TravelPod News

After the recent incidents involving women who have been kicked off of planes for wearing too little clothing. Journalist on the travel-beat, Chris Elliott expounds upon the things that people should not be wearing on an airplane.

I kind of agree with him. I think people should wear nicer clothing when they are traveling in general, especially when flying, but I don’t think airlines should start regulating clothing.

Come on now, if someone wants to look like they just stepped out of a girly magazine, who cares, really? If you don’t want to look at it, avert your eyes, that’s what I say.

I think there should be more regulations governing the amount of time you are without your luggage when it is inevitably lost, let’s stick with what’s important, folks. Namely, getting you and your belongings to your destination on time, appearances are inconsequential.

There’s a new discussion topic in the travel forums, have your say.
See you there,

Louise Brown

TravelPod Community Manager

Cool Things in Random Places is another one of my favourite blogs. Today, they’re linking to the Parasite Museum in Tokyo.

Its crowning achievement is an 8.8 metre long tapeworm taken from the body of a human being! Just incredible. Look at this lady’s face, she is just repulsed beyond belief! So crazy.

Would you pay to visit this museum, or would someone have to pay you? I think it would be fascinating, in a strange train wreck kind of way. Discuss it in the TravelPod travel forum.

See you there!

Louise Brown

TravelPod Community Manager

Travelpodders are an eclectic bunch, and this month they’re talking about everything from the meaning of love to traveling in Europe on a budget. Check them out and have your say in the travel forums.

1. Love, infatuation, sexual desire, chakras

2. Amazing Facts…

3. What’s your favourite ice cream flavour?

4. Where would you live?

5. Right or Wrong?

6. Traveling or just wasting time?

7. Speaking English WILL kill you

8. When would you boycott a destination?

9. Europe on a budget, give me some tips!

10. Shooting guns…

Louise Brown

TravelPod Community Manager

TravelPod has just released some stylish new patches you can put on your blog, homepage, or MySpace page. If you add one, everyone will see your atmospheric IQ score and bow down to your geographic prowess.

Here’s the link to display one of the (quite alluring) patches on your blog or homepage.

If you have a Blogger account here are some easy instructions:

1. Login
2. Click on the layout tab,
3. Click add a page element
4. Paste the code that you find at the above link into the content box and voila, the whole world knows your Traveler IQ!

(Find instructions for your Live Journal, MySpace and spaces.live.com here)

Get more help, and ask questions in the TravelPod forums.

Fancy!

Louise Brown

TravelPod Community Manager

Influential travel blog, Elliott.org has ranked TravelPod at the top of the eight best travel blog sites this week.

Christopher Elliott writes that the most popular travel blogs are community-written and I think that’s exactly what makes TravelPod so great! The best writing and most interesting prose comes when we all put our heads together and create something new.

Check out the blog post at Elliott.org

Louise Brown

TravelPod Community Manager

For most people, setting out on a cross-India tour in a “tuk tuk” would not be tops on their list of things to do while on a vacation.

Joanna Penny however, is a different sort of person. After climbing Mount Kilimanjaro, she decided to team up with her friend Sharon Jefferies and race across the Indian sub-continent in a small, golf cart-like vehicle.

“I was looking for something adventurous because I’ve never been the sort to just go on a package holiday,” Penny says.

The race is dubbed the Rickshaw Run, and it involves groups of people taking off from Kathmandu, Nepal and ending up (hopefully) in Pondicherry, India.

“It’s completely crazy,” Penny says, “we don’t have any checkpoints at all.”

Most teams are doing the race to raise money for charity. Penny and Jefferies are no exception. The money they raise will help support Mercy Corps, an organization that provides literacy and agriculture training to people who need it. They’ll also be donating money to FRANK Water, another charity that helps bring fresh drinking water to people in India.

Penny is quite the avid traveler, and has already visited 17 per cent of the Earth’s surface, according to her travel map. She says she caught the travel bug in 1995, during her backpacking trip to Canada.

“I sort of realized that, as lovely as Scotland is, there’s a big world out there,” she says, “and I want to experience as much of it as I can.”

Penny and Jefferies leave for Nepal on May 23 and the race to Pondicherry starts June 1. To donate money or read about their trip preparations, head to Penny’s travel blog.

The “Loony Lassis” promise to write blog entries during the race, but Penny acknowledges that this could be difficult because of time constraints.

“I don’t think I’m ambitious enough to get to the podium, but I do want to get to the finish,” she says with a laugh.

You can follow their progress on their aforementioned blog, “The Craziest Idea Yet?!”

(TravelPod is a proud sponsor of The Loony Lassis as they make their trek across India)

TravelPodder Kateinjapan has just posted a HILARIOUS video about the Naked Man Festival in Okayama, Japan. Here’s an excerpt of what she writes in her most recent post:

“The festival is held in the evening at a temple in the city of Okayama, in Okayama prefecture. Eyo is a 14-day New Year ritual during which monks of the Shingon sect pray for a year of bountiful harvest and good fortune. On the 14th day, amulets (an object that protects a person from trouble) said to guarantee a good year were presented to the elders representing the people. But an increasing amount of believers began to gather for these amulets. People fought until their clothes tore off!! Thus the paper amulets were replaced by wooden sticks which were tossed into the crowd. Good fortune is bestowed to those who catch these sticks.

