Tuesday, June 5, 2012

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CNNGo.com


Hometown secrets shared by hometown travelers

Posted: 05 Jun 2012 09:15 AM PDT

by Hunter Braithwaite

Having spent a few years teaching in China and sleeping with a tight grip on a broken-spined and Sriracha-splotched "Lonely Planet," I eventually realized that the entire logic of asking the locals for travel tips while they are in their own city was flawed.

If you're a local in a tourist town, you see tourists as a type of animal or child that doesn't know what he or she wants, so you give them something boring.

The only local you should ask is the one who you meet elsewhere.

When I tore up my passport and retired, aged 25, to the turquoise strands of Miami Beach, and found myself teaching English, I started asking my students, who traveled here from all over the world, to let me in on the best secrets of their home countries and hometowns.

As professionals and travelers in their own right, I stand by their advice.

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Scoot: World's newest long-haul airline takes flight. So, how much does super-savings buy?

Posted: 04 Jun 2012 10:57 PM PDT

by Ramy Inocencio

"Flight attendants disarm doors," said the captain over the plane's loudspeakers. Passengers craned their necks and darted their eyes to each other across the aisles.

The captain's words would have been purely perfunctory at the end of Scoot airline's seven-hour inaugural commercial flight from Singapore to Sydney.

But we hadn't even taken off. 

In fact, we'd been on the plane for nearly an hour after a late push-off from the gate due to a "mechanical fault."

"It'll be about 20 minutes before we can get this fixed," announced the captain. "Safety is our No. 1 priority." 

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Social seating: First airlines, then everything else

Posted: 04 Jun 2012 06:52 PM PDT

by James Durston

You can escape your country, but you cannot escape Facebook.

This year the social networking site could pass 1 billion users, and if certain members in the travel industry have their way, many of them will be using the network while they book their flights.

Already KLM and Malaysia Airlines are using Facebook to show if any of your friends are on board -- you can then select a seat next to them.

But they are both proprietary systems, unavailable to other airlines. Now, Eran Savir, the 37-year-old CEO and co-founder of SeatID, plans to make so-called "social seating" a natural feature of ticket purchases across the whole airline sector.

His brainchild, which he runs out of Israel with CTO David Rachamim, 36, and plans to launch around September this year, is the latest of the next-gen social-seating systems to be made available to any airline that wants it, and we've been given an exclusive first look at how it works. (Scroll down)

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Crazy, beautiful and just plain wacky: 9 fantastic Thailand festivals

Posted: 04 Jun 2012 04:40 PM PDT

by Karla Cripps

Thailand loves a good party.

Make that a great party.

Whether the nation is engaging in the world's biggest water fight for Songkran or watching entranced vegetarians drive swords into their faces at the Phuket Vegetarian Festival, the wackier the affair the better.

Here are nine of the best Thai festivals, starting with one coming up later this month.

1. Phi Ta Khon

When: June 22-24, 2012 

Where: Dan Sai, Loei, 500 kilometers north of Bangkok

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9 best places to drink in Macau, before and after gambling

Posted: 04 Jun 2012 03:00 PM PDT

by Dan Shapiro

Macau may earn four times as much as Las Vegas, but many would say it's 10 times behind in fun factor.

For one thing, you can't even drink on the gaming floor. There's free tea, free water, free orange juice, but no alcohol allowed at Macau's casino tables. 

When you're about to roll for the big win, you need a cold one to take the edge off. A glass of vitamin C doesn't cut it.

And when your luck doesn't come through, you need something strong enough to blunt the pain of going home and telling the kids they won't be getting new shoes this year.

Also on CNNGo: Insider Guide: Best of Macau

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World's 29 best cities for men

Posted: 04 Jun 2012 12:54 PM PDT

by Frances Cha

Online magazine AskMen has released its 2012 list of the world's top 29 cities to visit for men.

Given the premise, we were expecting a sex, grog and bro-hug fueled bonanza –- "hot women, best single malt scotch, best pick-up bars, more hot women" -- but the roundup reads more like something out of Ladies' Home Journal. 

"Life is for living and nothing makes a man feel more alive than experiencing what the world has to offer," reads the story. "Hell, even if you have a bad trip, you still have memories, lessons and insights you can carry with you for the rest of your life."

Top 5 cities for men

London Mumbai Rio de Janeiro Washington, D.C. Shanghai

Despite the sensitive-guy opening, the list is a fun ranking of the world's coolest cities, featuring reasons that range from hilarious (26. Berlin, "Because it's remained successful and hype-worthy in a sea of European despair") to unexpected (7. Cartagena, "Because it's the beach party of your dreams").

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