Wednesday, July 09, 2008 |
| Nestled deep in a Mekong River valley |
This is one man's lament, from Bangkok Chief of Bureau Denis D. Gray, who has lived, worked and traveled in Asia for more than 30 years.
On a chilly pre-dawn in Luang Prabang, Laos, a wondrous and once-secluded place, scruffy European backpackers and well-heeled American tourists have staked out their firing positions.
A fusillade of flashing, jostling cameras and videocams is triggered the moment Buddhist monks pad barefoot out of their monasteries in a serene, timeless ritual. A forward surge breaks into the line of golden-yellow robes, and nearly tramples kneeling Lao women offering food to the monks.
Later that day, a prince of the former royal capital struggling to preserve his town's cultural legacy, protests: "For many tourists, coming to Luang Prabang is like going on safari, but our monks are not monkeys or buffaloes."
Nestled deep in a Mekong River valley, cut off from most of the world by the Vietnam War, Luang Prabang was very different when I first saw it in 1974. Fraying at the edges, yes, but still a magic fusion of traditional Lao dwellings, French colonial architecture and more than 30 graceful monasteries, some dating back to the 14th century. It wasn't a museum, but a cohesive, authentic, living community.
Fast forward to 2008: Many of the old families have departed, selling or leasing their homes to rich outsiders who have turned them into a guesthouses, Internet cafes and pizza parlors. There are fewer monks because the newcomers no longer support the monasteries. And the influx of tourists skyrockets, the fragile town of 25,000 now taking in some 300,000 of them a year. Throughout Laos, tourism was up an astounding 36.5 percent in 2007, compared to 2006, with more than 1.3 million visitors in the first 10 months of the year, according to the Pacific Asia Travel Association.Labels: mekong river, thailand
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posted by Blogger Menulis @ 10:01 AM  |
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| First-time visitors like us typically include the Ganges in a triangle of destinations |
"Cow. Mustard plant. Dead body," our taxi driver said as we drove into town.
Wait, what was that last one?
It was a woman's body, small and wrapped in shiny red cloth, being carried by hand on a pallet down the main street into town.
For thousands of years, Hindus and Buddhists have come here to end their lives — or renew them — in the river Ganges. Dying in this ancient city brings "moksha," or spiritual liberation to Hindus. The living cleanse their spirits by washing in the waters that run down from Himalayan snow peaks.
That tradition draws a never-ending human current of pilgrims, beginning in pre-dawn darkness each morning. From every street and intersection, blurry shapes amble toward the riverside steps, called ghats. The walk is quiet, except for the pilgrims' drums, chants, and tambourines.
The ritual also draws boatloads of tourists. First-time visitors like us typically include the Ganges in a triangle of destinations — along with the Taj Mahal and the temples of Khajuraho, known for erotic carvings — in India's history-rich northeast. But while almost every step in India offers some kind of intense experience, nothing was as riveting as that morning along the water in Varanasi.Labels: experience, ganges, hindus, india, khajuraho, triangle
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| posted by Blogger Menulis @ 9:58 AM |
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Tuesday, July 08, 2008 |
| Could you recommend some international vacation spots |
Q: My mother is turning 50 this fall and I’m turning 30, and we were hoping to celebrate by taking a vacation together. She’s never been outside of the U.S., so we’d like to travel abroad. Could you recommend some international vacation spots that would be inexpensive and fun? — Sarah S.
A: First off, С днем рождения, Wszystkiego Najlepszego , Chúc mừng sinh nhật,
Joyeux Anniversaire and Buon Compleanno! That’s “Happy Birthday” in Russian, Polish, Vietnamese, French and Italian (according to Happybirthday.com). For such a special occasion — it’s not often one abandons one’s 20s or hits a half-century — multiple congratulations are in order. I also think it’s wonderful that you’ll be using travel to celebrate your milestones.
