Haiti as we already know by now needs the whole world’s support due to the magnitude 7 earthquake that hit the island earlier this week. With this tragic event that killed an estimated 50,000 people, I can only hope and pray that Haitians can still find a way to continue living.
Haiti is Creole and French speaking Caribbean country. Being a Caribbean country it is blessed with one of a kind beaches. The island attracts thousands of tourists every year from around the globe. Natural wonders, parks, lakes, monument and historic sites are among the best tourist attractions of the island.
Beautiful islands are common in Haiti but Labadie Island is probably the most popular tourist spot in the country. The island is famous for its breathtaking view any time of the day. A cruise can help you check out the totality of the Labadie Island. You can check out the nearby Bay of Acul and Amiga Island. These two tourist spots are equally attractive and offer travelers luxuriant green landscapes.
If you’re a traveler who likes to know more of the country’s history then Citadelle is the right place to visit. Musee de Guahaba is a specialty museum that houses the country’s abundant arts and artifacts.
Barbancourt Rum Distillery is also a major tourist attraction in Haiti. One of the best tasting rums is being made here.
Petionville is the perfect place for vacationers who like to shop. The place is located in the country’s capital which is the Port au Prince. Various restaurants and shops are found in Petionville. You can also get a closer look of the country’s rich cultural heritage in this place.
Aside from the major tourist attractions that I have mentioned, there are also a number of places in Haiti that are worth your time and they are Lake Saumatre and Chaine de la Selle Peak. Lake Saumatre is famous for flamingos, water buffaloes, and crocodiles while the Chaine de la Selle Peak is the highest point of Haiti.
Despite being the poorest country in the western hemisphere there’s no doubt that Haiti has a lot to offer to its growing number of tourists across the globe.
Let us all hope and pray for Haiti’s fast recovery and restore those natural wonders that makes them one of the best tourist destinations in the world.
I'm a fan of Twitter but I was on deadline and only half-following tweets a few nights ago as messages streamed in from people in the UAE at the inauguration of the world's tallest building Burj Dubai, since renamed Burj Khalifa. A few made me giggle, like that of @OmaReina who re-tweeted @trebbye:"#BurjDubai is now Burj Abu Dhabi...I mean #BurjKhalifa, as stated by his highness", a reference to more affluent neighbouring emirate Abu Dhabi's financial bailout of its debt-ridden cousin Dubai. (For further explanation, see this piece by Dubai's Financial Times writer Simeon Kerr). While there were the usual expressions of cynicism from Dubai's many critics (some very witty), I was drawn more to tweets by Emirati and expat tweeps for their raw emotion and passionate expressions of elation and pride. As the messages streamed in at a rapid pace by tweeps determined to see the symbolic structure become a trending topic on Twitter, I have to admit I got a tad emotional and wished I was there with friends. You see, although I'm Australian I moved with husband Terry to the UAE in 1998 to work, and while we're permanently on the road now, the country is still our base. I've lived there a quarter of my life and feel more home there than in Australia where I have to admit I feel, well, um... foreign. So when twitter pal and Matador editor Julie Schwietert (@collazoprojects) tweeted: “You know what I don’t care about? The Burj, that’s what.” I felt compelled to respond. Not criticize. Just explain that "The people who care about the Burj are the people who live there & love the place, and for whom it's symbolic of so much..." (and, cause I needed more characters) "...which is why I care about it; I think we must feel the way Aussies felt when the Opera House or Harbour Bridge opened."
Because that's what I'd been thinking as I half-watched the tweeps coming in that evening. As I read tweets about workers injured during the construction of Burj Dubai, I recalled reading many years earlier in a popular culture class at uni about the many men who had died, were injured or went deaf while working on the Sydney Harbour Bridge, an initiative that created a phenomenal debt that wasn't paid off until the 1980s. I also remembered old black and white photos I'd seen of the opening ceremony, presided over by the state premier, with a 21-gun salute, Air Force fly-past, marching bands and decorated floats, all considered very extravagant during times of depression.
