Jeff Booth - Horizon TV - Helen Rosslyn - Martha Gellhorn - John Pilger - Bill Bryson - Francis Kilvert - Don DeLillo - J G Ballard - Natural World TV - Tonight TV - Dark Tourist 2018 - Robert Fisk TV -
According to the World Travel and Tourism Council, in 2018, travel contributed $8.8 trillion and 319 million jobs to the global economy. Entire local economies have become reliant on tourist dollars. What will they do if travelling slows? Jeff Booth, The Price of Tomorrow: Why Deflation is the Key to an Abundant Future
It’s over forty years since man first went into space. And most of us are still waiting our turn. But now a diverse group of rocket men believe the era of space tourism is here. These men are testing rockets, building space-ships, promising ordinary people the ride of a lifetime. Is a return ticket to space about to become a reality? Horizon: Space Tourists, BBC 2006
[Thomas] Cook’s grand tour lasted six years … The boisterous young Cook was seduced by the art of Italy. Helen Rosslyn, Bought with Love: The Secret History of British Art Collections II: The Golden Age, BBC 2017
I believed that all one did about a war was go to it, as a gesture of solidarity, and get killed, or survive if lucky until the war was over … I had no idea you could be what I became, an unscathed tourist of wars. Martha Gellhorn, 1908-98, The Face of War, 1959
Vietnam is fashionable. At Saigon airport there are backpackers and conga lines of package tourists, and Taiwanese businessmen watching Mr Bean. They almost cancel nostalgia and the memory of fear, but not the absurd. At Cu Chi, a drive from the city, they descend on the scene of one of the war’s most remarkable chapters – the tunnels where soldiers of the National Liberation Front (Vietcong was an American term) crawled through insects and snakes with the technology of a ‘free fire zone’ rampant above them.
Now teenage girls dress up as wartime guerrillas, guiding tourists through the bomb craters and shooing them off the new grass. Like so much else in the new Vietnam, the army has turned itself into a business and runs the tunnels like a theme park. They have thoughtfully widened the tunnels for large tourists and put in a shooting range where, for a dollar a shot, Americans can relive all the fun of Rambo and Platoon. There is the choice of an American M-16 rifle or a Vietnamese AK-47. And if you hit a bullseye you win a genuine, black and white checked Vietcong scarf. People line up to do this. John Pilger, Vietnam Now, article 22nd April 1995
What an odd thing tourism is. You fly off to a strange land, eagerly abandoning all the comforts of home, and then expend vast quantities of time and money in a largely futile attempt to recapture the comforts that you wouldn’t have lost if you hadn’t left home in the first place. Bill Bryson, Neither Here Nor There, 1991
I can’t think of anything that excites a greater sense of childlike wonder than to be in a country where you are ignorant of almost everything. Bill Bryson
Of all noxious animals, too, the most noxious is a tourist. And of all tourists the most vulgar, Ill-bred, offensive and loathsome is the British tourist. Francis Kilvert, 1840-79
To be a tourist is to escape accountability. Errors and failings don’t cling to you the way they do back home. You’re able to drift across continents and languages, suspending the operation of sound thought. Tourism is the march of stupidity. Don DeLillo, The Names
Tourism is the great soporific. It’s a huge confidence trick, and gives people the dangerous idea that there’s something interesting in their lives. It’s musical chairs in reverse ... All the upgrades in existence lead to the same airports and resort hotels, the same pina colada bullshit. The tourists smile at their tans and their shiny teeth and think they’re happy. But the suntans hide who they really are – salary slaves, with heads full of American rubbish. Travel is the last fantasy the 20th Century left us, the delusion that going somewhere helps you reinvent yourself. J G Ballard, Millennium People
In the Pacific Ocean lies an enchanted world. Home to a remarkable community of strange animals most of which exist nowhere else. Galapagos. The islands that inspired Darwin to formulate his Theory of Evolution. For thousands of years this wilderness remained untouched by humanity. But things have changed: dramatically. Natural World s34e3: Galapagos: Islands of Change, BBC 2015
Surfers share the waves with Galapagos sealions. ibid.
Marine iguanas have become the most widespread animals on Galapagos. And this process of adaptation still continues. ibid.
The mocking bird … only survives on two tiny islands. ibid.
Wildlife tourism has become the lifeblood of Galapagos. ibid.
As millions prepare for their summer holiday we expose the common scams targeting British tourists. Tonight: Sun, Sea and Scams, ITV 2017
Online booking fraud – we expose the fake sites. ibid.
The Pea Men … The Gold Salesman … Food Scammers [credit card details] … More than a dozen fake holiday sites … Fake police … Dodgy sales tactics … Wing mirror swindle … ibid.
Dark tourism: A global phenomenon where people avoid the ordinary and instead head for holidays in war zones, disaster sites and other offbeat destinations. Dark Tourist s1e1: Latin America, Netflix 2018
In Mexico City I come face to face with the possessed; I head down to Colombia to get as close as I can to Pablo Escobar and grill his personal hitman … [and] I take you to crossing the border back into America the hard way. ibid.
I’m on a narco fantasy tour being driven around with a Pablo lookalike who’s doing a shady deal on a huge 1990s walkie-talkie. ibid.
A [US/Mexico] border crossing experience that turns an illegal migrant into a tourist attraction. ibid.
I visit the world’s most popular suicide spot … and I indulge in a spot of nuclear tourism. Dark Tourist s1e2: Japan
Fukishima: nuclear tourism … perfect for a dark tourist. ibid.
Town after town is like this – wrecked, radioactive, abandoned. ibid.
I visit three dark tourist destinations: in New Orleans I go undercover to search for real vampires, and I discover a national tragedy [death of JFK] that’s turned into a tourist attraction in Texas, in Milwaukee I join a dark tourist on the trail of serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer. Dark Tourist s1e3: United States
Kazakhstan: Where I team up with a hardcore dark tourist to check out one of the most nuclear bombed places in the world; to the closed city of Baikonur, the top secret headquarters of the Russian space programme; and I go undercover to get inside the weird and paranoid republic of Turkmenistan. Dark Tourist s1e4: The Stans
They decided to call it Atomic Lake … This water is a hundred times more radioactive than normal drinking water. ibid.
I’m travelling around Europe’s dark tourist hotspots. In the Mediterranean island of Cyprus, I go undercover to break into a forbidden city; in the UK I go drinking with Nazis; and I visit the world’s most disturbing museum. Dark Tourist s1e5: Europe
30 miles south-east of London in the small town of Paddock Wood … This is the world’ biggest military re-enactment. ibid.
Cyprus: the beach resort of Famagusta … was a favourite with the international jet-set but it was abandoned during the war and now it’s a ghost city completely cut off by the Turkish army and completely off limits. Which of course puts it on the dark tourist bucket list. ibid.
An Indonesian harvest ritual supposed to strengthen friendship … I’ll be visiting the brand new bazaar and empty capital of Myanmar … I’ll test my moral limits in Cambodia. Dark Tourist s1e6: Southeast Asia
In South Africa I find out if townships are as dangerous as people say they are, and I help some white separatists run away from their biggest fear, and in Benin I’m initiated as a disciple of voodoo. Dark Tourist s1e7: Africa
I go on the trail of the grisly Manson murders, I prepare for the end of the world as we know it, and I experience the scariest horror house in the world. Dark Tourist s1e8: Back in the USA
Egypt: Tens of thousands of tourists are too frightened to come to the country. Robert Fisk, From Beirut to Bosnia III: To the Ends of the Earth, Discovery 1993