My wife and I are avid viewers of the Travel Channel. While we generally prefer No Reservations or Bizarre Foods, we’ve spent many an hour snarking on Samantha Brown’s ditziness while we watching her travels in Europe, Latin America, and the United States. Lately, we’ve been watching her ditz it up around Asia, though I’d say that this series is a bit better than her Great Weekends series, which pretty much consisted of her going shopping and getting boozed up. However, her pathetic showing in the last couple episodes — Cambodia and Vietnam — has really incurred my wrath.

Her travel sins:

• Everywhere she goes, she makes a big fuss about finding authentic culture. Ironically, you see English signs and a number of fluent English speakers at most of the places she visits — a dead giveaway that she’s in touristy locales. I’m fine with touristy. Heck, I do my share of touristy things when we travel, but I don’t fool myself into thinking I’m blending in with the locals. Does Samantha think that the typical family in a Vietnamese village would be fluent in English?
• In a segment about food in Cambodia, she starts off raving about the variety of food available, and then ends up going to one of the most upscale restaurants in the country, a complete departure from the street-food scenes she had just shown. Ok, that’s alright, but what happened next sent me over the edge. The chef prepares for her a giant prawn from the Mekong River and tells her, correctly, that the best part was the brain of the prawn (the yellow head fat you see in shrimp heads). She immediately winces. When they sit down to lunch, Samantha oh-so-predictably tells the chef, “I think I’ll let you have the brain.” First of all, it’s not like eating shrimp heads is that exotic a practice, even in America. Any foodie worth their salt knows that it is indeed the best part on a shrimp. Secondly, you’re traveling, Samantha. Where is your sense of adventure? Stop being a wuss, listen to the chef, and eat the damn brain!
• Speaking of being a wuss, there’s her street-market scene in Vietnam. So she goes to a street market and raves about what a great experience it is to walk through it. Then she says she has to blur her vision a bit whenever she walks past a meat stand so as to avoid seeing things she doesn’t want to see. Ok, yes, there can be some things in an Asian street market that might be shocking to Westerners. But then she points to one stand and says, “See what I mean?” They cut to that stand and the sight that so horrified her was … a couple of plucked chickens. Really? Chickens? Out of all the potentially disturbing sights she might see in an Asian meat market? Why yes, Samantha, chickens have heads and feet. This is what real chicken looks like, not those precut, shrink-wrapped slices of breasts in your American grocery stores or the thin slices of meat in your deli.
• In the final segment of the Cambodia episode, she visits a nature preserve (again replete with English-speaking guides and English signs, of course). First, she idiotically asks the guide, “So are there animals out here to see?” And then she freaks out when the guide tells her that there are, among other animals, king cobras. She acts like a total pansy about having to tread through a couple feet of muddy water to reach the bank of the river, which was only about 10 yards away. Then, while trekking down a path through the forest, she again freaks out when they come across a giant spider, even though she’s standing a good 10-20 feet away from it.

To top it all off, her jungle trek ends on a secluded beach where she said she was going to spend the night. So you’re thinking a rustic woman-with-nature scene with campfire and sleeping bags. Then you remember this is Samantha we’re talking about. She’s staying in a tent, but it’s a tent whose interior is straight out of a hotel room, replete with a Western-style toilet (the one thing that seems to put her most at ease). To top it off, there’s someone there to pour her drinks, cook her a meal, and make a fire on the beach so she can lounge on a chair, sip booze, and admire the view. You’re really roughing it there.

Just when you think it can’t get any worse, she writes on her blog:

I should mention in the interest of full disclosure that I did not spend the night in the tent on the beach. As awesome as it was after seeing that spider and then being told by the guide that a jaguar or some large Travel Channel-host-eating cat was walking the beach the other day I thought best that I just go back to the hotel. I know my limits.

Just unbelievable. Not only does she pick about the most touristy thing she can do — stay in novelty lodging accommodations on a secluded beach with someone to cater to her every need — she is too wussy to actually stay there. Her unadventurous nature is kind of the antithesis of what a traveler should be. If she comes across a local food stall selling delicious but slightly “non-American” looking food next to a Seven Eleven, she’d probably go into the latter and get a gas-station hotdog instead of trying the local food. She’s acting like the worst kind of travelers — the ones who want to just go out in the morning to see the sights in a foreign country, eat a club sandwich in some faux Western cafe, and then come home to America at night. I’m not asking for her to get totally immersed in the local culture or start doing her own Bizarre Foods show (though that’d be something to watch), but if you are all about finding “authentic” local culture, you can start by sucking down the head fat from that prawn like the locals do (except I wonder how many locals can afford to go that restaurant).

Side note: On the plus side, her ditziness is helping pump more money into the local economies of these countries. I loved that in the final scene of the Vietnam episode, she gets suckered into buying a whole crate of birds to release at the Buddhist pagoda (tourist fleecing, anyone?), and that just as she was getting all spiritual before releasing the birds, the monk walks away to answer a cellphone call and then comes back smirking at the camera. Very Zen.

Side note No. 2: Travel Channel, please send her to sub-Sahara Africa for her next series. Please please please??

