Category Archives: tourism

Xianglu Grand Hotel

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The Xianglu Grand Hotel will be the venue for SES China, to be held in Xiamen China in May of 2007.   The English website for the Xianglu Grand is here.

Major website SEO problems notwithstanding, the Xianglu Grand looks like an amazing hotel.   One of china’s largest and finest this huge hotel in Xiamen is a five-star hotel project by Xianglu China, a business consortium for petrochemical, synthetic fiber, and real estate.   This appears to be the first Xianglu group’s venture into the hospitality industry.

The Xianglu Grand is located in the Huli District and overlooks Hubin, a scenic part of Xiamen.   The hotel is minutes from the Xiamen Gaoqi Airport and very close to Xiamen shopping and attractions.

There are several restaurants including a steakhouse and buffet and a 24 hour lounge.

I’m tentatively planning to go this year having missed last year’s Nanjing event which was the first of it’s kind in China.   There’s a great search marketing tour that surrounds this event and it looks like a lot of fun and perhaps good structure to bring to a first trip over.

Hong Kong Harbor

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Hong Kong’s Victoria Harbor is very high on the list of places I really, really want to visit. It is one of those spectacular and legendary places where an entire culture unfolds before your eyes.

New York Times travel reports today that the Mandarin Oriental Hotel is the place to stay in Hong Kong, but at about $560 for a harbor view room I think this other New York Times frugal travelers approach to Hong Kong is probably more my speed.

Photo Credit: Hong Kong Tourism Board

Survival Tips and Survival Kits

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Blogging the Kim Family Search story has led to a number of great comments and articles about survival kits and wilderness survival tips. Feel free to leave more in the comments section – just post the URL and it will link up automatically.

Wilderness Survival Tips Website

Field and Stream Pocket Survival Kit: This article shows how to build a very inexpensive but fairly complete and light survival kit.

Survival tips from the TV Series “Survivorman”

Google Search for “Wilderness Survival”

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10839538/

Supplies list for long road trips:
http://www.roadtripamerica.com/forum/showthread.php?p=24583

Grand Canyon Skywalk

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Wow, the Grand Canyon Skywalk , a joint project of a Chinese businessman and the Hualapi Tribe, looks like it will offer an amazing view of the Grand Canyon. It appears the Skywalk will open very soon and no later than March 2007. I have mixed feelings about this type of attraction because in one way it ‘mars’ the pristine landscape you are there to see, but in another way it allows you to experience that landscape more dramatically and intimately. For me the increased focus and economic development aspects of these projects make them worthwhile, and it’s certainly a more wholesome approach to funding tribal needs than a casino.

CNN story about the Grand Canyon Skywalk

Whitewater Rafting is very safe, CNN!

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James Kim Search Discussion – Click here | Mount Hood Climber Search

David Boone, missing hiker in California

I’ve been looking into missing people, danger, and death for the Danger Database project and noted this CNN headline that screams “Whitewater Deaths surge in US”, noting that recently about 50 people per year die on whitewater trips.

Until I got to the last paragraph they almost had me buying into the idea that rafting is really dangerous. I take my kids rafting and certainly realize there is risk, but I’ve been assuming it’s well worth the educational and recreations value of a raft trip down the Rogue River or other great whitewater rivers here in Oregon or other place. I started to wonder but luckily I read this : “Ten million Americans take whitewater trips each summer”.

OK, let’s do the math: 50 people out of 10,000,000 die while rafting. Assuming you take an “average” rafting trip your chances of death are 50/10,000,000 or 1/200,000. Looking at it in the common death statistic parlance this is .5 deaths per 100,000 people which is a very reasonable degree of risk I think, though I need to bone up on my death stats for other activities. Hmmm – 1987 skydiving killed 1 for every 75,000 jumps and it looks like Hang Gliding is the most dangerous activity but I need to find better stats. Lightning appears to average 90 deaths per year, handily beating out rafting in terms of simple numbers.

Of course your chances are actually much lower than 1/200,000 if you avoid rafting while drunk and taking unneccessary risks, which I understand contribute to a lot of the accidents in rafting and many other human pursuits as well.

Hmm – based on some stats I dug up it looks like an hour of rafting is about 3x more dangerous than an hour of driving (ie based on my wild and quick calculations you are 3x more likely to die rafting for an hour than driving for an hour).   Still, it would appear to be a fairly/very safe activity.   See comments below for details

… and speaking of Travel, how about Time Tourism?

