All Nippon Airways (ANA) now providing women-only lavatories

Japan is a country known for having women only trains, but now All Nippon Airways (ANA) has introduced women-only lavatories. According to the Airline Reporter blog among other blogs, women-only lavatories are now available on ANA’s international planes, except the Boeing 737 or Airbus A320, and they have a pink logo on their doors.

However, there will be some circumstances when male passengers may use the female lavatories, namely:

• When required for safety reasons, just prior to the seat belt sign being turned on during take-off and landing.
• When a passenger is not feeling well and a personal emergency requires such use.
• When there are very few female passengers and the women-only designation has been lifted for the flight. If this is the case, an in-flight announcement will be made.

Nevertheless, this may prove to be a good idea because after all, a man using the restroom during turbulence could cause some “issues” plus women wouldn’t have to worry about having to put down the toilet seat in their own lavatories!

The most outrageous guest requests at the world’s most luxury hotels

If you thought that hotel concierges at luxury hotels spend their days scoring tickets to the ballet or reservations at the hottest restaurant in town – think again. In fact, Forbes.com recently had an article detailing some of the world's most outrageous guest requests. Just how outrageous is too outrageous of a request from a super wealthy guest? Just check out some of these requests received by concierges over the years:

• The Setai, South Beach, Miami: A guest visiting from the UK asked the concierge to ship a tiger from Florida to London - on two days' notice no less. Apparently, the tiger belonged to a Florida woman the guest had fallen for and she wouldn’t go to London without it.  

• The Plaza, New York City: A guest asked the concierge to obtain a live batch of tarantulas for him to take home and enjoy – naturally roasted.

• The Ritz-Carlton, Cancun: A guest wanted to privately watch a film on the beach – after all of the sand had been covered up. Hence, a team was dispatched to Mexico City to obtain some extra rugs.

• The Sagamore Resort, Lake George, NY: A guest asked the concierge for an engineer to come to his room to change the fireplace from gas-burning to wood-burning.

• Hotel Adlon Kempiniski Berlin, Germany: A guest realized that the stuffed bunny his four year old needs to have in order to fall asleep was left at home and no substitute could be found. Instead, the concierge arranged for a bellhop to drive the five hours round trip to the home of the family to retrieve the bunny.

• Brown's Hotel, London: A guest from the Middle East asked the concierge to ship 21 live deer to Kuwait as a 21st birthday surprise for his daughter.

• Le Saint-Sulpice Hotel, Montreal: A movie star guest on a strict dietary regiment insisted on drinking raw milk straight from the cow no less, for breakfast every morning. Hence, the concierge made regular trips to a nearby farm every night and milked a cow – while wearing his concierge suit!

Somehow though, I don’t think a concierge will perform any of the above requests for ordinary guests like you or I!

Single Chinese rent dates to appease parents during Chinese New Year

Single Chinese have come up with an innovative way to please their parents during the annual Lunar New Year holiday - they are renting fake dates. According to the AFP (“Chinese rent dates to appease parents”) and already noted by other bloggers, advertisements have been posted all over popular web portals like Baidu.com by young Chinese singles seeking to pay other young men or women to come home with them for the Spring Festival – the most important family holiday in China. One such ad posted on Baidu.com under the headline, "Looking to rent a girlfriend,” read:

500 yuan (73 dollars) a day, you don't have to sleep with me, I can sleep on the floor in the same room, but you have to be a good actress.

Another ad posted on Chinaren.com under the headline, "desperately looking for a girlfriend to go home with me for Chinese New Year,” read:

I haven't yet found a suitable girlfriend and my parents are pushing too hard… I'm searching for a girl around 23 years old (and not more than two years below or above that), 160 to 175 centimeters high, average looking is OK.

To all of the ad posters and single Chinese out there, we would like to simply say: Gung Hay Fat Choy! (and good luck to those who did not find a date!)

Airport security humor

With the recent underwear bombing attempt on an airliner still fresh in everyone’s mind, we have an an important message from Transport Canada (A division of the US Department of Homeland Security) to repeat should you be traveling to Canada or from Canada to the USA as new “rules” are in effect:

Moreover and if you are traveling to and from the USA, just remember that the Transportation Security Administration is there working hard to make sure you enjoy a safe flight and you can count on them to do what they are trained to do: Overreact to tiny threats while ignoring the really big ones….

Man with Indian passport visits every country on earth (and takes really lousy pictures…)

If you are not a citizen of a so-called “first world country” and are having difficulty traveling due to your passport, the Hemingway Never Ate Here blog as recently noted that a 55-year-old Indian citizen named Kashi Samaddar has spent nearly seven years and £350,000 to visit all 194 countries in the world to set a new world record. However, the real purpose of his trip was to prove that an Indian (obviously one with plenty of money and time on his hands) with an Indian passport could see the entire world.