During the group tour portion of our trip to China in 2008-09, we were frequently trucked to touristy souvenir shops, where the tour would stop for 30-45 minutes while salespeople tried to fleece us. This was part of the package because the cost of the tour was kept low to encourage more tourism, and these “partnerships” with stores are the only way the travel companies can recoup their money. So we stopped at porcelain factories, traditional pharmacies, tea shops, jade factories, etc. Most of the time, we didn’t have much problem. We were traveling with a group of close to 20 people, and at least a handful of us usually ended up buying something at one of these stops. When we were visiting Wuxi, however, it was just the four of us, and the pressure-sale tactics at the pearl refinery there did get kind of annoying.

However, nothing we experienced in mainland China or Hong Kong can compare to this: A Hong Kong tour guide berated her group of tourists from mainland China on the bus for not buying enough swag at one of these tourist traps. Someone on the bus recorded the tirade, though it was just all shots of the back of the seat. As for what she’s saying, if you don’t speak mandarin, the video doesn’t tell you much except for the tone of her voice, which ricochets between angry and passive-aggressive. I’ve included a translated excerpt from a BBC story.

The female tour guide shouted that there is no free lunch in the world, meaning that the 1,000-plus yuan each visitor paid for the tour doesn’t even cover airline tickets, much less lodging and meals in Hong Kong.

She fussed at the tourists, saying, “I provide food and lodging for you, yet you won’t contribute. If you don’t pay me back in this life, you’ll still have to pay me back in your next life.”

The female guide even made a threat: When they stop for 1.5 hours at the watch shop, if the tourists don’t buy more stuff, they won’t get food or a hotel to stay in.

She also ridiculed the tourists, saying: “It’s fine if you are poor at home, but don’t act like this when you’re out.”

Some other tidbits I picked up from the video:

You’re the ones who owe me! I don’t owe you anything!

Next we’re going to a watch store. Anybody got any objections?! … This stop isn’t just for window-shopping; you need to buy something. Don’t just go in and walk around. Just now, you left the store before the allotted time was up. The other group spent 100,000-some yuan and was still in there. We only spent about 10,000 and yet we came out before time was up.

Wow! Just … wow!

I haven’t posted anything to the blog since we got back from Atlanta, and part of the reason is that I’m still wading my way through the approximately 800 photos I took on the trip (plus another memory card from Courtney), toning them, and uploading them to Flickr. I was kind of concerned about running out of memory cards when I ran through an 8 GB card (which holds about 370 photos) before the end of our first day in Atlanta. Fortunately, my pace slowed somewhat the following two days. Still, after spending a couple hours on this every night for the past week, I’m only about halfway through my photos.

I did, however, find enough time to throw together an “If You Go …” guide for Atlanta for those who might be interested in visiting the city, with pointers on lodging, attractions, dining, and transportation. Also check out Courtney’s post on our food blog about our dining experience in Atlanta, which was, for the most part, fabulous.

Here’s a slideshow of our photos, which is sure to get longer and longer in the coming week(s). Maybe I’ll actually get done sometime in mid-July.

The 1996 Olympic Games exhibit at the Atlanta History Center.

We kicked off our final full day in Atlanta with a visit to the Atlanta History Center, which was only a few minutes away from where we are staying. The center has several parts — a history museum, an old farm house from the 1800s, and a stately mansion built in the 1920s — all surrounded by lush gardens and woods.

The history museum housed several exhibition halls focusing on, among other things, the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, the Civil War, and Native American influence on Georgian culture. The most interesting one was the Olympics collection, which spanned two floors. The first floor featured exhibits on topics such as the construction of Atlanta’s Olympic facilities, replicas of torches and medals from every Olympic Games, and a day-by-day look at the 1996 Games. The second floor featured a variety of hands-on activities, such as exercise bikes and rowing machines on which you can try to match Olympian performances. We also found the pottery exhibit in the Native American collection quite interesting, especially a video that demonstrated how a couple of good ol’ boys are carrying on a unique tradition of pottery-making that involves using mules to turn a wheel to mix the clay and making glaze with a glaze mill.

The two preserved houses were also pretty interesting, though old preserved houses kind of all run together once you’ve seen a few of them. The farm house was relatively simple, and its furnishings bore a strong resemblance to furnitures we’ve seen in other old houses from that era, such as rope beds. The Swan House mansion was beautiful (unfortunately we were not allowed to take pictures inside the house), and again, some of it architectural styles and interior furnishing reminded me of other mansions that we’ve visited.

The Swan House fountain at the Atlanta History Center.

In between and after our history lesson, we treated ourselves to fine patio dining all around the neighborhood of Buckhead. It started with lunch at Anis, a French bistro where we had wild mushroom ravioli and steak frites. The ravioli were delicious but a little on the skimpy side (only four), and the steak frites were excellent. The patio theme continued at dinner when we hit up Eclipse di Luna for some tapas action. We ordered seven items and loved almost every one of them, in particular the goat cheese-stuffed peppers and braised pork bellies.

The patio area at Anis, where we had lunch.

