(January 17, 2013) --- Considered by industry experts and scuba diving enthusiasts as “the best of the best,” Scuba Diving Magazine’s Top 100 Gold List is a “popularity contest” where rankings are based on a total number of responses from global readers and divers. The Top 100 Gold List features operators, resorts, live-aboards, underwater experiences (i.e., best wall, shore and wreck sites), dive bars and more. Here are some of the highlights … [Read more...]
LA Travel & Adventure Show Returns in 2013
The 8th Annual Los Angeles Travel & Adventure Show Returns to the Long Beach Convention Center January 12-13, 2013 Jean-Michel Cousteau, Rick Steves, and The Bachelor's Chris Harrison among featured speakers LOS ANGELES - November 19, 2012 - California's largest travel show will return to the Long Beach Convention Center on January 12-13, Unicomm has announced. Named as one of Southern California's top 10 trade shows or conventions by … [Read more...]
The Halong Bay Monster
Like Scotland's Loch Ness Monster, Vietnam has its very own sea serpent legend-one which resembles a prehistoric escapee from "Here There Be Dragons" on the edges of Age of Exploration mappa mundi. Trapped in lovely Ha Long Bay ("Where the Dragon Descends into the Sea"), "The Tarasque" is not only a version of Nessie but purportedly just as camera-shy. Featured in the 1997 James Bond film "Tomorrow Never Knows," Ha Long Bay is now a UNESCO … [Read more...]
David Stanley: Traveler & Guidebook Author
David Stanley is a well-heeled travel writer who has written a number of books about the South Pacific for Moon Handbooks. We have admirably followed his career for a number of years. He has been writing guidebooks for over 30 years and has maintained his South Pacific website since the late 1990's. We recently had a chance to ask him about his career, travels and advice in regards to travel writing. Q. You are a prolific writer how … [Read more...]
A Bicycle Built for Two
While I was house-sitting a 15th-century farmhouse in historical Gascony, with a backyard view of the snow-capped Pyrennees, I decided one bracing morning over a cafe du lait to hire a bike and make a pilgrimage to one of France's oddest pilgrimage sites: "NOTRE DAME DES CYCLISTES." Looking decidedly uncool in my fuzzy Patagonia jacket, Tintin T-shirt, Gap shorts, white athletic socks, and Rockport walking shoes, I pedaled like a madman, … [Read more...]
South Pacific Films by David Stanley
Over the past eight decades the paradise isles of the legendary South Seas have provided a backdrop for many Hollywood productions. French Polynesia has been the most popular location by far, followed by Fiji and Samoa. Both Hollywood films set in Solomon Islands, Guadalcanal Diary (1943) starring Anthony Quinn and The Thin Red Line (1999), were about the Pacific War. Easter Island features in Kevin Costner's Rapa Nui (1994) while The Other Side … [Read more...]
Tourism in the Pacific by David Stanley
Tourism is the world's largest and fastest-growing industry, accounting for 10 percent of world economic activity and one in 15 jobs worldwide. Some 750 million people a year currently travel abroad compared to only 25 million in 1950, and each year over 100 million first-world tourists visit developing countries, transferring billions of dollars from North to South. Tourism is the only industry that allows a net flow of wealth from richer to … [Read more...]
Vanuatu: One of the World’s Remaining Paradises
When you think of a romantic island vacation, what do you imagine? Basking away peaceful days in the sun, just you and your special someone? Stealing away to hidden beaches where you frolic in the waves like children, uninterrupted by human life? Sipping a drink in your beach chair with a view over your feet that could easily be the setting for a Corona commercial? Picturesque, pristine, and private- this is the dream setting for couples … [Read more...]
The Wizard of Christchurch
EVERYONE knows J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings trilogy was filmed entirely on location downunder by Kiwi director Peter Jackson. But did you know that a real sorcerer, a magi of magic realism straight out of the Oscar-winning series, only rather recently left New Zealand after the nasty Christchurch Earthquake of 2011. Born Ian Brackenbury Channell in London (4 December 1932), "The Wizard of Christchurch" is an inspired soap-box … [Read more...]
Curse of the Sea Gypsy
Looking for Love on Lovina, Bali Well, er, the problem was, I thought I saw a real live mermaid. Get that? Loping on Bali's Lovina beach one day, I came across a troglodytic Indonesian man crouching over a campfire, cooking a stunted animal on a skewer. Was he eating a cat?! "Very nice bitch," the local sarong hawker spat in the sand. Lo and behold! I saw a bikinied blond, like the statuesque prow of a Viking vessel, … [Read more...]