My problem in answering you is that I don’t really know how you and your mother define “fun,” nor do I know what “inexpensive” means to you. So I’m going to set forth four different vacation ideas, each with a slightly different price tag and emphasis. I do hope that at least one of them fits your criteria.Labels: vocation
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| posted by Blogger Menulis @ 10:05 AM |
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Saturday, July 05, 2008 |
| many travelers are showing an interest in the area's alternative "eco" vacations |
Inspired by Southeast Asia's natural beauty and rich culture, many travelers are showing an interest in the area's alternative "eco" vacations, like the one offered in the Thai National Forests.
Participants on this $2,300, 10-day tour (airfare and two nights' stay in Bangkok not included) receive an intensive education in regional ecology and conservation efforts, which range from using biogas to discourage logging and creating communal farms to decrease poaching. Highlights include trips to the Erawan, Budo Sungai-Padi and Khao Yai national parks, where tropical birds, elephants and Asiatic tigers live.
It's one of many luring travelers to the region. As travel to Southeast Asia continues to rise — an estimated 60.4 million tourists visited the region in 2007 — many visitors are forgoing traditional packages and chain hotels and instead discovering the nascent ecotourism market.Labels: vocation
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| posted by Blogger Menulis @ 10:07 AM |
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Sunday, May 11, 2008 |
| Freedom Ship |
Send this freedom is a concept for a city floating proposed by Norman Nixon.
According to the Freedom Ship International site,
With a length of 4500 feet (1400 m), a width of 750 feet (230 m) and a height of 350 feet (110 m), Freedom Ship would be more than 4 times more than the Queen Mary. The concepts of mobile include a modern city with a life of luxury, a vast duty-free shopping International Mall, and a 1.7 million square feet (160000 square metres) floor set aside for various companies to show their products. Freedom Ship would not be a cruise ship, wants to be a unique place to live, work, retirement, vacations, or visit. The ship permanently circumnavigate the world, covering much of the world coastal regions. The vast fleet of aircraft hydrofoils and ferries residents and visitors and the shore.
The site also provides for the addition of a subway, the ship, as well as a marina and a space for residents to save their cars.
Current naval engineering techniques are not sufficient for the construction of this great ship. Currently supertankers can not be made larger than the enormous stresses on the hull of the bow and sag in heavy seas, causing catastrophic failures. Freedom Ship International said on the Discovery Channel, the engineer impossible that they plan to use a barge construction technique, which should reduce the stress of enormous weight. Moreover, this would reduce the cost of shares tailored for the ship, the cost of living may be more reasonable. The program also stated that the propellers would be a series of 400-rotation without azipods [1] However, despite the large number of screws, the ship is still slower than the world. Although initially declared service should be 2001, by 2008 the construction had not yet begun.
Net price estimates for the ship rose from $ 6 billion in 1999 to $ 11 billion in 2002. [2]
The ship was broadcast on Discovery Channel's Extreme Engineering series in an episode entitled "failed genius."Labels: Freeddom Ship
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| posted by Blogger Menulis @ 5:33 PM |
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| Happy Mother Days |
Previously, I have to say about how my mother is very terrible, because it can be baking bread from scratch, goat milk and cheese to turn out and ice-cream and seriously tasty omelet. But what you do not know about Mama is that the most beautiful, most compassionate, thoughtful and caring person you will ever meet. This means that you, for themselves and others come out of her way to help those who need it. If anyone should be as lucky as I am happy and have my mother, the world would certainly be different and a much happier.
When I was little my mother with me would you a singing me to sleep at night, objetí me every morning and every day I recalled that I loved. Give me the book as Cartoon and The Secret Garden to read and to encourage my imagination grow and develop. Since the beginning of the year as I can remember, I have always loved the sport and it's probably because the mother would me skating and skiing in winter and cycling and swimming with me in the summer (and it still does). Mama does not speak ill of other people and as such has taught me the values of respect and recognition of others. At this moment in my life if I had to have a decision on whether or not to do something questionable, my decisions have always been around the fact that I do not want to do something that would disappoint my mother, or less proud of me. She is my number one cheerleader in all, this is what me and for me even if I am not sure of himself.