But, more than anything, like the Sydney Opera House and other great iconic monuments, the Sydney Harbour Bridge is a source of immense national pride. Its completion not only united the city when it connected Sydney's northern and southern shores in 1932, but it also united a nation during very challenging times. I suspect Burj Khalifa has done the same.
P.S.my tweets motivated this lovely post from Julie on Matador: How Twitter Helped Me Care About the Burj
The posts I will be popping up on my poor neglected travel blog over the next few days have been a long time coming. Some I drafted back in Beirut in November, others I scribbled almost a month ago while I was recovering from bronchial pneumonia from a hotel room in Bangkok where we were working on a guidebook. That diagnosis, by the way, based on nasty symptoms like coughing up blood, came from my doctor uncle in Australia by email because I was too busy working to get to a GP. It would be an understatement to say that 2009 has been a hectic year of travel and writing for Terry and I - something I only recently appreciated glancing at all the books we've written which have been published this year sitting on the shelf beside my desk here at my family's house in Bendigo, Australia: Footprint Italian Lakes, Thomas Cook Northern Italy, and Thomas Cook Travellers Calabria, plus a handful of books I updated for AA and Thomas Cook. Then there are others we've written that I haven't even seen (like the Rough Guides Clean Breaks, which I contributed to) or are not yet published, like the new edition to the Rough Guide to Australia (for which we updated four and a bit states - half the country! - on a four month-long road trip from October 2008 to February 2009), and another first edition, Back Roads Australia for DK. I skim down this page scanning my posts, and while there have been few compared to last year or the year before, when I stop at In Print and Online and then take a look at that archive I see why. We may continually read the claims that print is dead yet we've spent more time writing for magazines this year than any other, and up until we returned to guidebooks in December we'd spent six months solid doing little else but write for magazines. The irony is that we've now been hired by HomeAway Holiday-Rentals for a year to travel the world, stay in their properties, and blog about the experience - something I never could have predicted. So the travel blogging that for me had been an escape from my 'day job' as a travel writer now becomes our main source of income. Print is still not dead, however - as much as our new client appreciates social media, they are still going to pay us bonuses for every article we get published in a magazine or newspaper. So I'm expecting it's going to be another busy year, but I'm pleased to say that we'll be slowing down considerably. No longer will I be envying a donkey his pace. More on our new project, Grantourismo soon.
Pictured? Fortune tellers in Bangkok.
Which hotels do travel writers check into when they go on holidays? That's what Mark Hudson, a writer himself for The Sunday Times, among other publications, was keen to know, so he asked 50 of them (including myself) and published their recommendations, 'Where travel writers pay to stay', on his site 101 Holidays. I've been meaning to share this one with you for a while. If you're a regular Cool Travel Guide reader, you'll know (from this post and others) that I've been increasingly frustrated with user-generated content of the kind you get on Trip Advisor, and find myself looking more and more for recommendations by experts, so I was pleased to see Mark do this. Ah, but you say, aren't all hotel reviews in magazines and papers written by experts? Well, yes they are, but they aren't always the kind of hotels that the experts actually stay at when they have a choice. Sometimes hotels are reviewed because they're 'hot properties', newly opened, relaunched, or because an advertiser/business partner has asked for them to be reviewed. Pictured above is a detail from the sitting room at the Novecento, a hotel we stayed for pleasure, not work, when we attended the Venice Biennale in June - it's not new and not 'hot', but it has loads of charm, is in a wonderful location, and the staff are some of the best around. 
If you had ever been to stag parties, you probably won’t forget those experiences. Though stag nights vary from places to places, some of the mischievous activities are often happening in every stag nights. Among the world famous stag parties comes from London Stag Weekends.
Stag nights are known for the way people celebrate, and some stag parties are having some specialties as well. London Stag weekends are known for the luxurious and glamorous programs which are often filled up by the richest guys from around the country. When it is time for stag parties, here there won’t be any limits- yes, life to its fullest!
As the name stag parties have become a genuine reason for many to enjoy a weekend without limits, some are making something that would be useful in future life as well. Some sorts of games and training programs which often happen only in finishing schools are happening in some stag parties. One of the leading clubs which is on top list of London stag weekends had offered some team building games and personal effectiveness programs while having full fun on the run. Having a chance to check luck may also be interesting to some- Yes, bingo is also a part of it.
