When the travel agency Flyhome declared bankruptcy on Wednesday,  there were slightly more than 650 travelers still stranded in Iraq.

Lennart Landrén, a lawyer associated with the now defunct travel agency suggested they “now turn to the [Swedish] Transport Agency and [Swedish] Consumer Agency and discuss the situation that has arisen.”

Landrén added,”It’s a sad statement to make. According to the information I have received, there are no guarantees provided.”

Name Pam Mandel
Who? She started blogging as an expat in Austria over 10 years ago has since had her work featured by Conde Nast Traveler, National Geographic Traveler, MSNBC, and USA Today. She was the contributing editor for travel at Blogher for five years and blogged about Hawaii for World Hum. She’s written guidebooks for Thomas Cook, radio stories for WGBH Boston (NPR), and travel stories for World Hum, Perceptive Travel, Scanorama, International Living, and more.  Find her entertaining and insightful travel musings on the web at Nerd’s Eye View.
Countries Visited 28
Age 46

Titanic Nominations
1. Worst Airport The international terminal at LAX. After being yelled at and herded by airport security, I proceeded to spend a horrible week there one evening while waiting for a delayed flight.The only food available was from a rattling nearby vending machine. All the restaurants were before the shouting TSA staff –  going hungry was more appealing than facing the guards again.
2. Worst Hotel Thuan Loi Hotel (Chau Doc, Vietnam) in a border town on the Mekong.  Dirty nylon sheets, mosquito nets punched full of holes, windowless cell-like rooms, and a perpetually damp bathroom floor. To exit the room, I had to climb over a spiderweb of daisy chained extension chords. That bedbug ridden guest house in Kargil, India, seemed positively cozy by comparison.
3. Worst City for Driving Pisa, Italy. I’ve had to transit Pisa four or five times and each time, I’ve exited the city and gone back in, exited and gone back in because I cannot find the correct way out. The last time, I seriously considered abandoning the car and looking for a job.
4. Worst Car Rental Experience Honolulu, Hawaii. “I tried to return the car downtown last night, but the building next door to the return lot was on fire.” I will not soon forget the look on the airport rental car agent’s face.
5. Worst Toilet Some forgotten village, Bahawalpur Province, Pakistan. It wasn’t so much a toilet as it was two vertical stacks of bricks over a pile of… yeesh. Every morning, a child-servant would come with a bucket and a spade to remove all the waste from the previous day.

/Doug

Air France’s Rio-to-Paris flight was forced to return due to a “technical flaw in some of its bathrooms,” the airline said.

The plane was in the air for five hours, but it was determined that passengers wouldn’t last the entire 11-hour flight with fewer bathrooms.

Passengers were offered a later flight and many were placed in hotels or driven home, but a few missed connecting flights and many seemed to find it all absurd.

Sports  reporter Erin Andrews has filed a lawsuit against Marriott International Inc. and several hotels affiliated with it, for negligence, emotional distress and an invasion of privacy.

The lawsuit states refers to incidents in 2008 in which a 32-year-old man named Michael David Barrett (who pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 30 years in prison) videotaped Andrews naked through hotel room peepholes in several US states and posted the footage on the internet.

Where does Mariott come in? According to Andrews’s lawyers, when Barrett called the hotels to find out which rooms she was staying in, the hotel confirmed she was a guest, told him the room number and provided him a room just beside.

Why the delay? FBI agents questioned him about his time in Yemen, Wehelie said. He had gone to Yemen  two years ago at his parents’ request so he could learn Arabic and find some guidance in his life.  Wehelie is of Somali descent, but many Somalis live in Yemen, where educational opportunities are cheaper than in other parts of the Middle East.  Wehelie was studying information technology at the Lebanese International University.

Wehelie has no ill will toward the US or the FBI.  “I’m not angry at all. I know who I am and I knew eventually I would go home,” he said. “They’re trying to find the bad people, so more power to them.”

A drunken 36-year-old in the Western Australia town of Broome climbed into a crocodile enclosure and rode a 5-meter long male croc named Fatso.

Fatso took issue with being ridden and attacked the man, who was able to escape with severe lacerations on his right leg and received dozens of stitches.  Appears he will live long enough to be able to kill himself with another stupid stunt.

During the reign of Silvio Berlusconi, over 150 laws to crack down on anti-social behavior have become a part of daily life.

A young couple sitting on a monument in a piazza in Vigevano, a town near Milan, had to pay a fine of €160 .  Another couple was caught kissing in a moving car in the town of Eboli and had to pay a €500 fine.  In the coastal town of Eraclea, it is forbidden to build sandcastles, as they “obstruct the passage” of those strolling along the beach.  And don’t even think of wearing wooden clogs on the island of Capri — they’re too noisy and have thus been banned.  In Venice, it’s a €500 penalty to feed the pigeons.

Kissing a pigeon in a moving car while wearing clogs? Probably a life sentence.

We are used to overstuffed luggage falling from overhead compartments, but maggots? They fell from the overhead bin due to a spoiled container of meat (left behind by a passenger on the previous flight, according to US Airways).  As the plane was taxiing, passenger Donna Adamo told AP,  “I heard the word ‘maggot’ and that kind of got everybody creeped out. All of a sudden, I felt somebody flick the back of my hair and on the front of me came a maggot, which I flicked off me.”

At the gate, the plane was cleaned and fumigated before the passengers were brought back on board.