I tell you, if you ever had the privilege of crossing paths with my mámu you a better person. Unfortunately, I think that people are so nice as she is, (if different from these people still exist) are often undervalued. In its role as one of the primary school, Mom to work early and come home late every day, they really interested in the welfare of its students and employees and still has a lot of nonsense and politics than anyone should have been. Despite all that, mother has a positive outlook on life and believes that good people. But what if I had me, Mom would have been long retired, so they can spend her days gardening, hiking on the bike and horseback riding, reading and writing books.Labels: mother day
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| posted by Blogger Menulis @ 5:25 PM |
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Tuesday, April 22, 2008 |
| Kimberley grows up |
Papa needs new shoes, as they say in Vegas. But at the Canadian Disabled Skiers Association they're not getting them from the owners of Sunshine or Lake Louise. Yet.
A plump $25,000 was teed up to come the charity's way last season, the windfall from a bet that Charlie Locke, the head of Lake Louise and Resorts of the Canadian Rockies (RCR), levelled at Ralph Scurfield of neighbouring Sunshine.
The bet was meant to quash a time-honoured perception that Sunshine is closer to Calgary and Banff than is Lake Louise. The Trans-Canada turn-off is first by 45 km it's true, but according to Locke, the access road, the parking and the lifts all conspire to make a skier's journey to the top of Sunshine longer by at least 10 minutes than to the top of Lake Louise. "He declined to accept the bet," explains Locke dryly, "and by not accepting, he admits it."
Locke's sanguine approach to the wager sounds a good deal like his approach to the rising pile of ski resort chips he's been collecting in recent years--six in the past decade alone: "I would never have made the bet if I thought I'd lose."
Locke likes to point out that all the money he makes in Alberta, he spends in B.C. Of RCR's eight ski areas, four are in Alberta: Nakiska, Wintergreen, Fortress and Lake Louise. Two of the more recent acquisitions are across the provincial border: Fernie, full house of the Lizard Mountains; and, at the foot of the Purcells, Kimberley--the hand that has yet to be fully dealt. A whopping $200-250 million is earmarked for its metamorphosis from a miner's playground to a baby boomer's tax shelter. Last year saw the opening of a slopeside Marriot hotel, the switch was thrown on a new high-speed quad and a $13 million budget for 1999 mushroomed to $30 million--and the players have barely broken a sweat.
The marketing wizards are dubbing it the Powder Triangle. One hundred and twenty km from New School Fernie, and 275 km from the classic, internationally known Lake Louise, Kimberley is being sold--and bought--as both a stand-alone destination and combo-package by Canadians, Europeans and Americans.
Ben Tipper -- Photo by Craig Farish
The number of British visitors to Kimberley is expected to quadruple this year, according to Locke, lured by "a new destination that's exciting and attractive from a Canadian dollar point of view." Investment patterns are also being watched with interest; B.C. has high hopes of benefiting from the prevailing antidevelopment movement that's mobilizing across the provincial border. RCR estimates $1billion in ski-vestment will flow into the Kootenay-Columbia Valley region in the coming decades. Unlike their Alberta sisters, Locke's B.C. resorts are located far from the hysteria of the national parks.
Kimberley's long cruising runs are well-tailored to the intermediate ski weeker's market, and it features a thigh-numbing quotient of ungroomed blacks to boot. Nearly 500 acres of new terrain was added in 1998, with a dozen runs mapped for expansion beyond black-diamond Easter Bowl.
Mid-mountain, the scent of wood smoke hangs in the air; even winter's snow can't smother the primordial slash burn that smoulders under the weight of acres of tree cuts. With the light Purcell snow, a grand view of the Rockies and more sunshine than the Okanagan itself, Kimberley has all the cards to set the standard for the Kootenay good life.
Now, if only they could do something about that town. Day and night, the strains of reworked oompahpah continue to pipe into the platzl, the brainchild of a 1970s town council mandate that continues to entertain or assault visitors depending on their kitsch appreciation. The "Bavarian City of the Rockies" features Canada's largest cuckoo clock (yodels on the hour), faux gingerbread architecture and accordion competitions to wake the dead. It still beats Intrawest-style sterilization, say townsfolk. And it has attracted a high number of European restaurateurs, offers Locke optimistically.
