What happens to all that crap, I mean, garbage on a cruise?

by Jamie Rhein on

I remember that startled feeling when I went to the toilet on a train in Africa and saw the tracks whizzing by below the hole. On an airplane, there’s that great whooosh!, that satisfying sucking of air accompanied by a swirl of bluish green fluid that helps wash what has been deposited in the bowl into some hidden receptacle–I hope. This summer we looked at a used RV as a possibility to put on some land we own in Montana as a place to stay once in a while. There was great discussion about what to do with the waste. There’s a dump station near the land, but there’s the problem of getting what was dumped to the dump without bringing the whole RV through town. We don’t have a truck and don’t intend to get one. Thinking about what to do with waste is a real downer–a real idea killer sometimes.

It’s worse when you think of what people can produce on a massive scale and what happens when these garbage producers head off on a cruise ship to sail the ocean blue on their quest for a vacation in paradise. The ocean blue may have a hard time staying that way as cruise ship vacations continue to gain in popularity. Paradise is in danger of turning putrid. This photo is of garbage in a tidal pool in Micronesia, for example.

Cruise ships, according to Ellen Slattery in her post on our favorite environmentally friendly, in-the-know site, Green Daily, have a bad habit of dumping crap in the ocean–and I mean that in an all encompassing sense. Although there are rules for how far ships must be from land before they can let the garbage go, all don’t comply. Even if they do, there’s the diesel exhaust from the engines. Ellen has gathered an impressive stash of information that ought to be read before anyone books a cruise.

The idea is not to skip a cruise, but to pick cruises that are more environmentally friendly. Royal Caribbean International, Lindblad Expeditions, Princess Cruises, and Crystal Cruises are the four cruise lines Ellen lists as being cognizant of treading more lightly on the planet. For the reasons why, plus more tips on how to take a cruise with a clear conscience, read her “Your dream vacation could be a nightmare for the earth.”

Click on jschneid for a photo he posted on Flickr on January 12, 2008. The garbage was washed up on the beach in the Mayan Riviera. As he wrote, “Did the shampoo bottle you threw away on your Caribbean cruise end up on this Mexico beach??”

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When’s Bangladesh going to disappear?

by Jerry Guo on

The country’s the size of Iowa, but has half the population of the entire United States. Oh, and by the way, it could possibly be wiped out in the next century.

Here’s the thing: Bangladesh happens to be situated at sea level in a region of the world where flooding and monsoons are already a problem. As it stands, each year roughly half the country is under water at one point or another. But because of possible rising sea levels in the next 20 years (even a 20-centimeter rise) could devastate 10-million Bangladeshis.

We’ve heard of small island nations like Tuvalu (most famous for their Internet TLD: .TV) that are doomed to extinction if global warming pans out. But if the same thing happens to Bangladesh, that’s going to be more than a humanitarian disaster. They have a growing Islamic fundamentalist movement and a very weak government, which means the threat of less and less land (and more and more water) will undoubtedly destabilize the region.

As with many recent postings (a la Mt. Kilimanjaro), all this is to say visit Bangladesh soon, lest it be under water by the time you get around to it. Here’s a great analysis piece about Bangladesh and global warming in this month’s Atlantic.

Ode to Neil: What is 1% of 2,000 posts?

by Jamie Rhein on

I’ve been blogging with Neil for about a year now wondering how the heck is he managing to crank out such bounty with his sly wit and traveler’s know-how. Since the number of posts Gading manages to put out in a day are sometimes hard to keep up with, I thought I’d give you a sampling of my favorites of Neil’s.

Of course, like he wrote when he signed off today from Gadling on his last post–his 2,000th, I’m sure we haven’t read the last of Neil. However, I thought that someone who has 2,000 posts in two years certainly could have a post dedicated to him. It’s not exactly the same as the trophy-like statue of the Greek god Hermes pictured here, but hopefully it will suffice. Hermes is linked to travel among other things.

(Neil, to turn this into a real statue, you can print out a copy of the picture, carefully cut around the outline of the statue like a paper doll, glue it onto a piece of tag board, cut around that, affix it to a toothpick with tape, stick one end of the toothpick in a bit of playdough or something and perhaps you can get it to stand up.)

Statues aside, this is what 1% of 2,000 looks like–20 posts. But, first, here’s my all time favorite written for our April Fool’s Day bonanza in 2007. Bush Lifts Mark Cuban Travel Ban

These are culled since April of 2007. I picked these because they either made me laugh, inspired me to write my own post, I learned something I didn’t know, brought back some of my own travel memories or gave me useful information that I used. You can decide which is which.

