Travel

Airport as barometer of the city

madrid airport
Photo by S Migol

A cities airport is an expression of what that city is and wants to be:

The aerial view may be a traveler's first glimpse at what the immediate future holds. But it's probably the airport experience on the ground that cements a traveler's first substantial impression of a city and its merits, whether premature or otherwise. That experience -- the flow, sense of efficiency, and all the small details enabled by the airport's architecture -- can be viewed as an expression of what the city stands for, or what it aspires to be.

For those investigating emerging cities and the development of ecosystems to support the cities' entrepreneurial ambitions, the experience at the airport is almost an initial barometer for things to come.

Most of my negative opinions of many destinations start at the airport.

For me it's not about brilliant architecture, shopping and dining experiences as much as the systems to get me to my destination. Your first experience when arriving in Taipei is a gaggle of sale people trying to sell you duty free - then you are swiftly through immigration to the taxi curb. In Vancouver upon arrival you are greeted by jack booted security who take aside those who fit a profile. As described in the article Hong Kong is by far my favorite.

The Airport as an Expression of a City's Aspirations

Heavy Bag Refrain

Heavy bags in Istanbul
Photo by ildiva

When traveling there is nothing worse than being hampered or glued to your choice of luggage. For some this isn't a problem. To them travel is about taking a taxi to the hotel and seeing the city from the windows of a tour bus. I like to immediately get out on foot to explore the alleys and eat at the restaurants where the locals eat. I want to light, free and unburdened by unnecessary extras in a hard sided suitcase or an overpacked backpack.

This passage from the Art of Travel states well how I feel:

When your pack is light and efficient you feel happy and free. If on your way to a hostel or a train station you spy a pleasant café you would like to enjoy for awhile--you can. Or perhaps you would venture into a shop, watch old men play chess in a park, take a scenic route. Whatever you want to do, you can do. That's good traveling.

When your pack is heavy and cumbersome you are never a happy traveler. All-consumed with the singular demand of transporting your burden to its destination, you will mostly see and experience the ground in front of you.

Indeed as sweat pours over your brow and as your shoulders ache from the cutting weight you will more resemble a godforsaken soul in a chain gang than a happy-go-lucky traveler.

But even that isn't the worst scenario. Many travelers pack and accumulate so much their range is limited to a hundred yards--and this only with bursts of superhuman effort. They wait for time to pass and help to arrive.

Perhaps someday as you skip through a faraway train station you'll come across one of these forlorn and weary travelers, and hear his or her version of the Heavy Packer's Refrain, which goes something like this: "I've got so much junk I'm always sitting around guarding it while everyone else is off having fun!"

The article continues with some useful advice on what type of bag you should choose for your trip (backpacks specifically).

More: Walking and Backpacks

Travel is freedom and lightness

Travel is freedom and lightness
Flying by albertopveiga

Christina Wodtke writes about reveling in the lightness of travel:

But the real secret of travel is the one George Clooney knows, and most folks who see the movie won't believe. It's to stop fighting the impermanence of travel, and to revel in it. I love sliding through security like a hot knife through butter because I know the tricks. I love being the only fuzzy white coat in a sea of blue suits in the A section of Southwest, and love striding past the limo drivers and kissing lovers to the taxi stand without double checking any signs. But better, I love my small duffel I can carry because I learned to pack only two panties, bras and shirts, only pack the book I am actually reading and never ever unpack deoderant, toothbrush or ibuprofen. I love to travel light.

Lightness is always literal and metaphoric with travel. Lightness is the only important lesson of travel. It's the difference between catching your boat or missing it because you can't run to the dock fast enough. Travel favors the prepared, but it also favors the minimalist. George Clooney's character in Up in the Air takes this to its logical extreme. He refuses both physical and emotional baggage, gliding thorugh life like Fred Astaire with rolling luggage. I was amazed the movie didn't judge him for his choice to be frictionless and unburdened, as most Hollywood movies would . In fact, one could argue the only time the story "punished" him was when he tried to add weight to his life. The movie asked us to take a steely eye to our lives and ask how much of the romance, family, and stuff we haul around is really worth it? When you get home from a long trip, how many clean clothes do you have in your luggage, how many unopened medicines, how many unused gadgets? How many of those relatives you can't stand are worth standing? What do you need?

