As a Woman, Can I Really Travel Without Much Fear for my Safety?

Vagabonding traveler Rolf Potts answers your questions about travel

Inside Slum Tourism

With mixed feelings, Rob Verger recently signed on for a tour of Rio de Janeiro’s favelas. He looks back on the experience—and the photos he was allowed to take.

Break Bread and Brie in France

Great cheese abounds in the land of Gaul, but dig in and you risk committing any number of faux pas. Terry Ward explains how to partake of the nation’s famed fromage with savoir faire.

10 Wanderlust-Inducing Summer Concerts

Call it world music or global pop or the sound of the world hum. Ben Keene reveals 10 acts on tour that are sure to transport you. Plus videos.

Bryan Mealer: ‘War and Deliverance in Congo’

The former AP correspondent traveled up the Congo River. Frank Bures asks the author of “All Things Must Fight to Live” about following in the wake of Joseph Conrad. 

A Journey Into ‘The Second World’

Some bureaucrats joke that they would never claim expertise about countries they had not at least flown over. In an excerpt from his new book, Parag Khanna argues that real global understanding can only come from serious travel.

‘The Worst Guidebook Writer Ever’?

Lonely Planet author Robert Reid reviews Thomas Kohnstamm’s “Do Travel Writers Go to Hell?” and weighs in on the controversy surrounding it

New Travel Book: ‘A Rotten Person Travels the Caribbean’

Full title: “A Rotten Person Travels the Caribbean: A Grump in Paradise Discovers that Anyplace it’s Legal to Carry a Machete is Comedy Just Waiting to Happen”

Author: Gary Buslik

Released: June 2008

Travel genre: Bad-natured travel, island travel

Territory covered: The Caribbean

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Spam Conquers the World (Sort of)

Spamburgers, Spam tacos and Spambalaya—the canned pork loaf everyone loves to hate is leaving its indelible taste on dishes around the globe. In Spam-loving Hawaii, Japanese-American chef Muriel Miura has a new cookbook, “Hawaii Cooks With Spam,” which offers recipes for Spam sushi, Spam pancit and Korean rice with Spam. Um, yum? If yes, then try Spam in ratatouille pie, curried rice, lasagna and even Heidelberg casserole. 

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NYT on Matt Harding’s Dance Across the World: ‘Almost Perfect’

We’ve written before about the internet phenomenon that is Matt Harding’s dancing video. As of this morning, the latest version of the round-the-world jig-fest (you can watch it below) has logged more than 4.6 million views on YouTube, bringing unlikely fame to its 31-year-old creator, a seemingly laid-back Seattleite. Harding and his video get a full write-up in today’s New York Times, which calls the project “an almost perfect piece of Internet art.”

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The Old West’s ‘Non-Renewable Resources’ In Peril

When it comes to the preservation of historic landmarks, it’s often “the grand, the notable and the notorious” that get the attention—but sometimes it’s the structures built for everyday use that tell us the most about history, the AP observes. According to this story, in places like Utah and Colorado, it’s those everyday buildings—the remnants of early frontier settlements—that are slowly disappearing. “You could tell this was a place where they were doing everything they could to make it,” one archaeologist said of a historic homestead near Salt Lake City. “That’s the story of the American West for me right there.”

The All-American Train Ride?

Doesn’t have the same ring to it as “the all-American road trip,” does it? With the possible exception of the (nearly lost) art of freight train hopping, riding the rails in America has never been mythologized the way some other modes of travel have. Guardian writer Ruth Fowler recently rode the train from New York to Los Angeles, and in this essay she argues that we’ve got it all wrong: Amtrak really is the way to go, and not just because of the high price of gas.

Related on World Hum:
* U.S. Train Ridership Up, But Satisfaction Remains Elusive
* What’s a Ride on a Sleeper Train Without the Company of Strangers?

Photo by reivax via Flickr (Creative Commons)

Michael Palin: Travel Makes One ‘Less Afraid of the World’

At lunch with the Financial Times, the amiable BBC travel host chats up a Moldovan waitress, expounds on his love of atlases and tells tales about filming on the Pakistan border.

Related on World Hum:
* Michael Palin: The New ‘New Europe’

Great American Road Trip (Prematurely) Declared Dead

“You want a road trip?” writes Michael Paterniti in the New York Times. “Try Google Earth.” Yeah, he’s a bit smug. He’s also wrong. We can have Google Earth—one of the Seven Wonders of the Shrinking Planet—and the road trip. Despite the $4 gallon of gas, the American road trip will continue to thrive for many reasons. 

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Cambodians Wary of Angkor Museum

A new Thai-backed museum/mall complex located a few miles from Angkor Wat is drawing fire from Cambodians skeptical of the enterprise’s motives. The New York Times reports that restoration specialists are unhappy with the Angkor National Museum’s “aesthetics” and lack of scholarly content, while others suspect that the Thais have designs on Cambodia’s architectural heritage. In fact, anti-Thai riots erupted in 2003 over the issue of Angkor’s provenance.

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U.S. Airports are Hotbeds for Laptop Loss

Flustered flyers leave behind an astounding 12,000 laptops in U.S. airports each week, according to a recent study (pdf) sponsored by Dell. But here’s the really scary part: The Economist’s Gulliver blog reports that less than 35 percent of those lost laptops are returned to their owners.

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World’s Worst Tourists?

Once again, it’s the French, Indians and Chinese, according to an annual survey of hoteliers by the French version of Expedia. The latest poll of 4,000 hotel employees in Europe and North America calls the French out for being impolite and unwilling to communicate in foreign languages, deems the Japanese most liked and declares the Italians best dressed.

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Moose and Midnight Sunsets: A Father-Son Drive up the Alaska-Canadian Highway

Fifty years ago, Roger Norum’s father and grandfather drove the Alaska-Canadian Highway from Dawson Creek, British Columbia, to Fairbanks, Alaska. In this Guardian essay, Norum and his father re-create the trip—and drive each other just a little crazy in the process. It’s a fun read.

Related on World Hum:
* Jonathan L. Levin: The Procession of Black Hats
* Oprah Winfrey, Amanda Congdon and the New Golden Age of the Cross-Country Road Trip

Photo by stevelyon via Flickr (Creative Commons)

Berlin Embassy: Critics Not Impressed

German architectural critics are having a field day with the new U.S. embassy in Berlin (pictured), skewering the design as “banal” and “monstrous.” It’s an unfair rap, says University of Maryland architectural historian Jane Loeffler.

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