A Helsinki fashion show

Kristin and I stumbled upon a Helsinki fashion show along the Esplande.  There were locals participating and a few people even almost fell.  One of the non-models looked kind of drunk and always came out to a roaring crowd - so much lost in translation, but a delightful afternoon.  The gear is the same Western type stuff we are used to, but Helsinki seems to have a lot going on.  In the past two weekdays, we have stumbled upon a couple concerts and a fashion show.  Anyways - super random, enjoy the pictures.

The Helsinki battle of jet lag, 2013

We arrived in Helsinki at about 1:00pm after a long night of flying from DFW to Toronto to Frankfurt to Helsinki.  It was never as brutal as it sounds, but pretzels in DFW and Frankfurt helped to keep us going.  When we arrived, Kristin fell asleep almost immediately.  She will likely wake up at midnight, hungry and confused.

I have a system where I do not sleep until it gets dark.  This works great in Asia because arrivals are generally late afternoon to late evening.  Europe is tougher with AM arrivals.  I try to walk around a lot and stay outside.  It tricks my body into complying.  But about waiting for sunset...

Dawn to Dawn - A new adventure begins

Rare is the odyssey that begins with a credit card declination.  Rarer still is the shabby beginning we experienced at the closest thing to a starting line that is readily conceivable in the mind for our journey, this day,  2013 year of our lord.

It was not early, we were not in any way overconfident or with excessive zeal of any kind, but we were caught flat footed in one of the most deplorable and embarrassing schemes ever to begin an odyssey.  I will just get right to it.  My primary debit card was declined.  At Auntie Anne's.  For the an $8 purchase of pretzels.  To make matters even more proletariat, we had not only declined the upsell additions of nacho cheese and honey mustard condiments, but demanded the free Heinz Mustard packet before our journey came to an unflattering end just as it began.  We looked like a pair of bozo pretzel amateurs.  Our North African pretzel attendant sneered at us from behind her flour specked smock.

The Louvre

Day 

Night

Eiffel Storm

The most photographed structure in the world as photographed by me.  Most travelers pass through the Eiffel Tower at some point in their life.  I took this photo to give the impression that a road could literally pass through the tower, through to a storm on the other side.

Lover's Bridge - Love Locks Paris

In Paris, there is a bridge over the Seine where lovers attach a lock with their marks - initials, a date, or a quote.  After locking onto the bridge, the keys are heaved into the Seine. After a few months, when the locks have completely filled a panel, the panel holding the locks is removed and wood is affixed in place of the panel, until the new panel arrives days later.  Here we have a missing panel with some graffiti scrawled across the wood placeholder.  Soon this will be replaced with a new iron panel, and people will fill it up with locks again.

But a question, where do the locks go after they are removed?

Cloud Kingdom

Higher than Italy and surrounded by it, San Marino is a kingdom above the clouds.  31,000 strong represent the world's oldest republic.  How did it earn this designation? This happens when you build your country on top of a mountain and have an army with world class crossbow proficiency.

We earned San Marino after a butt clenching commute from Bologna. We ate six course meals and trekked its three towers.  I spent hours trying trying to get the perfect shot in the rain at the top of San Marino in the darkness amongst the clouds, and returned when I had misgivings about the shots that I got.  It is that kind of place, small enough to strain for perfection.

Boos in Paris with a long bearded bonus furmonster

Here we are in front of the gigantic metallic Asparagus.  We had a beautiful day in Paris.  I want to share all 700 pictures that I took, but with this internet connection, it would take 2100 minutes.

Here we have a long bearded Furmonster of the day - Jensen's wiser smaller and more affable cousin

Reflecting on a dark night at the Louvre

Puppies in boxes and supercars in Miami

We are now in Paris some 35 hours after our journey began. Adrenaline depleted, going to bed, but earlier today, when we were on South Beach for lunch, we saw a box full of puppies.

 We also saw supercars...

Sunset in the Bahamas

 Ah, the obligatory sunset photo.  Everyone likes them.  Everybody does them. Never gets old.

Kristin and I hit the Bahamas for a weekend last June.  We grabbed a pizza and ate it while the sun went lights out on us, reflecting off the glistening sand.  Perfect dinner.

