June 22nd, 2008
Hidden surcharges and fees are one of those things that I let get to me out of proportion to their actual import. I think it’s the generally dishonest nature of them. If you advertise a service at a price, you should deliver that service for that price. If you can’t, advertise at a price for which you *can* deliver that service. Not complicated.
Anyway, I was galled by one yesterday when I walked up to a counter in an airport and bought a ticket. The ticket was $XXX, along with a “$25 administrative service charge.” Wait. I just walked up to your desk in your airport, and you want me to pay another $25 for the privilege of buying a ticket from you? WTF?
Anyway, in the spirit of these things, here’s a very handy chart outlining the current US domestic airline fees.
(Link courtesy of the comments section of the always interesting Travelvice)
June 19th, 2008
Back online soon, I hope.
June 13th, 2008
David Byrne - Don’t Fence Me In
Johnny Cash - The Wall (live in Berlin, 1987)
M.I.A. - $20
With a bonus from Gogol Bordello, which I first discovered because some woman sitting in the same row as me on a CDG-JFK flight was wearing one of their t-shirts:
May 30th, 2008
The deadline for electronic filing of your claim in the credit card foreign transaction fee settlement is tonight (May 30th). More info about the settlement and your options here. The official site is here. I’m just posting this as a reminder to those of you that, like me, put this to the side with the intent to sort it out later. Well, later is just about too late. Have fun paging through your passports.
(No, I don’t know if you’re eligible, whether there are any extensions available, etc. Please don’t ask, because I don’t know. Really.)
May 13th, 2008
Just yesterday, I had recommended Jaipur as a “breath of fresh air” to a friend considering traveling there. Jaipur was, in fact, the highlight of a trip through India a couple of years ago. My impression of the place was one of refuge, of education, of being apart from it all. And then today I see that there was a multiple bombing of this city. This doesn’t change any of those impressions, but it does cast a sad pall over them.
April 24th, 2008
Here we are - the much anticipated team time trial (TTT) on the Road Atlanta racetrack. In the TTT, each team will start all of its riders together. The finish time of the team will be determined by the time the front wheel of the fourth rider crosses the finish line. Any riders finishing behind the fifth rider on that team will be awarded their actual time across the line.
Stage Four takes place entirely upon the 2.54 mile Road Atlanta track in Braselton, GA (about an hour northeast of Atlanta). The course will have twelve turns, ranging from hairpins to long sweepers. The start will be no fun for anyone, as it launches the riders straight into a not-insignificant hill. Here’s a map of the course, after the jump:
More
April 14th, 2008
Wreck of the Gamma. Just off George Town, Grand Cayman. Highly recommended. Higher res available here.
April 14th, 2008
Well, no, because it doesn’t exist. But if there were a hell, this one might go:
A Lonely Planet author says he plagiarized or made up portions of the popular travel guidebooks and dealt drugs to supplement poor pay, an Australian newspaper reported Sunday.
Thomas Kohnstamm, who has written a book on his misadventures, also said he didn’t travel to Colombia to write the guidebook on the country because “they didn’t pay me enough,” The Daily Telegraph reported.
“I wrote the book in San Francisco [California],” he is quoted as saying in the Telegraph. “I got the information from a chick I was dating — an intern in the Colombian Consulate.”
[ . . . ]
Kohnstamm has worked on more than a dozen books for Lonely Planet, including its titles on Brazil, Colombia, the Caribbean, Venezuela, Chile and South America.
[ . . . ]
Kohnstamm’s book, “Do Travel Writers Go to Hell?: A Swashbuckling Tale of High Adventures, Questionable Ethics and Professional Hedonism,” is set for release next week.
I’m a big fan of the LP series, but I’m not surprised by this - too many people putting together too much info for this not to happen. That said, they’ve never failed me in any substantial way - the closest was a completely wrong ferry schedule in Panama. And I should have checked with the ticket office, anyway.
Thanks to DT for sending this in.
(Huh. Interesting, the things you find when you search for your own entries. Here’s a story on the very same thing, using my LP bookshelf photo. And here’s someone who has decided to just cut and paste my entry on India into his or her blog.)