Finally, we concluded the night at Cafe Intermezzo, which is a whole story unto itself. We had actually gone searching for Cafe Intermezzo the previous night after finding it on Yelp. We were in the mood for some sweets and this place had good reviews and some appealing choices on its menu. Yet, even with the help of Google Maps and GPS, we couldn’t find it. The place where it was supposed to be, according to Google Maps, was a strip mall and the cafe was nowhere in sight. We circled those couple blocks but found nothing. We weren’t about to give up, however, and we went back to the area again today after our visit to the history center. Yet again our search was in vain. Finally, we asked our hosts about the place, and with the directions they provided, we finally located Cafe Intermezzo after dinner tonight — several blocks down from where it was located on Google Maps.

Finding the place, however, was just the first part of the adventure. We circled the place twice in search of parking. It wasn’t that we were too cheap to pay for parking, but rather that we didn’t have cash with us to pay the $3 parking fee for the lots around the cafe, which did not accept credit cards. Eventually, we backtracked a mile to find an ATM and got cash to pay for parking. After all this trouble, we were thinking that this place had better be worth the trouble.

Fortunately, Cafe Intermezzo did not disappoint. We were seated — where else? — on a large patio that was dimly illuminated by candlelight, with cool breeze being provided by the surprisingly mild night and the numerous fans humming away on the ceiling. The drink menu was impressively thick, and the cafe also had quite a selection of pastries. Customers were invited to go inspect the sweet offerings in the display cases and make their choices. We went with a slice of cookie dough cheesecake and a crepe Suzette. Both were delectable, though the combination of the warm sweetness of the crepe and the cool sweetness of the cheesecake proved overwhelming. We needed a pot of green tea to help us offset the sugar overload and finish the desserts. We left the cafe with our sweet tooth thoroughly satisfied and our bellies bloated with cheesecake, crepe, alcohol, and tea. After this, I don’t think I’ll be craving sweets for at least two weeks.

That was the case for me today when we visited Zoo Atlanta. While standing outside the reptile house, we heard a loud bellowing from the stick-pole-fence exhibit to our right. I looked over and saw that it was an enclosure for giant tortoises, and I immediately knew what was about to happen:

I was no stranger to this scene, however. A few years ago, while in Washington DC, I witnessed a similar ritual at the National Zoo. Just like then, it was funny to watch people’s reactions, especially those with kids who aren’t quite old enough to know about the birds and the bees and the tortoises. A young woman with little kids thought at first that the male tortoise was bellowing because it was stuck. Upon a second look, though, she quickly deduced, “Oh, he’s not stuck.” An older lady in her party, perhaps her mother, still was a bit confused, but instead of explaining what is going on, the young woman just repeated, “He’s not stuck,” until the older lady made the connection and immediately told the kids, “Alright, into the reptile house. Let’s go,” and rushed them away.

With such frisky business going on at the zoo, it was no surprise that we saw a number of baby animals today: warthogs, monkeys, golden lion tamarins, orangutans. We also found out from a zoo keeper at the giant panda exhibit that the female panda, Lun Lun, is pregnant, something they only discovered a couple days ago. The zook keeper, however, cautioned that it’s too early to celebrate, as miscarriages are common in pandas.

The abundance of cute baby critters was only part of what turned out to be a great day at the zoo. For the second day in a row, we were blessed with mild, overcast weather, which not only made it more comfortable to walk around but also induced the animals to be more … lively (especially the tortoises, apparently). We also didn’t run into much of a crowd, which was a bit of surprise considering that the Fourth of July weekend is upon us. We happily accepted our good fortune and enjoyed what was by far the least-crowded giant panda exhibit we’ve ever seen.

The zoo was pretty well designed in terms of giving visitors a good view of the animals despite some sizable exhibits. Every large exhibit had multiple viewing areas, allowing you to see the animals no matter what corner they may be hiding in. The lemur house, for instance, had pedestrian walkways up in the canopy, where the primates lounged. At another exhibit, we were at eye level with an adorable red panda that was snoozing in the trees. She was lying on a branch only about 15 feet away from us, making us wonder how she hasn’t leaped from the branches and escaped.

We were particularly impressed with the number of great apes at the zoo. There was a big pack of gorillas in an expansive exhibit, and a good number of orangutans in another sizable enclosure that could be called their Club Med without much exaggeration. It had multiple “huts”, playing areas, hammocks, and even giant fans blowing cool mist in the direction of the apes. In this idyllic environment, the orangutans apparently are free to let their inhibitions fall by the wayside and let it all hang out:

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Courtney trying to fend off an offering of corporate brainwashing at the World of Coca-Cola.

Just for the heck of it, we decided to visit Atlanta around the Fourth of July. I had been there a couple times before, but those trips were more than a decade ago and well before some of the city’s newer attractions were built.

Because we were disembarking after work, we broke the six-hour trip up into two days, overnighting in Anderson, S.C. (whose sole purpose seems to be serving as a home base for people attending Clemson football games), so that we only had to drive two hours to reach Atlanta this morning, giving us ample time to see some of the sights. We spent the bulk of the day in downtown Atlanta, visiting the Georgia Aquarium and the World of Coca-Cola. Here are some of the highlights and lowlights of the day.

