Oceania

Travel through Oceania by country:

Australia, Indonesia, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, New Zealand, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu, Vanuatu

Travel through Oceania by popular city:

Auckland, Canberra, Melbourne, Perth, Sydney, Wellington

Travel through Oceania by popular things to do:

Cook Islands, Sydney Opera House

Travel through Oceania with our writers:

In the Corner of the World, Work and Play in Queensland

A Brokedown Melody

by Erik Olsen on

I don’t know how many of you out there are Jack Johnson fans; I suspect some of the surfers among us are. But I have to say that I love his music. I really do. At one point his cheery, bestubbled mug was everywhere. He was to surfing magazines what Lance Armstrong is to Outdoors/fitness magazines. And when anything becomes that popular, the hauteur sets in, and folks like me snootily reject the offerings of anything or anybody with such widespread appeal. And so it goes.

But as I say, Jack Johnson, for some reason, tends to be different. Even though some say his music all sounds the same, I still have an odd addiction to it. And I am also rather intrigued by Johnson’s efforts as a filmmaker, which is really the crux of this post. Even though it looks like it was produced a few years ago, I only recently stumbled upon this DVD of a film called A Brokedown Meoldy (also the title of a Johnson song) that Johnson worked on with such surfing luminaries as Kelly Slater, Tom Curren, Gerry Lopez, Rob Machado, and others. Of course, Johnson, an accomplished surfer himself, is featured too. The group, or various iterations among the list, find the best surf spots around the world including Jamaica, Indonesia, Tahiti, Hawaii, Mexico and South America. And yes, the film is sound tracked with music by Johnson. I mean, duh.

Anyhoodle, it sounds like a great film, and I rather enjoyed the clips available here.

Word for the Travel Wise (01/16/07)

by Adrienne Wilson on

I just checked out the 2007 calendar of cultural events taking place in Papua New Guinea and what a line up! Go see what fantastic festivals and shows they have waiting for your viewing pleasure, then hop on one of these and go!

Today’s word is a Pidgin (Tok Pisin) word used in Papua New Guinea:

balus – plane

As noted in Wikipedia the word ‘tok’ means word or speech and the word ‘pisin’ means pidgin and is a Creole language spoken by about 4 million people as a second language and over a hundred thousand as a first. It is spoken in the northern mainland of Papua New Guinea. If you scroll down further you’ll find a nice list of words and some pronunciation examples. As an added bonus you can learn even more words by venturing into the online Tok Pisin phrasebook, also provided by Wiki. They’ve actually got a great handful of links which I suggest going through them all if you’re really into learning this lang. One last site I’ll note here though is Robert Eklund’s Tok Pisin page. It had pictures of signs, people and some audio clips. Looks a winner to learning the very basics.

Past Pidgin (Tok Pisin) words: natnat, kaikai, misis

License Plates of the World

by Justin Glow on

The other day I ran across this website, LICENSE PLATES OF THE WORLD, which has got to be the largest collection of – you guessed it! – license plates on the Internet (and not just because the title is in all caps, but that helps). If it’s not, well, then please show me an online collection of license plates larger than this one. I dare you! I spent the better part of an hour going through and finding some truly bizarre plates from places like Antarctica and – get this – Texas!

It reminds me of when I was a kid, traveling the country with my family, kicking the back of the driver seat and asking, “Are we there yet?” No, my father would say, encouraging me to play one of the many car games kids played to pass the time. I always enjoyed the license plate game, where you had to find a plate from every state in the US. Alaska and Hawaii were usually quite rare, but if you spotted one you were pretty much ensured a victory.

Think of this website as an online, globalized version of that game. Only the license plates on the website are indexed by country and state, so you don’t have to sit in the car and search the backs of random cars. Okay, so it’s nothing like the game I played as a kid. But it does involve license plates!

LP’s The Perfect Day

by Erik Olsen on

I have to say I love the fact that Lonely Planet is really branching out in the travel writing genre. Take a look at their catalog, and you can see that they’ve really moved beyond basic travel guides into vast new realms. I posted recently about the lusciously photo-illustrated book “The Middle of Nowhere” which I have right here on my shelf and which I go to whenever I need a quick inspiration for where to go next. But that book is hard backed and rather pesado, and so as I carry around a version of something similar, albeit smaller.

I just got my hands on “The Perfect Day” by Lonely Planet. The book provides bite-sized summaries of what constitutes the perfect day in multitudinous cities around the globe. From New York City to Phuket, Madrid, Dubai and so on, pretty much every major and medium city is covered. The writers are mostly LP authors and/or travel writers, so I suspect you can trust their advice. I like this book for its quick insight and it portability. It lacks a certain depth, but that’s not what it was intended for; The Perfect Day was written to whet your appetite about a place, and I think it pulls that goal off nicely.

Tip for Tipping

by Iva Skoch on

We have covered the very fragile topic of tipping outside the US before…it is a tricky one. I have seen a few website and guides which instruct tourists on tipping and I have never felt comfortable with any of them. Ehow.com for example, has a tip for tipping in the Czech Republic suggesting people should round up to the nearest koruna. That is absolutely not the case. You would round up a 179 crown bill up to 200, not 180.

I do not quite understand why Americans–the world’s richest nation–are so concerned about tipping (specifically over-tipping) when traveling abroad. When in doubt, I find that you can’t honestly go wrong with tipping more, even if people tell you tipping is not necessary. Often they are just being polite. If you can tip 15% at home, why not do it abroad?

Yes, you might be paying more than people usually get, but it is better than trying to figure out the tipping etiquette in each country or under-tipping. Yes, you want to be treated like a human being, not a walking bag of cash (ehm, good luck with that). Yes, there is the argument that service workers in the US only earn a minimum wage and they depend on higher tips. I would argue that the US minimum wage is still much higher than “regular wages” in 99% of the rest of the world. Plus, the entire world knows that it is customary in the US to pay generous tips. They see by the clothes you wear that you can afford it. Why not just do it?