The Titanic Awards

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 Worst Airport For domestic, I’d go with the gloomy and outdated JFK.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.

Famous Travelers chuck thompson, ChuckThompson.com, extreme tourism, hellholes, rogue travel writer, WWII