The Good

• The enormous shark tank at the Georgia Aquarium: If you’ve followed our travel blog posts, you probably know that we’re suckers for zoos and aquariums, and we’ve seen our share of shark tanks. However, I don’t think any of the ones we’ve seen can compare to the one at the Georgia Aquarium in terms of size, both of the tank and of the residents within. That tends to happen when you have three whale sharks gliding through the water in your tank. These animals were truly magnificent, and they weren’t the only giants in the tank. There were huge manta rays and quite a few giant groupers that made us salivate.
• Beluga whales: These guys were the other top attraction at the aquarium. They were extremely playful and flexible, effortlessly twisting through the waters and casting beautiful reflections when they approached the surface of the water.
• Sunfill: If you haven’t heard of it, this is a soda made by Coca-Cola and sold in the African nation of Djibouti. It was our clear favorite from the tasting room at the World of Coca-Cola. It was very minty (think mint Sweet Leaf iced tea, but mintier) and did not have much carbonation.
• Monks: When we were visiting the World of Coca-Cola, we noticed several Buddhist monks in our group, clad in their orange robes. They soon became an attraction in themselves as other tourists quickly took notice as well. The monks rolled with it, too, posing for pictures with a couple people. And there’s something hilarious about seeing a monk wearing 3D glasses.
• Meehan’s Public House: After a long day with relatively little food, we were walking around downtown Atlanta in search of a place for dinner when we saw the sign outside this Irish pub advertising lobster ravioli, which is one of our favorite dishes. Courtney ordered that daily special while I got the beef short rib, and both were delicious. The beef was extremely tender and juicy, with a nice layer of fat in between the meat, and it came with a sweet blackberry demi that made for an excellent sauce. The prices were quite reasonable, too, considering the location (we ordered the two most expensive items on the menu and the bill came out to be $33).
• VRBO and our lodging: Instead of a hotel, we opted to stay at a vacation rental that we found on Vacation Rentals By Owner. It’s the first time we had gone that route, and so far, we’ve been thrilled with our choice. We are staying in a carriage house in the neighborhood of Buckhead. We had originally booked a studio at the house, but a couple days before the trip, the owners informed us that after some shuffling, they had upgraded us to a one-bedroom apartment that they had finished building on the lower level of the house. We were totally knocked out by the apartment when we walked in: dark wood flooring, granite countertops, marble bathroom, and tasteful and somewhat eccentric decor. In addition, our hosts are super friendly. Oh yeah, did I mention that this place cost us significantly less than a hotel room? I think we’re going to go the vacation rental route instead of hotels as much as possible in the future.

The Bad

• Atlanta traffic: Our drive was smooth the whole way, but the traffic entering Atlanta was surprisingly congested considering it was 11 a.m. on a weekday. Thank goodness for the MARTA, which spared us from having to drive into downtown.
• The ticket line at the aquarium: Remember this tip: Buy your tickets in advance online before you visit the aquarium. One look at that meandering mass of humanity at the ticketing queue and you’ll be very glad you did. We bought a combo pass for the aquarium and the World of Coca-Cola in advance and were able to walk right past that long line of people waiting to buy tickets and head almost immediately into the aquarium.
• The other lines in the aquarium: We might’ve dodged the line outside the aquarium, but there was no escaping the lines inside. Every exhibit had a mini-queue of people in front of it. Imagine if we had gone closer Friday or Saturday, with the holiday crowd out in force.
• Corporate propaganda overload: From having gone to the old World of Coca-Cola, I knew that the new one would be one big commercial for Coke, but it proved even worse than I thought. The tour started with an impossibly cheery staffer pointing out various pieces of paraphernalia and telling the crowd to ooh and aah at certain items (I think she secretly hates her job, because it’s impossible to get this enthusiastic over soda). That intro was followed by a short “documentary” — a 3D animation flick showing various strange alien-looking creatures making a bottle of Coke in the most wasteful, least efficient, and probably least green way possible, and then talking about how much they love Coke. Then the staffer was back for a few more lines of corporate brainwashing. “We’re all from different places around the world, but we all have one thing in common? What is it? We all love Coca-Cola!”
• The 4D experience at Coke World: As if the constant barrage of “Coke is great. We love Coke” programming wasn’t enough, we were treated to a “4D” movie in which a scientist and his assistant travels all over the world to study what makes Coke great (and incidentally, show off the company’s massive distribution network). Aside from the over-the-top acting by a couple actors who will probably be forever haunted by this screen credit, the segment also featured some not so gentle rocking of seats to “enhance” the experience. I was expecting the rocking and I’m not stranger to thrill rides, but this ride was rough. I was feeling an ache in my head and neck by the end. Oh, and they also squirted water on us several times to coincide with scenes in the movie where there was a splash. It was only a few drops each time, but I didn’t appreciate not being told that we would get wet, as I would’ve put my camera back in its bag if I had known.

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For part of our trip to England later this year, we are planning to rent a car and drive around the Cotswolds. Car rental in England is expensive enough as it is, especially considering the high cost of gas, but the collision damage waiver from the rental companies is a notorious rip-off. I do, however, want some insurance just for peace of mind since we’ll be driving in a foreign country, not to mention on the opposite side of the road. So I’ve been looking into other sources of insurance, including my credit card companies. The issue of car rental insurance has never come up for me before, so I’m a newbie to the ins and outs of who offers what and under what terms.

