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

Catalina Tiki Festival

by Neil Woodburn on

The Tiki gods have often smiled kindly upon us here at Gadling and as a result, we aim to keep you mortals abreast of what’s happening in the Tiki World.

Friday kicks off the biggest event of the summer for lovers of Polynesia, aficionados of bamboo, and gulpers of Mai Tais.

Yes, it’s the Catalina Tiki Festival!

Located just 23 miles off the coast of Los Angeles, the idyllic island of Catalina is hardly tropical in nature, but from August 18-20, popular Descanso Beach will come alive with the sounds, tastes, and sights of the South Seas.

There will be tiki carving workshops, Hula dance lessons, luau feasts, dance troupes from Hawaii and Polynesia, and regional drinks with tiny umbrellas served therein.

The highlight of these tiki festivals, however, is the music.

MC King Kukulele is a one-man, ukulele wunderkind who will keep the crowd entertained between sets performed by The Dynotones, The Friki Tikis, Gregg De Castro and the Many Nations Band and more.

Headlining band Ape, is a mesmerizing cacophony of sweet island music that will make you want to tie a bone in your hair and go roast whitey over some open flames. Crazy Al (photo above) cleaves on lead hatchet.

Welcome WorldWiki

by Erik Olsen on

The good folks at Wikipedia – that is, Jimmy Wales, et al. – have taken their whole travel wiki thing up a notch. They’ve introduced a new site called WorldWiki, that allows travelers and interested parties to go in and edit information about travel destinations, hot spots, recommendations, etc.

This is a fine idea. If there’s any group other than Star Trek fans and lepidopterists who are passionate about their hobbies, it’s travelers. I expect this will be a very useful and informed resource…even if there is the possibility for Wiki-mahem. But if there is any model that should work nicely for finding the best bar in London or the cleanest hostel in Budapest, the Wiki system seems well suited to doing that. Right now, the site is in need of some contributors but I suspect it will soon catch on and could create some serious competition for dead tree guides. My guess is that the folks at Lonely Planet, et al, are watching this one closely.

As a side note: Wikipedia has been in the news a lot lately. The New Yorker had an excellent piece on the organization and I keep seeing more about it everywhere.

“New” Mark Twain Books

by Erik Olsen on

One of the first travel books I ever read remains one of the best I’ve ever read. Mark Twain’s Innocent’s Abroad helped define what I like in a travel tale: fascinating, novel information about a place, detailed interaction with others, and humor. Twain delivers all of these and more. And Innocent’s Abroad had me both giggling and mesmerized throughout its pages. If only every travel writer could inject humor into their work, the genre would be much better for it. Twain and Bill Bryson are probably two of the funniest travel writers alive, except that Twain’s dead. But that’s beside the point.

What I want to tell you about here is a piece over at Worldhum by Kristen van Tassel, who takes a look at several new books about Twain that focus almost exclusively on his itinerant habits.

Twain might be best known as a fiction writer, but the reality is he was a compulsive traveler. He went to the ends of the earth in the days when, well, they didn’t think the world was flat exactly, but much of the world remained unknown to most of the people. And these books seem a nice way to introduce oneself to twain’s travel writings. The books are called Mark Twain: On Travel, edited by Terry Mort, and Mark Twain’s Helpful Hints for Good Living: A Handbook for the Damned Human Race, edited by Lin Salamo, Victor Fischer, and Michael B. Frank of the Mark Twain Project. They appear to be more compilations of Twain material, which is fine by me. It would be nice if a new novel or travel book was discovered ,but as far as I’m concerned the world can’t get enough of Mark Twain.

ISLANDS Caption Contest

by Adrienne Wilson on

Providing a caption for the illustration you see pictured here could get you and a pal an incredible trip to Fiji. To show how gung-ho they are about their 25th Birthday / Anniversary, ISLANDS magazine is looking to send the person with the most clever and creative caption to Fiji. The trip for two would be all-inclusive and lands you in the beautiful 500-acre island paradise of Turtle Islands. I won’t list all the prize details here, because I want to win, I mean because you’ll certainly want to head over to ISLANDS magazine for your chance to win. Seems like a pretty easy contest to enter, meaning little effort should be involved in getting your entry in there. Contest ends 09/30/06.

No excuses!

Word for the Travel Wise (08/10/06)

by Adrienne Wilson on

Vacationers flying into Tahiti for the month of September and on should take a peak at this cool website I just happened to fall upon this evening. The Tahitian Traveler has a good listing of things to consider beyond sunbathing on the beach all day. World Tourism Day is held sometime in the month of September as is an annual arts and crafts fest. Although Tahiti is well-known as a vacation getaway for newlyweds if you’re a lady going solo in the month of October you may wish to check out the Mister Tahiti contest. Not that I’m suggesting you spend all your time drooling over hot Pacific Islanders, but some added eye candy to the tropical settings around you won’t hurt anything. And mind you – I said eye candy.

Today’s word is a Tahitian (Maohi) word used in Tahiti:

tamaaraa – feast

Tahitian is one of the two official languages of French Polynesia with the other being French. There are approximately 120,000 speakers through the Polynesian Islands. Head to Wikipedia for the background details as always. After you’ve gotten your history fix go to the tourism site for a small useful list of words to help get you by on the islands. Tahiti Explorer looks like it has the small list of words with a few more added on and a nifty pronunciation guide. The same thing goes for the list of words on the Tahiti Traveler without the pronunciation guide, so it’s really up to you to take your pick. Lonely Planet has a guide which probably has the same amount of words in the back of the glossary. Still – better to know a few than none at all.