Cloud City - Beijing has really polluted air

My wife and I argue all the time about where to raise kids.  I think Asia or Europe would be fantastic, and she totally disagrees.  One of my really smart buddies, who lived as an expat in Asia for some time, shared with me his reasoning on raising a family in Asia.  He basically felt that you want to give your kids the best opportunity to grow and thrive, and with certain external factors being unacceptable, they may not have as much developmental success.  In short, water and air pollution can have terrible effects on a child's development.  he recently moved back to the United States after starting a family.  It definitely got me thinking, and while Zurich still sounds awesome, maybe Shanghai not so much.  It made me realize that if I do have kids, then we will not live in any of the Chinese mega-cities - especially not Beijing.  Whoa, look at the graph.

What this chart is saying, basically, is that the air quality in Beijing is considerably worse than in a smoking room in a U.S. airport.  Have you ever been in a smoking room?  They are top notch depressing and make you smell like an ashtray for hours.  Even when I smoked, I would usually pass on those dens of reekdom.  Picture a bar that still lets people smoke, multiply the stench by 50, industrialize any sort of ambiance into the core function of smoking, and add glass windows so that outsiders can quietly judge on their way to catch a flight for Orlando.  That IS a smoking lounge.  And, Beijing's air quality is worse than that.  This has massive health implications for pretty much every person in Beijing, from pregnant mothers to kids to the elderly.  How do you fix something like this?  Is it the systemic reality of growing too much too fast too soon?

The other effect of this pollution is these surreal pictures (below and after break), which the folks over at Kotaku likened to Cloud City:

What Businessweek thinks about me

Businessweek did a write-up about me yesterday, and it was pretty flattering stuff (text below after break).  This kind of stuff always embarrasses me to some extent, but I am pleased to be featured and hope that I can continue to create interesting stories with my life.  In other news, my dog Lou looks longingly at Kristin out of the corner of his eyes as she cooks black bean burgers for dinner.

Shinjuku dreams

The clouds that hovered in Tokyo never seemed to lift, blanketing skyscrapers where Japanese corporate leaders once flew dangerously close to the sun.  Japan's culture pervades society in a way that encompasses even the most minute detail - even the reflections off of a damp pavement seem decidedly "Japanese."  It is a culture that owns its country, and a country that owns its culture.  Nowhere else is the visitor lead into the ephemeral quality of culture so obviously, and yet, when just mm away from understanding, it dissipates like a cool morning fog you can just barely smell.  That is Japan.

Now when I close my eyes, the lights of Shinjuku still linger like phantoms on the back of my eyelids.  So bright and yet to fade.

The world's most crowded islands

From an island microslum in Colombia to a haute enclave in central Paris, the ten most crowded islands in the world bear scant similarities in class or culture. In fact, every entry in the top ten comes from a different country. But being islands, each shares the common thread of scarcity - whether it be land, resources, or housing. In general, these islands are prophetical microcosms for an overcrowded earth - finite spaces where self sufficiency governs and demand pierces supply.

With the world's population racing higher and higher, and the "megacities club" accepting new members yearly, some day the earth could bear the traits of one of these densely packed islands.

Gallery: Most crowded islands on earth

The precipice on a rainy night in Sri Lanka

A storm approached the shoreline of Sri Lanka.  It was a dark and broody wall of grey that stirred up the winds, knocking around our window shutters at the Galle Face Hotel - an old colonial gem, seemingly built when time began.  Waiters raced around the courtyard below, making hurried arrangements with stiff arms and shouting in an unknown tongue.  There was a party later that evening, and the Sinhalese workers slowly built some sort of cover from the rain over a chessboard dance floor, however impermanent. Beyond the courtyard, Boardwalkers scampered to get to their destination in double time.  It seemed that everyone was bracing for an event - the storm.  We were too zoomed out to really notice.  Looking at the world from a google map view can make a storm seem insignificant.  From our perch, we could only see the future.  We had a long way home.

The time was June of 2011, we had just been married, and in front of us was business school, our first house as a couple, a move from Texas to Indiana, and whatever else the future may bring.  We had to find home.

Looking back, that rainy night feels like the last night of a different age, an age where I learned how to feel the earth under my feet, an age where I learned to shift slowly with the globe, an age where I dusted off all the failures and stupidity that had accumulated around me and realized - Hey, I am still here, and now, I plan to do something about it.