Finding information about the credit card companies’ car rental insurance policies, however, was no easy feat. For instance, I went to the Web site for my Mastercard’s issuing bank, and car rental insurance wasn’t even listed under the benefits.  I then looked up the MasterCard Web site, and it mentioned that some types of cards offer car rental insurance, but that you should contact your issuing bank for details. There were no details about the policy in the benefits guide, just this one-sentence description:

Car Rental Collision Damage Waiver Insurance
Pays for covered damages (physical damage and theft) to a rental vehicle when your eligible MasterCard card is used to initiate and pay for the entire rental transaction.

So I called up the issuing bank and talked to a customer rep, who informed me that my card indeed does offer some sort of car rental insurance. She quickly read the description of the policy off the screen to me over the phone, which of course is no help at all when you want to comb through the fine print to see if a policy actually offers you enough protection. So I asked her if I can find this policy online or have the details e-mailed to me (I am, after all, a cardholder and the bank already has my e-mail address). After a slight hesitation, she told me no. She did, however, give me yet another phone number to call for more information about the card’s benefits.

At this point, the search seemed to be turning into a wild goose chase. I called that number and was greeted with an automated answering system reading off the exact same policy to me that the customer rep did. Fortunately, at the end of the message, it actually gave me a Web address to go for more information. It wasn’t anything obvious, and it wasn’t something I could find just by clicking around or doing searches on the MasterCard Web site. Heck, I don’t even remember the URL now, but fortunately I viewed the PDF of the policy with my Google Docs viewer, so Google Docs saved a copy. It turns out I had already automatically qualified for the coverage when I reserved the car with that credit card, but of course, finding out that I had coverage — and what kind of coverage it is — was much more difficult than it should’ve been. With the hoops I had to jump through to find that policy, I can’t help but get the impression that the credit card company really, really doesn’t want me to use the CDW coverage, or even know about it.

That brings up one of my annoyances — the opaque nature of useful, empowering information online in a day and age where such things should be required to be easily accessible. Sure, the credit card company can say that its policy is online, but when its Web site gives me no hint of where that policy is, and even the people working at one of its issuing banks can’t tell me where to go for the file, what good does it do me? We  see this over and over — crucial information that technically is out there and available to the public, but in practice is obscured behind layers of bad information architecture (sometimes intentionally so). Forget greater government transparency through putting more documents online, let’s start with something as simple as a pamphlet telling me about the goods and services I already own.

We arrived at the zoo around mid-afternoon so as to take in some regular sightseeing before the night event. We were eager to see the latest addition to the zoo — two species of lemurs, ring-tailed and red-ruffed. The ring-tailed lemurs did not disappoint, as they were just lounging inside a log most of the time (but the log was half open, so we got to see them clearly). The red-ruffed lemurs, however, were more elusive, hiding behind a rock formation for most of the time. We couldn’t see them at all when we first got to the exhibit. Later, with closing time drawing near, we swung by Lemur Island again. This time, the red-ruffed lemurs obliged us as they leaped out from their hiding place and climbed up a tall tree.

Aside from the lemurs, we also took in other parts of the zoo’s African exhibits. We discovered a nice little gazebo at one end of the trail that goes by the elephant exhibit. Because it sat at the opposite end of the elephants, there wasn’t much traffic there. We found three species of antelopes grazing and resting in the shade. They probably haven’t seen a whole lot of visitors up close, as they seemed a tad startled when we first walked up to the gazebo. However, they soon determined that we’re no threat and went back to their business.

We had about three hours to kill between when the zoo closed and when the Starlight Safari started. We went out for a quick bite, and then whiled away the rest of the time at a local mall, where we found a pet store with two tiny, adorable black kittens who were fast asleep. If we hadn’t already reached the maximum number of  cats our house can hold (three, all black, by the way), we would’ve probably taken them home.

Upon returning to the zoo around 8:30 p.m., the sky had dimmed, and the zoo staff had put out luminaries on the trail leading to the lions exhibit. The festivities started with the lion keepers tossing a few papier-mâché balls into the exhibit, which the lions quickly pounced on and ripped open to get at the treats inside. Next, a few cardboard boxes went into the exhibit. The male lion showed some interest in them, but the female really did a number on the boxes, shredding them in a matter of minutes.

By this time, the sky had gotten so dark that it was getting difficult to see the lions without the keepers shining a flashlight on them. I had my camera with me and snapped almost a hundred shots during the event, but with almost no light and with flash photography prohibited, most of them did not come out. Of course, we were standing next to the zoo’s officially sanctioned photographer for the event, and he was setting off his flash every 30 seconds or so throughout the one-hour event, so obviously the flash can’t really bother the lions too much. Nearing the end of the event, with the zoo photographer flashing away, I said the heck with it and turned on my flash for my final four or five shots, coming out with slightly better results. The event wasn’t exactly lions and Christians in the coliseum, but still interesting nonetheless (it was amazing how much the lions acted like our cats), and the money for the tickets went to a project to rescue chimpanzees.

