2008 February

Really Slow Travel: Walking Your Way Around the World

Amanda Kendle advocates slowing down on your travels and truly absorbing your surroundings.

For Rent: Military Base, Slightly Used (Just $495/month)

Like what you see? Subscribe to the full RSS feed. Larson Air Force base, Washington © Discovery.com Want to play a real life version of Halo? Simply fork out $495US per month, and you could rent parts of a former military base, complete with thousands of feet of connected underground tunnels. The property is the former Larson […]

Hotels Toy with High Tech Security Measures

Hotels are going the James Bond way. Pretty soon, you’ll be able to swipe your way into your room at the Plaza Hotel with a RFID card instead of your regular plastic card. You might even be able to dial your way into your room through your cell phone, or use an eco […]

Istanbul’s 7-Story Underwater Hotel to Open in 2010

Visitors to Istanbul will soon have a chance to view the most spectacular ocean views on the planet. A seven floor, seven-star hotel is being built underwater on what was formerly a tobacco factory. There will be exhibition halls, and restaurants, and all rooms will be sea facing. This isn’t the first such underwater […]

China to Permit Athlete Blogging at Beijing Olympics

China’s backing of inaction against Sudan hasn’t left the Olympics untouched - Steven Spielberg, a former artistic consultant for the Beijing Olympics, decided to sever his ties with the Games in protest against China’s backing of the regime. To add to this, athletes from several countries have set up a Team Darfur to protest […]

Photo of the Moment: Fijian Sunset

Esperanto: The Universal Language of Travelers?

Nora Dunn explores the not-yet-dead language of Esperanto. Could it be the universal language of travelers?

Cycling Scotsman Pedals ‘Round the World in 195 Days

Cycling Hawthorne Bridge, Portland © stop.down After braving snakes, heat, floods, and saddle sores for 195 days, 25 year old Mark Beaumont from Fife completed his around-the-world journey on his bicycle, beating the previous record of 276 days. The journey which began on the 5th of August last year had Mark cycle his way through 20 countries […]

Switzerland’s Alien H.R. Giger Bar

If you’re unfamiliar with the name H.R. Giger, you are at least familiar with his work. Remember that little, independent science fiction film way back in 1979 called Alien. Giger’s unique brand of bizarre, alien art was the impetus and inspiration behind the film and countless other sci-fi films since. Giger fans now have […]

Photo of the Moment: Near Dresden, Germany

Travel Documentary ‘A Map for Saturday’ Debuts on MTV

Intrepid director and world traveler, Brook Silva-Braga, e-mailed me Friday to say that his kick-ass round-the-world travel documentary A Map for Saturday is going to begin airing on cable TV next month: Greetings from Casablanca! Just wanted to give you a heads up that A Map for Saturday is going to air on MTV in the U.S. […]

Flying Casino Set to Take Off in 2012

© waffler If a bunch of interested customers in Asia have their way, the double decker Airbus A380 will soon have a casino on board. Casinos are becoming big business in Asia, and Macau is expected to overtake Vegas as the word’s gaming capital. The idea was proposed by Airbus makers way back when the plane […]

How I Ambushed Airport Security with a Purple, Plastic Laser Gun

I never thought they’d actually confiscate my gun. I was eight years old. I didn’t even know what confiscate meant. My carry-on backpack held all the trappings of an elementary school boy: Walkman, magic markers, a few Garfield coloring books, and a travel tic-tac-toe game. But the new pride of my toy box was Shockwave: a purple, […]

One Finger on the Pulse of Helsinki Street Fashion

For good or ill, the web fills just about any niche. Looking to commiserate with tri-lingual Polish cello players named Chuck living in downtown Denver, there’s likely a blog for you. Curious about the state of Helsinki street fashion? Ditto - you’re in luck. Hel-looks.com chronicles Helsinki street fashion by stopping downtown passers-by […]

The Eeerily Beautiful Singing Ringing Tree of Burnley

In 1957, an East German film called the Singing Ringing Tree told the story of a brave prince who wanted to impress his lady love by finding her the Singing Ringing Tree. He finds it in the kingdom of an evil dwarf who says he can have the tree, if it begins to sing. Now, an […]

