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!"