A short video of the lions:

More pictures:

From a distance, the new museum looks more like a storage warehouse than a palace of art. The outside looks like white, prefabricated metal sheets. Upon closer inspection, however, the walls turn out to be glass. Whereas the old museum looked like a pretty normal building that happened to house art, the new building is an ultra-modern construction with artistry infused into every nook and cranny, from the oval skylights to the oval urinals. The glass exterior and the white interior make the building feel airy, open, and light. As soon as we entered, my attention was drawn to two lit-up giant figures sitting on the walls:

The building may be new, but many of the pieces on display were  familiar. There were a couple interesting pieces that I don’t remember having seen before. One was a collection of a myriad of small stone faces, each distinct:

The other was an inverted Mona Lisa made of spindles of sewing threads. There’s a lens in front of the inverted mosaic that flips the image into a correctly oriented replica of the painting:

More photos from the museum:

In the wake of Spirit Airlines announcing that it will start charging $45 for carry-on bags that don’t fit under seats, five airlines have pledged that they will not follow suit. While this is sort of good news for travelers, it also underscores our desperate need for more transportation options so that there would be real competitors to keep consumers from being at the mercy of the airlines’ whim and greed.

Right now, if you need to travel relatively expediently between two places within the United States that are more than a couple hundred miles apart, airplanes are really your only option. A couple weeks ago, just on a lark, I looked up rail service between Durham and Providence, R.I. We make at least one trip to New England every year to see my in-laws, and we always fly into Providence. We would probably make that trip more often if not for the rising airfare (our last trip was about $400 for two tickets on Southwest around Christmas time, and we booked those well in advance), so I would be open to a different mode of transportation that costs less, even if it takes a few extra hours (flying usually takes about three to five hours including stopovers).

An Amtrak itinerary for the Durham-to-Providence trip

What I found was pretty disappointing. Two tickets on Amtrak from Durham to Providence cost about $200 to $260, which is $100-$200 less than flying. However, the travel time was simply unacceptable. The trip would have spanned two days! We would have to leave in the morning, and it would take more than six hours just to get from Durham to Washington, DC, where we would have to wait until 10 p.m. to catch the connection to Providence, which would not arrive until 7 a.m. the next day. While I’m willing to spend, say, up to eight hours making that 600-some-mile journey, I’m certainly not willing to turn this into an overnight trip, and I doubt many travelers would. Instead of taking the train, I might as well just make the 12-hour drive, save myself a few hundred bucks, and get there a lot sooner. Heck, I can even use some of that money for a hotel room en route and spend the night in a more comfortable place than a train cabin.

Compare that to China, which is busily putting together a high-speed rail network that will eventually run from Beijing in the north to my hometown of Guangzhou on the southeast tip. The section from Wuhan to Guangzhou opened last December and it takes only three hours to make that 600-mile trek. Fares for the high-speed rail are about $70 for second class and $110 for first class (and if the conditions of the cabins are anything like other trains in China, you want to be in first class if you can afford it). That’s pretty comparable to flying, where a plane ticket from Wuhan to Guangzhou costs anywhere from $80 to $160 for economy class. While the travel time by train is doubled (90 minutes flying vs. three hours by train), you’re still talking about just a three-hour trip. Now THAT is a truly viable alternative to flying and real competition for airline companies. Granted, that’s a line between two major cities, so it’s more like Atlanta-to-DC than Durham-to-Providence. Nonetheless, if it only takes three hours (instead of 24) to travel 600 miles, that’s going to make people more willing to drive an hour or two from wherever they live to a bigger city that would be on the high-speed line. If the U.S. can build a competitive high-speed rail network spanning the continent, I think a lot of travelers would flock to it, leaving air travel for mostly oversea or coast-to-coast trips. If nothing else, it would make the airlines have to compete and refrain from constantly screwing their customers by finding new, ridiculous things to charge for.

Though we only stayed a couple hours, we had enough time to sample some Turkish food and drink, take some pictures, and enjoy the stage performance, which featured some nice dancing and drumming, accented by vividly colorful costumes.

We started today at an old favorite — the Cotton Exchange in Wilmington, where Courtney went to the bead shop to load up on her beading supplies while I checked out the pottery store and then walked along the waterfront to take some pictures. After lunch, we were on our way to the North Carolina Aquarium at Fort Fisher when we drove past what seemed like a small lake on the side of the road where people were paddling boats around. On a whim, we decided to scrap the trip to the aquarium — which we’ve been to several times before anyway — and take a boat out on the lake.

Moments after we parked and started walking along the lake shore toward the boat rental shack, we noticed a couple people stopping on the side of the trail and snapping pictures. As we got closer, we saw the source of the excitement — an alligator lurking in the algae and pollen-covered waters just off the shore. As few more steps up the path, and we spotted another gator swimming into the shallows. When we got to the boat shack, there was a long line waiting for available boats, so we decided to walk around the lake instead, which was just as well, since I wasn’t too excited at the idea of getting into the water with the alligators swimming around.

The day was sunny and breezy, and the lake offered up plenty of interesting sights — ducks, geese, and several other types of waterfowls gathered in flocks close to shore, while turtles congregated in large colonies here and there, basking in the sun and feeding on bread crumbs from passing visitors. At one spot on the trail, we came across a couple of tiny, newly hatched turtles trying to make their way across the trail and to the lake. In a gazebo standing over shallow water, we heard a raucous chorus of frogs and spotted many of them lounging amid the plants and algae nearby, including a couple that was in the act of ensuring the continuing survival of the species. The frogs, in fact, weren’t the only frisky creatures on the lake, as we caught a couple of large waterfowls in the act as well.

