J3tlag.com (that’s Jetlag.com to non-hackers, I guess) is an interesting new blog devoted to — from what I can tell — the intersection of travel and style. Or something like that. It’s got plenty of style and not much travel-related substance so far, but it’s early in the game. They’ve got a diverse group of contributers lined up, however, and that seems promising.
I had to laugh when I saw an ad on TV last night for American Express’s new credit card: 1% of eveything you charge on your card is put into a savings account with a 3.15% interest rate. There’s a $35 annual fee for the card.
Okay, so let’s do the math. You wanna save some cash. But you have a hard time putting aside the dough on your own. The solution: keep buying stuff on credit — stuff you probably wouldn’t pay for cash for — and then you won’t have to worry about building your nest egg.
Go ahead and buy that new 42″ plasma screen TV for $2,200 — and a whopping $22 will go into your savings account! What a bargain! Throw a $2,000 Rolex (it’s used, so it’s cheap!) on the card, as well, as you’ve saved another 20 bones. When you substract the $35 annual fee, you’ve come out seven dollars ahead! (Of course, you could always pay cash for a cheaper TV and a less extravagent watch — and save the difference, plus the interest you’d have to pay on the credit card — but we all know what a hassle that can be.)
When most people think about saving money for the future, they try to figure out a way to make more cash — whether it’s through higher income or a hairbrained 1% savings plan like this. It’s much simpler, of course, to simply modify our lifestyles so we spend less than we make. It’s not necessarily easier, but it’s simpler.
One of my favorite passages in Rolf Potts’s excellent book “Vagabonding : An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel” is when Potts recounts a scene from the 1987 film “Wall Street.” Charlie Sheen plays a young stockbroker on the make; at one point, he tells his girlfriend that he wants to work hard and make a killing so he can one day retire and “ride a motorcycle across China.” As Potts points out, Sheen’s character — or anyone — could work for a year cleaning toilets, living inexpensively and saving as much as possible, and have enough funds for such a trip.
(Or, of course, assuming the journey might cost $3,000, you could always charge $300,000 on your new AmEx card and have the necessary loot saved for you automatically! Making the minimum monthly payments might be tough, however…)
Social design consultant Lee LeFever, whose site, Commoncraft, I enjoy (and who, I recently discovered, in a small world moment, has a good friend from my adopted hometown of Beaufort, SC), has just announced that he’ll be spending all of 2006 traveling around the world with his wife, Sachi. They leave their Seattle home in December.
To compile travel tips from friends and the public at large — as well as to document their travels from the road — they’ve launched a site called The World is Not Flat (no relation to the similarly-named Tom Friedman book). Lee gave me a sneak peek at the site and I submitted a pean to traveling in Vietnam.
Check out TwinF and, if you’re so inclined, post a recommendation or two. I think this’ll be an intersting experiment in grassroots travel advice and Web-based communications during their sojourn.
PHNOM PENH – A new Cambodian cafe is offering diners a slice of life under the Khmer Rouge, with a menu featuring rice-water and leaves, and waitresses dressed in the black fatigues worn by Pol Pot’s ultra-Maoist guerrillas.
Newly opened across the road from Phnom Penh’s notorious Tuol Sleng “S-21” Khmer Rouge interrogation and torture center, the cafe is meant to remind Cambodians of the 1975-1979 genocide in which an estimated 1.7 million people died.
But the set “theme menu” of salted rice-water, followed by corn mixed with water and leaves, and dove eggs and tea at $6 a time is proving too much to swallow for many visitors.
(Via BoingBoing.)
UPDATE: Apparently the joint has been closed down by the government for operating without a license.
WaPo:
Unless you can afford a first-class seat on an airplane, you’re stuck in steerage — a cargo area where solo travelers have little say about the person who will become their seat neighbor — also known as the person you plan to claw your way through when this thing ditches in open water.
Now, a Web business, http://www.airtroductions.com, is attempting to ameliorate the undesirable seat-neighbor problem.
The AirTroductions tagline is “There’s Something in the Air.” I’ll say — I think it’s called desperation.
A bad date is one thing. A bad date while you’re strapped into a chair in a metal tube hurtling through the sky at 30,000 feet is quite another.
(Via Gridskipper.)
Here’s a delightful SF Chron article from Michael Wolgelenter about various strains of Western pop music — good and bad — he’s discovered in far-flung corners of the world.
I had a similar cross-cultural sonic experience last year in a town on the rural east coast of Taiwan. I was in a bar and listened in amazement as a Taiwanese band launched into a pitch-perfect cover of Mexican rock outfit Mana’s power ballad “Corazon Espinado.” The singer even had the Spanish lyrics down. Here’s a pic of the group:
(Via World Hum.)
If the US wants to get serious about public health, perhaps we should take a page out of Bangkok’s book and start offering free outdoor aerobics classes.
Must be a Southeast Asian thing — I’ve seen it done in Vientiane, Laos:
CNN:
LOS ANGELES, California (AP) — The airliner circled Southern California for hours, crippled by a faulty landing gear, while inside its cabin 140 passengers watched their own life-and-death drama unfolding on live television.
While satellite TV sets aboard JetBlue Flight 292 were tuned to news broadcasts, some passengers cried. Others tried to telephone relatives and one woman sent a text message to her mother in Florida attempting to comfort her in the event she died.
“It was very weird. It would’ve been so much calmer without” the televisions, Pia Varma of Los Angeles said after the plane skidded to a safe landing Wednesday evening in a stream of sparks and burning tires. No one was hurt.
Funny: I thought TV sets in airplanes had “off” buttons.
IHT:
YUNNAN PROVINCE, China — In a world increasingly traveled, the remote destination has become the holy grail of the adventurous traveler. Even Mount Everest, the Antarctic and space (once the final frontier) can be yours if your pockets are deep enough.
Enter the remote guesthouse, part of a new breed of vacation hideaways that tap into our desire to escape the well-beaten path. From treehouses in Borneo to snowbound lodges in the Himalayas, they promise the chance to escape the modern world but without having to forgo luxuries.
(Via World Hum.)
I’ve talked to people who’ve been to The Hobbit House Bar in Manila — the joint is owned and run by little people. Supposedly the atmosphere is not exploitative at all; they’ve apparently got good live music and tasty vittles. Next time I’m in the Philippines, it’s at the top of my to-do list.