Common Sense and Whiskey

Fourth Wife Flies Free

Unusual promotion on South Africa's Kulula.com - via its Facebook page.

"Inspired by regular VIP travellers with sizeable spousal entourages, the offer is open to all fourth wives when the family travels together on the Jo’burg to Cape Town route."

Tourist Hordes, Thataway

Opening up Burma will be constrained by the lack of tourism infrastructure. There aren't many flights, or many hotels to sleep people who find their way in. Bangkok and Singapore are the main gateways. You can fly international carriers from Kolkata and KL. Vietnam Airlines has flights now, there are flights from China and Taiwan, and Doha via Qatar Airways is coming in October. All these flights, though, are to Rangoon.

Once you're in the country it's all day on the roads or rails (or the overnight train) to Mandalay or Bagan - or a domestic flight - and some people avoid domestic flights in places like Burma. But wait: China Eastern has a daily flight from Kunming. Takes about an hour.

Building out Burma will take some time, but not necessarily too much. Think of Luang Prabang, Laos, where scarcely more than a decade ago a room with a loud, lumbering wall air conditioning unit was luxury. Or its sister Siem Reap, which didn't use to claim all the world's most pretentious hotels. Honest.

In fact, if Burma makes good choices on building out all the things it needs, which is everything - road and rail and cell phone towers, to start - it has a shot at being the shiniest new jewel in the region. I found this look at the state of tourism in Burma to be interesting.

Heartwarming New TSA Publication

Via We Meant Well.

The Queue and You

There are two aisles open for American Citizens and Residents in the arrivals hall. Travelers hurry off their planes and fill the queue and it snakes way around behind the pass control booths. The line backs up pretty quick.

You hustle off the plane (Hard learned tip: If there are stairs and an escalator between the plane and pass control, ALWAYS take the stairs) because just like at airline check-ins, if you get in the wrong one, where people have too many bags, or there's some paperwork problem, or maybe the agent's just having a bad day, each customer in front of you could mean an extra six, eight minutes.

Intrepid Traveler Alert

Turkish Airlines begins service to Mogadishu today - from Khartoum. Now you can combine two don't-miss locations, Somalia and Sudan, in one itinerary.

Arrival in Bhutan

 When time came to drop through the clouds into Bhutan, the pilot announced, “We will maneuver the aircraft in the valley. This is a little different from large commercial aircraft. It is standard procedure. You will see the houses and trees a little closer than you are used to. The scenery is beautiful. Please enjoy the ride.”

He just picked a hole in the clouds and dove through. He did a 180 into the Paro valley. The automatic sensors called out, “too low,” and for the record he kept repeating, “acknowledge, override,” into the cockpit recorder.

This was George, bluff, barrel-chested, a real dude with a wide gray mustache, and one of just fourteen people ever to fly for Royal Bhutan Airlines, aka Druk Air.

- From the Bhutan Chapter of Common Sense and Whiskey, the book (Amazon) (Kindle) (BN).

Here, see it for yourself. Here's video of an actual landing at Paro airport, Bhutan. Kind of exciting:

Watch This

Great, riveting stuff for flying fans.

(Thanks to Cranky.)

Defeat!

How much is just too much for a Japanese budget wonk? 10,000 free airline tickets, apparently.

In an effort to relight the fire under travel to Japan after the Fukushima disaster, the Japan Tourism Agency submitted a budget request for money enough to give away 10,000 tickets. The budget was to have been aproved and applications were to be received by about April this year. To apply, you'd send an essay describing why you'd like to visit and where you'd go.

Just found this on the Tourism Agency web site. It was posted while we were away for the holidays:

"The project titled Fly to Japan! (to offer flight tickets to 10,000 foreigners with high potential to communicate Japan’s attractions), which had been covered in a number of media in autumn this year, was not approved as a governmental draft budget of FY 2012."

And I already had my essay written in my head.

 

Looks Cold, Was Cold

At the Ivalo airport, Finnish Lapland.

Quality Transit Time

Hanging out at the Continental Breakfast Bar at Schipol Amsterdam waiting to climb on our flight to Helsinki at Gate C10 across the way there. This is probably the highest and best use of the internet ever.

68.6 Degrees North Latitude, Here We Come

We're starting the long trip north this afternoon with a drive south to Hartsfield Jackson Airport. We'll be at our little cabin in Finland for a few days before heading further north. Photos and reports to come. Happy Holidays to all.

St. Helena Island to Become Less Remote

Jamestown, capital and main town on St. Helena Island

It's timely that Sharon, a St. Helenian (or, as they call themselves, "Saints,") commented in the St. Helena Gallery at EarthPhotos.com over the weekend. It prompted me to check the St. Helena news, and - this is something you can't say every day - there is some. Big news, in fact.

It might be the most-debted subject among the 4000-odd Saints. For sure it's a perrenial. And now comes word that, at last, apparently, St. Helena is to get its own airport. 

If you've been with us for a while, you know that St. Helena is accessible only by ship, specifically the Royal Mail Ship St. Helena. Now, in 2015, an air field is set to open, providing service to South Africa, and bringing the total number of visitors from the current 950 to around a projected 30,000.

The landscape at Prosperous Bay, site of the airport.

From the site Airport World:

"The design phase of the $344 million project is scheduled to commence immediately, and construction is expected to take place over a 48-month period....

