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

It’s World Tourism Day Today!

by Adrienne Wilson on

I figured we couldn’t let the day breeze by without acknowledging World Tourism day. No, no! But what exactly does World Tourism day mean? Are you and all your friends planning extravagant vacations somewhere? Anyone just return from Tonga, Finland or Zambia? I’m not 100% sure, but I’m sure the folks at the World Tourism Organization have a clue. This year’s theme is Tourism Enriches and without reading much one can already guess that a theme like that goes in both directions: it enriches the country and the tourist.

Anyways, happy World Tourism Day!

Word for the Travel Wise (09/27/06)

by Adrienne Wilson on

If all the words in the Pidgin language are repetitive like the two I’ve presented thus far I’d have to vote it as the easiest and most fun language to learn. However, all the words are not like this, but it still seems to be fairly simple to catch onto.

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

kaikai – food

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

Seven Kinds of Travel Stories You Should Be Able to Tell Before You Die

by Adrienne Wilson on

Here’s a cutesy travel piece out of the San Francisco Chronicle. I missed the first installation, but the author John Flinn sets the premise that it’s not enough to just go, do, and see all the wonderful places found in the New York Times best seller 1,000 Places to See Before You Die. In order for your travels to have some type of street cred, you’ve got to come back with some cold hard traveler’s tales. I’m almost certain Mister Flinn isn’t suggesting you go out searching for tales to tell or to create them. They should just sort of happen. In last’s week edition he talked about the first two which were Third World bus stories and bathroom stories. This week he adds scary air and animal stories while sharing two of his own. I have to admit the scary air tale he told tops many that I’ve heard and I don’t know where he got the balls to get in a plane with a pilot like that.

What do I know? If you’ve got to be some place bad enough I suppose you’d take chances with any pilot. Go take a peek and see if you’ve got some real travel stories of your own to tell. If not, maybe it’s time to take a ride on the wild side and look out for next week when he goes over a hotel story, a food story and a guide story.

P.S. The sheep in the bag in the back of the jeep is from an animal tale of my own, but really, it wasn’t that eventful.

Pursuing the Pitohui

by Erik Olsen on

It has been a long time, to long, since we last visited the NPR Radio Expeditions site. I used to head over there quite often to listen to the numerous audio bios they’ve got posted of various well-known (and a few rather obscure) explorers and scientists. But I more or less heard them all, so I kind of went on to other things. But they are always producing new stuff, so it behooves us to check in every once in a while. To wit: I offer you today this excellent piece on a conservationist named Bruce Beehler who is wandering the mysterious cannibal-inhabited jungles of Papua New Guinea in search of a mysterious and poisonous bird native to the region called the pitohui. In typical NPR fashion, you really get a feel for the heat and the exoticness of the location, and as you follow Beehler and the local shaman that he befriends, you can’t help wonder, how did I end up in a damn office?

Urban Lowdown Seeking Interns

by Adrienne Wilson on

Now I’m not one to gossip (usually), but word around the web is Urban Lowdown is looking for people with interests in marketing, developing, design, and writing to contribute to their website. If you’ve been searching for a travel website to contribute to this could very well be the one provided you fall into what I imagine to be a strict clique of travel know-it-alls or insiders as they like to put it. Go now for the lowdown on being apart of the Lowdown.