The Swiss countryside

Cities are humanity.  They are where we grab great dinners, check out storied art, meet other "cool" people, and stroll around while connecting dots and curiously peering in windows.  When "we" travel, especially in Europe, it seems the city is the institution that we visit.  Sure, the countryside races by on rolling train rides between Europe's great centers, but it is the city that grabs the traveler.  Paris, Barcelona, London, Prague - the city is the reward and destination, the places we write home about.  But to know the whole story of any country, one must read passed the opening chapter.  One must travel beyond the city walls.

The edge of the city does not announce itself, and through years of travel, I have grown appreciative of the subtleties of reaching open space, which is both dramatic in relativism and quiet in introduction.  After days of bathing in humanity and the shuffle of urban life, I find myself looking longingly at maps for quaint places that I have never heard of, picturing peace, simplicity, and adventure.  Rivers look curious, lakes have a sort of splendid solidarity, and national parks invite the traveler with a promise of wild edges and marooned corners of ecological decadence too wild to birth civilization.

The world's creepiest abandoned cities

I wrote this piece right before Kristin and I married, almost 2 years ago.  Over a million people read it, and I just noticed that I never published it on goboogo.  So, here it is.  Here is the original run.

Some cities die. The people leave, the streets go quiet, and the isolation takes on the macabre shape of a forlorn ghost-town - crumbling with haunting neglect and urban decay. From Taiwan to the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains, these abandoned cities lurk in the shadows of civilization. Their histories are carried in hushed whispers and futures stillborn from the day of their collapse. Some have fallen victim to catastrophe while others simply outlive their function. I think we can all agree on one thing - they are all very creepy.

Pripyat
Location: Pripyat, Ukraine - 100km from Kiev
Story: On April 26, 1986, the Chernobyl reactor began its tragic meltdown. The incident was a huge blow to the viability of the nuclear energy platform, and still today, the town of Pripyat is an abandoned shell of a city frozen in a 1980's Soviet time-warp. While the failed reactor has been entombed in a an appropriate sounding casing called a "sarcophagus," the area remains unsafe for human life. The town has thrived in one aspect though. Wildlife has returned to the area in droves. Wolves silently hunt among the towering apartment buildings, and boars forage for food in the abandoned amusement park - which strangely opened the day after the reactor explosion in the midst of evacuation.
Abandoned since: 1986

Tokyo Kawaii - Overdosing on cute in the heart of Japan

Kristin and I jumped over to Tokyo for a few nights last summer.  While there, we had a great time, checking out a bunch of amazing stuff.  Tokyo immediately vaulted towards the top of our list of favorite cities.  I took thousands of pictures, but some of my favorites are from the cute, or kawaii, side of Tokyo.

We prowled the shopping district of Ginza, bathing our eyes in untouchable Hermes bags, eating delicious baked sweets, and racing into toy stores to buy stuffed capybaras and to gawk at the multiverse of cute shoehorned into every floor.  We hit the apex of cute at Hakuhinkan Toy Park and just sort of rode the tide all the way back to the Haneda airport, where we departed, better for having visited Tokyo.

You start seeing things and it just seems normal.  "Of course," you think, why wouldn't Elmo be sitting at a table inside a bank seemingly in the middle of a conversation about CDs?  Why wouldn't the emergency exit explanation in the subway include an exit diagram with dinosaurs and other interesting trappings?  Japan seems to stamp some badge of character onto anything, and it is refreshing, and usually pretty damn cute. 

Enjoy the pictures.

The ten oldest bars and restaurants in the world

I once drank at a pub in Ireland where Vikings had commiserated after invading the Green Isle.  It was older than you or I, our great grandparents, or even the Magna Carta.  It was from the dark ages for sure, and where once Vikings swilled brews, today, tourists eat fish and chips while locals complain about Eurozone politics.  If you look closely enough and kind of squint at the Brazen Head, you can just barely picture middle ages Dublin.  You can almost smell the smoke.  If those walls could talk, they would tell the tale of mankind's ascent into a sophisticated society, for better and worse.  I wondered while I sat at the bar scribbling into my little notebook, how many other really old places are out there?

It is rare for a restaurant or bar to last a very long time - where a long time is determined with a measuring stick notched in decades.  The public houses, inns, and restaurants on this list evade conventional measurement, lasting centuries atop centuries.  These are places where arguments took place about the events we only read about in history class.  The oldest companies in the world are Japanese, but every spot on this list is European.  The Germanic people, it seems, are especially adept at building things that last a very long time. They dominate this list.