Clock in the Plazl -- Photo by Craig Farish
The ultimate compliment for a Canadian is, of course, an American one. An estimated 20 per cent of buyers come from south of the border; some could literally ski anywhere and still they choose Kimberley. "A lot of U.S. buyers have their own planes," Locke explains, "and fly right into Cranbrook." This year, he expects to see approval granted for airport expansion which would (optimistically) allow direct charter flights from Europe, turning Cranbrook into a veritable Calgary West.
The ore mine that fed the town of Kimberley for 100 years shuts down next year and with it, a way of life. The resurrection of what began as a community- owned-and-operated ski hill is already pulsing new blood into the area, giving young people a reason to stay and not-quite-old people a reason to come. There is some dissension among the locals; land values have risen and traffic has picked up. But one must ask whether the alternative--the economic malaise which has buried so many other B.C. mountain towns--is preferable.
Which brings us back to Locke's challenge. In the interest of good relations between the conqueror and the conquered everywhere, if Charlie Locke were to go ahead and donate the wagered $25,000 to the Disabled Skiers Association--despite Sunshine's unwillingness to roll the dice--then he would truly have won the bet. And yet more admirers
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| posted by Blogger Menulis @ 9:30 AM |
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Wednesday, January 09, 2008 |
| event-filled weeks traveling in south India |
Philipkutty's Farm. For me the odd name evokes a dreamy paradigm of south India—an arch of vermilion bougainvillea blossoms, the sheen of lake waters interrupted by a dugout's narrow wake and, above all, the blissful silence, broken only by birdsong, the chatter of women washing clothes along the shore and the chants from a Hindu temple across the canal.
Such tranquility was what had led me and a group of friends to Philipkutty's, after three rapid, event-filled weeks traveling in south India. Philipkutty's occupies a good part of an island in the middle of Vembanad Lake in Kerala, a state on India's southwest coast. Canals, streams, marshes and flooded rice paddies radiate out from the 80-square-mile lake, and together they make up the intricate brackish system Keralites call the Backwaters. In January, during the dry season, the temperature along the coast still hovers in the upper 80s and the air is heavy with moisture. This extraordinarily fertile area produces everything from commercial crops to a plethora of spices, including black pepper, cinnamon, turmeric and ginger.
Philipkutty's, which grows coconuts, bananas and other tropical fruits, also operates a type of family-run inn called a homestay, in which guests live with the hosts. Five lakefront guest villas are built in a traditional Keralan bungalow style, with white stuccoed walls and verandas overhung with dark-red-tiled roofs. There are no phones and no television sets, just a quiet and seemingly effortless elegance. It was the perfect place for us to unwind and absorb all we had experienced. The family and guests dine together three times a day at a big, round table or in an outdoor pavilion, and these home-cooked meals were delicious.
My daughter, a chef in New York City, and I were thrilled to discover something more at Philipkutty's: a fine cook and teacher. Her name is Aniamma Philip, though she's called Mummy by guests and staff alike, a name befitting her gentle mothering in the kitchen. With her daughter-in-law Anu Mathew, she owns and operates the farm, which in addition to commercial crops also produces ingredients for the homestay's meals, including spices and eggs. The farm, which is mostly cultivated organically, was established by Mummy's father-in-law more than half a century ago. In 1999, her son Vinod Mathew started adding the guest bungalows. After Vinod's unexpected death last year, Mummy and Anu took over.
Philipkutty's is still a working farm, but the focus now is on guests who usually stay several days, a week or even longer. Others might come just for a cooking class and lunch, sometimes making a stop at the farm during a tour of the lake on a kettuvallam, a jackwood boat with a vaulted coconut-fiber roof that was originally used for transporting rice to market.Labels: a farmosa, home-cooked, india, new york city, outdoor pavilion, philipkutty
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| posted by Blogger Menulis @ 9:56 AM |
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| will greet visitors to the 2008 Olympics |
Beijing, an ancient capital city long known for the architectural splendor of its centuries-old palaces and temples, is getting a new look that could have been plucked from science fiction.
A series of landmarks, notable for their futuristic design, will greet visitors to the 2008 Olympics. They include an Olympic stadium that looks like a giant bird's nest, a swimming venue literally built of bubbles and a pair of black office towers that lean toward each other at a 10-degree angle.