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Thanks to Glenn (hey dude, where’s your blog to link to!?)  who just pointed me to this fascinating claim by UCONN professor Ronald Mallet suggesting that we’ll probably be traveling in time this century, and that time travel will be verified on the subatomic level within a few years using this clever experiment:

To determine if time loops exist, Mallett is designing a desktop-sized device that will test his time-warping theory. By arranging mirrors, Mallett can make a circulating light beam which should warp surrounding space.

Because some subatomic particles have extremely short lifetimes, Mallett hopes that he will observe these particles to exist for a longer time than expected when placed in the vicinity of the circulating light beam.

A longer lifetime means that the particles must have flowed through a time loop into the future.

…  Mallett – an advocate of the Parallel Universes theory – assures us that time machines will not present any danger.

“The Grandfather Paradox [where you go back in time and kill your grandfather] is not an issue,” said Mallett. “In a sense, time travel means that you’re traveling both in time and into other universes. If you go back into the past, you’ll go into another universe. As soon as you arrive at the past, you’re making a choice and there’ll be a split. Our universe will not be affected by what you do in your visit to the past.”

The parallel universe stuff is not all that fanciful either, rather it’s consistent with the new but increasingly mainstream thinking in physics called “M Theory” that supports the *possibility* of parallel universes that would be essentially invisible to earch other except perhaps by the influences of gravity.

Yes, it sounds like science fiction but it’s not fiction at all, just speculative rather than hard science.   At least for now.

Holiday Travel Tips from Oregon State Police

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After reading so much about dangerous road conditions I thought it would be a great time to post these road travel tips from Oregon State Police and Oregon DOT. Weather is very cold and some roads will be icy for the Christmas Holiday. Please travel safely:

Oregon State Police and Oregon Dept of Transportation recommend the following travel safety tips to help get you safely to your destination:

* Expect the unexpected. Be informed and prepared when traveling on any of our highways.
* When traveling anywhere, plan ahead and taken known routes if possible. Our weather has been changing quickly and sometimes without warning. For road conditions in Oregon, call 5-1-1 or (800) 977-ODOT (6368). Outside Oregon, dial (503) 588-2941. Visiting TripCheck.com on the Internet provides information on road and weather conditions, incidents and traffic delays, and links to numerous cameras on many mountain passes and major routes.
* Take the time to keep up current and future weather conditions in the area you are traveling. Especially if going to or through higher elevations and mountain passes, areas where your vehicle needs to have appropriate traction tires or devices.
* If considering a remote route that you have never traveled on, don’t hesitate to contact available road and weather condition phone number or Internet resources, or contact police or highway department officials.
* Prepare an emergency kit to place in your car for longer trips and keep track of how much fuel is in your tank, especially if traveling unfamiliar routes or into remote locations.
* Let friends and family know what routes you plan to take when on a trip, keeping them updated and let them know if these plans change.
* Drive to the conditions. If it’s icy or wet, increase your following distance and reduce your speed. Use your headlights to improve not only your visibility, but also so others can see your vehicle.
* In bad weather, don’t use cruise control.

For those who may mix holiday celebrations with alcohol, OSP and ODOT recommend the following tips to help make your journey safer:

* Don’t drink and drive, and don’t ride with anyone who has had too much to drink.
* Volunteer to be a designated driver.
* If you see someone you know who has had too much to drink to drive, take his or her keys.
* If hosting a gathering, provide non-alcoholic beverages.
* Use public transit or local drive-home services provided by taxis and other companies.
* Always use safety restraints.
* Report any suspected impaired driving by calling 1-800-24DRUNK (800-243-7865) or 9-1-1.

Media ridealong requests should be directed to your local OSP office.
For more information about the national effort to battle impaired driving, visit www.StopImpairedDriving.org

James Kim family missing. Could they have taken the infamous Merlin / Galice road ?

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Most recent updates from this blog are HERE 

Update 6 is here and is later info than below

I heard about the missing Kim family [ more recent Kim family missing] over at Techmeme [police information is here], thinking it’s unlikely I could offer any reasonable insight but it appears they were heading from Portland to Gold Beach on the Southern Oregon coast, an area with which I’m very familiar.