All travel is just beyond the edge

When we were young, we would explore the edges of our suburban sprawl.  We would take our bikes through neighborhoods passed gas stations and soccer fields and gargantuan power lines pumping a modern lifestyle into thousands of mcmansions, lined up like fractals from the sky.  We would ride as far as our fears would allow, conjuring myths about abandoned houses and devil worshipers, about high schoolers and coyotes.  We would push into seemingly fantastic realms, into fields untouched by development, where the fractals did not reach.  We would explore the edges, because the edges were there.

Tonle Sap Lake, Cambodia

Hard to believe it has been two years since we have been to Cambodia - enjoy this picture of a lake scene on Tonle Sap from Summer of 2010.  Maybe next year we will head back to this interesting and beautiful land.

The world's best airports

The are roughly 50,000 airports in the world, of which about a quarter are in the United States.  A few weeks ago, Skytrax bravely released their list of the best 100 based on customer surveys.  Like most Skytrax surveys, the United States is noticeably absent from the top of the list making its first appearance with Cincinnati at 24th.   What is number 1? I will give you a hint; it is not this.

The list gives no points to unique airports like Male International. The Male airport is buffeted on all sides by some of the most beautiful ocean in the world; reef sharks swim just beyond luggage cart check, and the cab line is an eclectic mixture of boats and water planes.  It is like an airport from a strange dream, and yet it is really there. 

There are some great airports on this list.  Hong Kong's airport on Lantau island is a modern showpiece that is 30 minutes from the past (Tai O) and 30 minutes from the future (Central).  Singapore lives up to its billing as a the most talked about airport in the world with so many cool options.  Adults can enjoy a Singapore sling by the Crowne Plaza swimming pool (one of several pool options), and kids have access to a 4 storey swirling monster slide - the tallest in Singapore.  Schiphol in Amsterdam is perfect on account of its robust cheese selection and lodging options, such as Yotel Hotel, a by the hour type of micro-hotel with soft blankets and nice showers.

The town of Rapperswil, Switzerland

Rapperswil is a great place to get lost.  Back-roads lead to quaint restaurants and quiet squares, and a castle looms uber alles reminding you that this place has been in business for a very long time.  In fact this place was booming when a map of the world looked like this.  

Located at the southern end of Lake Zurich, boats line the banks surrounding the town, and 600 different kinds of roses bloom throughout the city from June to October - a feat that granted Rapperswil the title of Rosenstadt or town of roses.  It is a town frozen in time yet functionally efficient to the modern era traveler.  One can explore medieval alleyways, inspect a 13th century castle, and order McDonald's all within a matter of 30 minutes.  It is a great place to get lost, but a better place to find. 

United offers deal of the decade: 4 miles to Hong Kong

Idiots!  Apparently some bad code in United's award travel reservation  system caused users to easily book flights to Hong Kong for only 4 miles.  Normally, such a trip would cost about 60,000 miles, but for some lucky customers this weekend, they were able to use just 4 simple miles.  That is a 99.993% discount!

Word spread across the internet about "the glitch" and many customers grabbed the incredible deal.  United is attempting to cancel the tickets.  The DOT is saying not so fast and may require United to uphold the deals.  Regardless of what happens, United appears to be in a serious free fall since merging with Continental, and perhaps this Hong Kong fare deal will mark the humorous bottom to their struggles. But, probably not.

World's top airlines

Skytrax has released their airlines ranking for 2012, and it is no surprise that no U.S. based carrier is anywhere to be found in the top 20.  This list is similar to what you would expect with a few surprises.  Garuda almost inches into the top 10 despite being banned from flying in Europe just three years ago.  SpiceJet ranks higher than American Airlines.  Virgin Australia jumped 20 spots.  Royal Jordanian and  EgyptAir rank higher than Aerlingus - I have flown all three and would never have guessed that.

Kristin and I have flown over 30 of these carriers and I am left scratching my head more often than not. So how does this happen?  What is the methodology?

The Malls of Dubai

 

Every country has its own culture of shopping. Italy has the pedigree, with worn estate leather goods from Tuscany and glittering catwalks fueling Milan's couture. America boasts 5th Avenue, the biggest week in fashion, and the cookie-cutter malls of middle-America. Shopping in Paris is as elegant as it is expensive, where visiting the temples of Chanel, Dior, and Hermes is like a Hajj for fashionistas. Getting fitted for a suit on Savile Row in London is a gentlemanly apex, one that is best achieved while gently pulling on a cherry-wood pipe and commenting on cheeky matters from a pink-tinged page of the Financial Times.

