Travelfish #455: Seeya next year!

Happy holidays and safe travels

Hi all,

This week I kick off with a piece as interesting as it is depressing on what is happening with Cambodia’s islands—read it if you dare!

Over on Couchfish, the itinerary series for paying subscribers got underway again, with three pieces on Bukit Lawang in North Sumatra, looking at the trip there from Medan, the great flood and some of the challenges the area faces today.

For free reads, I looked at how Online Travel Agents could lift their game, and farewelled the year with some predictions for 2023. Elsewhere, still on Couchfish, I’ve finally wrapped up my “rethinking travel” series—the links to each piece are below.

This is the last Travelfish newsletter for the year—I’ll be back in your email inboxes in early January. Happy holidays and safe travels all!

Cheers

Stuart

Rethinking Travel

• Couchfish: National Chocolate Milk Day (World Tourism Day)

• Couchfish: Nice Tourism (Sustainable Tourism)

• Couchfish: The Benevolent Lie (Responsible Tourism)

• Couchfish: The Year Is 2006. The Town Is Luang Prabang (Pro-Poor Tourism)

• Couchfish: Zoom in to the Red Plastic Chairs (Slow travel)

• Couchfish: The Petro-bourgeoisie (On flying)

• Couchfish: Reality Check (On tour companies)

• Couchfish: Follow The Money (On where the money goes)

• Couchfish: Foundations Matter (On Community Based Tourism)

• Couchfish: The Writing On The Wall (Travel writing)

• Couchfish: Taking A Long Term View (A conclusion—finally!)

Streetside grazing, Yangon

Any list of things I miss about Burma starts with the food. Photo: Stuart McDonald

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⭐️ Story of the week 

• Island Shopping: Cambodian Officials Buy Up The Cardamoms’ Coast from Mongabay

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📚 What I’m reading

• The Anarchy: The Relentless Rise Of The East India Company by William Dalrymple (Yes, still reading it—is long!)

🇲🇲 Burma

• ‘Afraid Of The Gun’: Military Coup Fuels Myanmar Resource Grab from Aljazeera

• Undeniable: War Crimes, Crimes Against Humanity And 30 Years Of Villagers’ Testimonies In Rural Southeast Burma from Karen Human Rights Group

• Myanmar Tourism—To Go Or Not To Go? from NikkeiAsia ($)

🇰🇭 Cambodia

• ‘Further and Further Away’: Film on Bunong Evictions Wins International Acclaim from VOD

• Cambodia’s Tallest Statue Of The Buddha To Be Built On Top Of A Mountain In 2023 from Cambodianess

• Riverside’s Reinvention: The Case For Car-free Sisowath Quay from VOD

• In The Khmer Rouge’s Last Stronghold, Myths From The Cambodian Genocide Still Reign from Coda

Ad: Phnom Penh’s Penh House, from US$70 per night. Click here for the details.

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🌴 Environment

• Can Travel & Tourism Industry Contribute To Reversing Biodiversity Extinction? from Travel Tomorrow

• How Bad For The Environment Is Traveling? from DW

• Climate Adaptation Must Be Transformational, Not Just Fighting Fires from The Third Pole

🇮🇩 Indonesia

• Sulawesi Hydropower Dam Could Flood Important Archaeological Sites from Mongabay

• Indonesian Women’s ‘Long And Difficult’ Journey To Deradicalisation In Fight Against Extremism from SCMP ($)

🇱🇦 Laos

• Govt. To Compensate Those Affected By Construction Of Laos-China Railway from Laotian Times

• Leveraging Benefits Of Regional Economic Integration: The Lao People’s Democratic Republic And The Greater Mekong Subregion from ADB (report)

🇲🇾 Malaysia

• Female Novelists Investigate Malaysia’s Ethnic Puzzle from NikkeiAsia ($)

• Dispatches On The Batang Kali Massacre from Emily Ding

🇸🇬 Singapore

• How To Explore Singapore By Bike from Travel Weekly

• We Came From Pulau Semakau from Orang Laut

🇹🇭 Thailand

• Thai Superstitions Keep Modernity In Its Place from NikkeiAsia ($)

• Death Of A Dynasty from Secret Siam ($)

Ad: Bangkok’s Sala Arun from US$73 per night. Click here for the details.

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🇻🇳 Vietnam

• Foreign Tourism In Vietnam A Shadow Of Pre-Covid Boom from NikkeiAsia ($)

• Vietnam Steps Up South China Sea Land Reclamation from RFA

Random other stuff

• How Do London’s Buses Get Their Numbers? from Londonist

• Is It Ethical To Take A Luxury Holiday In A ‘developing’ Country? from The Conversation

• Hotel Booking Sites Actually Make It Hard To Get Cheap Deals, But There’s A Way Around It from The Conversation

• Wreckage Could Finally Solve Mystery Of MH370 Air Crash from Stuff

Dinner prep

Kota Kinabalu knows how to do seafood fresh. Photo: Stuart McDonald

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See you next week!

So that’s the wrap. I hope you are all in good health, and thanks for reading.

See you next year,

Stuart