Jul 2007

"Check it out, I'm calling you from the plane!!!" Photo by mig13.

The 8pm train was empty, save about a dozen passengers and myself. A phone rang. Up the other end of the carriage, a young woman answered the call. She was loud, really loud. Like most of my fellow passengers, I did my best to ignore the noise.

The three teenagers sitting behind her didn’t. They countered with cries of “shut up!”. They imitated her by talking at an even louder volume. They made matters much worse.

Eventually, the guy sitting next to me piped up and yelled across the carriage:

"Would you leave the f****** woman alone!"

Pleasant vibes all round. But it shut the teens right up; and the original loud-talking passenger ended her call, seemingly oblivious to the fuss she’d just caused.

It may be better to catch the train than to drive yourself to work, but I find it decidedly uncomfortable when my fellow passengers decide to carry on loud and public conversations on their phones. I've sat on the train and heard a guy bad-mouthing his wife (he was talking to his lover); I've caught the evening train and spent half an hour listening to an excited young gentleman calling his friends - one by one - to tell them he just got a new job.

Maybe I'm just grumpy when I'm on the train. But I'm of the opinion that when you're sharing public transportation, it is respectful to your fellow passengers to maintain a modicum of reserve in your phone conversations.

Apparently, airlines are starting to allow people to carry and use mobile phones on planes. Hurrah. Is the in-flight experience really going to be helped by loud-mouthed, phone-wielding passengers?

I’m not the only one who doesn’t relish the prospect.

Darren Cronian from Travel Rants doesn’t want them.

Charles Starmer-Smith from the Telegraph doesn’t want them.

Rick Seany, the founder of FareCompare.com, points out: “there actually was an age when you couldn’t be reached anywhere at any time, and the world managed to keep turning.”

What about you? Do you think being able to use mobile phones on planes is handy, or are you dreading the thought of being stuck next to someone calling all their friends just tell them they're on a plane?

Rolf Potts posted this yesterday on Vagablogging:

If the beaten track is created for the tourist, the tourist herself creates an 'off the beaten track' to reassert her own autonomy and independence. Having discovered how attractive this toe dipped in freedom is to most people, the tourist industry has also gotten into the off-the-beaten-track business, usually more expensive and fundamentally more snobbish in its appeal for places where 'the rest of them' won't be.

Lucy R. Lippard, On the Beaten Track (1999)

With the tourism industry catching on to off-the-beaten track destinations, effectively destroying their “unbeaten” nature, the question for travellers becomes:

How do you find cool destinations that are really off the beaten track?

For those of you who enjoy reading the daily featured blogs, you can now subscribe to the RSS feed (what's RSS?) of all the latest featured blog entries.

The cool thing about this feed is that it includes photos, which our regular blog feeds aren't set up to do (yet).

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Picture this:

You’ve just arrived in India, a little hungry. You find a samosa-dealing street vendor, who tells you the price: 30c (Australian). Bah. You give him 60c and tell him to keep the change. What’s 30 cents going to do to you?

Ben Groundwater, a blogger for the Sydney Morning Herald’s online travel section, related this experience on his blog. It’s not, in itself, a particularly notable story.

The response he received from other backpackers, however, was something else.

While many didn’t have a problem with him tipping the street vendor 100%, there were a vocal minority who found his actions problematic - to say the least. By tipping the vendor, they said, Ben was encouraging the vendor to charge a higher rate to tourists.

One person said it gave Indians the impression that Westerners are “walking banks”.

Now I’m not trying to be boastful, but I think that the label of “walking bank” is quite fitting when you consider my wealth with the earnings of the average Indian street vendor. And I dare say that said vendor is well aware of this, whether I leave him a 30c tip or not.

Perhaps the most common argument used to ridicule Ben’s extravagant tipping was the fact that he was already being “ripped off”. At 30 cents for a samosa, Ben was being charged 5 times what he should have been, according to one commenter. To then tip an extra 30 cents meant that he was rewarding the vendor’s dishonesty.

All this talk of getting ripped off 30 cents by an Indian street vendor makes me feel decidedly uncomfortable. As someone with a comfortable economic existence in a First World country, I know perfectly well that 30 cents isn’t going to cause me any budgetary headaches.

What I find really perverse is the historical incongruity. How much of the wealth of what we call the “First World” comes from our forefathers exploiting people in the Third World? And don’t tell me it’s the past. Our society perpetuates this state of affairs. How many of the clothes I wear were made in sweatshops? How much of the food I consume daily is imported from a Third World country where those who laboured to produce it were paid a mere pittance?

Getting over-charged for being a Western tourist? I’d call that social justice.

p.s. You can join the forum discussion about this topic. Or feel free leave your comments below...

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There's a new breed of travellers. And apparently, they haven't heard of greenhouse gases.

"Mileage runners" string together as many cheap flights as they can in order to rack up their miles. Where the average traveller just wants to get from A to B, the mileage runner will get from A to B by way of stop-overs and connecting flights in C, D, E, F and G. Apparently, “If you like puzzles, it's lots of fun.”

Not all puzzles ought to be indugled in, no matter how much fun they are. Robbing a bank with a high-tech security system appears to be quite fun (or so Hollywood tells me), but it’s not exactly ethical, is it? Charles Starmer-Smith from the Telegraph calls mileage running “inexcusable”, and I’m inclined to agree with him.

The original Wired article about mileage runners sparked quite a debate, as quite a few people commented on the environmental effects of this excessive flying. Somebody called Jerome posted this response to the environmentalist critics:

Listen, scheduled flights are going to fly whether or not the aircraft is full. If anything, mileage running reduces the environmental cost per person. Just like how it's more environmentally friendly to carpool with 3 people in a Range Rover than everyone driving their own Prius.

It’s a convenient kind of logic, but very short-sighted. Less people flying means airlines will be forced to start cancelling services, thus reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Having people fly simply to get some frequent flyer benefits artificially inflates the demand for flights. (As an aside, one person driving a Prius is still better than 3 people sharing a Range Rover. A Prius emits 4 tons of greenhouse gases per year, as opposed to the 13.10 tons a Range Rover produces.)

It seems the whole notion of taking personal responsibility for your “carbon footprint” hasn’t quite sunk in with some people.

Related articles from the Swivellin' Chair:

• Who should bear the burden of global warming?

• Are you a binge flyer?