Travel Newsletter - 9 October, 2020

Current and future travels in Phan Thiet, cool neighbourhoods, dismantling cruise ships, snow leopards and villages in Siberia, punk rock Tokyo, time-lapse Singapore.

Greetings from rainy Saigon. In fact it seems to be raining all over the country, with floods in central Vietnam. Meanwhile I discovered I had more friends living in Playa del Carmen than I realised when I started seeing Facebook notifications as being marked safe from Hurricane Delta.

There’s still lots to report about in the travel world even if we can’t all travel. Every Friday when I sort through my links I wonder if there will be enough to post, but sure enough there is.

Here is week’s latest posts from myself, along with interesting travel reads and news I’ve found around the web.

Latest posts at Nomadic Notes

Notes on Phan Thiet – Mui Ne Beach, Phan Thiet city, and riding along the Binh Thuan coast

Trip report to Phan Thiet, the capital of Binh Thuan province in the South Central Coast region of Vietnam. Visiting Mui Ne, Phan Thiet and beaches on the Binh Thuan coastline.

COVID-19 and travel (or lack thereof)

Here are 8 ways travel will change after the pandemic

“What will travel look like in the future? We asked the experts.”

Study: Short quarantine + testing stop 100% of Covid-19 cases in travel

Singapore Airlines first class meals: now home delivered for $900

Call me crazy, but I actually like airline meals. It might be more that I associate these airborne bento boxes with travelling rather than the food itself. I don’t love it $900 worth though.

Pro-wrestlers battle on Japan scenic train in bid to help region rebound off the ropes

Daily airline passengers 2019 vs 2020 in the United States.

statistics_data_facts

This week we take a look at the number of daily and weekly airline passengers in the United States.

Air travel was one of the first sectors to get severely hit by the pandemic. The White House announced on March 11th that by March 13th, airline travel from the European Union would be suspended. By then, Italy was already into a countrywide lockdown, and in the days to follow, all of Europe, with the exception of Sweden, went into strict mandatory home confinement.

As for the United States, starting with California on March 19, and through the end of March and the first days of April, nearly all states had imposed mandatory lockdown.

In the span of just over one month, from March 8th to April 14th, the number of daily airline passengers had dropped an unprecedented 95%, from 2,119,867 to 87,534. In the entire week starting on April 13th, just 684,590 passengers passed through the TSA checks. In 2019 the same number of passengers would pass every 6 hours.

As for the present, the situation seems to be stabilizing at a 65% decrease compared to last year, and with the second wave of the pandemic now hitting most of Europe, the future of air travel doesn't seem any brighter.

If you are planning on traveling with an airplane, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has posted a number of steps on how to protect yourself from COVID-19 during your trip that you can find on my blog stadafa.com.

If you are looking for a way to help my channel that does not take very much time, one thing you can do is go to the link in bio (or visit stadafa.com) and click "Participate in surveys" on the top. The surveys take 3 minute tops. Thank you!

#statistics_data_facts #stats #dataisbeautiful #datavisualization #dataviz #tsa #travel #airplane #corona #coronavirus #covid_19 #covid #airport #travelgram #traveling #pandemic #airlines #unitedstates #notravel #notravelnolife #airplane_lovers

October 4, 2020

Adding to the near-future dystopia vibes in the pandemic era is this temperature scanner in Thailand.

Niall Harbison @NiallHarbison

My local shops in Thailand. In 2 seconds scans my temperature and to see if wearing mask. Doors don’t open if not. 3 cases in 100+ days here. Removes awkward mask arguments for staff as well.

Cruise ship dismantling booms in Turkey after pandemic scuttles sector

Travel news

Floodgates in Venice work in first major test

New York's historic Waldorf Astoria hotel auctions off 80,000 items ahead of complete renovation

Photos, Varosha: North Cyprus to reopen beach of forbidden ghost resort city after 46 years

Selina nabs Remote Year in bet on subscription travel for Digital Nomads

Assorted travel reads

Future Phan Thiet / Mui Ne, Binh Thuan Province – Vietnam

Construction and infrastructure projects in Phan Thiet / Mui Ne, Binh Thuan Province, Vietnam. This is the other post I wrote on my trip to Phan Thiet.

The island that humans can’t conquer

“A faraway island in Alaska has had its share of visitors, but none can remain for long on its shores.”

The 40 coolest neighbourhoods in the world

TimeOut have come up with their own version of the popular annual travel lists like NY Times and Lonely Planet. I like neighbourhoods so it was interesting to see what they came up with. At #5 is Yarraville in Melbourne. I’ve had friends who have been living there since the 90’s telling me how cool it was, so now the world has caught up.

Meanwhile at #27 is Phibsboro in Dublin. I lived in Phibsboro for a year in 2002/2003, and there was not a single espresso machine in the whole neighbourhood, let alone any cafes serving avocado on toast. I didn’t know anything about Phibsboro when I moved in just days after arriving in Dublin. Sometimes people would gasp when I told them that was where I lived. I haven’t been back to Ireland since then so I look forward checking it out.

At #32 is Binh Thanh district in Ho Chi Minh City. I live near here and it’s a fair pick. I wrote a blog post about the cool neighbourhood of Thao Dien, and I have other neighbourhood posts beyond Binh Thanh in my draft folder.

The Best Islands in the World: 2020 Readers' Choice Awards

Another travel listicle, this time for islands.

Western travel writers are hooked on Balkan war stories. Local voices could be the answer

Among my travel writers circle in Vietnam we comment on when yet another article about Vietnam from a western newspaper starts off with mentioning the war.

Why New York, Mumbai and Guangzhou were once known by other names

Glimpses of the isolated communities along a remote Siberian river

Russian snow leopard kittens caught on camera

Singapore's last village proves nostalgic tourism hit in pandemic

30 years after reunification, old German-German border is a green oasis

“Crossing the militarized border that split Germany into east and west once meant risking death. Now? It’s a literal walk in the park.”

And on the subject of East and West Berlin…

Filippo Lorenzin @fi_lor

30 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, East and West are still divided by different lightbulbs in street lights

Scotland’s answer to route 66... 500 miles of non-stop scenery through the breathtaking Highlands!

These photos perfectly capture the punk rock side of Tokyo

Amazing time-lapse video of Singapore.

I follow Captain Kate McCue on Instagram, and this short video made me laugh hard.

captainkatemccue

PSA Sunday
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#spreadtheword

October 5, 2020

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The Travel Newsletter by Nomadic Notes is a weekly newsletter of the best travel reads and interesting travel news, and random ramblings by the editor.

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- James Clark