The Titanic Awards

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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Famous Travelers columnist, Daisann McLane, frugal traveler, national geographic traveler, New York Times, real travel

Name Will Hide
Who? London-based freelance travel writer with a weekly column in The Times. Find him on the web at willhide.com and willhidetravels.blogspot.com
Age 42
Countries Visited 50ish

Titanic Nominations
1. Worst Flight Scariest was flying Belgrade-London on JAT in November 2009 when we passed too close to the jetstream of a 747 somewhere over Austria. It’s the only time I’ve really thought “this is it”.
2. Worst In-Flight Meal I hate it on short, overnight flights from the US east cost to London when they wake you two hours before landing for “breakfast” and then just give you a muffin that has a sell-by date of June 2019 and a cup of luke-warm dirty water that they laughingly call coffee.
3. Worst City for Driving Cape Town. You expect it to be bad in somewhere like Tehran or Dhaka, but Cape Town in theory has more of an air of civility – so why are their drivers so selfish, never letting you in at junctions and cutting you up all over the place?
4. Worst Ride on an Animal On an elephant in Assam, India. Never, ever ride an elephant in shorts. Their skin is like industrial sand paper. The hair on the inside of my legs still hasn’t grown back.
5. Worst Museum There’s a Jesse James exhibition in Stanton Missouri, USA, which is basically a posh shed next to a highway. It’s devoted to the notion that JJ never died young in the 1890s but went into hiding, grew old and passed away peacefully in Texas in the 1950s, supported by a few pictures of an old guy with a similar nose and ears – except they’re not similar at all. It’s just so bad, it’s good. You’ve got to admire the belief of the people who run it.

Famous Travelers columnist, freelance, The Times, travel writer, Will Hide, willhide.com

Name Christopher Elliott
Who? National Geographic Traveler’s ombudsman and nationally syndicated travel columnist. Probably the best person in America to contact when you get ripped off by anyone in the travel industry. For updated insider info, check out his practical, regularly updated blog.
Age 41
Countries Visited About 50

Titanic Nominations
1. Worst Pizza Anything made by a chain restaurant. The cardboard it comes in tastes better, and it’s probably more nutritious.
2. Worst Toilet There was this outhouse in the French Alps. It was the summer of 1988. I decided to go outside because I was afraid I might pass out. Fortunately, only the cows could see my indiscretion
3. Worst First-World Airport Newark.
4. Worst Visa Queue Heathrow.
5. Worst Drivers Have you ever been to South Florida? That stretch of I-95 between Palm Beach and Miami is some of the most dangerous highway in America. Seriously. I wouldn’t want to be driving on it after dark. Makes the Daytona 500 look like driving school.

Famous Travelers chris elliott, christopher elliott, columnist, heathrow, newark, ombudsman, rip-offs