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 Norie Quintos
Who? Senior editor at National Geographic Traveler, specializing in consumer travel news, guided tours, and family travel. Former jobs include travel reporter at U.S. News & World Report and senior editor at Caribbean Travel & Life magazine. Find Norie on Twitter
Age 45
Countries Visited About 25

Titanic Nominations
1. Worst Meal At a restaurant in Rome, I urged my kids to order a panini—“it’s authentic,” I assured them. What they got: three halves of hotdog in a hamburger bun.
2. Worst Tour In Rekjavik, Iceland, I signed up for an eight-hour “Golden Circle” minibus tour. Problem was, it was December and there were only six hours of daylight. The first two hours of the tour were conducted in near-total darkness, with the guide blithely describing the passing geologic and historical highlights no one could see, “On your left is the Hengill volcano… And here, on the right is a geothermal plant…. ” Adding to the Twilight-Zone-iness of it all was that no one else seemed to think it was odd.
3. Worst Flight Regional flight from Shiraz to Isfahan on Iran Air Tour, a subsidiary of the Iranian national airline. The Tu-154s was a leased Aeroflot aircraft. The plane’s obvious age, seemingly rickety condition, and Soviet styling made me wonder if we’d arrive in one piece. But we did.
4. Another Worst Flight I took a charter flight from Darwin, Australia, to a lodge in Arnhem Land. The plane turned out to be a two-seater. It was just the pilot—who looked awfully young—and me in the jumpseat. Halfway into the flight, he asked me to pull out the map. He peered at it and flew on. A little later he asked me if that area below looked like the marked spot on the map. At that moment it dawned on me that the guy had never been to where we were going before. Then I started to panic and wondered if he’d ever flown solo before; he assured me he had. Now, those who are familiar with my sense of misdirection would never ask me to navigate, but we somehow managed to locate the airstrip. To top off this surreal adventure, after we landed I had to get out and help park the plane by pushing it under some trees.
5. Worst Photography Moment My regular camera broke soon after I arrived for a South African safari. So I bought several disposable film cameras at a gift shop in Johannesburg. On the first morning’s game drive, the jeep was full of wannabe photo pros jostling each other with their mongo-lensed Nikons. And there I was snapping away with the $10 plastic camera. The best part was telling them where I worked—National Geographic. You could just see those guys wondering if maybe I was employing some kind of super-secret photography technique.

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