In Dubai, The malls are king. Vast expanses of high end extravagance, these oases from the draping emirate heat are stocked with Gucci, Tom Ford, Louis Vuitton, and any other brand that peddles four-figure handbags to the jet set. Just as America brought the shopping mall to retail prominence, Dubai has perfected the art, blown it up, and put it all back together with megatons of glitter, pomp, and reckless luxury. But more so than brands and shine, the malls of Dubai also have other extraordinary features. A skating rink and a movie theater? That is so 20th century. How about scuba diving, snow skiing, and visiting the tallest building in the world? Welcome to the malls of Dubai.

Gallery: The Malls of Dubai: Skiing, scuba diving, and shopping 

St. Lucia drifting between the Pitons

St.  Lucia is a wild breast of green land hunkered down on a line that extends across the Caribbean down to South America, an ancient mountain chain that just peaks above the water line to say hello.   Virgin forests overgrow the quiet asphalt roads that lead to black sand beaches and quiet jungle trails. Steaming collapsed calderas lurk inland, and Afro-Caribbean dancehalls fill the humid nights with the thumping jams of reggaeton.  The oft-used dancehall air horn blasts across the tear shaped island and out towards the Atlantic from decaying colonial outposts like Soufriere.  It feels like a unifying blast of something, though I never pinpointed what that something was.  It is perhaps a revelry that has taken many forms since the colonial overlords left centuries ago, shape-shifting the island into a post-colonial sliver of decay.  Or more likely, it is simply a blast that accompanies a great time at a crowded club next to a beach, under the gaze of the pitons, where tomorrow will be hot and freedom is cheap.

Zurich: the world's most expensive city?

It was 2:00pm at Delta HQ when my phone rang.  It was Kristin. "We have to make the 4:30 to Zurich, Bermuda is completely booked up for tomorrow."  It was Memorial Day weekend, and we needed to use the extra day off as extravagantly as possible.  I asked no questions.  Within minutes, I scrambled to close up my work.  I cleaned out my teapot, saved my excel files, and raced home to pick up Kristin.  Within two hours, we were boarding a flight for Zurich.  Working for an airline has its benefits, the contours of which I am just beginning to explore.

Zurich is the top city on the Economist cost of living index, but we found it easy to stay there on the cheap.  We booked our 4 star hotel through Priceline "pick a price" for about $140 after tax, we dined on Bratwursts and pretzel rolls (a personal favorite), and used Zurich's superb train and subway system to get around when foot travel was not in option.  

I did not find it prohibitively expensive at all. In fact, I was not nearly as fatigued from sticker shock as I have been in the past in places like Singapore, London, or the Kathmandu International Airport - where I once bought a Kit Kat bar for something like $5.

Anyways, here are some pictures from our spectacular trip to Zurich:

The sun never really sets

When it all began, I was just another passenger, chasing the sun across the pacific.

As a traveler, I decided not to stop. The odyssey continued as I finally abandoned my past for opportunities and plied my trade as a writer or student or analyst or whatever else could get me in the position to smell jet fuel and know that on the other side of the jetdoor was a world and a world away.  Travel is the journey and the destination, and I do whatever I can to keep the trip alive.

So fast forward, and here I sit.  Twice removed from my home, the hour is late and a dog slumbers at my feet.  I am tired, sure, but is that not the point?  To see so much of the world that you collapse in exhaustion from the beauty of it all?  To know what you have seen and to know that the only thing keeping you awake is the bright shining suns in your past, and the possibility to share that beauty with the world, one way or the other...

The question was never when will it stop.  The question remains, how long is now?   

I ask myself this question when everything is right, and the sun is setting behind a beautiful city to dance its way across the Pacific.  There is a moment, just before the sun relinquishes its control to the night, and that moment is my 'now.'  I can't capture it with my lens, and I can't capture it with my words, but I will always chase it with my life. 

Liechtenstein - a tiny rich country

Nestled between Switzerland, Germany, and Austria is the tiny principality of Liechtenstein.  It is one of the smallest countries in the world but has the world's highest per capita GDP's at over $140,000 per year. The country is filled with art and flanked by the alps.  It is the perfect place to spend an afternoon.  In the hills, above the capital city of Vaduz, is a castle where a ruling royal family still lives to this day.