Leave the clutter comforts of home, at home, and enjoy the freedom that traveling light provides.

The Unbearable Lightness of Travel

Revisiting: Travelling makes you more creative

216 Thamel at dawn
216 Thamel at dawn

A revisiting of Jonah Lehrer's Why We Travel article previously linked to last December when it appeared in Scienceblogs.

Travel, at least the travel I engage in, forces me to think in whole new ways and tackle problems that never happen in my day to day life. I find routine, though comforting, becomes mind numbing over time. I'm not forced to think as I act largely on instinct. When I travel I'm forced to navigate strange streets in a language not my own while I wonder about contingencies if the atm won't work or the credit card is somehow unusable. I see things and experience points of view entirely different from my day to day existence.

I never travel to rest or have a vacation. I don't understand the concept of traveling thousands of miles to simply sit by a hotel pool or hide away inside a spa. When I travel to a place I want to see, experience and do as much as I possibly can in the time I have.

Where at home I am an introvert, abroad I approach strangers and ask them questions. I sit and watch people, observing their behaviour, style, and tastes. I document all that I see and experience.

It is during these times (and they have been far too few) that with that sketch book in hand I have had the clarity of thought to ponder whatever problem I am trying to solve. Though often exhausted, when I return from a trip I feel energized and full of crazy ideas.

The same applies to leaving home and spending time working abroad, for whatever duration you can muster. Living and working in a foreign culture forces you to face different challenges daily over a long period of time, ways of thinking and ways of getting things done. It can only have a positive effect.

Jonah Lehrer, this time in the Observer, on how travel is a basic human desire that makes you smarter, more open-minded and creative:

Why do we travel? It's not the flying I mind - I will always be awed by the physics that gets a fat metal bird into the upper troposphere. The rest of the journey, however, can feel like a tedious lesson in the ills of modernity, from the pre-dawn X-ray screening to the sad airport malls peddling crappy souvenirs. It's globalisation in a nutshell, and it sucks.

Because,

Travel, in other words, is a basic human desire. We're a migratory species, even if our migrations are powered by jet fuel and Chicken McNuggets. But here's my question: is this collective urge to travel - to put some distance between ourselves and everything we know - still a worthwhile compulsion?

Yes,

When we escape from the place we spend most of our time, the mind is suddenly made aware of all those errant ideas we'd suppressed. We start thinking about obscure possibilities ... that never would have occurred to us if we'd stayed back on the farm. Furthermore, this more relaxed sort of cognition comes with practical advantages, especially when we're trying to solve difficult problems.

and

cultural contrasts mean that seasoned travellers are alive to ambiguity, more willing to realise that there are different (and equally valid) ways of interpreting the world. This in turn allows them to expand the circumference of their "cognitive inputs", as they refuse to settle for their first answers and initial guesses.

Forget club med, cruises and packages to Cuba; destinations that try to recreate the comforts of home. Instead, travel far and drop yourself in the middle of somewhere different and see if "distance and difference are the secret tonic of creativity".

Why we travel.

Travel Packing Tips from the Pros

Travel Packing Tips from the Pros

The New York Times gleans tips from professional flight crews on how to pare down your luggage and pack as efficiently as possible. Unfortunately they miss pointing out the benefits of soft-sided luggage. Part of the point of traveling with one bag is the ease of movement it provides; the benefits of those wheels on your bag soon disappear when you hit the city streets. There are some good tips, including the rolling of clothes, a habit I have had for years much to the chagrin of my wife who carefully folds everything.

"I try to pack everything I'll need to survive"
"Fast-dry apparel isn't always the most stylish, but it's lightweight, washable in a hotel room sink and takes up little room. Think REI or Travelsmith."
"Think hard about what you are doing," he said. "Pare down what you are going to bring. Then, when you're done, pare it down again."

