Touch Screen Gloves/$0 Flights/Survival Tourism
Nomadico issue #79
A weekly newsletter with four quick bites, edited by Tim Leffel, author of A Better Life for Half the Price and The World’s Cheapest Destinations. See past editions here, where your like-minded friends can subscribe and join you.
A New Bullet Train in Indonesia
Following the opening of a new China-funded train line in Laos that we reported on earlier, Indonesia just cut the ribbon on another one connecting the two largest cities in Java in Indonesia. And this one is faster, running at 350 kilometers per hour (217 mph). Not many tourists spend time in Jakarta or Bandung, the two end points, but it does stop in popular Yogyakarta, near a volcano hike and two wonders of the world: Borobudur and Prambanan. See pics and details here.
Touch Screen Gloves
If you find yourself taking your gloves off to use your phone in the winter, it might be time for an upgrade. Lots of lightweight easy-to-pack winter gloves come with a sensor built into the fingertip section that your smartphone recognizes like your real finger. You can find hundreds of them on Amazon for $8 to $20. At higher price points you can get heavy-duty insulated versions suitable for skiing or snowshoe hikes.
Will We See $0 Flights in the Future?
It’s common knowledge that airlines make nearly all of their profits now from extra add-on fees. Frontier recently took that to its natural conclusion by announcing $0 base airfares (before taxes) on a one-day sale that ran this past Tuesday. There were blackouts and conditions, but it was interesting to see an experiment like this by a bare-bones airline that ran the numbers and said, “Why not?”
The Rise of Survival Tourism
I met this guy Tom on my Bulgarian ski trip last year who was talking about how he’d been a contestant on the British season of Alone, where the test is who can get by solo the longest in a remote area with wild animals roaming around. Turns out he won the thing and he was well-prepared: he runs a company that sets you up to survive on your own in nature—on your 8-day vacation. His is one of several benefitting from a rise in survivalist holidays. See The Wild Business of Desert Island Tourism.
11/23/23