1. Iceland’s putrid fish delicacy.

2. Infiltrating North Korea Part 15: More song and dance, and a conundrum about chocolate

3. Help Gadling buy this woman a cow

4. How to buy goods confiscated by TSA

5. The museum of broken relationships

6. Dumpster diving: The cheapest way to eat when traveling.

7. Hollywood’s Craziest Foriegn Country Stereotypes

8. Turd Coffee: An Indonesian Specialty

9. Affordable Float Plane Fishing in Alaska Part 1: A How to Guide

10. 9,000 Naked Men in Search of Wood

11. The Thankless Life of a Sherpa

12. Removing Leeches

13. The Philippine Penal System Vacation: Free Song, Dance and Meals!

14. Best (Authentic) Mexican Restaurants in Los Angeles

15. Disneyland’s Secret Restaurant

16. Griffith Park: A return from the ashes

17. Are Cookies on your Computer Increasing the Cost of Your Vaction?

18. Go Now before They’re Gone: Conde Nast Traveler’s 20 Most Threatened Places

19. The Strange, Uncomfortable Silence of Naked Germans

20. Cow Tourism

Clubbing and elephant-feeding, all in one night

by Jerry Guo on

Here’s one quirky thing about Bangkok. In the Nana red-light district, it’s not surprising to see go-go dancers next to an elephant handler. Each night, you’ll find on average half a dozen elephants roaming the streets of Bangkok.

Their handlers, known as mahouts, go about trying to get tourists to buy on-hand treats, such as sugar cane, for the elephants. It turns out to be a pretty lucrative way to make a living (relatively speaking). One handler makes about $67 a day compared to $270 for working in a factory.

But it’s not all fun and games. The mahouts depend on their elephants for their livelihood. On the other hand, keeping elephants in downtown Bangkok is quite inconsiderate. The police haven’t found a good solution, though a Stray Elephant Task Force was created last year with undercover officers who try to keep the elephants out of Bangkok. Things aren’t looking good, according to the New York Times:

“To be honest, nobody wants to do this job, nobody wants to deal with the elephants,” said Prayote Promsuwon, who is in charge of the Stray Elephant Task Force, which was formed after an elephant handler, fleeing the police, raced his elephant the wrong way down a large Bangkok boulevard, causing traffic chaos.

Nature-Deficit Disorder

by Neil Woodburn on

Yes, you read the headline correctly.

And yes, it means exactly what it looks like it means.

Nature-Deficit Disorder is not a clinically diagnosed disease. It is, however, a rather clever name for a disturbing trend towards “denatured childhood” and the alarming affects that can result from such a condition.

The phrase was coined by Richard Louv in his fascinating book, Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children From Nature-Deficit Disorder.

Louv points out that today’s children no longer spend long summer afternoons running through the woods, playing in fields, or camping under the stars. Instead, they are at home playing video games, watching movies, surfing the web, or engaging in other indoor activities.

I’ve witnessed this myself when I go home to my parent’s house for Christmas and am surprised every year by the absolute dearth of kids playing in the street with their new toys. Christmas morning is a ghost town–outdoors, at least. If I peer through the neighbor’s windows, however, I can see all the kids huddled around TVs or computer screens, bug-eyed and brain dead. Frankly, I find it very depressing.

So what’s the harm in spending less and less time outdoors in nature?

Louv argues that the exposure to nature is necessary for cognitive development and without a heavy dosage of it, children are more prone to suffer from depression, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, stress, and, of course, obesity.Part of this theory is based upon the concept of biophilia–a belief that we are all still hunters and gathers at heart and are therefore still very strongly connected to nature. As a result, “there is something in us that needs natural forms, that needs association with nature in ways that we don’t fully understand.”

Although Louv is not a doctor, he sites a substantial body of research supporting links between positive immersion in nature and a child’s increased cognitive development.

He takes the argument a step further by blaming decreased nature exposure on worried parents who no longer allow their kids to run loose. Playtime is not only structured and supervised these days, but playgrounds and parks have been completely bled of any natural elements for fear of lawsuits, thus creating an artificial environment that might be outdoors, but it sure isn’t natural.

It will be a long time, if ever, we see Nature-Deficit Disorder appear in the pages of the DSM, psychology’s A-Z of psychiatric diagnoses. I doubt that such a condition will ever be proven conclusively, and yet exposing children to the great outdoors just feels right to me, like it’s the natural thing to do.