One morning in Beijing on the China 2.0 Tour, I grabbed a selection of newspapers as our group gathered at the gorgeous Marriott City Wall hotel, and I thought I’d share some tidbits from my haul since many PT blog readers may not have easy access to papers like the China Daily.

• A unique complex, the Emperor’s Lodge inside Beijing’s Forbidden City, will open next year after extensive restoration.
• The city of San Francisco is actively seeking more ties with China, especially sister city Shanghai (Mayor Gavin Newsom went to school in San Francisco’s Chinatown.)
• China Daily journalist Hong Liang gripes about less-than-stellar Chinese convenience stores.
• Wonderful article entitled Lost Horizon Found, about Shudu Lake and Potatso National Park in Shangri-La country (Zhongdian) plus why China needs more national parks.
• The South China Morning Post had a very interesting article about a Dutch man, Sebastian Straten, who is pursuing his dream of a guest house business in Iran.  The link to it doesn’t have the whole article (silly! but I did find the full article in the Brunei Times.) I liked this quote:
  

  “His guiding principle is simple: it is better to be among the first foreigners investing in Iran’s nascent tourism industry than a latecomer in nearby Dubai, the Gulf’s commercial hub – especially during a financial crisis….Iran sees tourism as a priority and wants to invest more than US$30 billion in the sector over the next two decades, according to Iranian media.”

• They’re building a high-tech urban planning vision for book nuts about 30 km north of Seoul, South Korea: Paju Book City. For more, see this Bloomberg article.
• From the UK’s Financial Times, a whole section called Global Traveller that deals with how businesses are coping with travel costs. The short answer? It’s a buyer’s market, and deals abound. Global Traveller also had blurbs about Lima, Mumbai and Florence.
• A couple of museum exhibit notes:  Tokyo’s Mori Art Museum will open Chalo! India on 22 November, and the British Museum’s blockbuster Babylon looks really impressive.

I love the different perspective you can get by skimming the available local papers; a traveler’s bliss!

Related posts:

1. PT Travel Linkfest for 14 July 2008
2. PT Travel Linkfest 01.28.2008
3. PT Travel Linkfest 01.21.2008
4. PT Travel Linkfest 02.12.2008

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 20th, 2008 at 1:24 pm and is filed under Asia travel, Sheila projects, travel websites. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.