The Isle of Man is a mysterious place, a nearly sovereign territory out in the middle of the choppy Irish Sea between England and Ireland. What sort of people live there? What's there to see and do? These are all questions we wanted to answer, so we went ourselves...because why not? All this week we'll be sharing our experiences in this curious island destination.

We'd been in London too long. It was time for a sidetrip, and with Liverpool only two hours away by train and the Isle of Man only another two hours by ferry from there, the mini-adventure was a no-brainer. If we were actually close enough with time enough to make it to the Isle of Man, then by all means we were going to go.

Some hotel price comparisons later, we decided on a holiday package from the ferry company Steam-Packet (the only ferry company between Liverpool and Isle of Man), for 109 GBP ($170) per person for two nights' hotel and roundtrip ferry tickets. Not bad! If you're thinking of going anytime soon, the price has dropped to 99 GBP and here's the link.

Anyways, all aboard!]]> JetSetCD 2011-10-10T17:05:34-05:00 http://www.jaunted.com/story/2011/10/6/101544/454

These days, when you think of Bangkok, does the "Hangover 2" phrase "Holla, city of squalor" pop into mind? It did ours, until we freaking went there and got tangled in its web of awesomeness. Bangkok is truly a world metropolis to be experienced over more than a few days, but we'll be detailing several places and things that simply can't be left undone. Join us, but watch where you step.

You MUST hop the river's bus boats to get where you're going.

If you think there's a ton of ways to get around a metropolis like New York City, then you need to spend some time in Bangkok, which may just take the cake for variety of public transportation options. There's taxis, tuk-tuks, motorbike taxis, buses, songthaews, longboats, the subway, the Skytrain, commuter and hotel boats and the Chao Phraya Express Boat. The latter, if you can't yet tell from the topic of this story, is our favorite by far.]]> JetSetCD 2011-10-06T15:31:59-05:00 http://www.jaunted.com/story/2011/9/12/101840/414

Bad news: it now sucks more than ever to live in North Korea. Why? Because the good ol' DPRK just launched their first cruise ship, the Mangyongbong (pictured above). About the only thing it has going for it is that it floats, plus okay also the fun-to-say name. Technically having the option of taking a cruise should mean life is tad bit better, right? Well, the ship is so sad that North Koreans are better off without it.

Want to "cruise" on the Mangyongbong? Be prepared to board from a dirt-covered dock from a town near the border with Russia, leave your cell phone behind, bed down on bare-bones mattresses in a communal space and soak up the sun from plastic lawn chairs that'll probably be blown overboard by the wind before you can get to them. What a cruise!

Luckily it's not a very long cruise; the ship only does a 1-night journey from North Korea to the the special tourist zone of Mount Kumgang on the South Korean border. It's a beautiful place, but it's also the focus of a constant ownership tug-of-war between North and South Korea, so what we're saying is this is a cruise where you should definitely opt for the extra travel insurance.

Check out more photos of the inaugural cruise here.

[Photo:AFP/Daily Mail]]]> JetSetCD 2011-09-12T10:18:40-05:00 http://www.jaunted.com/story/2011/8/23/171448/848

One of the first things you’ll be told when you go to Bruges is that Bruges is small. It’s walkable. It may look big on a map but you can walk from one end to the other in 20 minutes.

That may be, but even when a city’s as pretty and tiny and walkable as Bruges, sometimes it’s nice just to sit back and be ferried around the place. Andthe best way of being ferried around in Bruges is the literal way—in a small canal boat.

From the canal, you get a totally different perspective than from the shore—and you also get a brilliant part canned, part live commentary (in three languages), pointing out the main sights of the town—as well as tiny details like the smallest window (about 10in high, on a huge building) and even a local dog which likes to hang out of a canalside window and look photogenic. ]]> juliab 2011-08-24T09:40:02-05:00 http://www.jaunted.com/story/2011/4/5/232455/4085

Yesterday, when billionaire Richard Branson announced the expansion of his Virgin Oceanic program to deep-sea exploration, he joined a very exclusive club. Okay, sure; he's already a part of the private island owners' club, the billionaires with space travel aspirations' club, and even the private club owners' club. Now, however, he can finally join the ranks of submarine owners of the world.

Technically Branson got his first sub last year, with the launch of the Necker Nymph, a 3-person tourist sub that accompanies his catamaran yacht-for-charter, the Necker Belle. Read more on it here, but do note its similarities to an airplane, rather an a conventional submarine. Branson's new sub will instead be a 1-seater with capability to reach 37,000 feet. That's crazy, and Branson is even crazier; he intends to pilot the second of five planned deep dives, and stands as the back-up pilot on the first, Marianas Trench dive.

Heaven forbid something happens to Richard, but we're now wondering what other billionaires count submarines among their toys? ]]> JetSetCD 2011-04-06T10:07:39-05:00 http://www.jaunted.com/story/2011/4/4/85728/12058
The Ha Long Bay sinking

If there's something we've learned over the last year, it's never to trust an overnight "tourist" cruise in Southeast Asia. It was only a little more than a month ago that such a boat sunk in Vietnam's Ha Long Bay, killing 12 in only 30 feet of water. The safety (or lack of) in these boats is to blame, and nothing has illustrated the issue better than the story of "Adventurous Kate," who survived a shipwreck in Indonesia.

Kate is author of her own blog about traveling Southeast Asia on her own, which she has been doing continuously since October of last year. A week ago, on Monday March 28, she was enjoying a 5-day cruise to visit the famous Komodo dragons of Komodo Island when her tourist boat hit a reef and promptly sank, causing her and her fellow travelers to abandon ship and swim to the closest island—Komodo, with its dragons.

The reason they swam? Half of the life jackets onboard were unusable and both lifeboats failed. Their luggage was waterlogged and left behind, and what they did eventually reclaim had been pillaged by the boat's crew. ]]> JetSetCD 2011-04-04T12:04:47-05:00 http://www.jaunted.com/story/2011/2/10/16330/1456

Anybody want to start a rogue floating casino, or maybe finally give your museum-size collection of McDonalds' Happy Meal toys a home that'll attract tourists? Buy a decommissioned Staten Island Ferry for $500,000 and that'll do the trick! The odd eBay listing hit the interest of the internet today, with only a little over one day left to bid.

According to the listing, it's the former Gov. Herbert H. Lehman boat, originally built in 1965 at a cost of $42 million. Decommissioned in 2007, the orange hulk has been sitting in the Bronx awaiting a buyer...and apparently it's available to be shipped to you! "Use as a Ferry, Floating Attraction, Casino or Private Club," they say! ]]> JetSetCD 2011-02-10T16:03:30-05:00 Search Jaunted string http://www.jaunted.com/search/