The Titanic Awards

Name Catherine Watson
Who? Former travel editor of the Minneapolis Star Tribune and winner of the Lowell Thomas Travel Journalist of the Year and the Society of American Travel Writers’ Photographer of the Year. Her writing has been anthologized in many books, including “Best American Travel Writing 2008.’’ Her solo collections are Roads Less Traveled — Dispatches from the Ends of the Earth and Home on the Road: Further Dispatches from the Ends of the Earth. More at catherinewatsontravel.com.
Age 65
Countries visited 112.  (Most recent is the Faroe Islands)

Titanic Nominations
1. Worst Taxi Ride My all-day-long attempt to find the Tree of Life in the desert of southern Bahrain. The taxi driver, who’d been working on this 10-by-30-mile-wide island for 25 years, admitted he’d never been south of the Manama suburbs. By the time we’d found the damned tree, we’d been lost more times than I could count, and then arrested for trespassing.
2. Worst Toilet The dank, filthy, unlighted ruin of a public ladies’ room in central Bucharest, before Ceaucescu’s horrid government fell. No toilet paper, no soap, no “feminine hygiene products” in the whole country, no nothing.
3. Worst Meal The famous raw shrimp cocktail of Kathmandu. I ordered it to celebrate an overland trip into Tibet, got violent food poisoning, was sick for the next 3 weeks and lost 16 pounds. Only then did it occur to me how far Kathmandu was from any ocean shrimp might live in.
4. Worst Foreign Policy Idea The U.S. government’s ban on ordinary American travelers going to Cuba. It would be funny if it weren’t so stupid: Technically, we CAN go to Cuba, we just can’t spend any MONEY in Cuba.
5. Worst Airport Security Nepal’s domestic terminal. As elsewhere in South Asia, “Ladies’’ are searched separately, behind a curtain. The young female officer didn’t look up from filing her nails. “Do you have big knife?’’ she asked. No. “Do you have bomb?’’ No. “You may go.’’ Well, okay, then, if you say so…

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Famous Travelers airport, Bahrain, Bucharest, Cuba, Kathmandu, Nepal, security, taxi, worst meal, worst toilet