"This is the hottest place on Earth in terms of architecture," said Rory McGowan, a Beijing-based director of Arup, the British design and engineering firm, which is involved in several signature projects in the city. Architects and designers "are flocking over here in the thousands to look at Beijing."
As China's economy started taking off about 20 years ago, a similar transformation began changing the face of Beijing. Scores of traditional courtyard homes, factories and drab communist-inspired apartment blocks have been razed in recent years to make way for high-rise buildings with names such as "Fortune Plaza," "Soho" and "Park Avenue."
With the Olympics coming, the construction turned into a round-the-clock frenzy,with the host city seeking to convey an innovative and forward-looking image. Such projects could change Beijing's image as a stodgy city, particularly compared to cosmopolitan Shanghai, where foreign architects first gravitated a few years ago.
The "Bird's Nest" Olympic stadium was designed by Swiss firm Herzog and de Meuron, known for turning a hulking former power plant in London into the Tate Modern art museum. It's a 91,000-seat bowl that will host the opening and closing ceremonies along with track and field events. The stadium's nickname comes from an exterior of steel "twigs" that form a massive, curving nest.
Motorists regularly disrupt traffic on an adjoining highway as they stop to snap photos.
Across from the Bird's Nest is perhaps Beijing's most whimsical building: the Water Cube, the swimming venue for the Games.
Builders used material similar to plastic wrap to create 4,000 translucent bubbles, which were filled with air and bolted to a metal frame. The material allows sunlight to filter in and the sounds of splashing water to flow out.
China Central TV's new headquarters was planned by Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas, who designed the Seattle Public Library, the Prada store in New York and the Casa da Musica concert hall in Porto, Portugal.
Its two 37-story towers of black glass on diamond-shaped steel beams bend toward each other and are joined at the top by a sloping horizontal section that ranges from nine to 14 stories. It looks like a pair of Bermudas, and Chinese have dubbed it "Big Shorts."Labels: beijing, olympics games
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| posted by Blogger Menulis @ 9:42 AM |
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Wednesday, January 02, 2008 |
| Stepping from the Hilton to a busy... |
Stepping from the Hilton to a busy, foulane highway and into the massive KL Sentral railway atrium beyond is an exercise in contrasts. Behind this sprawling hightech transport hub, offering everything from airport chck-in counters to light rail and a monorail, liea an ordinary urban neighbourhood. Its simple, low-rise streets are home to greywalled shops and small businesses, some offering reflexology massages (by skilful blind masseurs) and, of course, endless hawker-style eateries.
Although the pavements are quiet and the shutters are mostly down (it's about 8am on our first day), a corner food court is already coming to life. Confusingly billed as a restoran (restaurant), it is merely an open-sided square full a plastic chairs and tables and surrounded by a few unpretentious stalls. It's one of many hundred street-side refuges from the mounting heat, serving condensed-milk-sweetened coffee and countless variations on mee egg noodles.
Almost as soon as we sit, a clatter of yellow and orange melamine dishes arrives. There's mee (noodles stir-fried), wan tan mee.
"We haven't much time for holiday, you know. When it comes to food there's just so much to try."
This is Liew's "home food". And it's easy to see the spark for Liew's fusion cooking in the unselfconscious mix of cuisines that make up Malaysia's past, present and future. Winding back through the waking streets, we pass the gaudy billboards f an indian or mamak eatery. Alongside dosai (South Indian-style savoury pancakes), griddled flatbreads like chapattis, and naan from a squat, pumpkin-shaped tandoor oven, there's nasi goreng (a Malay-Chinese dish), "lamb chop" and fish and chips that's at least three or four cuisines in one.
