As much as we all love traveling and exploring the globe, sometimes it doesn’t always go quite as smoothly as we’d like. And these past few days have given us some prime examples of the fun and excitement being robbed from a trip abroad. Most notable was the San Francisco to Shanghai flight that was, well, shanghaied. The supposedly 13-hour flight left San Fran Sunday, but problems immediately arose – a broken toilet on board forced the flight to be diverted to Alaska where they were going to replace the plane(call me immature, but “broken toilet” and “strand passengers” in a headline pretty much guarantees that I’m clicking on the link). But the next plane had mechanical issues. The result was that travelers didn’t arrive in China until Tuesday – three days late.
Continuing the theme of nightmare travel to Asia, there was a lot written this week about the state-of-the-art Bangkok Suvarnabhumi International Airport, which has been ordered to get its act together by the International Air Transport Association. The airport, which opened to much fanfare in 2006,is simply doing a very poor job of moving tourists through the facility – which is really the main goal of any airport. Thai officials are advising several smaller carriers to move operations to Bangkok’s other airport.
Assuming you’re not scared off from continuing your globetrotting ways, here are some cool travel ideas from around the web this week. Michelle Higgins at the New York Times writes about some intriguing adventure vacations in Asia – my family is already plotting a panda-tracking vacation. (Advice – try not to fly through Bangkok.)
At CNN, Danielle Tumminio takes a look at the hidden secrets of Australia’s outback. And speaking of hidden secrets, here are 10 cool things that are off the beaten track in London.
Headed to France? They’ve just launched a car sharing program that includes only electric cars. Rick Steves at the Los Angeles Times has the story on this very forward-looking program, which is available to American and Canadian drivers.
Asia, Australia, France, London
