I nearly died of exposure a week or so back. Well, okay, so I’m exaggerating somewhat. What happened was my car broke down and I had to park it perilously close to fast traffic zipping by. The car’s problem was a failed alternator, which resulted in a dead battery and subsequent engine failure, so I couldn’t even turn on the emergency hazard flashing lights to hopefully help make the car more obvious and to encourage [...]
Good morning It is a strange and semi-random process, deciding what to write about. I started off Thursday this week with some half written materials for publication today, and then during the morning, stumbled across a strange news item. At first it seemed worthy of a single short paragraph in today’s compilation of stories, but as I struggled to distill the nonsense implied in the story down to a single short paragraph, I realized that [...]
North Korea has been in the news quite a bit this year, first with the death of their leader and the succession of his son; and more recently, when our leader went to South Korea and up to the DMZ where he gazed across to North Korea. This quick view from afar was enough for Mr Obama to issue a ritual condemnation of North Korea as a backward country 40 years behind the times and [...]
After many decades where the US was almost the only country in the world not to have an international tourism promotion budget, the country finally last year got a new organization up and running, an organization billing itself as ‘a public private partnership with the mission of promoting increased international travel to the United States’ and calling itself ‘Brand USA’. Until then, international promotion of the US was done on a more or less uncoordinated [...]
Good morning Travel has understandably been on my mind this week. Our September North Korea tour had three more people join – at this rate it will soon be that one in every 50 foreigners visiting North Korea in 2012 will be Travel Insiders. Amazing. Shall we try to make it one in every 40? One in every 30? I’ve also written a new piece to add to the growing collection of material about travel [...]
Most of us, when planning our travels, instinctively limit our transportation selections to planes for long distance and cars for shorter distances or for traveling around the destination we reach. But there are other alternatives that – for some of us – might be of great appeal. Traveling on a motorcycle is an exciting and unique way to see the world. Who wants to be bogged down in a plane or car? With the wind [...]
Good morning It has been a very busy week this week, but have I now got a surprise for you in return! Last week I mentioned our planned tours this year; and at the time, I had in mind something that I wasn’t sure could be achieved, but which now seems to be possible. I suspect this is a tour which will either fill up in a flash, or be a total disaster with no-one [...]
Yes, you read the headline correctly. The Travel Insider is going to North Korea; and you’re invited to come along too! Fewer than 2,000 people are able to visit North Korea each year, so you’ll become one of an exclusive ultra-small community of people who have actually seen North Korea in person, rather than relying on the not always accurate news reports (usually narrated by people who have never visited North Korea, either). This tour, [...]
For most of us as ordinary travelers to Europe, the modern day EU offers us two very prominent and positive travel experiences. The first is the wonderful convenience of only needing one single currency as we travel around many different countries – the Euro is currently shared by 17 different ‘Eurozone’ member states. The enormous convenience of only needing to learn one exchange rate and only keep one set of notes and coins in one’s [...]
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