2008 February

Bizarre Culture: Chinese Town Where Everyone is an Acrobat [Video]

Like what you see? Subscribe to the full RSS feed.Evidently, in one small town in China, everyone is an acrobat. Sure, it’s fascinating to watch. But the rampant child exploitation is hardly different than the mental anguish and grueling, physical training regimen that the circus puts its animals through.

Photo of the Moment: Horseshoe Lake, Illinois

An Idiot’s Incomplete Guide to the Bidet

Chris Cook explores the fascinating (albeit confusing) role of the bidet.

Passport Pictures for Under a Dollar

Qatari Passport 1968 © banoootah_qtr As a traveler, very little irks me more than walking into a store and paying $7-12 for passport pictures. You need them not only for passports, but also visas, international driver’s licenses, and other miscellaneous pieces of photo id. At about ten bucks a pop, this cost of traveling can add up. […]

Fly Me to the Moon: Niagara Falls’ Rocketbelt Convention

Rocketbelt Convention, Niagara Falls It’s called a ‘rocketbelt.’ Not a ‘jet pack.’ This is not a misnomer, really. Your average rocketbelt consists of two tanks of ‘rocket-grade’ hydrogen peroxide, which you attach to your back. Add nitrogen, and the fuel suddenly expands in volume by a factor of 5,000. The whole mixture then gets converted to steam, […]

Photo of the Moment: San Agustin Church, Manila

San Agustin Church, Manila © The Wandering Angel

5 Steps to Solid Travel: How to Beat Airport Security Every Time

Nora Dunn explores the five steps to ditching your liquid contraband and becoming a proud solid traveler.

BA Crash Landing Survivors to Receive Free Holidays

When a British Airways flight crash-landed at Heathrow in January this year, passengers were eager to praise the pilot for their escape. The miraculous landing resulted in only a few minor injuries and was attributed to the skill and presence of mind of the pilot who managed to divert the plane onto the grass inside […]

British Co-Pilot Dies Mid-Flight

Tragedy struck a GB Airways flight from Manchester to Cyprus when a co-pilot fell ill and died during the flight. The flight with 156 passengers on board took off from Manchester on 24 February and was mid air when First Officer Michael Warren took ill. A purser administered first aid, and another co-pilot diverted the aircraft […]

Futuristic ‘Tunnel of Truth’ to Replace Airport Security?

(Not the) Tunnel of Truth, O’Hare Airport © Laertes If a new idea the Transport Security Administration is exploring gets traction, those embarrassing pat downs at airports may be history. You will instead be placed on a conveyor belt, and passed through a glass tube of sorts while you have the life scanned out of you. […]

Photo of the Moment: A Walk Among Bluebells, England

A Walk Among Bluebells, England © Trans-itions

Curious Travel: 8 Questions to Ask in Every New Place

Amanda Kendle reveals eight great questions for the curious traveler to ask in every new destination.

Pilot Lands Plane on Indianapolis Highway, Takes Off Again

© fearoflanding Drivers on Interstate 80 east of Indianapolis found themselves sharing road space with an unusual motorist recently. A single engine Piper airplane made an emergency landing on the strip on Sunday. The pilot Babar Suleman took off from Eagle Creek Airport and was on his way to Pittsburgh when his plane developed engine trouble […]

Inside St. Louis’ Scrappy City Museum

It’s like the world’s largest jungle gym. The City Museum in St. Louis has been pieced together with scraps of the past, all culled from within city limits. Fire engines, school buses, and aircraft fuselages are fused to the outside of an old shoe factory. Wrought iron slinkies, four feet wide, stretch from castle turret to […]

Photo of the Moment: View From a Rickshaw, New Delhi

London Set to Open Massive Sports Complex

Londoners will soon be able to surf the waves 365 days a year. The Silvertown Quays Venture Xtreme, a gigantic outdoor sports complex, is slated to open in 2011. Phase one of the 1.5 billion pound project will include the surf pool and the outdoor sports complex. Phase two will be completed with […]

Travel Book: Chasing Bohemia: A Year of Living Recklessly in Rio de Janeiro

I’ve never been to Brazil. I have, however, met a whole lot of great Brazilian people, and that alone has given me enough reasons to want to visit the country. But a new book by Carmen Michael called Chasing Bohemia: A Year of Living Recklessly in Rio de Janeiro is the cherry on top, and […]

20 Cheap and Simple Ways to Travel Greener

Kimberly Lang and Elizabeth Sanberg explain why traveling green is much easier than you might think.

Langar: Perhaps the Best Indian Food You’ll Ever Have

It might be the best Indian food you’ll ever have. The langar is a staple of Sikh worship - and is absolutely free, to everyone. No creed, color, nationality, or even religion is turned away. You sit on the floor, in rows that may stretch as long as a football field, as volunteers dish out ample […]

Experiencing Pure Darkness in Stockholm’s Färgfabriken Art Gallery

“Only when standing in a pitch-dark room do you realize that you actually start to see. Even in the perfect darkness, there is always some kind of light.” – John Duncan Darkness – true darkness – isn’t something I expect to see as a city traveler, in gothic cathedrals built to lift worshipers’ eyes to the […]

Air Travel Roulette: Germanwings Offers ‘Blind Booking’

Germanwings has a neat, if rather odd, promotion for people who love to travel but aren’t set on visiting a specific locale. For 19-39€ inclusive, customers starting from six German cities can make a ‘blind booking’ and get a cheap ticket to any one of a number of destinations to be revealed when the booking […]

Photo of the Moment: Walking Sligo Beach, Ireland

Walking Sligo Beach, Ireland © atomicpuppy68

Photo of the Moment: Near Ceará-Mirim’s Market, Brazil

Bizarre Culture: Chinese 1000-Hand Guan-Yin Dance [Video]

Via YouTube: This dance is called “Buda with thousand hands”. It is performed by a group of Chinese handicapped girls. They can not hear or talk. They dance by reading the signs given by the 2 teachers standing at each side, they are so famous now that they are being invited by countries around the world. The […]

5 Simple Ways to Be Kind to Your Fellow Traveler

From bagging your stinky socks to eavesdropping on your hostel mates, Chris Cook offers five easy ways for you to be a better fellow traveler.

Artist Recreates the Scents of Helsinki, Budapest, Paris

Hungarian born artist Hilda Kozari has created an art installation consisting of three bubbles – one each for Helsinki, Budapest, and Paris - that she says represent what each city smells like. The bubbles are part of an Urban Olfactory Installation exhibit and have been created in collaboration with perfumer Bertrand Duchaufour. The sense […]

Berlin Hotel Offers World’s Largest Cylindrical Aquarium

World’s Largest Cylindrical Aquarium, Berlin At the Radisson SAS hotel in Berlin Mitte, you can zip up and down the building in an elevator that’s encased inside a giant aquarium. At 25 meters tall, and 11 meters wide, the aquarium is the largest acrylic glass cylinder in the world and contains 900,000 liters of sea […]

FAA to Investigate Snoozing Go! Air Pilots

More reassuring news for those of us already terrified of flying. Two pilots on a Go! Air plane from Honolulu to Hilo overshot their airport by 15 miles, and the Federal Aviation Administration has now launched in investigation into the possibility that the two chaps dozed off in the cockpit! It gets worse. It was […]

Funeral Culture: New Orleans Sends Dead Off in Style

Jazz Funeral, New Orleans In New Orleans, they send you off in style. The ‘jazz funeral’ starts off sombre. On its way to the cemetery, the brass band plays soulful, sad funeral hymns called ‘dirges’: ‘Nearer My God to Thee’ is a popular choice, but it can be anything that reminds mourners of the ups and downs […]