the folks on the ABC show Lost might think so. Anyway, rather than the product of some humongous mega-media-corporo-conglomo-ration, it was put together by students from the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill as well as some visiting students from Universidad de los Andes in Santiago, Chile.

The site is well-designed and loaded with historical information about these two men and their times. We learn that the character of Crusoe is a blend of fantasy and reality…although given that Crusoe encountered only Friday and not a bunch of beautiful Tahitian women bearing palm-based foot massage oil, I use the term “fantasy” lightly. Regardless, it’s worth checking out and I salute the ambitious young team that put it together.

Brick Lane: Best Indian Food Outside of Bangladesh

by Iva Skoch on

Contrary to popular belief, not all food in London is bad. Indian food is, in fact, excellent. The best way to sample it is to head over to Brick Lane, a street in the East Side of London, just steps away from Liverpool Street or Aldgate East tube stops.

Brick Lane (also known as Banglatown) is actually the center of the Bangladeshi community, nonetheless, this is where people go to satisfy their Indian food craving. It is one of the few things in London which won’t make you go broke in two hours. You can get a meal here for 5 GBP.

I come here every time I am in London and I try a different place every time. I went again this past Saturday night and was not disappointed. Remember that some of the restaurants have no liquor license, so you have to bring your own booze. Make sure to try the sweet, coconut nan. It complements the super-spicy vindaloo (or “vindy”) dishes very nicely.