So I recently received a copy (from my parents, nothing exciting) of this book 1,000 Places to See Before You Die and, well it has a lot of flaws. I suppose any list does. My particular gripes are:

1) Why so many goddamn hotels? I'm gonna travel to the fucking backwaters of India to stay in a palace. I mean, I can understand having a few exemplary hotels on the list and maybe including a few others in the mentions of important cities/festivals but the fact that 205 (by my somewhat inebriated count) of the 1,000 places are hotels.
2) A non-orthagonal 20% (I'm not even bothering to count but this is 200 of 900 pages) of this book is about the USA and while I'm sure Superdawg (a hot dog stand) in Chicago is quite the experience, I'm not sure it deserves to be included if it means the exclusion of beautiful port town of Xiamen, China and the adjacent island. Also, I don't know that each of the Hawaiian islands needs its own entry. On the other hand, I have been to the Pike Place Market in Seattle so at least this way I get one point
3) Africa only gets 68 entries.

At the same time, it did have the positive value of reinvigorating my need to go visit the world. Benben, I need you! Who knew it cost $900 to fly to Brazil. I don't think I have the money to fund a trip for six months but now I can't stop thinking about it.

Alright, I'll finish watching Futurama and post some more nonsense tomorrow.

At 8/08/2005 7:03 AM,  Anonymous said...

I went to an average African nation. It had an average amount of trouble, an average size and an average economy. These statements are all based on the African standard of average which the rest of the world calls, and I quote, "...extremely fucked in the head." Africa is an immense continent and has a range of climates and peoples and more ways to kill you than Australia.
I can think of a few sites that are probably not in that book. Did you know that there are trained African elephants in a game reserve in the Democratic Republic of Congo? The equitorial rainforests of several Central African republics should be seen before the Sahara engulfes them in the next hundred years. The northwest coast of Africa has several nations, like Morocco and Maurutania, that are quite pleasant and are not scheduled for coups any time soon. (Editor's note: Mauritania is currently involved in the aftermath of an as yet bloodless coup.) There are the mass graves of Rwanda, the plague villages of southern central Africa like Kivu and Kikwit and lets not forget the excellent swimming off the coast of South Africa. The water can be a bit nippy and by that I mean, it is a breeding ground for great white sharks. Of all the sites one could spend a lifetime experiencing in Africa, my favorite must be a coup. If one cannot be in country for one of these annual events, I recommend an attempted coup. While these my lack the spirit and derring-do of the junta, they are still a marvelous demonstration of aggressive democracy in action.

 

At 8/09/2005 9:19 AM,  Anonymous said...

By the by, fuslsome, I was thinking about reading a dialouge by Plato once a week, twice if I can actually do it. I could post my reactions on Wednesday. Just like in Phil's Seminar at school, except I would actually read the thing. We have never really gotten into it about The Man.

 

At 11/03/2005 6:36 PM,  Anonymous said...

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