TRAVEL TIPS: Use the Web to save $$$, time

We all know that planning and paying for a trip can be
a real pain the keister.

But Jeremy Caplan of TIME magazine, in its May 1,
2006, edition offers some tips to make the process
easier and hopefully a little more affordable. If you
subscribe, check out page 69. For the rest of you,
here are the highlights:

Kayak.com
*a new way to search for bargain flights
*covers fares on about 300 airlines
*lets you adjust search parameters without having to
start from scratch
*also offers hotel and car-rental deals

Travel.yahoo.com/trip
*gives you a Web folder to store online research about
museums, restaurants, etc.
*after gathering Web pages about places you'd like to
visit, you can print your itinerary, save it or share
it online

Triphub.com
*useful for planning reunions or weekend getaways with
friends
*this site is described as "like a traveler's version
of Evite.com"
*you can book group tickets
*facilitates group discussions
*TIME warns, the site is only two months old, so it's
still working out the kinks

Bnm.com
*cheap rental cars

Biddingfortravel.com
*offers bidding help

Turnhere.com
*see free short videos of destinations around the
world

Tripstalker.com
*instead of checking on prices several times a day
until you find one that works for you, let this site
do the work for you
*the site will alert you by e-mail or text message
once a flight, hotel, or rental car matches your
criteria

WORLD VIEW: Iraq

*map image from http://geo.ya.com/travelimages/az-iraq-map.jpg; click on map for larger image

With the war in its third year, news from Iraq has become background noise for many - a half-listened to news broadcast, a lost cause? But for the people IN Iraq, every day is a thundering caucophany of news as their nation convulses right before their eyes, transforming - into what?

The Internet allows the sangha (a Buddhist term that means "community of all beings") to connect like never before. So, check out the heartbreakingly desperate posts on these blogs from inside Iraq.:

http://messopotamian.blogspot.com/
TO BRING ONE MORE IRAQI VOICE OF THE SILENT MAJORITY TO THE ATTENTION OF THE WORLD

http://healingiraq.blogspot.com/
Daily news and comments on the situation in post Saddam Iraq by an Iraqi dentist

http://hammorabi.blogspot.com/
Iraq - 'The Past, Present and Future of the Cradle of Civilization'!

WORLD VIEW: Shanghai

For some hilarious and fascinating morsels about daily life in Shanghai, check out the recent posts at:

http://www.banterist.com/

Here are some excerpts:

TOURS
Asian tour guides all use bullhorns to address their groups, turning any tourist spot into a cacophony of different dialects competing to tell you about the vase or tree you're looking at. A guide told me they don't use them for Western tourists because we're averse to having someone with a bullhorn talking to them from one foot away. Not so for the various Asian visitors who are perfectly content to have a 90 decibel lecture on the Qing dynasty delivered to their face. Even if the group numbers two, as I witnessed.

SPITTING
Phlegm here is the by-product of a serious pollution problem and a national love of smoking. Spitting it all over the place is the by-product of Mao's Cultural Revolution which embraced "peasant" behavior. The government is aware that hawking phlegm everywhere is freakish to Western tourists and is making an effort to stop it. In the meantime however, watch where you're walking - or turn it into a fun game.

LANGUAGE
The language is fairly impossible to speak, in part because of the tonal aspect. There are four tones: high, rising, falling-rising, falling. That means you'll enjoy many exchanges like "Shizou? Shizou? Shizou?" until they realize you meant "ShiZOU." Depending on how you use tones when saying "tang" you are either saying "soup", "sugar", "to lie down" or "boiling hot." So when you thought you were ordering Hot & Sour soup you were actually telling the waiter you were taking a nap.

GREEN TEA AND TAXIS
Most interesting among his factoids was that green tea improves vision and alertness. He told us taxi drivers here carry a thermos of it which is something I've seen myself. I have no doubt at all about the magical properties of green tea, because its ability to improve the vision and alertness of Shanghai's taxi drivers explains why everyone here isn't dead.