After the first quarter of the trail, the path veered off from the lake shore, and we found ourselves walking through some relatively quiet neighborhoods lined with cypress and magnolia trees. The trail just seemed to keep going and going, and the lake turned out to be deceptively large, as it took us more than two hours to walk around it. By the time we got back to the car, we were quite ready to be off our feet.

Some pictures:

It was worse even than Beijing. The air in Guangzhou is brown. No, not brown. Yellow. No, not yellow. The air in Guangzhou is sick. It is unwell.

The otters didn’t spend a whole lot of time in the water, but did a lot of posing for the camera on land. We also came across a chimp who just camped out right in front of the glass for a long time, giving us the chance to wait for the crowd to move on and then get in up close for a few nice shots. We even got some decent shots of the cacomistle and the coati, nocturnal creatures who usually stay concealed on the high perches in their dark exhibits but were down on the ground and very active on this day. At our last exhibit of the day — the lions — the male lion was just flopping on the ground when we got there, but as I was snapping a couple pictures, he perked up. At that same moment, the sun pierced through the clouds and cast a golden glow on his mane, making for a pretty nice image.

We love to travel, and for us, planning the trip is half the fun. Here are some of my favorite tools for planning a trip, as well as some approaches that help me make the planning easier and keep things organized.

On the last day of our Christmas stay in New England, we braved the damp weather and hopped on the subway into Boston to visit the Museum of Science. Since it was just a couple days after Christmas, the place was packed. There were munchkins running around everywhere you turned, followed by their parents trying to keep up. One of the reasons we went was because Courtney wanted to see the special Harry Potter props and costumes exhibit. There were so many people there that, by the time we got to the museum just after noon, the earliest available admittance to that exhibit was 5:25 p.m. Having so much time to kill before then, we went for some lunch at a nearby mall — and got caught in the rain en route — before heading back to see the other parts of the museum.

As an amateur photographer, I was quickly drawn to the view through the wall of glass in the back of the lobby. Since the museum actually sits elevated on top of the Charles River, the giant window offers a magnificent view of the river — which was partially frozen at the time — and part of the Boston skyline in the distance, set against a cloudy sky tinted crimson by the setting sun. As if this didn’t already strike you as a picture-worthy view, the edges of the window panes even frame the scene nicely for you. If you visit the museum, be sure to turn away from the exhibits for a while and take in this beautiful view.

The museum has a large collection of exhibits on a wide range of sciences. Its main intended audience is obviously kids, as one can tell from the exhibits and shows, but there are some interesting stuff here for adults as well. We watched one of the shows — a 15-minute live presentation about electricity. The presenter talked for a while and gave some interesting facts about electricity, but as she herself admitted aloud, the audience didn’t come to listen to her talk; they came to watch lightning bolts. The show didn’t disappoint on that account, as the giant Van de Graaff generator were powered up and let loose one lightning bolt after another, complemented by small tesla coils on both sides of the stage. A clip of the show:

See my YouTube channel for more clips from the Museum of Science.

Another highlight of the day was the tamarins exhibit. The museum has three cotton-topped tamarins on display, and we spent half an hour in front of their Plexiglass enclosure oohing and aahing with the other visitors at how cute these critters were. I spent much of the time trying to get a good shot of them, no easy task since they were constantly on the move, jumping from one branch to another. Interesting piece of insignificance: The tree in the exhibit is fake, but the branches are real.

A few other exhibits that piqued my interest:

• The exhibit about the evolution of computing. You know how you always joke about how a … umm … classic computer model should be a museum piece? Well, here, they actually are. Right there in the glass case was an Apple II, complete with the giant disk drive and the monitor display that’s basically a black-and-white TV set. There was also a modem unit from the 1970s where you had to literally dial another computer with a rotary phone, listen for the connection tone, and then hang up the handset. I wonder if we’ll be seeing an iMac or a Dell in that exhibit in 30 years.
• There was a small display about things that people collect, and right in the middle of it was a set of PEZ dispensers in the likenesses of the characters from the original Star Trek series. The funny thing is that it’s not like those are hard to find. In fact, we found a bunch of these sets on sale for $20 at World Market earlier this year.
• Ever wonder what a deer smells like? How about black bears? Or a moose? You can find out at the animal panoramas at the museum, where each display comes with a “smell” button. Push it and sniff, and you’ll catch a whiff of that animal’s scent. Basically every scent had a woodsy hint to it, and I suspect they probably toned down the animals’ actual scent so as not to stink up the area. Alas, there was no skunk exhibit.

As much as I love science, I must admit: There was definitely an air of nerdiness in the museum, not in a bad way, just in a slightly comical fashion. For instance, in the section titled Mathematica (enough said), there was a pretty cool giant timeline of the history of math on the back wall, culminating in a “Wall of Fame” of mathematicians. In another part of the museum, we wandered into a small stage designed to look like a cute little old neighborhood. It turned out to be a recorded presentation, and we decided to take a seat, rest a bit, and listen. The presentation is basically a recorded voice telling a story — a story about the narrator’s quest to figure out the age of a big tree in the neighborhood. The nerdiness spikes when the narrator decided to ask a scientist friend — Flori — for help, and from there it basically sounded like Flori became a lot more enthusiastic about the project than the narrator. I never found out how the story ended, as we got up and walked out midway through.

