Travel Newsletter: 26 April 2024

Jakarta update, the first high-speed rail in the USA (maybe), floatels, barf bags, and more travel reads

Welcome to the Nomadic Notes Travel Newsletter, where I curate the best travel reads of the week.

Hello from Jakarta! I was here last year to see the opening of the Jakarta-Bandung high-speed railway, but the opening was delayed (the perils of planning trips around infrastructure openings). 

This time around I figured I would turn this visit to Indonesia into a rail research trip. I spent a week in Sumatra where I rode a section of the South Sumatra railway to Lubuk Linggau. I had to look that up on the map, and I will get around to writing about it once I get through my backlog of articles.

[Lubuk Linggau (@nomadicnotes).]

I will go from Jakarta to Surabaya by rail, including the high-speed section from Jakarta to Bandung.

Here is this week's travel reads.

Travel reads

• A Japanese village wants tourists to come for heat, soot and steel

“To lure visitors, residents of Yoshida, famed for its high-quality steel, are inviting tourists to help produce it.”

• The rise of booze-free backpacking: why gen Z are choosing to travel sober

• What it’s like to plan vacations for billionaires

• The impossible dilemma of a polar guide

“Tourism to the Arctic and Antarctica contributes to their demise, and the regions are melting fast. A polar guide of 25 years asks: Should I stay away?”

• One Gulf city preserves streets after others bulldozed old buildings

“Dubai, Kuwait and Riyadh turned away from the past to make way for modern skyscrapers, but UAE’s Sharjah takes a different tack.”

• Kuala Lumpur’s Chinatown: what to eat, drink and do in reborn area full of new restaurants, shops and bars

🛏️ Accommodation

• A company is turning former cruise ships into floating hotels — see inside its largest 'floatel'

• JAL launches Boeing 'cockpit' hotel room to tap your inner pilot

💻 Nomad news

• Istanbul, Dalaman, Izmir: Where to go with Türkiye’s new digital nomad visa

Another country with a digital nomad visa, and once again the conditions aren’t very appealing for digital nomads.

🚆Train travel

• From Sin City to the City of Angels, building starts on high-speed rail line

“The project is touted as the first true high-speed passenger rail line in the country, designed to reach speeds of 186 mph, comparable to Japan’s Shinkansen bullet trains.”

• Private rooms coming to some of Japan’s bullet trains

• Vintage Japanese train tickets

✈️ Air travel

• Where have all the barf bags gone?

“The once ubiquitous seat back stuffers seem to have been cast aside. What happened, and what do the avid barf bag collectors think about it?”

…

James Clark – Jakarta, Indonesia.