At the very least, to take a taxi in Shanghai is to put your fate in the hands of a man who does not speak your language and will not drop you off where you had intended. At the worst, it's Death Cab 2006. They put New York cabbies to shame.

SPIRIT: Laughter yoga

Smile. No, really - smile.

How do you feel?

In 1995, Dr. Madan Kataria, convinced by his research for a scholarly paper that laughter really IS the best medicine, formed a laughter club in a city park in Mumbai (formerly Bombay), India, to put the theory into practice. Eventually, he combined laughter with yoga, and now the practice has spread around the world. The club's Web site describes the practive this way: "Laughter Yoga is physically-oriented technique that uses a perfect blend of playful, empowering and otherwise "tension-releasing" simple laughter exercises, interspersed with gentle breathing and stretching exercises, rhythmic clapping and chanting of Ho Ho Ha Ha Ha in unison. This is done as a way to improve health, increase well-being, and promote peace in the world through personal transformation. In Laughter Yoga you use laughter as a tool, not an emotion."

OK, OK, it sounds a little silly, but give it a try. I promise you'll feel better afterward - even if it's only because you're laughing at yourself! See if there's a club near you:

http://www.laughteryoga.org/

Even, if you can't find a club to practice with, just remember what e.e. cummings said: "The most wasted of all days is one without laughter."

Here are a few more quotes to get you thinking about laughter:

"Laughter is an orgasm triggered by the intercourse of sense and nonsense." - Author Unknown

"I've always thought that a big laugh is a really loud noise from the soul saying, 'Ain't that the truth.' " - Quincy Jones

"When people are laughing, they're generally not killing each other." - Alan Alda

"You can't stay mad at somebody who makes you laugh. It's as simple as that." - Jay Leno

"He deserves Paradise who makes his companions laugh." - Koran

"The human race has one really effective weapon, and that is laughter." - Mark Twain

TELEVISION: 5 Takes: Pacific Rim

Have a thing for reality TV? Then have I got a show for you!

The Travel Channel has sent five travel journalists (they call them "TJs") to explore the Pacific Rim. Equipped with backpacks, cameras and $50 a day, they will visit 12 cities across Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Cambodia/Thailand in 12 weeks. Viewers decide where the TJs will go by posting suggestions and voting via the show's Web site:

http://travel.discovery.com/fansites/5takes/pacrim/main.html

The show is cool because it's good fun to watch their travels and interact with them online, but also because you can find a lot of good travel tips on the forums.

VOCABULARY
Vegemite: The TJs report that the famed Aussie spread is made from byproducts of the beer-making process. They compared it to Nutella and said it smells like cinammon and butter. Eating it induced much laughter and nose-scrunching among the TJs, along with this culinary analysis: "It tastes like the combination of fish scales and earwax ... it's deceiving because it smells like cinammon and buter and tastes like some kind of combination of fish scales and ear wax!"

GUEST TRAVELER: Istanbul, Turkey

My friend and fellow hasher Heavy Load, aka "Jon," put together a blog after his recent trip to Istanbul. Have a look!:

http://futurebehind.blogspot.com/

Here's just a little taste from his entry titled "Listen to the sun rise":

Robert asked us how much longer we were going to be in Istanbul, and we told him we were leaving the next day, and he said it was a shame we wouldn't be able to see more. He asked what we'd liked about Istanbul, and I told him I liked all the mosques (they are all over, and Istanbul is a hilly city, so you frequently get good views of the city, and can see just how many beautiful mosques there are). He said, "Istanbul is a city where you can hear the sun rise." That got everyone's attention, and he explained that in the morning, the muslim call to prayer comes with the sunrise. So, the prayer-caller guy at the most eastern mosque will see the sun-rise first, and will start his call to prayer. And this continues from east to west across the city, and he said you can hear it progress across the city. Vincent argued with him and said you weren't really hearing the sun rise, but I thought it was a cool way to say something.