This article has been on the NYT most emailed list for at least a few days showing perhaps more mainstream interest in what many of us have been practicing for years. Perhaps people will come to realise that traveling with one bag is not a form of roughing it but luxury in the freedom and practicality it provides.

Packing Tips From Travel Pros

For more information on traveling light or bags in general see:

6 Essential iPhone Apps for Asian Travel

As the number of apps. in the iTunes store has continued to grow, the iPhone has become an essential travel tool. While Eliss, Stanza and Articles keep me entertained and informed, the following are the iPhone applications that I consider essential tools in my travels around Asia.

D-Clock

D-Clock

Inspired by the wrist watch designs of Dieter Rams and Dietrich Lubs, D-Clock is an analogue watch with alarm and calendar, which maintains in software, the simplicity and function of the original designers work. It has all the usual alarm setting and sounds but I love how you set the clock and alarm by moving the hands. Very intuitive. I have a thing for clocks on the iPhone and this is thus far my favorite.

Continue reading >>

Air Travel Set To Suck More

Serious aircraft face

As if it wasn't bad enough already, be prepared for some additional security precautions and likely inconveniences if you are traveling to the US from an International airport.

Travelers to U.S. Now Face Patdowns and Other Scrutiny
Airline passengers traveling to the United States on Sunday were subjected to more scrutiny, including physical patdowns, in the wake of new restrictions that lengthened lines at airports and limited the ability of international passengers to move about an airplane. The Department of Homeland Security confirmed on Sunday that all passengers headed to the United States from foreign destinations are supposed to be subject to a physical patdown at thegate area, in addition to more frequent carry-on bag checks. The requirement is imposed on foreign airports.

TSA continues to allow laptop computers, cell phones and other electronic items.
TSA says its still allowing laptops & cellphones onboard but some ppl experiencing different flying from other countries

New rules keep passengers in seats
New government security regulations prohibit passengers from leaving their plane seats beginning an hour before landing.

Bad time to be a Nigerian with irritable bowel syndrome.
A Nigerian man who became ill on Northwest Airlines Flight 253 from Amsterdam to Detroit -- the same flight involved in Friday's terrorism attempt -- triggered a security alert at Detroit Metropolitan Airport after the pilots requested emergency assistance upon landing ... Earlier in the afternoon, Delta Airlines, which acquired Northwest last year, said in a statement that the crew had requested police assistance on the ground because a passenger was "verbally disruptive." ... The T.S.A. said that the flight landed safely at Detroit International Airport at approximately 12:35 p.m. Eastern "without incident."

It's amazing to me just how much people will put up with when they are flying.

Update since this was posted:

Some security has been relaxed since the underwear bomb incident but it's worth noting that the increased security only applies to flights who destination or departure is the United States. Asian travel is unaffected.

President Obama, It's Time To Fire the TSA
Today, DHS's Napolitano's response to the crotchbomber: "We're looking to make sure that this sort of incident cannot recur." But the TSA's response to Abdulmutalib's attempt makes one thing clear: We must stop pretending the TSA is making us safer.

Security expert Bruce Schneier nails the core incompetency: "For years I've been saying 'Only two things have made flying safer [since 9/11]: the reinforcement of cockpit doors, and the fact that passengers know now to resist hijackers.'"

The Unofficial Guide to Flying After the Underwear Bomb
The TSA hasn't explained jack. But we found this audio of a pilot explaining the new in-flight security arrangements. Based on that, and what else we know, here's an unofficial guide to travel in the age of the underwear bomb.

The cognitive benefits of travel

Lady selling flowers in Bangkok

Why do we travel? It's not the flying I mind--I will always be awed by the physics that get a fat metal bird into the upper tropo- sphere. The rest of the journey, however, can feel like a tedious lesson in the ills of modernity, from the predawn x-ray screening to the sad airport malls peddling crappy souvenirs. It's globalization in a nutshell, and it sucks.

And yet here we are, herded in ever greater numbers onto planes that stay the same size. Sometimes, of course, we travel because we have to. Because in this digital age there is still something important about the analog handshake. Or eating Mom's turkey on Thanksgiving. Or seeing the girlfriend during her semester break.