We stop to watch a young man strecth a ball of wheat-flour dough to make roti, rolling and folding the paper-thin sheet with brushed ghee and searing in on a griddle until it's puffy, falky and..."Oh, let's just have one to try," says Liew. We pull off crips, greasy pieces with our fingers as we walk. Lunch in Chinatown awaits so w glide along on the LRT (Light Rail Transit) towards the city centre. Below us are the white-stuccoed minarets of the old central railway station, a monument to Malaysia's British colonial past now used as a bus terminal. In days to come we will spot other glimpses of the era - occasional redtiled roofs and iron balconies, grand, vintage residances with art deco ironwork - and in the city's popular, day-to-day food. We alight at Pasar Seni Station, the gateway to Chinatown, the cheap DVD and rip-off designer stall strip known as Petaling Street, and the large pastel-toned Central Market building, formerly a fresh food or "wet" market and now an arts and crafts centre
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| posted by Blogger Menulis @ 7:33 PM |
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Saturday, December 29, 2007 |
| Born into a Chinese family in post-war Kuala Lumpur |
This cheeky figure with a passion for loud shirts spent his formative years in its bustling merchant area, squeezing into a couple of rooms (known as a "shop house")above th family's poultry store- and, later, restaurant - in the Chinatown district. Surrounded by the sights and smeels of spice sellers, herbalist and mobile hawker stalls, he began to cook for the family.
In the early '70s, needing a little extra cash, Liew got a job as a cook in an Adelaide pub. By 1975 he'd discarded electronics and become a fully fledged chef, opening Neddy's, which became renowned in Adelaide and beyond for its amazing multicultural menu - from Greek to Italian to Chinese. Gradually Liew unleashed his creativity, combining ingredients and techniques from his Malaysian childhood with those learned in his new word.
This extraordinary culinary master is often credited with creating the Asian-European blend now known as contemporary Australian cuisine. Like his fellow countrymen, he is an authentic food obsessive. To travel with Cheong Liew to Malaysia is and opportunity to share that obsession, for an all-too-brief five days, on the fringes of his organised food tour. In that short time I will not only plunge headlong into this multicultural melting pot, but sample about 200 amazing dishes, with countless between-meal snacks en route... be continues....
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| posted by Blogger Menulis @ 10:37 PM |
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Wednesday, December 26, 2007 |
| Fast Food in Malaysia |
KUALA LUMPUR IS A CITY where the visitor is instantly entangled in a modern labyrinth of grey, rain-stained freeways, ring roads and overpasses. These weave their way between a futuristic cityscape set amid lush bursts of tropical foliage where the jungle seems to be struggling to break free. It is a city of flat, cement-coloured skies. Only rarely do you see the Klang and Gombak - the two caramel-coloured rivers from which Kuala Lumpur derives its name. (It means "confluence of two rivers.")
This is where master chef Cheong Liew grew up. He left it as a 20 years old electronics student, to journey to the somewhat less exotic Adelaide of the 1960s.
As the near-lagendary executive chef at Adelaide Hilton's esteemed Grange restaurant, Liew is also the figurehead behind Senses, the signature fine diner at the Kuala Lumpur Hilton. Liew is back in the Malaysian Capital, staying at the enormous, twin-pronged complex that houses the recently opened Le Meridien and Hilton hotels.
While things have changed on the surface, the city's gastronomic soul remains. Every Malaysian's waking thought, it is still said, is "what shall I eat today?" And despite many years in Australia, Cheong Liew is no exception.
will be continues...
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| posted by Blogger Menulis @ 8:36 PM |
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Sunday, December 23, 2007 |
| American Express Platinum |
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The American Express Platinum Credit Card includes a Qantas domestic return flight every year between most capital cities in Australia. It also offers you 1.5 Membership Rewards points for every dollar spent up to $100,000 each year and 1 point for every dollar spent beyond that, which you can then redeem for a wide range of options including travel rewards.
The Gard also offers domestic and international travel insurance. So you can be safe in the knowledge that you're covered for a wide range of occurrences: from a cancelled flight in Melbourne to a doctor's bill for an emergency in Paris. with all these features, and a subscription to Travel Leisure Australia, shouldn't the Platinum Credit Card have a place on your "must have" list?
THE PLATINUM CREDIT CARD STYLE WITH SUBSTANCE.
