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

LP Less Than Three

by Erik Olsen on

Aspiring filmmakers out there pay attention. Lonely Planet, the guidebook colossus, is offering a big time travel opportunity to folks who send in the best travel film that lasts, and here’s the gimmick, less than three minutes. That may seem like a short duration, unless you actually spent time watching some folks’ homemade travel video, (which believe me, I have), in which case you know that some folks are just not meant to be filmmakers (what is so hard about holding a camera steady?).

It seems like a pretty good deal. If you check out the FAQ, you can read that LP is offering a first prize of 10,000 Australian dollars (which comes out to, what? about $780? JK!) to help pay for your own Round-The-World economy flight, an STA travel voucher and the choice of either hanging with LPTV folks in Melbourne (LP’s home base) or taking the rest of the cash and heading out on your own “dream journey”. Hmmm….hanging with the LPTV folks would be fun, buuuuuttttt….so the hitch is you actually have to produce the film, make it under three minutes and, here’s the catch, make it interesting enough that people will actually WANT to watch it.

Sydney Wins…Again

by Erik Olsen on

Probably the most frustrating things about this story for me is that I’ve never been to Sydney. Australia is the only continent, in fact, that I’ve never visited…a fact that distresses me a great deal. Something simply MUST be done to rectify this. But that, dear gadling reader, is not you problem. So onto the news at hand.

The news at hand is this: Sydney, the Australian cultural capital (I said CULTURAL Capital, please no emails about geographic illiteracy) has once again been selected as the world’s number one city by readers of Conde Nast Traveler. This is frightening to say, the 11th time the harbor city has won the award since it (the contest, not the city) began in 1988. That’s quite an amazing feat for a former penal colony that supported Britain’s criminal and bureaucratic castaways. OK, ok, ease up. I know that’s an old tried and true way to upset Aussies. Again, no email, please (that means you, Howie ;-)). BTW: Budget Travel Magazine has got a piece on Sydney y’all might enjoy.

Anyhoodle, the idea is that readers…apparently an itinerant bunch…selected the best city based on ambiance, friendliness, culture sights, restaurants, lodging and shopping. About 28,000 readers voted this year, giving Sydney a score of 87.7, followed by the Italian city of Florence with 86.8, and San Francisco and Bangkok each with 85.9. Why New York is not on the top of the list is a mystery to me, especially since I know both Bangkok and New York and…well, Bangkok is exciting at all, but the best? Nah. All said, though, more than ever before do I need to hustle and get these bones to the land down under.

Airlines Showing More Thigh

by Erik Olsen on

30,000 feet above the fruited plain is not the place to catch the raciest new fare from Hollywood…unless you own your own plane, of course. Then you can watch and/or do whatever you want. But for the most part, airlines from American to Xanadu have shown movies onboard that can be viewed by everyone, keeping things mainly within what might be considered family fare. This is not absolute, of course. JetBlue’s 21 gazillion channels of DirectTV provide the opportunity to poke that annoying little armrest button long enough to find, say The Terminator gunning people down while you fly. But for the most part when it comes to the movies being shown aboard movies that were actually selected by the airline, they have been tame.

According to sister-site Cinematical, that may not be the case any longer. Some airlines, they say, are beginning to show more racy, mainstream fare like Brokeback Mountain and Transamerica with the idea that this will provide more choice, variety, and current releases to passengers. I for one think i’s a good if not great idea, so long as they don’t begging showing Debbie Does Dallas or something. The fact is, given the lousy crop of films out these days, the more variety the better so as to tolerate those six or so long hours in the air.

Hungry Planet: The Book

by Erik Olsen on

It’s already been pretty much established that America is a fast food nation. In fact, a book by Eric Schlosser with that exact title pretty much spells it all out. Many of us eat our own weight in hamburgers and fries every year, and you could fill a Volkswagen with the amount of grease that oozes its way though our bodies in a lifetime.

But is America unique in this respect? I’m always reading articles about how the Chinese are becoming increasingly obese. Same with the Europeans…yes, even the culinarily snooty French. But it still raises a very interesting question: What does the world eat?

In an amazing-sounding book of photos and text called Hungry Planet, photographers Peter Menzel and Faith D’Aluisio offer a study of families from around the world, revealing what people eat during the course of one week. Each family’s profile provides a description of their weekly food purchases and is accompanied by photographs of the family enjoying food at home as well as shopping and out in their community. There is also a main shot showing the family surrounded by, well, food. The book also contains essays by a gaggle of well-known writers like Francine R. Kaufman, Corby Kummer, Charles C. Mann, Michael Pollan, and Carl Safina. I’m actually listening to Pollan’s Botany of Desire right now on my iPod, so I’ve been tuned into these “What do we eat and why” books, shows and articles.

Anyway, I thought this was one of those really simple, but cool, ideas that reveal a lot about how we live in this fast food day and age.

JenLeo Live in Australia

by Erik Olsen on

One of our favorite traveling friends and travelers, Jen Leo, is in Australia right now and has posted a slide show from the road. Lucky girl is there for two whole weeks, checking out the Land Down Under as part of an apparent press junket. She’s posting not from her traditonal spot of the Web WrittenRoad, but from a new site where she is chronicling her adventures.

And speaking of Jen, I have to say that the good folks at Travelers’ Tales sent me Jen’s latest gender-specific travel humor compendium (GSTHC, or Gosthack): What Color is Your Jockstrap, and after just a few stories I can tell you it’s a giggle-inducer. More on the book at a later time, later post.