In Case You Missed These Travel Highlights

November 10, 2008

There are a lot of new things happening in the travel and tourism business around the world these days. There’s a new swimming pool in Tokyo, Delta has discovered a new way to make the job of baggage handler more exciting and a new museum has opened in Munich.

In Tokyo, recently, a bald, naked man who said he was a British tourist went swimming in the moat of Japan’s Imperial Palace, climbed the palace wall, and threw rocks and splashed water at police before being taken into custody. He also got out of the water at one point, and chased police with a rock and a plastic construction site pole.

He then went back to the murky water and swam across to the other side of the moat, where he climbed up the 8-meter (9-yard) stone wall of the palace. Television showed passers-by gathering around the moat and watching the chase, giggling and taking photos on mobile phones.

“We are checking on his mental condition now,” a police spokesman said.

In Atlanta they’re checking a baggage handler for cardiac arrest. After opening the cargo hold of a Boeing 757 she found a cheetah running loose amid the luggage.

According to a Delta spokeswoman, one of two cheetahs being flown from Portland, Ore., to Atlanta escaped from its cage. The airline summoned help from Zoo Atlanta, and experts rushed to a closed airport hangar, tranquilized the escaped animal before transporting it to the zoo.

There’s nothing worse than an unexciting job, which is why at first we thought this was all part of an effort by Delta’s Human Resources Department to make airport jobs more exciting.

On the other side of the world, a bit of excitement is being generated in Munich by a new museum which is housed in an old public toilet.

Originally built in 1894, to serve nearby households which lacked facilities, the toilets were locked up in 1992 because of lack of use.

“On the night we opened, around 800 people came to see our work,” initiator of the museum project, Mathias Koehler told Reuters. He said that a toilet was a great place for artistic expression because art is a form of relief in the same way that going to the toilet is.

Herr Koehler has since been nominated for the “Eloquent Spokesperson of the Year” award.

Jim Ferri

Tags: airline, tourism

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Ripping Off the Traveler

November 6, 2008

Like most people, I enjoy traveling. What I don’t enjoy are people who try to rip me off just because I’m a traveler. And I’m not talking about traveling to Papua New Guinea or deep into Africa or other exotic locales

Take my visit to London’s Heathrow airport a few days ago, to the much ballyhooed Terminal 5. The design of the new terminal is fantastic — broad spaces, good and rapid access to far-flung gates via train and escalators, comfortable seating areas around the gates (although they could have thrown in a few more outlets to recharge laptops and cell phones).

They’ve got some good restaurants such as the Giraffe — a great place to grab an American-style breakfast after arrival — but some of the new restaurants, such as Gordon Ramseys “Plane Food”, have prices at the same altitude as the 747s flying in here.

That’s one of the problems with Heathrow — everything is so expensive. Want a glass of OJ at Ramsey’s after your early morning arrival? It will set you back about $5. If that’s enough to send you to something a bit harder, go for the $15 Bloody Mary. I mean, come on, that’s $3 more than the Eggs Benedict.

The problem with Heathrow is that it wasn’t designed to be an airport. It was designed to be a shopping mall at which planes land and travelers are trapped.

Worse yet, many of the sales people seem to have been trained to extract every dollar and Euro from your wallet. The folks who ran the Spanish Inquisition could learn a few tricks from retailers here.

Although I wasn’t buying anything last Saturday, I walked into various shops to get a sense of the cost of things. When I entered the Duty Free liquor area I asked a clerk (who immediately latched on to me as they had in other shops) if they had Johnny Walker Red. His immediate reply was “Wouldn’t you much rather have Johnny Walker Black or Blue?” I felt like making him black and blue.

When I was back out on the concourse I stopped to take a photo of the shop and the surrounding area. Within seconds a sales clerk yelled over to me that I was not allowed to take photos of the Duty Free shop.

My mouth dropped when I said “What?”  “No,” she said coming over, “it’s not allowed and they confiscate the cameras of people who take photos.”

“Is that the law?” I asked. “Yes,” she replied.

“That’s incredible,” I said, “I’d like you to call a policeman so we can ask him about this.”

“I’m just doing my job,” she said, as she quickly walked away. I went to talk with her again a few minutes later but when she saw me coming she quickly moved away.

Jim Ferri

Tags: airline, business travel, consumers, tourism

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Jim’s Gems: Beijing’s Night Food Market

November 3, 2008

If you don’t like exotic or unusual foods — I mean really exotic and unusual — I’ll apologize right now.

Just about everyone who knows me will tell you I’m not a fan of exotic foods either. Meat and potatoes are my staples. About as exotic as I get is anything eaten with chopsticks, and I can’t even master them. Put a set in my hands and food becomes airborne. And there’s nothing like shrimp flying like shrapnel across some fancy restaurant to enhance everyone’s dining experience.

But when the guide on a tour bus in Beijing the other day pointed to a long line of empty food stalls right beyond Cartier, Gucci and Sony, and told us that was the spot for the nightly food market, I just knew I had to see it for myself.

Open from around 6:00pm every night, I quickly discovered this is a place where they really push the food envelop. It’s not at all like shopping at your local supermarket or sitting down at a restaurant. In fact, there are no seats at all — it’s all stands, with food being grilled or deep fried for those who like to walk and munch.

It is raucous, with lights and music blaring, vendors yelling, crowds jostling to get to their favorite pièce de résistance. In this carnival-like atmosphere, everything is served on bamboo skewers, with so many flailing about that you risk being impaled.

There are plenty of tame eats, of course — corn and fruits stacked on skewers, vegetables, grilled giant prawns, squid, mug-bean cake, chicken and pork and a hundred other things.

If the video does not play, click here.

But there are also, I found out, those more exotic menu choices:  star fish (15Y or about $2.50), fired silk worms (5Y for about a half-dozen jammed on a skewer), sea snake, grilled sheep penis (50Y) and fried scorpions, ranging from 15Y for the smallest to 50Y for the giant six-inch ones, among other things.

I can’t remember if it was that sheep appendage or the monster scorpions that finally pushed me over the edge and annihilated my appetite, but I quit the crowd and headed around the corner for something Beijingers consider exotic. A Big Mac (22.50Y).

Jim Ferri

Tags: Jim's Gems

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