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

One for the Road: 30 Days in the South Pacific

by Dave (Blogsmith Old) on

How about heading to the South Pacific sometime in the next 30 days? Consider this our virtual December Destination suggestion of the day. All you have to do to be transported is read the recently released 30 Days in the South Pacific, published by our friends at Travelers Tales. This collection of True Stories of Escape to Paradise may inspire you to hop on a plane this month or just embark on some serious South Pacific daydreaming. Fiji, Moorea, Vanuatu, Tonga and Taveuni – just peek at the table of contents and read a sample chapter – do you feel the sand between your toes? I bet it won’t even take all thirty stories to get you seriously thinking of a trip to one of these islands. If you can’t get there in December, be sure to add this to the top of your New Year’s resolution list: “Must spend at least 30 days on an island in the South Pacific sunshine.”

This book is the first release in a new series of 30 Days titles from Travelers Tales. Future titles in the series will include Italy and Japan.

Geography Name Game

by Dave (Blogsmith Old) on

Last week Terry Riley at Tripso posted this creative bit about vocation vacations. His list of locations and matching vocations is catchy and fun, inspired by Site 59’s work-themed travel packages.

As Labor Day comes to a close and many of us prepare to head back to work tomorrow, I decided to try and find just a few more places with vocation-like names, this time venturing outside the states to see what I could find that matched up with English language words for certain jobs. Some of these are a stretch, I’ll admit, but it’s as creative as I could get on my day off! If you think of any more, please add them in the comments below.

R&B Musician – Seoul, S. Korea

Soap Maker – Ivory Coast

Wine Maker – Cork, Ireland

Doctor or Nurse – Medicine Hat, Canada

Sandwich Maker – Delhi, India

Cheese Maker – Munster, Germany or Cheddar, England

Map Maker – Atlas Mountains (Africa)

Chef – Cook Islands, New Zealand

Travel Agent – Tours, France

Diver – Plunge, Lithuania

Hair Dresser – Perm, Russia

Gymnast – Split, Croatia

Body Builder – Pecs, Hungary

Wish I Was Paddling Fiji

by Erik Olsen on

Well there are several things I can think of that I’d rather be doing right now than sitting down at my desk on a Monday and writing. Let’s see…hmm…Jacuzzi party at Hef’s mansion…diving the Well there are several things I can think of that I’d rather be doing right now than sitting down at my desk on a Monday and writing. Let’s see…hmm…Jacuzzi party at Hef’s mansion…diving the Galapagos…wine tasting in Napa…oh, and how about paddling Fiji. Yes, that would be nice. Waking up and having nothing to do all day but draw quiet strokes across the cerulean surface of the South Pacific. I could do that.

Well, that’s what Robin Stanton got to do recently. Her adventure trip included not just paddling, but hiking, mountain biking and lots of good South Pacific grub. They visited local villages like Malake Village, where they hung out with the locals and dined on fish, chicken, taro leaves, and cassava (sorry, I’ve had both taro and cassava…yuck).

Anyway, as I stumbled in this morning from a searing weekend, I pondered momentarily where I might rather be, and as I say, paddling in Fiji is right up there. And Hef’s place would be cool too.

Worldview Widget

by Erik Olsen on

Mac users who have the new Tiger OS installed are probably aware of one of the new OS’s great new features: Dashboard, which lets you keep a series of little apps called Widgets right up front for immediate use. Upon installation, some of the widgets are installed as defaults, like a clock, a calculator (very useful) and a stock ticker.

But at the Apple site you can also download various widgets to enhance your collection and improve productivity. For travelers and folks who are just generally interested in the rest of the world, there is an interesting widget called the WORLDview widget that I just installed. It is quite useful for me, as I try to find information about various countries I might be blogging about. The widget displays all the countries in the world, and gives you the country map, the national flag, country coordinates, the capital and the continent. It’s pretty cool, if a bit limited. I’d love to see them incorporate news links for each country, so that if you click on, say Finland, you might get a quick dose of news about the country. But even as is, it is quite cool.

Books on Travel Health

by Erik Olsen on

Are you heading out to some distant, exotic locale in the near future? Wndering if you’ve done all you need to immunize yourself again the nasty illnesses that await you? Well, consider taking along a book on staying healthy. Here are a couple of suggestions.

Probably one of the best is the Travel Health Clinic Pocket Guide to Healthy Travel by Dr. Lawrence Bryson. It’s an older book, but Dr. Bryson practices one of the newest disciplines in medicine. He is a member of the International Society of Travel Medicine, and his clinic in San Francisco is one of the leaders in the prevention and diagnosis of travel-related medical problems.

Dr. Bryson divides the nations of the world into three different degrees of health risk: Risk Level I nations enjoy health standards comparable like the United States. They include Canada, Northern Europe, France, Australia, New Zealand and the urban parts of Japan. “Risk Level II,” says Dr. Bryson, “are those with health standards which are satisfactory but not equal to those of the United States. These include the European countries bordering the Mediterranean (except for France), the nations of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, the Caribbean islands (except for Haiti and the Dominican Republic), Israel, South Africa and rural Japan.” Health risks are high and standards of sanitation and hygiene are poor or unpredictable in Risk Level III countries. This group includes all of Central America and tropical South America, Mexico, Haiti, the Dominican Republic and all the nations of Asia and Africa except for Japan, Israel and South Africa.

On top of all this is some useful discussio of the types of diseases you need to concern yourself with, and how and when to deal with immunizations. You can’t prepare yourself for everything, and you can’t guarantee that you will not get sick, but picking up a book like this can be a way help educate yourself about the various problems you might face.

The Rough Guide has a handy guide to keeping healthy while overseas and it look slike you can get one pretty cheap on Amazon. And for those traveling to Africa, you might consider the Lonely Planet Guide to health safety.