By the end of the 19th century, the event had evolved into the current style, being held naked (not completely but rather in a ‘thong’ that looks similar to that worn by sumo wrestlers). Recently, the festival has been attracting over 10,000 naked men who thrust themselves into the crowd upon the release of these wooden charms at midnight. Despite the chilling temperature, the intense fight produces steam that casts a mysterious spell on this winter event.”

Watch the writhing half-naked men, then chat about it in the forums.

See you there!

Louise Brown

TravelPod Community Manager

The question everyone asks about blogging is: “How do I get more people to read my blog?”

The short answer is: Create better quality content.

But, how do you do that?

Here are three attributes of a good quality travel blog post. I ask myself if I have included them every time I write a new post.

1. Use of all five senses

2. Honesty

3. Use of my brain

Bonus points for: The inclusion of other people!

Check out my video and share your own tips in the TravelPod forums.

See you there!

Louise Brown

TravelPod Community Manager

There’s a very nice review of TravelPod today on the travel blog Ready to Roam. Vagabondpoet says that “Travelpod is great simply because it’s the biggest”, and lists it as one of his favourite travel blogging sites.

Check it out.

Thanks for that endorsement Vagabondpoet!

Louise Brown

TravelPod Community Manager

A new service from Rovair, allows you to rent an internet “aircard” for “as low as” $5.95 per day when borrowing it for 30 days or more.

Here’s how it works:

You order the card, they send it to you in the mail, then you can plug it into your USB port and use the internet pretty much anywhere you want to go in the United States.

One reviewer took it to New Orleans and used it in a taxi, at his hotel and at the airport, so I gather he saved a lot of money. Just by skipping those hefty internet access fees in the airport waiting lounge alone would probably be worth it.

I’m curious as to how far into the wilderness the coverage goes and how it works in other countries. This could be very good, especially for someone blogging about a multi-city or RTW trip.

Update: After a quick call to the RovAir marketing department, I was informed that the service does not officially extend into Canada, but it is indeed possible to receive the signal outside of the U.S. They also told me the company is working on a bigger, international network, but for now, it will only work in domestic U.S. locations.

There go my dreams of blogging from the wilds of Yellowknife this summer like this guy in Costa Rica:

Would you use Rovair? How do you get connected when you’re on the road?

Come talk about it with me in the TravelPod forums.

See you there!

Louise Brown

TravelPod Community Manager

This has got to be the best celebrity-product pairing I have ever seen.

Jaunted is reporting that William Shatner may be the next spokesperson for Virgin America. With their tongue-in-cheek advertising and generally campy ambience, Shatner couldn’t have found a better partner.

He’s currently “negotiating” with Priceline, so there’s no telling what he’ll do with Virgin.

Watch out here he comes! *duck*

What do you think? Could Virgin POSSIBLY get a better celebrity endorsement? Methinksnot.

Which celebrity would be a better match for Virgin than Mr. Shatner?

Tell me in the TravelPod forums!

Louise Brown

TravelPod Community Manager

Wow, talk about some travel controversy. The Lost Weekend is reporting that author Thomas Kohnstamn had written the Colombia guidebook without even going to Colombia. He justifies it by insisting that Lonely Planet wasn’t paying him enough to write the thing.

Is that the best you can come up with? I personally, spent a few years being a freelancer, however, not as a travel writer. I was also paid a pittance, but I never faked my writing and editing! It never even crossed my mind! Travel writing is something you do for the love of travel, not for the virtually non-existent paycheck.

In this case, I am more disappointed in the starving writer than in the big corporation signing his cheque. If you want to be a travel writer, you should be a travel writer, and worry about the money later. Not only does constantly worrying about money corrupt your travel writing biases, it also doesn’t get you into an occupation that you will enjoy.

What do you think? Tell me about it in the TravelPod forums.

See you there!

Louise Brown

TravelPod Community Manager

Today, I’m asking the TravelPod community: “Where would you like to live for the rest of your life?” If money wasn’t a problem, and you didn’t have to worry about working or anything else, where would you live out the rest of your days?

In the forums, there is quite a bit of discussion surrounding the potential for floods on small islands due to global warming. Maybe it would be better to set up shop on the top of a mountain. Perhaps you’d like to live in a small European village, or maybe a place where you can stretch your hard earned dollars the furthest.

I’m curious, let me know by posting in the TravelPod forums.

See you there!

Louise Brown

TravelPod Community Manager

Oh horror of horrors! They took down the Back to the Future ride at Universal Studios to make room for The Simpsons ride.

Was this the right choice? I really don’t think so… While The Simpsons is not a passing phase, certainly it can’t be more influential than the likes of Back to the Future trilogy!

I think this is a bold move on the part of amusement park management, what do you think!? Have your say in the TravelPod travel forums.

I will sorely miss the Back to the Future ride…if I ever go back to Universal Studios again, that is…the park will never be the same again…
Here’s the article at the LA Times

Here’s a blog post about it at Jaunted

There are some real numbers behind the decline in tourism to the United States. Overseas arrivals in the U.S. have declined 11 per cent this decade, down from 26 million in 2000 to 23 million in 2007. That has all happened while the travel industry as a whole grew 6 per cent per year!

That’s some astounding stuff. Why are people staying away from the states in such numbers? Is it American’s attitude toward foreigners? Cutting through the red tape needed to visit? How about a lack of signage in other languages? I guess it all adds up.

Will you be visiting the states anytime soon? Why or why not?

Come tell us in the TravelPod discussion forums.

See you there!

Louise Brown

TravelPod Community Manager