Titanic Nominations
1. Worst Beer I actually hate the taste of beer, so the fact that I do occasionally drink Tekate in Mexico on hot days on volunteer trips does not speak well for the brand.
2. Worst Airport Charles de Gualle is the top of my list right now after flying into there in winter and deplaning on the runway onto a sheet of ice. The whole airport looks like it has not been renovated since the 1950s.
3. Worst Hotel While my first thought went to rooms that smelled so badly of smoke that you thought they might have caught fire, the worst night I ever spent in a hotel was near Hanover Germany in a hotel that we only belatedly realized was over a beer hall on the night of Pinksterfest.
4. Worst Train Ride As a child my family missed a train in Denver and took the “milk train” instead. The whole train stank of sour milk.
5. Worst City for Driving Without question Rome is the worst. Not only is navigation a challenge (all roads may lead to Rome but few seem to lead out) but you are being passed on the left and right by a family of four on a Vespa.

Name Carl Hoffman
Who? Author of the new book The Lunatic Express. He is also a contributing editor at National Geographic Traveler, Wired and Popular Mechanics.  In two decades of reporting he has flown with missionaries in New Guinea and bush pilots in the Sudan and Congo, driven the Baja 1,000 and once sailed an open dinghy 250 miles over eleven days.  His three teenage children, he claims, find him boring.  You can find him online at thelunaticexpress.com.

Titanic Nominations
1. Worst Bus Greyhound LA to DC, the last leg of Lunatic.  Clean, on time, but like traveling through a nation of lost souls and ‘Greyhound Steak Houses (McDonald’s) – the standard luggage was plastic garbage bags.  Need I say more?
2. Worst City for Driving Dhaka, Bangladesh.  Traffic is so thick and choking you could walk across the cars faster than driving.  But then you’d have to climb over horse carts and bicycle rickshaws and auto rickshaws…
3. Worst Toilet In steerage on the Bukit Siguntang across Indonesia; two holes for every thousand people, roaches the size of half dollars scuttling past, an inch of liquid on the floor, darkness.
4. Worst Souvenir The sheepskin coat in China that was, um, not well cured.  The coroner who arrived at my door two weeks after returning home wasn’t amused.
5. Worst Ride on the Back of an Animal The reindeer on Sakhalin Island in the Russian Far East with the Oroki people.  He refused to move a muscle, so we ate him.  The raw femur marrow was pink and slippery, just like snot.

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Name Richard Bangs
Who? A legendary adventurer. He got his start as a river guide (think Mountain Sobek Travel, which he co-founded) and became an award-winning author with 19 books, hundreds of published magazine articles and numerous documentaries. If you haven’t seen him on TV, you may have heard him speak at the Smithsonian, National Geographic Society, the Explorers Club or other venues.  He recently returned from filming a documentary about the Gods of Greece with an appearance by Arianna Huffington and featuring her sister Agapi Stassinopoulos. His next film, premiering July on PBS, is “Hong Kong: Quest for the Dragon” Find him online at richardbangs.com
Age 59
Countries Visited About 140, give or take a territory, protectorate, department or two

Titanic Nominations
1.Worst Toilet I was in Japan. They had just come out with those heated toilet seats, but I didn’t know about it and I wasn’t expecting one when I sat down. The worst part was that it was so hot I got 2nd degree burns.
2. Worst Fight I was on a book tour for my first book (back when they sent people on book tours). I was on a 12-seater from Seattle to Vancouver. The pilot started cursing. “Wouldn’t you know it, my last day on the job and the wheels won’t come down.” He had the airport foam the runway and told us to assume the crash position. The only consolation, I remember thinking, was this might help sell some books. Just before we touched down in the foam, he tried to blow out the wheels with a small explosion. It worked.
3. Worst Airport  Mui Airport in Ethiopia. After a month traversing a river in Ethiopia, we ran out of food and couldn’t find the trail to Mui Airport, where they supposed had a few flights a week. We finally found it after three days of looking. We reached the airport, or the place where the airport was supposed to be. There was nothing there.  We had to trek another two days to reach a real airport.
4. Worst Hotel Ghat Hotel in Libya. It’s probably called “The Ghat Hotel and Resort” or something. When I got to my room, there were so many creatures on my bed, in my sheets, it looked like the universal flea circus. Every imaginable category of competition: crawling, creeping, bouncing. The bed appeared to be moving. On a five star scale, I’d give it a negative 80.
5. Worst Border Crossing I was rafting the Euphrates river in Turkey and we didn’t know exactly where border to Syria was. We found out when we came to a bridge and saw Syrian soldiers standing on it aiming their guns down at us, saying they’d shoot if we came any closer. Fortunately, it was a fairly calm part of the river and we were able to paddle back up stream.