Here are some pictures from this wonderful place.

Top 10 Venice Travel Guide

Visiting Venice is a lot like living in a painting. The colors and reflections feel ephemeral. You blink and the picture changes. The size of Venice ceases to exceed its usefulness as no corner, road, bridge, or shop seems wasted or useless. Each thing plays a part in defining her character. The peeling paint reflects glories of the past, with the new layers an homage to the upkeep of a starstung legacy. The beauty is so effervescent that even a blind man could make a career as a photographer here. While people may come and go, none forget. Hemingway hunted, Napoleon conquered, Monet painted, Leonardo invented, and millions more have gasped and gawked in the shadows of this most storied settlement. It is to be savored like some early morning dream that surreptitiously impacts the remains of the day.

In Venice, the ambiance alone is so beautiful and otherworldly that just wandering aimlessly provides fantastic results. Beyond errant exploration though, Venice provides many gorgeous sights and enchanting islands for travelers to explore. Here are 10 things to do in Venice and around the lagoon.

Gallery: 10 Things to do in Venice

Top 10 Florence Travel Guide

Florence is so much more than a city. The past of this small community on the banks of the Arno is forever intertwined with invention and progress. The Renaissance began here, advancing all forms of intellectual inquiry and creation. The Medici, essentially the world's first modern bankers, built a Florentine empire with a strong patronage for the arts. Once the center of the banking and art world, it now exists simply as a quiet city in the Tuscan hills. Florence has come down gracefully from its apogee unapologetic and ready to just be. It forges on ahead with shops full of artisans; architecture that has shaped our conception of beauty, and an art scene that may never be eclipsed. The Florence experience serves a welcome respite from the supercenter and highway lifestyle. Florence is more than a city. It is an ideal from which every other beautiful city should be measured.

Once you have arrived in Florence, the beauty can be overwhelming. I do not have a cure for Stendhal Syndrome, but I do have some experiences for you to enjoy while exploring this old town.

Top 10 Hong Kong Travel Guide

Hong Kong is all about balance. Nature and steel. Silt and sparkle. Yin and Yang. This masterpiece of divergences is a Feng shui city bereft of boring angles or a predictable head turn. Spicy aromas billow from a flaming street wok. An animated hawker peddles jade from a humble stoop, his wispy beard blowing in a gust from a passing double-decker. In a corner office sixty floors up, a suited banker creates eastern wealth like a modern day alchemist. Each plays a part in defining the complexities of character forged in this balancing act of humanity. Vertically, Hong Kong is man's answer to the California redwoods - thousands of spires erupting out of the earth like a civilization on steroids. If ever mankind had something to prove, they proved it here on the banks of the South China Sea.

After the Opium Wars in the 19th century, Hong Kong became a British colony. This colonial conquest fostered Hong Kong's character in amazing ways. Compromises were made, the city was built, and the unlikely union created a hybrid society where east met west. The Brits and the Chinese built towards the sun and created a hulking civilization. The end result is Hong Kong - a city lavished in sublime food and breathtaking vistas. It is near impossible to yawn with boredom in this extraordinary city, and these ten experiences are a great foundation to any stay in Hong Kong.

Gallery: Hong Kong

The vibrant graveyard of Chichicastenango

A strange Guatemalan furmonster

Any idea what this creature is?  I saw an entire troupe of them foraging around the ruins of Tikal.

Ruins of Guatemala

Grabbed this shot this week in Antigua at an abandoned church damaged hundreds of years ago in an earthquake.

Chicago at night

I took this picture of Chicago at night while reveling with my little bronies in the second city.

Top 10 most dangerous places in the world

What comes to mind when you think of the world's worst place? While it is easy to complain about rural Wal-marts, La Guardia, Applebee's, and any government office with motor vehicle in its title, none of those places escalate the game from nuisance to immediate danger. All of them can be horrible, yes, but a threatened existence they do not pose.

The places on this list are the bad places. Some have run out of hope. Others have fought war for so long it is the new normal. Most are exceptionally dangerous and heartbreaking. And while none of them are fighting for write-ups by travel bloggers or inspiring travel with the NetJet set, some of these locations may someday be on the travel map. After all, it was not long ago that current hot-spots like Cambodia and Croatia would have made such a list.