Travel, in other words, is a basic human desire. We're a migratory species, even if our migrations are powered by jet fuel and Chicken McNuggets. But here's my question: is this collective urge to travel - to put some distance between ourselves and everything we know--still a worthwhile compulsion? Or is it like the taste for saturated fat, one of those instincts we should have left behind in the Pleistocene epoch? Because if travel is just about fun then I think the TSA killed it.

The good news, at least for those of youreading this while stuck on a tarmac eating stale pretzels, is that pleasure is not the only consolation of travel. In fact, several new science papers suggest that getting away--and it doesn't even matter where you're going--is an essential habit of effective thinking. It's not about vacation, or relaxation, or sipping daiquiris on an unspoiled tropical beach: it's about the tedious act itself, putting somemiles between home and wherever you happen to spend the night.

I so want to simply cut 'n' paste the whole article here because it's not until much later that Jonah Lehrer gets to the point I observe within myself time and time again when I travel. Even when I only travel somewhere new 30 minutes away.

... our thoughts are shackled by the familiar. The brain is a neural tangle of near infinite possibility, which means that it spends alot of time and energy choosing what not to notice. As a result, creativity is traded away for efficiency; we think in literal prose, not symbolist poetry. A bit of distance, however, helps loosen the chains of cognition, making it easier to see something new in the old ...

Travel, at least the travel I engage in, forces me to think in whole new ways; tackle problems that never happen in my day to day life. I find routine, though comforting, becomes mind numbing over time. I'm not forced to think as I act largely on instinct. When I travel I'm forced to navigate strange streets in a language not my own while I wonder about contingencies if the atm won't work or the credit card is somehow unusable. I see things and experience points of view entirely different from my day to day existence.

When I travel I can't sit still. I could never imagine lounging about in a hotel, a hotel which provides the same experience as every other hotel in the world. Which is the point for many - familiarity and the comfort of being home. I get out and walk, and walk, and walk. I try to experience as much as I can in the time I have. Where at home I am an introvert, abroad I approach strangers and ask them questions. I sit and watch people, observing their behaviour, style, and tastes. I document all that I see and experience.

How can this not have positive cognitive benefits.

Why We Travel by Jonah Lehrer

An Itinerary For A Short Stay In Bangkok

bangkok bike

I've travelled to Bangkok so many times that many of the traditional tourist attractions, though amazing, have lost some of their appeal to me. Bangkok is a big city with a trememendous variety of activities that cater to just about every interest. Activities for kids (yes Bangkok is an ideal destination for families too), museums, the best movie theatres in Asia, art and design exhibits, towering restaurants on top of the city, shopping and more shopping, are all wrapped with a unique rich culture and some of the friendliest people in the world. With frequent short visits I try to see something different, exploring different neighbourhoods, while hitting the usual haunts that make Bangkok special to me.

Before I get started, I always hit the grocery where I stock up on fresh fruit, vegetables, juice and yogurt. I do this no matter which city I land in but I've learned the hard way in Bangkok that not eating right can have some uncomfortable consequences. My one risk is coffee to go from a street vender. It's not a French café but there is something about starting my day with fresh Thai. coffee replete with condensed milk that marks the start of any day there. It's almost impossible to plan a timed itinerary into a short space of time here so I tend to write a laundry list of places I want to visit and hope that I can manage to check them all off during my stay.

Excluding all the usual meandering about with camera and the inevitable stops for banana shakes, the following is alternate itinerary for a short stay in Bangkok

Continue reading >>

Bangkok experiences an all-time low in hotel occupancies

Bangkok BTS line

International arrivals declined by 21% in the first six months of 2009 as compared to the same period in 2008.

During this time, it was reported that Bangkok's five-star hotels recorded occupancy of approximately 47% while four-star hotels recorded approximately 51% during the same period.

Bangkok hotels have not witnessed such levels of occupancy since the 1997 Asian financial crisis.

It was forecast that occupancy is likely to remain in the 50% to 60% region as approximately 7,150 rooms are expected to enter the market in the next three years.

This fall may prove to be an excellent time to visit.

Source: www.hvs.com

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