Some 250 million children are confronted every day with the horrors of war. Fantasy is often the only way for these children to escape their reality. This video shows the fantasies of kids caught in war situations. It won the Golden Lion 2017 at Cannes! And the Silver Ciclope in Berlin and the Bronze Lamp ADCN in Amsterdam. The Londen International Awards awarded the Batman video with two times bronze for the categories Music and Post-Production and silver for Production! It was filmed with real kids in a small refugee camp in Lebanon. The camp is enclosed by…
How not to get scammed.
The world out there is full of decent, fun human beings. I have met heaps of them over the last few decades. Some are my good friends today. Some people out there see you as walking dollar sign. And the more naive and careless you are, the bigger the dollar signs. Our job as travellers is to not be careless or stupid without being paranoid and fearful. There is a balance there. The most common seven scams I have experienced have been: The place is closed Your taxi driver or “guide”, or ” new…
New Safety Video: The Beans do Cabin Safety Badly
To illustrate how human beans can do better when travelling, CASA, Australia’s Civil Aviation Safety Authority has put together a video featuring jelly beans as clueless passengers on what ends up being a doomed flight. The video includes messages about limiting carry on, alcohol consumption, seat belts, seat reclining, listening to crew instructions, not smoking on board and not taking luggage off the plane in an evacuation: Here is the video: I am not sure when this film is meant to be shown. I could not imagine it being used on board on aeroplanes!…
Naked Man in Phuket Airport Hurls Poo
Just when I thought I had heard about all that can happen in an airport along comes this one! According to the Phuket news, a 27 year old American of Korean descent from New York, was taken into custody at 1130pm on 4th January, 2017 for causing a public disturbance as he walked naked through the Departures Hall of the International Terminal. Mr Cho, an American of Korean descent was booked to fly to Seoul (ICN) on Korean Air’s flight 638 due to depart at 1am the next morning. It is claimed that Cho removed his clothes…
China’s Spring Airlines – Surprisingly Good Choice
Spring Airlines are described as the “Ryanair of China“. The commentary pages are littered with complaints against the carrier. For example: As a result, I fully expected a flight from hell that would make a really interesting blog post for my first flight of 2018. What I got would put many “full service” airlines to shame. Booking :3/10 We wanted to fly direct from Shanghai to Bangkok. Six airlines ply the route non-stop including full-service Carriers: China Eastern/Shanghai, Juneyao Airlines and Thai Airways as well as low cost Air Asia, Lion Air, and Spring. Fares…
23 Tips to enjoy China Travel
Over one billion people call China home. Four of the top ten cities in the world are in China: Chongqing (30m), Shanghai (24m), Beijing and Guangzhou. Possessing some of the world’s oldest continuous history, tasty foods, interesting sites and diverse cities, China has emerged as a very popular destination. Last year, almost 150 million people travelled to China including myself. Here is what I have learnt about China: You have to get a visa. Make sure you allow time and money to do it. Ensure you have all of your paperwork in order before applying for the…
China was the 75th Country I have visited!
After just over half a century of travelling, I have visited my 75th country. An average of 1.5 countries per year through my life. I think this puts me in the top 1 percent of travellers vis a vis countries visited! 27 of those countries are in Asia with 24 countries in Europe, 11 in Central and North America, seven in the Pacific region, four in Africa and just two in South America. Apparently, the average Australian has visited six countries. This is lower than the average Brit (10 countries), but higher than the average…
Air Safety- Who I will and won’t fly.
Flying is incredibly safe. There are over 5000 airlines with ICAO codes. Very few of those carriers experience any major emergency incidents. Others do. Who do you know is safe or not? I rely on airlineratings.com, that rate about 10 percent of all airlines. Out of those airlines, extrapolating airlineratings.com data, 35% of airlines are fully compliant with seven safety measures. Now no one can guarantee that a “seven star” airline won’t have a crash involving fatalities but they are compliant with the most stringent safety requirements. In addition, 12% are one star airlines that…
My first China Eastern flight -with baby in exit row
Flying China Eastern to China gave me some trepidation. It’s customer service rep is not good. Overall, I was pleasantly surprised but it was a unique experience in a couple of ways… Booking: 7/10 We chose China Eastern to Shanghai because I could easily use some Delta points I had sitting spare in an account. Travel out of Australia in December is very expensive so being able to cash in 35,000 points plus taxes was a great opportunity. The points value plus taxes meant the fare cost the equivalent of around $US500 with taxes compared with the…
100,000+ miles to 9 countries-Overview of My 2017 Travel Year
I remarked recently to a friend that this had been a very quiet year for me for flying. “A quiet year?”, he repeated with a wry smile noting this year I visited nine countries- mostly in Asia. Four were very familiar: Australia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and five were new for me: China, Finland, Japan, Lao and The Philippines. I thoroughly enjoyed all of them but would be less likely to return to Lao than the others. I flew 50 times this year -around once a week. This is lower than my average 88 flights per year…
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