How Many Miles?
Too bad roads don’t follow straight lines. We wouldn’t need the Route Roller, a modest device from Austin House for reckoning the distance between any two points on a road map. It looks a bit like a fever thermometer, and here’s how it works: you match your map’s scale, say 20 miles = 1 inch, to use one of the Roller’s choices. (Recall your multiplication tables.) Then you trace your proposed route along the map with a serrated-edge wheel at the tip of the device. True, the result is only approximate. But anything is better than guesswork. Besides, the Route Roller costs only five bucks.
title: “Travel Briefs” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-30” author: “Nathan Rivera”
And it takes place in New Jersey, only about an hour’s drive from Manhattan (the school also has classes in California and Florida). In the weeklong basic class, instructors teach skills from building a debris hut out of branches and leaves to whacking rabbits with a throwing stick at 20 paces. One popular lesson: brain tanning. That means skinning a recently killed deer–then rubbing its brain matter into the hide to preserve it. (No creatures are actually harmed; the deer is roadkill.)
Founded in 1978 by ace tracker Tom Brown Jr., the eco-oriented school rounds out its survival training with Native American-inspired philosophy. But there is one “Survivor” skill you won’t learn there: “We don’t teach backstabbing,” says Brown. Seoul in a Sweat Once every couple of months, Naoko Hirasawa, 40, travels from her home in Hiroshima to Seoul, South Korea, to sweat out whatever ails her. Like thousands of other Japanese women, she has become addicted to a 600-year-old Korean tradition: the hanjeungmak sauna. Intensely hot and dry, it uses burning pine to heat a cavelike dome made of stone with empty hemp bags to sit on. Hanjeungmak is thought to be responsible for many women’s smooth skin and healthy look. Koreans believe it purges the body of impure elements along with the sweat. “It’s great when you have a bad hangover,” says Hirasawa. And compared with tourist attractions in Japan, hanjeungmak is inexpensive. “It’s cheaper to come here,” she says, “than taking a bullet train to Tokyo.”
title: “Travel Briefs” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-20” author: “Charlotte Loe”
The area is known as the Pacific Graveyard: the far west coast of Canada’s Vancouver Island. Remote and thinly settled, its fishing and logging industries fading out, the region is famous mostly for fierce winter storms. Now tourism operators in the tiny town of Tofino have found a way to market their most conspicuous natural resource, drawing hundreds of storm watchers from all over the world. The town’s luxurious Wickaninnish Inn was built five years ago solely for storm watching. “This is ecotourism and adventure tourism, and it can be extremely and thrillingly dangerous,” boasts owner Charles McDiarmid, who has the sound of crashing waves piped live into the dining room. The waves are indeed dangerous; the safest place to watch them is indoors. The season runs from October to March, usually producing 10 to 15 really big storms–with a silver lining for Tofino.
title: “Travel Briefs” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-26” author: “Ray Brown”
Increasingly, visitors can stay in style. In the village of Siem Reap, about four miles south of Angkor Wat, tourists can now book rooms at the luxury Sofitel hotel, which opened last October. Combining French and Khmer architecture, it offers luxurious suites, a jazz bar and a health spa. The leafy Angkor Village Hotel recently opened 10 deluxe bungalows surrounding a swimming pool. The hotels are starting to compete for visitors. April is one of the most popular months, as Cambodians celebrate the Khmer New Year with a three-day festival. On the last day, they cleanse statues of Buddha with perfumed water, symbolizing hope for rain for the rice harvest. In Siem Reap, they’re also hoping for a flood of tourists. TOWERSLess Leaning Don’t worry, the engineers didn’t fix it too well. The Leaning Tower of Pisa, scheduled for a gala reopening on June 16, hasn’t been this vertical since 1810, but it remains five dizzying degrees off center. “Any [straighter] would have disappointed the tourists,” says Prof. John Burland, the Imperial College of London engineer who directed the 11-year, 29 million euro project to stabilize the tower. It has been closed since 1989, after minor earthquakes nearby toppled several other structures of roughly the same age.
A monumental party is planned for the reopening, with tenor Andrea Bocelli and a host of other celebrities. You may have to wait awhile before retracing Galileo’s footsteps up the tower’s claustrophobic spiral staircase, though. For the first six months, there will be just one daily visit for a guided group of up to 30 people. Visitors will need a university’s letter of reference or other written proof that they have a scholarly interest in the tower. Regular unguided admission begins in November, at 25,000 lire a ticket–about $12 at the current exchange rate. Come to think of it, the tower is worth seeing even from the outside. TESTSOut of the Cubicle Adventure travel used to be for thrill seekers. Now it’s for co-workers. Increasingly, U.S. companies interested in building camaraderie are sending their employees on sometimes risky trips into the wild. Tanna Oldfield sought to establish rapport between the old guard and new hires at her Texas software company by making them jump out of a plane–with parachutes. “If they could conquer fears about skydiving, they could overcome work issues,” she says.
Despite recent cutbacks among New Economy companies, adventure-travel organizers say their team-building business is up from last year. After a reorganization last fall, DMR, a New Jersey telecommunications consulting firm, flew more than 100 employees to Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains for four days of rock climbing. Sales executive John Tedesco says he expected the trip to be “a total disaster.” But after dangling 90 feet above the ground in a rope harness, Tedesco learned to rely on his colleagues. “You see people in a different light,” he says. “Nothing has been the same since.”
title: “Travel Briefs” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-13” author: “Marcia Stockman”
INDONESIA
Getting Turmeric Under Your Nails
“This is the real Bali,” says chef Heinz von Holzen, waving an arm at the bustling market near Jimbaran Bay. The stalls are packed with women vendors in sarongs, tending piles of ginger, tiny shallots, garlic and other items. To get a real taste of Bali, von Holzen says, this is the place to start. Then you can delve deeper in a cooking class at von Holzen’s restaurant, Bumbu Bali (balifoods.com). In several hours you can learn about 20 exotic recipes, such as sate lilit (minced-fish-on-lemon-grass sate) or ayam pelalah (shredded chicken with chilies and lime).
AIRLINES
The New Security Tax
title: “Travel Briefs” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-13” author: “Katrina Galvez”
Tahiti had tens of thousands of cases last year, several people died on Fiji of the severest form of dengue and Hawaii had its first epidemic (more than 100 cases) in 50 years. Already this year there has been an outbreak on remote Easter Island. The Centers for Disease Control warns travelers to avoid getting bitten (gee, thanks) and to consult a doctor if necessary. The only treatment is bed rest, fluids and fever-reducing medication.
LAWYERS
Is the Pillow Mint Extra?
SHARKS
Bait and Switch?
There’s one problem. The Shark Shield relies on batteries. In experiments, sharks returned as soon as the signal was turned off. If your batteries go dead, you could, too.
