Thailand has a new acting prime minister who's had it with weeks of protests that have dominated the news from Bangkok. Why? Because tourism, which accounts for six percent of the country's GDP, is down!
The brother-in-law of fugitive former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, acting PM Somchai Wongsawat, says the country has to stop scaring foreigners:
I appeal to all parties to turn to each other to resolve the problem and together heal the damage done to the nation. We should bring back the smile to the country once again, as we are called the Land of Smiles. We have to restore confidence in outsiders, especially tourists, that we are a peaceful country and have no more conflict.
Though the political turmoil is real, tourists in the capital aren't in any sort of danger, as the protests have been largely peaceful. Bangkok blogger Newley Purnell has loads of on-the-ground reports, including photos and audio slideshows.
We've done our fair share of ending up not exactly where we planned when traveling by bus or even taxi in foreign countries, but the Spanish couple who just spent a fortune on two long taxi rides in Norway have far exceeded our attempts.
Headed for Olden to re-join a cruise ship, the taxi driver misunderstood them--apparently--and took them to Halden instead, 380 miles away from their intended destination. They spent the night in a hotel there and only realized their mistake when no cruise-ship awaited them--and they taxied on to Olden. Round trip bill: €3,870 ($5,680) for a scenic trip between the northwest and the southeast of the country.
We wonder why the taxi driver didn't double check the destination, unless he deliberately tricked them; we also don't get why the Spanish couple didn't notice that the journey seemed to be taking a really, really long time. Then again, they were the cruising kind who usually just come ashore with a nametag, so perhaps their travel skills were lacking. In any case, they've given a couple of taxi drivers a big income boost.
We've mused before that New Zealand might be on its way to having more tourists than sheep but we always thought that'd be because travelers kept, uh, flocking there.
Turns out that instead, the number of sheep in New Zealand is decreasing. Well down from a 1982 peak of having 22 sheep for every one New Zealander, these days the stats can only boast eight sheep per Kiwi resident. Drought and more cows are the cause, but we're scared this trend will change New Zealand forever--and take away the reason for a whole lot of sheep jokes. That's baaa-d news!
You know how you can always tell the tourists headed to warmer climes when you walk through the airport? They're always the ones wearing goofy print shirts and short shorts even though it's bound to be frigid on the plane.
Jaunted member JetSetCD sent us this funny snapshot, along with a bit of an explanation:
I mean, it may be the Motor City and all, but really? Gotta love the guy in the tropical shirt at the bar; the flights around it were headed to various parts of Mexico.
Have your own travel snapshots? Drop 'em in our Flickr pool.
Walking around on the beach is usually only dangerous if a giant wave attacks or a shark decides to walk on land, but in slightly scary North Korea things can be a bit different.
Tourists from South Korea are allowed to travel to two tightly guarded spots in North Korea, one of them being the mountain resort of Mount Keumgang. Over the weekend a 53-year-old South Korean woman was shot dead there by a North Korean soldier because she crossed the boundary line of the resort during a walk on the beach.
Some sources say she ran towards her hotel once the guards approached her, while others say she was walking deep into the prohibited zone. Whatever the case, it's a reminder that although they can do some incredible crowd choreography, those North Koreans can be a really sinister bunch.
Love or loathe the English? The latest Rough Guide for England has a few choice things to say about them. First the bad news: It says that English people are quarrelsome, contradictory and "obsessed with toffs and C-list celebrities."
The good news is more, well, quaint, than good. The Rough Guide people decided that England is
A country of animal-loving, tea-drinking, charity donors, where queuing remains a national pastime and bastions of civilization, like Radio 4, are jealously protected.
We've heard a few complaints about the British before so this quirky Rough Guide assessment comes as no surprise. But since we love a good cup of tea, we haven't struck England off our visiting list just yet.
We're smart travelers. Really we are. But when we read the UK Times list of the 14 best travel scams last weekend, we realized that we might be smart but the scammers are sometimes smarter.
This list should be compulsory reading for all travelers, just so you're aware of how nice-but-nasty some scam artists can be. Among the usual phony free trips, credit card theft and drink-doping "buddies," there were a few scams we hadn't heard of yet.
One of these was "the metal detector shuffle," where the scam-artist, without baggage, waits until you've put your bag on the conveyor belt, but then rushes through ahead of you. With enough coins or other metal items in his pockets, he gets held up and has to go through the detector several times; meanwhile your bag has gone through and the scam-guy's accomplice, in front of him, has taken off with it.
And finally, there's one we can't imagine we'd fall for, but apparently some people have:
You are approached by someone in a bar who guarantees you thousands of dollars if you join in a scam by getting on a bus that they will rear-end somewhere along its route. Most of the passengers, you are promised, will be in on the fraud, and will all protest that it was the driver's fault, while rubbing their hips and necks. And the bus company will start handing out cash and liability-waiver forms immediately.
We hope we don't have to tell you to beware of strange men promising a bus crash.
Fijian tourism is suffering, and it's not just because of military coups. Nope, the thing that's really killing 'em is an incident last year in which a drunken Fijian soldier urinated on a Japanese tourist on board an Air Pacific flight.
Believe it or not, said the Fiji Times:
Urinating on a tourist on an international flight is a high-profile incident which gains global notoriety.
And getting peed on is only half of it. From cab drivers who overcharge tourists, to shop vendors working the hard sell to gum-smacking customs officers, the tourism industry is doing everything it can to give the country a black eye, the newspaper says. While there aren't any quick fixes listed, we've gotta figure that making it to the airplane lav in time would be a good start.
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