This article explores various modes of transportation, highlighting both the stellar options and those that still need improvement. From the exhilarating to the underwhelming, discover the best (and worst) ways to get around.
Unless you’re 14 or under, you’ll take a jet-boat or jet-ski tour and think: why? Your ears are still ringing, your clothes smell of fuel and there’s salt crusted deep in your ears. And the wake you create helps destroy fragile native habitat in the stunning surrounds you’ve paid to come and see on holiday. You probably ran over 15 turtles without even knowing it.
\This attraction in Far North Queensland takes you in vintage carriages from Cairns to Kuranda on the tablelands, but the two-hour trip only fleetingly delivers on scenery, as you climb amid trees for much of the time. Kuranda, meanwhile, is filled with car parks and souvenir shops. \You’re excited to take a camel ride, imagining a romantic sunset experience or the opportunity to channel your inner-Lawrence of Arabia. Instead, you lurch atop a stinky, unhappy beast over which you have little control, constantly worried about being tossed onto the sand, and so uncomfortable – if not seasick – that you can’t wait for it to end. Tuk-tuks once provided a genuine local experience and white-knuckle ride as you careered through Bangkok traffic, inhaling fumes, tipping around corners, and grinning at other passing passengers. But tuk-tuks have mostly gone, and those that remain are overpriced tourist traps more likely to deliver you to the driver’s cousin’s shop than your requested destination. \Yes, it’s famous, you feel as if you’re travelling around the Monopoly board, and the route map is an unbeatable design icon. But stations are tired and grubby, trains frequently delayed and overcrowded, and you don’t see anything. Clamber to the upper deck of a double-decker bus – another transport classic – and admire streetscapes instead. SeeBy all means spend €80 ($130) on a 30-minute gondola ride down smelly back canals lined by peeling palazzi, where you push past other gondolas full of bemused tourists, and get photographed by people on passing bridges. Or spend €9.50 for 75-minutes on a vaporetto (water bus) past major sights, and be wowed. See Incredibly beautiful, incredibly fragile: Antarctica is especially vulnerable to cruise tourism, with the threat of fuel spills and the inadvertent introduction of foreign flora and fauna to the White Continent. If your ship has more than 500 passengers, you aren’t allowed to disembark onto the continent anyway, so what’s the point? Go see an iceberg or glacier in southern Chile. \Summer alpine resorts are magnificent: hiking in wildflower-strewn meadows, floating down rivers on lilos, chair-lifting to the summit to absorb the views. But there’s one activity, mountain biking, that’s in a word, terrifying. The unnatural pitch over handlebars. Skidding in gravel. The real prospect of falling – at best onto rock-hard ground, at worst into the abyss. No sir. Surely the worst part of a cruise is the morning of disembarkation. Unceremoniously booted out of cabins at what feels like dawn’s crack (usually around 8am) so that stewards can prepare for incoming guests, it takes all the fun out of farewell celebrations the night before. Can we agree to push back check-out and check-in times? \People assume getting around the City of Angels involves being stuck in traffic on sprawling freeways – but why not zip through neighbourhoods by rail for a mere $US1.75 fare? Centred on the Downtown, LA Metro Rail’s network of underground trains and light rail vehicles reaches popular places such as Santa Monica and Hollywood – with a station connecting to LAX’s new “people mover” shuttle coming soon. SeeGrab, South-East-Asia’s version of Uber, makes zipping around cities easier and stress-free. Available in 500 cities across Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, Cambodia, Indonesia, Myanmar, Philippines and Vietnam, the app connects passengers not only with private taxis, but also with budget options like tuk-tuks. Pre-paying by card negates the need for cash, while fixed fares eliminate price gouging by dodgy operators. See Gotta love certainty in an uncertain world. Google Flights offers a price guarantee on select itineraries that are found on their search engine and booked on an airline or travel agency’s website. Google Flights will monitor the price until your departure: if it drops, they’ll refund the difference. Genius-levelcustomers may be eligible for price-drop credits for use on future reservations if the price of a booked hotel goes down. Bring out your inner-teen or skip the traffic jams and save the tread on your shoes by taking a scooter instead. Nothing beats the jump-on, jump-off simplicity of hiring a scooter using an app that works in countries all over the world. Just find a scooter and ride until you’ve had enough – then just park and sign of
TRANSPORTATION TRAVEL TOURISM EXPERIENCE CRUISE CAMEL RIDE JET BOAT TUK-TUK PUBLIC TRANSPORT SCOPOTERS GOOGLE FLIGHTS GRAB
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