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| posted by Blogger Menulis @ 11:25 AM |
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Saturday, December 22, 2007 |
| The Heat Is On |
First, the bad news: when we travel, we contribute to climate change. The carbon dioxide coming from our transport-especially our planes-plays a substantial role in raising the earth's temperature. In fact, it's not too much to say that we're putting at risk the very sights we're putting at risk the very sights we're travelling to see: the atoll where we relax on the beach is so threatened by rising seas that some island nations are preparing evacuation plans; ski slopes are being affected by shorter winters and shrinking snow-packs and the same forces will soon melt the legendary snows of Kilimanjaro, revealing its less legendary rocks.
At about the same time, if sea temperatures keep rising, the die-off of the world's coral reefs will be complete. Meanwhile, the warmer seasons are drawing malaria-carrying mosquitoes into regions where they've never gone before.
And yet, we want to travel. We want to see the world, meet new people, learn about other cultures, widen our perspective. One of the sweetest gifts fossil fuel has given us is the sense of a larger world filled with beauty and diversity. There's something more than a litle sad about making it smaller again.
There's also good news in the realm of travel, if not yet enough. Planes, for instance, have become more efficient over the past 40 years - but efficiency has not kept pace with air traffic growth. As The Economist magazine has pointed out, a new Airbus 380 will use the equivalent of 3500 passenger car's worth of power. The US Department of Energy's 2006 edition of the Transportation Energy Data Book reports air travel by Americans, for instance, accounts for a little more than 12 per cent of the country's carbon output, and since it is emitting CO2 at high altitudes and adding other potentially heat-trapping chemicals, including nitrous oxide, the resulting brew could be two to four times worse for the climate than a similar dose coming from the exhaust of a car.
How can those of us who love to explore the world participate in the effort to turn back climate change? We can open up our definition of "leisure travel" to include carrying lighter loads of carbon.
We can find out whether th companies that take us where we want to go are devising ways to limit their impact as well. Other players in the travel industry are working on ways to mitigate some of the damage. It's easy to find opportunities to "offset" the carbon cost of travelling. Carbon offsetting makes sense, and it's bound to expand in the years ahead as other airlines follow Virgin Blue's lead. Virgin Blue is the first airline to have its carbon-offset program certified under the Federal Government's Greenhouse Friendly scheme.
Virgin Atlantic chairman Sir Richard Branson also recently proposed a highly publicised series of solutions to air travel's contributions to global warming. What generated the most attention was his idea to tow planes (with their jet engines off) between gates and runways, thereby addressing the fact that jets burn far more fuel on take-off and landing than they do in the air.
The company claims that if the world's airlines signed on to its plan - that also includes starting a plane's descent earlier, to allow a steadier speed, and reducing the weight of planes by using lighter materials inside and out - air travel- based carbon emissions could be cut by 25 per cent, or 150 million tonnes a year.
Europeans can already choose carbon-neutral car rentals from Avis but offsets don't solve problem entirely. For now, their price is suspiciously cheap. That's because so few people are engaging in the voluntary trade of emissions that the companies offering them can purchase carbon credits for very little money. Some of the offsetting actions, frankly, don't amount to much; this is field with no regulation or accountability. For the moment these carbon offsets are a decent salve for our consciences - and a real bargain. But they will only represent a sustainable solution if joined by improvements in technology and significant, international political action.Labels: The Heat Is On
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| posted by Blogger Menulis @ 7:06 PM |
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Friday, December 21, 2007 |
| Desire Doyen |
A concierge with a higher caling or a canny name change by the marketing department? You be the judges as The Sarojin hotel in Khao Lak, Thailand, launches its new "maestro of personal adventures", The Imagineer. Not only can this doyen of guests' desires leap restaurant queues in a single bound, he can find you an elephant, organise a champagne jungle safari for two or set you sailing on the hotel's luxury boat, the Lady Sarojin.
Jowell Philemond-Montout is the hotel's Caribbean-born Imagineer. He says he developed his creativity following his passion for dance around the world, which saw him high-kicking at the Moulin Rounge for 15 years. Now, in his new role, Khao Lak is his stage and he tailor-makes guest experiences to make your stay at The Sarojin -an award-winning 56-room boutique hotel - something to sing and dance about. The Sarojin; +66 7642 7900; www.sarojin.comLabels: desire doyen
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| posted by Blogger Menulis @ 10:07 PM |
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