Online and printed mapping is sometimes problematic here in Southern Oregon and there’s a road that appears on many maps as a “shortcut” to Gold Beach. But in fact in winter it can be treacherous and often closes with snow. It’s the Merlin to Galice to Gold Beach route. Cell phones don’t work in this mountainous remote area along the Rogue River valley and the coast. A few folks have been lost (many more just scared out of their wits in bad weather) along this tricky route through the Siskiyou National Forest.

The troopers are probably examining this possibility (I’d say likelihood), and hopefully they’ll find the Kim family soon safe and sound.

Update: I called the Galice USFS District Ranger office and it appears the news had not reached there yet. They are advising against that route due to snow drifts that may not be cleared and confirmed that the route is not regularly patrolled. I’m going to follow up more on this angle shortly.

Update II: I just called the Northern Police dispatch number listed below and they did not seem well informed about local road situation, but indicated that the (Southern?) dispatch is following up. I’m going to call the Gold Beach ranger district to make sure they are aware of the situation. TuTuTun lodge, where the Kim’s were staying, is along the route I’m talking about (Via Lobster Creek bridge to North Bank Road) making it even more likely they may have taken the dangerous Bear Camp Road “shortcut” which has many logging road turn offs.

Update III: Gold Beach district said they’d heard of this on the news but I could not reach the road engineer or District Ranger to find out if people had checked extensively up there.

I fear this is a case where spreading the word won’t help much – rather a search of the many logging roads off of the Merlin to Gold Beach route is called for here.

Update 4: Update: As of 9 a.m. PST Friday, investigators said they were narrowing their search to Oregon’s Highway 38 as the family’s most probable route to their destination of Gold Beach. The Kims last spoke to an innkeeper there by phone about five hours before they planned to arrive.

Highway 38 seems less likely to me than Merlin Galice road, but I don’t have enough info to know if the police are using more than just intuition about the route. 38 is not nearly as hazardous as Merlin Galice / Bear Camp route, is travelled regularly, and unless they drove into the river there’d be signs of a crash. Without local info Kim could have correctly concluded that I-5 to Merlin would be faster than going via 101, and could also have (wrongly) concluded that the Merlin Galice route was short and safe.

Update 5: Leslie at CNET tells me that the SF Police are aware of Bear Camp as a possible location and appear to be searching in that area as well, which is good. I’ve contacted a friend in Gold Beach who will help spread the word as well.

Update 6

From the news report:

James Kim is a senior editor at CNET and hosts the web site’s popular Crave blog.

Police said friends and family knew them to usually keep in daily contact.

According to Det. Angela Martin of the San Francisco Police Dept., the family had lunch with a friend in Portland on Saturday between 2-3 p.m., then left to travel to Gold Beach on the southern Oregon Coast.

According to San Francisco Police, the family made two phone calls to a Gold Beath hotel that afternoon, the second call at 5:45 p.m. On that second call, the family reportedly asked the hotel clerk to leave a key outside since they would be arriving late that night.

That phone call was the last reported contact with the family. The Gold Beach hotel did leave keys out for the Kim Family but the keys were still there the next morning.

According to the Kim’s cellular phone provider, the phone was last used after the lunch in Portland. Calls to the Kim’s cell phone later Saturday went straight to voice mail.

The Kims were driving a 2005 silver Saab station wagon with California personalized plates of DOESF.

Anyone with information is asked to contact Oregon State Police Northern Command Center Dispatch at 800-452-7888, or the San Francisco Police Department Missing Persons Unit at (415) 558-5508.

World Peace through Blog Evangelism

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Hey Matt, I think I’m becoming a WordPress Blog Evangelist.   I’m telling everybody with anything to say to get a WP blog going ASAP.   Oddly (or not?) they all want their hand held while setting it up rather than just logging on and following the excellent directions and support here (there?) at WordPress.

The good news is that while blogging in many technology sectors  is going strong now, in travel (in fact in almost all of the non-tech sectors) I think blogging has not even reached that powerful upward inflection point.

Thus my dream of creating a huge, unstructured global travel blogging network is still attainable.    In fact wouldn’t it be neat if people started getting specific travel advice from local bloggers who they’d then take out to dinner to say “thanks!”.    Friendships would blossom, tourism would bring prosperity to every corner of the globe, and we’d have world peace through blogging.     (insert violin holiday music here)