The Titanic Awards

Name Mike Richard
Who? Vagabondish.com editor, traveler and web designer living in Rhode Island.
Age 30
Countries Visited About 40

Titanic Nominations
1.Worst Toilet Believe it or not: a public toilet in downtown Portland, Maine.  It was like someone let a pack of methed-up children loose on a poo pinata – every conceivable surface was covered.  It would’ve taken a CSI clean-up crew weeks to fully sterilize it, although simply burning it to the ground would’ve been best.
2. Worst Souvenir In Montreal, I found a 5′x7′ area rug that I knew my first serious girlfriend back home would love.  It was packaged exactly like a dead body.  I very stupidly lugged the damn thing several hundred miles on multiple train, subway and car rides to get it home.  I’m sure several folks along the way must’ve called the cops on me.  (Incidentally, that girl broke up with me the following week)
3. Worst Meal The currywurst at the top of Berlin’s Fernsehturm TV Tower.  It was my first foray into the wonderful culinary delights of currywurst, and it turned out to be nothing more than an outrageously overpriced Ball Park Frank.  Bonus: spending the better part of that night on the toilet praying for death!
4. Worst Sunburn Latrobe Festival.  I sat outside for twelve hours sans sunblock.  Back at our hotel that night, I felt only a strange tingling sensation in my whole face.  The next morning, my face was burnt, blistered and peeling like a zombie extra from 28 Days Later.  It hurt (and looked) so awful that I almost went to the hospital.  But, like any real man, I chose to down a glass of orange juice and walk it off.
5. Worst City for Driving Pick any one in SE Asia.  Seriously.

Famous Travelers currywurst, mike richard, vagabondish.com, worst meal, worst souvenir, worst toilet

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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Famous Travelers iran air, nat geo, national geographic traveler, norie quintos, worst flight, worst meal, worst tour

Famous Travelers bangladesh, honduras, java, travelers tales, worst airline, worst meal, worst place, worst toilet, zambia

Name Catherine Watson
Who? Former travel editor of the Minneapolis Star Tribune and winner of the Lowell Thomas Travel Journalist of the Year and the Society of American Travel Writers’ Photographer of the Year. Her writing has been anthologized in many books, including “Best American Travel Writing 2008.’’ Her solo collections are Roads Less Traveled — Dispatches from the Ends of the Earth and Home on the Road: Further Dispatches from the Ends of the Earth. More at catherinewatsontravel.com.
Age 65
Countries visited 112.  (Most recent is the Faroe Islands)

Titanic Nominations
1. Worst Taxi Ride My all-day-long attempt to find the Tree of Life in the desert of southern Bahrain. The taxi driver, who’d been working on this 10-by-30-mile-wide island for 25 years, admitted he’d never been south of the Manama suburbs. By the time we’d found the damned tree, we’d been lost more times than I could count, and then arrested for trespassing.
2. Worst Toilet The dank, filthy, unlighted ruin of a public ladies’ room in central Bucharest, before Ceaucescu’s horrid government fell. No toilet paper, no soap, no “feminine hygiene products” in the whole country, no nothing.
3. Worst Meal The famous raw shrimp cocktail of Kathmandu. I ordered it to celebrate an overland trip into Tibet, got violent food poisoning, was sick for the next 3 weeks and lost 16 pounds. Only then did it occur to me how far Kathmandu was from any ocean shrimp might live in.
4. Worst Foreign Policy Idea The U.S. government’s ban on ordinary American travelers going to Cuba. It would be funny if it weren’t so stupid: Technically, we CAN go to Cuba, we just can’t spend any MONEY in Cuba.
5. Worst Airport Security Nepal’s domestic terminal. As elsewhere in South Asia, “Ladies’’ are searched separately, behind a curtain. The young female officer didn’t look up from filing her nails. “Do you have big knife?’’ she asked. No. “Do you have bomb?’’ No. “You may go.’’ Well, okay, then, if you say so…

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Famous Travelers airport, Bahrain, Bucharest, Cuba, Kathmandu, Nepal, security, taxi, worst meal, worst toilet