According to Basil Read, the scope of work includes building a 1,850m runway with a taxiway and apron to cater for aircraft up to the size of an Airbus A320 and Boeing 737-800.

A 3,500sqm terminal building will be built, as well as an air traffic control tower and a 14 km airport access road and all related infrastructure."

We visited the remote British colony in the south Atlantic Ocean last year, sailing from Windhoek, Namibia (photos) to St. Helena (photos) and on to Ascension Island (photos), from which the RAF runs charter flights to the Falklands, and, in our case, Brise Norton Air Force Base near Oxford, England. Here's what we wrote at the time.

Links for the Weekend

A travel blog centered on Eastern Europe: Argophilia. Note their advice on TripAdvisor.

The people at Anna.Aero have been in touch. It's a site for Airline Network News and Analysis, hence ANNA. (A natural partner for the Airline Route Updates blog. If you've GOT TO KNOW that Eastern Airways is to Start Glasgow – Stavanger Service, or Air Mauritius from 30MAR12 is introducing its 4th weekly service between Mauritius and Mumbai, then Airline Route Updates is for you.)

And most importantly, big big Lakhs for Big Babus.

Quick Travel Links

Chernobyl, My Primeval, Teeming, Irradiated Eden: Story of a visit to the exclusion zone, in Outside magazine.

The Pizkuny Wall: Story in Der Spiegel about life along the Lithuania/Belarus border, and their own mini-Berlin Wall.

Where is Resolute Bay, site of a 20 August 737 crash in northern Canada? Way up there, it turns out. Several maps. The air carrier was First Air. Here's its route map, from its web site:

 

When Money Doesn't Matter #9

Michele Bachmann's in the news for politics, but more importantly, how does she travel?

Ryan Lizza's long biography in the current New Yorker informs us that Bachmann's campaign has traveled in a Dassault Falcon 900, and that she told Lizza, "Isn't this an incredible way to fly? I've never been on a nicer plane in my life."

So let's see.

The Dassalut Falcon is a trijet. Various iterations of the 900 can fly from 4150 to 4750 miles. Here's the web site. I found several used Falcons on sale, ranging from a 1986 model for just $6,700,000 to a nice 1994 for $15,300,000.

 

Have You EVer Flown One of These Airlines?

Don't.

Here is the banned-airlines list maintained by the European Union to identify airlines that have severe problems. Looks like we've only had the pleasure of flying one - Air Madagascar - winningly known as Mad Air, back in 1995. The list is pertinent (thanks to JoeSharkey.com) because of the recent crash of an airline on the list outside Kisangani, Congo.

Our flight was from Mauritius to Antananarivo, Madagascar's capital, back in 1995. Best I remember, it was just fine. It was a big ol' 747 which, lore had it, was in service except when the President's wife took it to Paris to go shopping.

There's a chapter on Madagascar in my new book, and we'll have that chapter here on the blog later this summer. For now, check out these photos from Madagascar on the Common Sense and Whiskey Companion, and these on EarthPhotos.com.

Three Quick Tools to Help Decide on Your Next Travel Destination

If you've read Common Sense and Whiskey - the book, you've read these quotes:

Robert Louis Stevenson: “For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel’s sake. The great affair is to move.”

Colin Thubron said just about the same thing: “You go because you are still young and crave excitement, the crunch of your boots in the dust; you go because you are old and need to understand something before it’s too late. You go to see what will happen.”

I think they’re both right. You just pick a spot and go.

Here are a couple of tools I use to start the process of deciding where to go:

I like Hipmunk for initial checks of air routes, because it's quick, streamlined and easy. (For air route  junkies, there's also AirlineRoute.net.) For example, you don't have to click a button to tell Hipmunk if your flight is one way or round trip. If you don't enter a return date, it figures it out. Smart. Here's my review.

If you search for "(your destination) airport," there's usually a Wikipedia result that will tell you the flights to and from a place. Here's an example of what you can learn from Wikipedia about who flies where from Ashgabat airport.

TripAdvisor. It makes me crazy that they try to keep you on their site and don't link to the hotels they describe. That's nuts. But they've got reviews of hotels in some pretty obscure places.

And check the travel planning resources in the sidebar here on CS&W.

Turtles!

It's not everyday....

A Week at the Airport

Great, great, lyrical book for those of us who have a weak spot for getting from here to there. Fine, light summer reading.

Check it out.

Vignettes from Africa V - Around Victoria Falls

We're not in Africa. We're actually en route to Panama City, Pamana today. We'll talk with you from there shortly. Meantime, here's part five of a series of short vignettes from some of our past trips to Africa.

The Zambesi is the fourth largest African river after the Nile, Niger and Congo, at 2700 kilometers. It's the longest to empty into the Indian Ocean. It's mouth in Mozambique comprises a 120 kilometer wide delta.

Its source is in northwest Zambia. Above the falls it’s navigable by bigger boats to only ten kilometers upstream, at Kandahar island. It's a calm river with sandbars and islands. 84 species of fish, 415 of birds, Ebony, Fig, Mahogany, Waterberry and what they call the "Raintree" and the "Sausage Tree" as well as Ilala and Wild Date Palms.

A woman named Precious arranged us a Zambesi cruise. We climbed aboard a two-deck blue and white cruiser and found a seat with some agreeable gin-swilling Germans.

Upstream, hippos yawned, a croc lurked here or there, boats like ours chugged by. The sun ground us into the sundeck.