In today’s New York Times’ Globespotters post, Fresh, Sweet and Seasonal in Mumbai, Dan Packel tells us about the abundance of fresh fruit available in the APMC Fruit Market in Navi Mumbai. It covers a huge, 22-acre area and sounds delicious. Not to rain on Dan’s parade, but I did think we should remind travelers of dangers sometimes associated with…
One of our previous posts speculated that tolerance may be key to health and happiness based on a comparative study of states in the U.S. That line of thinking prompted us to look for comparative data worldwide. We came up with the Global Gender Gap Report, released in 2008 by the World Economic Forum, which rates countries on the disparity…
Earlier this month, we posted about Russia’s heavy alcohol consumption levels as a follow up to our Healthy Planet Index. It turns out that Russians may be what Alex De Jonge has called “geoalcoholics” in his book “Stalin and the Shaping of the Soviet Union.” This discovery all stemmed (no pun intended) from a link that Tyler Cowan posted on…
I recently returned from a two week adventure in Israel with the Birthright program from the University of Delaware. Prior to leaving we were told we could bring a maximum of two bags each. Because I have a tendency to over-pack, this caused me some stress. I managed, even though I had to dedicate one full bag to gluten-free foods. …
While Americans were busy consuming 232 million turkeys last year (46 million of them on Thanksgiving), others were passing on the noble bird in favor of a snack of beetles, crickets and other arthropods and insects. There are many places in the world that have markets full of these delicacies. If you sample this fare while roaming the world, are…
Why do we travel? Are we trying to find a better path forward for ourselves and our children? There are many ways to pursue happiness, and close encounters with new cultures often lead us to reconsider what happiness means. When we hear fellow travelers asking, "What is the best way to live?" and "Where does this path lead?" their answers…
Sitting down to a steaming bowl of paella--rice, broth, chorizo, clams and mussels--with a pitcher of Sangria is a fiesta for the tastebuds. It's also a gastronomic adventure that can lead to serious illness caused by allergies, bacteria or Hepatitis A. If you have a food allergy and are planning a trip abroad, you may have checked out our previous…
Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal posted about cabin fume events - how problems during a flight can cause real air quality issues for the crew and passengers. Hopefully, these events are rare and that raising the red flag in the press will help the airlines improve things so that they become rarer still. However, even on flights without specific problems,…
Packing for a trip used to be easy. I would wake up the morning of the trip, grab a suitcase, throw in more clothes than I needed, dump all of the things on my bathroom sink into my Dopp kit*, sign a stack of traveler's checks and, of course, write all of their serial numbers in that small, separate booklet…
Given the choice, would you rather buy an international health plan that is secure and subject to state regulators' standards, or one that is not? When it comes to international health plans, consumers often encounter products from "non-admitted" insurers that operate beyond the reach of U.S. state insurance regulations. These offshore plans--also referred to as surplus lines policies-are cheap but…
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