Name Chuck Thompson
Who? Author of Smile When You’re Lying: Confessions of a Rogue Travel Writer and To Hellholes and Back: Bribes, Lies and the Art of Extreme Tourism (plus a few WWII guides) and has contributed to The Atlantic, Esquire, National Geographic Adventure, Playboy, Maxim, Spy, Escape, WWE Magazine, Outside, Men’s Journal, and the Los Angeles Times. More at ChuckThompson.com
Age 45
Countries Visited 60+

Titanic Nominations
1. Worst Cliche Found in Travel Writing Any iteration of combination of ancient/modern or old/new. You know, “the city maintained its ancient elegance, yet embraced the modern” or some crap like that. Every place is a blend of the old and new, including my fucking back yard. .
2. Worst Flight It was a NWA flight. I was sitting right across from the bathroom on this old Boeing 737 that seemed like it was made out of cardboard and Lego. We hit some turbulence and the door of the bathroom popped off and landed on my head — literally.  I helped the stewardess reattach it.  I got a sorry but no upgrade.
3. Worst Airport For domestic, I’d go with the gloomy and outdated JFK. Outside the US: Kinshasa’s N’Djili Int’l airport. To get out of that airport took about five or six bribes. The place is a complete bribe factory.
4. Worst City for Driving Rome. It almost ended my relationship.  My girlfriend and I could see our hotel but couldn’t reach it for over an hour. We were trapped going around the same block.
5 Worst WWII Museum I did these two books on WWII sites and traveled around to visit them. There’s one in L’Aigle, Normandy called “June 44 Museum.” Out of the hundreds I visited (there are 500 – 700 WWII points of interest in the book) it was the only one that merited zero stars. There were talking wax figures and they didn’t look anything like the actual people.  Stalin looked like Mark Twain. FDR looked like he was about to run a marathon. Not surprisingly, they didn’t sound like them either. All their voices were narrated by the same voice — an inarticulate English boy.

Name Seth Stevenson
Who? Author of Grounded: A Down to Earth Journey Around the World and a contributing writer for Slate. His work has also appeared in the New York Times, New York, Newsweek, Rolling Stone, and other publications.  Seth is a multiple Lowell Thomas Award winner and was excerpted three times in the Best American Travel Writing series. He currently lives in Washington, D.C.
Age 35
Countries Visited 31

Titanic Award Nominations
1. Worst Drink Some sort of strange Russian moonshine served at a bar in Vladivostok. “You know how improperly distilled alcohol can make you go blind?” my girlfriend said, after taking a sip and grimacing. “This tastes like blind.”
2. Worst Tourist Trap Those tiny towns on the Mexican coast that exist solely as cruise ship ports. (Yes, I was on a cruise ship, which I acknowledge was my first mistake. I plead extenuating circumstances.) You are almost literally trapped amid the jewelry stores and t-shirt shops if you can’t find a bicycle or a bus and escape down the road to the next village.
3. Worst Train Ride An overnight train in India. There were swarms of cockroaches scaling the wall next to my head as I attempted to sleep. It took a decent amount of scotch guzzled from a flask before I could pretend they weren’t there.
4. Worst Toilet Leaving aside the countless spider-infested outhouses all over the globe, I’d have to go with Moscow’s Leningradsky Railway Terminal. There were plumbing tools scattered in the sinks because the guy’d given up on fixing the leaks. The squat toilets were freckled with horrifying human matter of every variety. Adding insult to repulsion: They charge a fee to use these!
5. Worst Hotel I understand the utility of Tokyo’s capsule hotels. But staying the night in one was a miserably claustrophobic experience. Also, I’m fairly certain the dude in the pod across the way was masturbating.

Name Simon Reeve
Who? An award-winning BBC TV presenter and bestselling author.  Simon has traveled the world making BBC TV programs that mix travel with current affairs.  His books include The New York Times bestseller The New Jackals: Ramzi Yousef, Osama bin Laden and the future of terrorism, which warned of a new age of apocalyptic terrorism (back in 1998!). Find him on YouTube at shootandscribble. His website is simonreeve.co.uk
Age 37
Countries Visited +100

Titanic Nominations
1. Worst Meal Zebu penis soup at a roadside stall in Madagascar while travelling around the Equator. A zebu is a type of tropical cattle. The dish is as awful as it sounds.
2.  Worst Toilet A basic outhouse on a remote island in western Indonesia. It wasn’t much more than a stick platform extending off a low ridge, designed to dump business straight into the sea. But I had to go during low tide, and hungry village pigs were waiting eagerly below, fighting their way up through the toilet hatch from underneath, trying to eat more than just my arse.
3. Worst Airport Mogadishu, Somalia. As a UN flight landed briefly in Mogadishu, quickly dropping off just two colleagues and me, a gun-battle broke-out at the airfield. The only other planes were bringing in bundles of qat, or khat, the local narcotic of choice, which we had to buy in bunches for the team of heavily-armed local mercenaries who protected us. I went to the local market and bought a Somali diplomatic passport in my own name from a man called Mr Big Beard.
4. Worst Hotel I’ve visited dozens of places untroubled by even medieval hygiene standards, but a dark, dank, mouldy hotel room in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, was particularly memorable. I was standing at a sink, vainly waiting for brown water to turn clear and watching two huge cockroaches mating or wrestling, when I trod on a sharp rat-trap the size of a house-brick.
5. Worst City for Driving Bangkok is still terrible for driving. Endless hold-ups with cars and trucks belching out toxic crap. I’ve been stuck in jams for hours there, retching from the fumes. And nobody switches-off their engine. It would be healthier to suck on a hosepipe running from the exhaust.