Dutch Architects Float a New Plan to Deal with Climate Change

Global warming is going to impact countries like the Netherlands earlier than others. In this low-lying country where the roads and the waterways seem to merge at some point sooner or later, close to 20 percent of the country is underwater, and flooding is getting harder to control. Now, according to NPR, city planners have […]

Photo of the Moment: Inuit Dwelling, Greenland

Adrenaline Rush: The Geek Sport of Speedcabling

© Jaako Trust an IT guy to devise a new “game” that has people detangling Ethernet cables, and calling it a “sport.” Los Angeles native, Steven Schkolne, devised the game called “speedcabling” in which contestants were given a tangled mess of eight Ethernet cables and asked to detangle them. The contestant who detangles the cables in the […]

The Great Dark Tourism Round-Up: Awards Time

Amanda Kendle wraps up our series on the various niches of dark tourism with appropriate awards for each.

Photo of the Moment: An Unfortunate Business, South Korea

© skootter01 Via the Flickr page: In Korea you can see some strange signs, and this is one of the funniest I’ve seen. This little shop is located along a little street full of furniture stores in Uijeongbu, near Seoul. My guess is that they just pulled something random off of an Internet search engine that somehow […]

Heathrow Experiments with Radio Tagged Luggage

RFID Tag (not actual size) © midnightcomm If an experiment just launched at Heathrow Airport is successful, the days of your bag arriving in London while you disembark in Tokyo may be history. Heathrow Airport, through its owners Emirates and BAA, is conducting a six month trial with radio tagging air travelers’ baggage. The experiment […]

World’s First: Vegan Strip Club Opens in Portland, Oregon

Portland, Oregon has one of the largest concentrations of strip clubs in the US. And now the city has the distinction of having the world’s very first vegan strip club. Yes, you read that right. A Mr. Johnny Diablo has just launched the Casa Diablo, a strip joint that offers “meat on […]

QuikShell Modular Backpack: Pack Only What You Need

It’s like a Thule roof rack for your car, but not. A modular backpack design seems so obvious, I’m surprised no one’s thought of it before. The QuikShell bag is a modular concept that snaps on only what you need. For example, you could have one module for rock climbing, one for base jumping, and […]

Youth Camel Hunting on the Rise in Australia’s Aboriginal Communities

© BntAl3nabi Forget adrenaline sports – a new initiative to relieve frustrated Aboriginal youths in the interiors of Australia has them hunting and butchering camels. Substance abuse and alcoholism are rampant among teenagers in remote Aboriginal settlements like Kintore, where there are hardly any (legal) recreational opportunities to speak of. This has worried substance abuse task […]

How to Travel Independently for the First Time

Amanda Kendle offers five steps to traveling independently for the first time.

Photo of the Moment: Carter Lake, Omaha, Nebraska

Mock Terrorist Stunt Has New Zealands’s CAA Red Faced

The Brisbane Times claims that a newspaper reporter looking to point out the holes in New Zealand’s airport security system managed to sneak a knife and a toy revolver aboard an Air New Zealand flight to Napier. The airport in question is Auckland Airport where the reporter boarded the flight carrying a suitcase with […]

Apologies to Vagabondish Commenters and Readers All

My apologies to anyone who’s already subscribed to the Vagabondish RSS feed and recently received a follow-up e-mail to their comments as though it’s their first time here. We upgraded to the latest version of WordPress and it appears that one of our plug-ins has an itchy trigger finger for resending all those “Welcome” e-mails. Cheers, -Mike

The Worst Building in the History of Mankind

It’s been called ‘the worst building in the history of mankind.’ And Kim Jong-il would have been so proud. The Ryugyong (”Capitol of Willows”) Hotel stands 105-stories tall in the dead-center of Pyongyang, the capitol of North Korea. At its inception, it was hoped to have 3.9 million square feet of floor space (and seven revolving […]

How to Map the World in Panorama

Since Google Maps hit the online world, there’s been no shortage of mapping “mashups“. Some useful, some less so. ViewAt.org is like Flickr meets Google Maps meets [insert your favorite panoramic camera here]. Just find your favorite dream destination on the world map, click the pushpin and go. One of the site’s founders […]

« Go Back — Keep Looking »