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

Space Tourist Anousheh Ansari Blogs

by Erik Olsen on

What does space smell like? That is a question that Einstein himself may have pondered. His equation is one of the lesser known, but certainly important ones of all time: S=fb2, where Smell (S) equals a universal funk constant (f) minus one’s body odor (b) squared. It is a brilliant piece of Einsteininan mathematics that has been used in the development of high energy particle physics and odor eaters.

OK, I took some scientific/poetic license there. It wasn’t Einstein who came up with the Universal Funk Quotient, it was Enrico Fermi. He was Italian. So what’s this got to do with anything? Well, here I was perusing the Web today, wondering what in the world…or out of it…would interest gadling readers, and then I came across the blog of the first woman space tourist.

Anousheh Ansari just got back from her most amazing trip to outer space aboard the Soyuz TMA-9, and boy is she happy. And why wouldn’t she be? For a mere $20 million, she was able to float around planet earth with little or no work to do (she was a tourist, remember) and then returned on Friday after 11-days aboard the international space station. She said, finishing up my thought from above, that space smelled like burnt-almonds. Of course, that may have just been the burnt-almond flavored air freshener that hangs in the windshield.

No matter. There are videos and photos and written words on her site ,and, of course if you Google her, there are a gazillion stories about the trip she made. But most of all, I suggest you take a look at the video and make note that she issues a personal thank you to YouTube. If that isn’t the most 21st century thing you’ve heard this year, I don’t know what is.

Wallpaper* City Guides

by Adrienne Wilson on

Just when you start to sleep on Wallpaper* they go and make their debut in the publishing world with these nice little City Guides. Their reason being, after 10 years in the game uncovering the best new design and urban travel spots globally, packaging that decade of experience into well-thought out yet simple guide books was only obviously. They make it clear that the traveler’s time is as important as their own and they don’t waste it chucking in massive quantities. It’s about quality and they very best. The first 20 were published this past September and another 20 will be published every six months after that. Current titles include Mexico City, Los Angeles, NYC, Madrid, Bangkok and Stockholm to name only a few.

The books can be purchased at Phaidon. Don’t see what you’re looking for? Stay tuned for the rest in 2007!

Photo of the Day (10/1/2006)

by Erik Olsen on

Perhaps just a wee bit out of focus, this lovely, deep blue shot by lecercle really caught my eye for both the angle at which it was shot and the interesting details in the picture. Though captionless, you can’t help wonder what is happening here. Where was this taken? Some place in Australia? And who’s that kid with the club in the background. Is that his bike? A picture that is both beautiful and
full of interesting little mysteries.

Australia’s Open Water

by Iva Skoch on

Sleeping under the stars, with the magic of the underwater world beneath you is about as cleansing of an experience as you can get. Far from civilization, the stars are amazingly bright and–but for the waves breaking over the boat–it would be almost unbearably quiet.

The best way to enjoy the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) is definitely a live-on-board scuba diving trip. Because in most places, the GBR is some 2-3 hours from shore, it is really not worth it to just do a day trip. In Cairns, a gateway town to the GBR, there are numerous establishments offering just that. We went with Scuba Pro and would recommend them to anybody. A three-day trip is about $400/pp, all-inclusive: boat trip, two nights on the boat (there are private rooms, but some people choose the sleep-on-the-deck option to enjoy the stars), food and drinks, equipment rental and 11 dives, including 2 night dives. All in, it’s a pretty good deal. This is also a good way to get certified, although after diving the GBR, you’ll be spoiled and other places will seem like a cold pool of muddy water.

Needless to say, the diving is incredible. Turtles, sharks, lobsters, dolphins…all in water so warm you don’t actually need a wetsuits, if it weren’t for the damn jellyfish.

Locals Only. Whatever.

by Iva Skoch on

Adventure travelers tend to describe their favorite places abroad like this: “There are no tourists there, it’s just the locals.” That, of course, does not include the writer, who is, inevitably, a tourist. It’s just that he/she thinks he is slightly better (more worldly, less loud, etc.) than the other tourists.

I have always been torn about this issue. When I travel, I like to think that I go to the less touristy places, but the “locals-only” tags scare me. First of all, it is a bit hypocritical to go to a “locals-only” place as a tourist. Next thing you know, it will be in Lonely Planet described as a locals-only joint and locals will have to find a new place. And, those same tourists will also stop going, realizing that a locals-only place has go tourists-only or expensive, or both. At that precise moment, it disappears from Lonely Planet or is renamed “tourist trap.” Here is an example.This has happened to quite a few wonderful Czech pubs, too, for example U Fleku. It’s quite sad, if you think about it.

But that is not the only thing that intrigues me about people’s attraction to “locals only” places. I first discovered it when I realized that I am about the only person in Prague not concerned about “touristy places.” As a Czech native, it would never even occur to me to go to places where only locals hang out. I actually prefer to go to more cosmopolitan hangouts; a lot of natives do. Just like you would be hard-pressed to find New Yorkers hanging out in fried chicken joints because that’s what a lot of locals do, it is the same way in Prague. It is my foreign friends in Prague who always demand to go to some “locals only” place. I guess they derive some weird pleasure out of fulfilling their stereotypes of Eastern Europe: crusty old men playing cards and drinking beer. It’s like observing wild animals in their natural habitat…