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Name Daisann McLane
Who? Writer, photographer, and (as yet undiscovered) calypso singer. Daisann writes the Real Travel column for National Geographic Traveler and just won the North American Travel Journalist’s Association’s first prize for best magazine travel column. Her book, Cheap Hotels (Taschen)  won the Lowell Thomas Gold Award for best travel book of 2003, for what the New Yorker describes as “glimpes of urban excitement and exotic tranquility tinged with the inevitable sadness of transience.” She has worked as a staff writer for Rolling Stone and penned The Frugal Traveler column for The New York Times. She now splits her time between Brooklyn, New York and Hong Kong — where she recently started a private food tour company to help travelers avoid the Titanic pitfalls of badly translated Chinese menus. Check out her Real Travel blog here.
Age 52
Countries Visited 56

Titanic Nominations
1. Worst Toilet Shanghai’s Fuyou Antiques market. A vendor pointed me to a corner by the stairwell. It had no cubicles, toilets or even water–you had to squat over a communal concrete sluice of shit that angled down to a hole in the concrete wall. Occasionally an attendant would come and slosh a bucket of water to keep all the stuff moving through. Later, traveling around China, I discovered that this was a common public toilet setup, dating from the pre-economic boom days. Now in China you’re more likely to find high-tech sensor-powered flush toilets. But there’s one thing you can always count on: hi or low tech, you won’t find any toilet paper in your mainland Chinese stall.
2. Worst Plane Ride Air Tonga, from Va’vaau to Tongatapu on a nine-seater twin prop. Some big chief’s funeral was going on, and I was waitlisted, standing on line behind what looked to be the entire Tongan rugby team. Their carry-on consisted of bundles of taro roots and whole roast pigs. The flight manager made each bereaved Tongan stand with his luggage on a old-fashioned metal scale, then wrote a figure down on a clipboard. He added everything up, scratched his head, added the column again, then looked up at me and shrugged as if to say: You want to try?
3. Most Annoying Tourist Attraction The Pyramids, hands down. I think I took a wrong turn at the McDonalds, and had to baksheesh my way through four rings of attendants before I even got close. It’s an ancient wonder, indeed: the world’s oldest and most authentic tourist trap.
4. Worst Hotel Bedspread Barnacle Bed and Breakfast, Big Pine Key, Florida. (see photo below) My book, Cheap Hotels, had a whole chapter devoted to the worst bedspreads I slept on during my six years as The New York Times‘ Frugal Traveler. This one was at least clean (while researching, I discovered that the average US hotel chain usually washes its spreads only once every 60 days!) but aesthetically, it was like coming home every night to a velvet cat painting.

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Titanic Nominations
1. Worst Cliché Found in Travel Writing “I’ll definitely be back soon.” Yes, we’ve all wanted to return to a place. We get it.
2. Worst Airline Air Tran. When the flight attendant began screaming in my face, the first thought that came to mind was, “Hmmm, I wonder if she’s bi-polar or just really hates her job.” Either way, it didn’t bode well that for the next few moments of flight prep as I tried to turn off my cell phone as quickly as possible while she continued to scream. And though the other passengers were all looking at me as if to say, “Don’t worry, we know it’s not okay: But the tickets were cheap — and they lost our baggage too”, I couldn’t help but look at my friend and giggle and while thinking to myself that shouting at passengers is inappropriate, whether or not I turned off my cell phone within a split second of notifying my husband the flight was ridiculously delayed. But that giggle did not please her in the slightest and she threatened to throw me off the plane. Wow. It was then I decided that I would never again fly Air Tran. Ever, ever.
3. Worst City for Driving Tirana, Albania. Driving in Albania was both one of the worst and most exhilarating experiences of my life. I was driving, but on parade. It’s one of the places on earth where  women are quite expected to stay in the passenger seat. And when they don’t it’s a downright public exhibition. But I was legally allowed to drive — so I did.  Traffic police at various intersections neglected their duties to gawk at me, pedestrians stopped to stare. Male drivers glared as though I might as well have been a mass murderer. For I dared to drive. And in the meantime, I seamlessly negotiated traffic that was similar to what I would imagine to be Parisians on crack.
4. Worst Ride on an Animal Jerusalem, Israel.  Soon after being lifted into the air atop the Mount of Olives overlooking Jerusalem’s Old City, the camel seemed sad and I seemed clichéd. Then after mere moments, the camel — defeated — bent down and I paid its owner some Shekels. I quickly wished I were back in the Arab Quarter eating greasy falafels marveling at citizens carrying weapons and learning to play a lute. Followed, of course, by a very chewy cup of coffee served by the charming shopkeeper.
5. Worst Beer Brussels, Belgium (surprisingly) Before I really liked beer much, a friend convinced me to taste raspberry fruit beer in Belgium. It made me want to vomit. It turns out, I was more of a Guinness girl. Sorry, Belgium. I love thee otherwise, and have since realized many of your beers are delicious and nuanced; but that was some seriously icky stuff.