Another important factor to be mentioned about London stag weekends is that the rate for organizing stag nights is getting lower and lower as the competition is getting tougher in the great city. As new players are entering the game with some exclusive ideas to set a trend among the people who are having a great time at stag parties, veterans are trying their best to lower the price as well as to come up with some new ideas- which in turn will help the customers or the people who enjoy such things a lot.
Once, when stag parties were not accepted widely, there weren’t enough people to take part but as the time is changed, most of the stag parties are nothing more than a festival.
If you are planning to do a stag party, having a clear understanding of the offers from different institutions as well as having your own exclusive ideas to make the day memorable shall be the perfect solution. Yes, it’s time for everyone to be a part of this revolution. If you never had a chance to or if you are about to have a stag party, make sure that you are having the best!
While the vast majority of comments I get on Cool Travel Guide are wonderful and warmly welcomed, I've received a few comments over the last year that have caused me to reflect upon what Cool Travel Guide is all about and what I'm prepared to post and what I'm not and to come up with a posting policy. Here it is: while I welcome comments in response to posts I've published on Cool Travel Guide and other comments that might be slightly off-topic but touch on subjects this blog covers (see this post 'What is Cool Travel Guide?' to find out what those are), there are some comments that I won't post and won't address and they are:
1) spam, including friendly on-topic comments across multiple posts where it's obvious you're just leaving comments to try to sell your timeshare apartments or cheap flights. The only exception is where I know you and you are writing from a business address, but even then if you're spamming, I'm sorry I won't post your comments.
2) comments that are abusive, defamatory and obscene. If you have a problem with me or something I've written, then email me directly. But unless you identify yourself and write in a reasoned, calm and considered manner, don't expect me to answer. Life is too short and I don't have time to write to my friends, so don't think I'm going to waste my precious time answering abusive emails.
3) persistent off-topic comments, especially those across multiple posts that verge on stalking. If your comments are off-topic *and* anonymous, then there is no way I'm going to post them. Again, if there's something you want to discuss then email me directly and identify yourself. Bear in mind I'm not going to respond to people who accuse me of being an apologist for Dubai nor am I going to get into discussions about things like the human rights of construction workers there. This doesn't meant I don't care, it just means I don't care to discuss the subject with you on Cool Travel Guide.
4) comments that relate to content I've written for other publishers that has nothing to do with Cool Travel Guide content. For example, an anonymous person recently left an angry comment in relation to a review I wrote on a hotel for a Lonely Planet guidebook because their experience differed remarkably to my own. If you have a bad experience at a hotel, my advice is to complain to the hotel manager during your stay. There's nothing they can do about a noisy hotel room after you leave or if you leave an anonymous comment on Cool Travel Guide. If you've maintained your anonymity, I can't even follow it up with the hotel manager to find out what happened. Complain to the manager at the time of your stay and they can probably move you to another room or help find you alternate accommodation. If I didn't mention the noise in my review, then I obviously didn't experience it myself, but don't question and criticize my reviewing skills nor expect that I'll upload an anonymous comment that does so.
4) comments that relate to content I've written for other publishers that has nothing to do with Cool Travel Guide content. For example, an anonymous person recently left an angry comment in relation to a review I wrote on a hotel for a Lonely Planet guidebook because their experience differed remarkably to my own. If you have a bad experience at a hotel, my advice is to complain to the hotel manager during your stay. There's nothing they can do about a noisy hotel room after you leave or if you leave an anonymous comment on Cool Travel Guide. If you've maintained your anonymity, I can't even follow it up with the hotel manager to find out what happened. Complain to the manager at the time of your stay and they can probably move you to another room or help find you alternate accommodation. If I didn't mention the noise in my review, then I obviously didn't experience it myself, but don't question and criticize my reviewing skills nor expect that I'll upload an anonymous comment that does so.
HOW YOU CAN EMAIL ME: click on VIEW MY COMPLETE PROFILE under ABOUT ME (right column) and click on 'email' under Contact, however, I can't reiterate enough: don't expect a response unless you identify yourself honestly and provide real contact details.
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