Finally, 5:25 p.m. rolled around, and we headed to the Harry Potter exhibit, joining a throng of other people with the same admittance time. The line moved slowly, in part because some people were spending extra time at each display and listening to the audio tour they purchased. The exhibit included many costumes, sets, and props from the movies. My impression of it all is that it’s probably pretty cool for Harry Potter enthusiasts (which I’m not). Too predictably, however, the tour ended in a Harry  Potter-themed gift shop, where they were selling plastic magic wands for $45 (and the stand on which it sits is another $20). Talk about highway robbery!

Watch out. Courtney got me a Flip Ultra HD video camera for Christmas. I’ve been playing with it during our holiday trip up North, and so far I’ve been pretty happy with it. The camera turns on very quickly. Just hit the power button and you’re ready to aim and shoot in about two seconds. The microphone on the front of the camera does ok picking up the voice of the person holding the camera and whoever you point it at, but if you point it away from the speaker, you’ll have a hard time hearing him/her, and it doesn’t do well at all when there’s a howling wind blowing. The picture quality looks good on the camera, but appears a bit choppy on the computer screen. However, once you upload it to YouTube, it’s fine, and that’s all I really wanted this camera for anyway. I love the small size and light weight, as it slips easily into the front pocket of my DSLR bag, so I can carry it around with my photo camera while traveling and quickly switch to shooting some video without having lug another bag around.

Now that I have a new toy, I’ve started a YouTube channel specifically for clips I post to this blog. I think it’s going to be mostly travel clips, starting with the one below, which I shot with the Flip while our plane was descending into a snow-covered Philadelphia. The channel might also feature various clips I stumble upon on YouTube. Keep in mind that I’ve just started playing around with videography, so I’m in the constantly learning and highly experimental stage, and you get to suffer through the results.

The marquee outside the Providence Performance Arts Center.

While in New England celebrating Christmas, we took in a performance of the musical “Wicked” at the Providence Performance Arts Center. The theater was opened in 1928, and everything about it, from the retro marquee out front to the ornate domed ceiling inside, bear proof of its age and history. One word of advice, though: If you go to see a show there in the winter, don’t bundle up too much. They seem to set the heat on full blast, and the seats are so close together that you have little room to put your outer layers of clothes after you shed them. Also, smuggle in your own beverage, unless you feel like paying for a $3.75 bottle of water (and considering the heat and the seeming lack of a water fountain, you’ll probably end up caving in and pony up the cash for it).

As for the show, the performance was outstanding. One amazing set followed another, and an impressive looking dragon hung over the stage the whole time (it wasn’t really part of the show, but was still cool nonetheless). The costumes were equally extravagant. The performers put on a strong display as well. We actually watched two understudies play the role of a couple of the main characters, and nothing about their performance tipped us off to that fact until we got home and read the program.

The musical’s shortcoming, however, lies with its all-too-predictable script. In essence, the story is a prequel and afterword to the “Wizard of Oz” and only touches on Dorothy in a few passing references. Instead, it focuses on the backstory of Elphaba (the Wicked Witch of the West) and Glinda (the Good Witch of the North), roommates at school who become friends and later enemies by the choices they make. However, it flips the roles and makes the traditional villain its heroine — a talented, good-hearted, but misunderstood outcast who takes a stand against an oppressive regime and pays the price. Most of the first half of the musical is a cross between Clueless or Legally Blond (with Glinda playing the Alicia Silverstone/Reese Witherspoon role) and a Kafka novel about state oppression. And as the story progresses, the Land of Oz is increasingly portrayed as a land of corruption, lies, propaganda, and oppression from a government that seems to be part Third Reich and part Bush regime.

While the message of the script — that we should question the actions of our government instead of living in blissful, willful ignorance — is admirable (if not a bit overdone), the way it is delivered leaves something to be desired. The message is hammered home in a blunt fashion that proves to be overly obvious at every turn. The fact that Elphaba is portrayed as just an outcast rather than evil at the outset tips you off right away that something’s not right in Oz, and you keep waiting for the other shoe to drop, and it doesn’t take long to figure out what that not-so-shocking revelation will be — well before it actually happens. The same holds true for most of the other plot twists, and a few minutes after intermission, you can probably figure out how the rest of the story will shake out. A the end, the script undermines the effect of the message it tried so hard to beat into our skulls by forcing a happy ending onto a story that wasn’t headed for one. And this certainly wasn’t done in the absurdist, escapism fashion ala “The Threepenny Opera“. Basically, if the story was portraying the Land of Oz as Nazi Germany, then the ending is telling us that all those who were sent to Auschwitz turned out fine.

Despite the flaws with the script, the performance of the cast and the impressive sets and costumes combined to deliver an entertaining couple of hours. Now, if only they didn’t try so hard to force-feed us a deep message in such a shallow manner …

My rating: 3.5 out of 5

While Courtney and her mom busied themselves in a bead shop, her father and I took a stroll to nearby Brown University. Now, being married to a Providence alumna, my attitude toward Brown is, by necessity, something along the lines of the Simpsons episode where Otto says he almost got tenure at Brown. However, I must admit, the campus was beautiful on this particular day, with the snow-covered grounds and grayish skies providing a stark contrast to the old brick buildings.