You can read the the full story about his adventures and why he set out to establish a new record in the Daily Mail. Apparently though, the picture below was the best picture he could take of London and don’t even ask to see the other pictures!

Top 25 business travel blunders

The reality of business travel recently inspired Embassy Suites to run its first "My Business Travel Blunder" essay contest. The serviced apartment group had invited business travelers to share their biggest business trip blunders and within just 4 weeks, they had over 500 entries for a chance to win airfare for four plus five nights at the Embassy Suites Waikiki Beach Walk. The top 25 entries were evaluated on three criteria (humor, uniqueness, and relevance to business travel) and they are included in a slideshow on Business Week’s website plus (along with a video segment) and some of these top entries included:

• The wife who called her husband's boss by a none-too-flattering nickname her husband has for him.
• The businessman who ended up wearing a stranger's suit to the job interview after the airline delivered him the wrong luggage.
• The woman business traveler who thought that a well-known CEO was leering at her until she realized that her blouse had come undone.

However, the overall winner of the contest? Someone referred to only as pant-less from New Jersey.

Lesson learned: Remember to bring an extra pair of pants on your next business trip!

Mandarin and Cantonese Lessons in one minute

Should you be visiting China or Hong Kong, Pierre-Francois Metayer of PFMproductionz has produced two amusing videos – one entitled “Mandarin in One Minute – To Sing” and “Cantonese in One Minute – Electricity”. I am not sure how useful these videos are but the first one (“to sing”) is definitely entertaining and will leave you looking forward to seeing more language lessons from Pierre!

In this second video, Pierre-Francois explains the various components of the Chinese character for “electricity” in Cantonese:

Please lighten your load before boarding

Here is an odd story from several newspapers (including Daily Mail, The Independent and the Toronto Star) that is also being picked up by several aviation and travel blogs, including the Wend blog and the Dallas Morning News’ Airline Biz blog. Apparently, All Nippon Airways (ANA) is now asking passengers to use the toilet before boarding the aircraft so that they will weigh less and help to cut carbon emissions (and cut the overall cost for fuel as well). The theory behind the request is simple: empty bowels and bladders will mean lighter passengers and hence lighter aircraft and lower fuel usage (and not to mention some additional cost savings for the airline). For now though, the experiment is intended to last for only one month and it will be implemented on 42 flights but if the results are positive and are well received by passengers, the trial may be extended for a longer period of time.

Will this idea work? According to the Toronto Star:

Here's how it works: The average human bladder holds up to a litre of fluid, which weighs roughly one kilogram. All Nippon's most popular aircraft, a Boeing 777, holds 247 people. So, in theory, if 247 passengers all go to the washroom before boarding, they could lighten the plane by up to 247 kilograms - the weight of three average men.

However, the authors of the Airline Biz blog also point out that a “thinking person would then question why airlines serve drinks on airplanes, since that would require visits to the rest room.”

Either way, passengers will find that All Nippon’s idea is a MUCH BETTER one than Irish carrier Ryanair's idea of charging passengers to use their on-board lavatories.

Singaporean Singlish Kills The English Language Funny Talk

For anyone who has visited Singapore, you may have noticed that many Singaporeans have a unique way of pronouncing English. So on your next trip to Singapore, don’t be surprised if you are asked “wat u wan ar” to eat – whether “fly rice,” “beef fly rice,” or “chicken kali”; and “wat u wan ar” drink – whether some “flu jus” or some “c***” (either medium or big….)

Still Chinglish we speak here

Travelers to China will note with some humor that neither English nor Chinese seems to be written or spoken there. Instead, “Chinglish” or “China English” is, according to wikipedia, “used” by an estimated 300 to 500 million users and/or learners of English there. And unlike Pidgen English which is a language that can actually be learned, “Chinglish” is simply English with really bad spelling and grammar or a bad (sometimes literal) translation or confusion over the translation of Chinese characters into English.

When Beijing hosted the Olympics, an effort was made to try and rid the city of “Chinglish” while the Luxique travel blog has recently noted that Shanghai, which is gearing up for the World Expo fair next year, will attempt to do the same by having student volunteers check all the English on signs throughout the city and if they deem the translation to be less than accurate, whoever owns the sign will need to correct it.

Either way, travelers will generally find Chinglish to be more amusing than annoying. Hence, here are some classic examples of Chinglish (some with pictures) that may or may not need some “translation”:

• In the hotel elevator: “Please bump your head carefully.”
• Keep off the grass: “Tender fragrant grass. How hardhearted to trample them”
• A slippery slope: “To take notice of safe: The slippery are very crafty.”
• In the hotel lobby: “Please leave your values at the front desk.”
• On the subway: “If you are stolen, call the police at once.”
• “F*** the Certain Price of Goods.” (This translation apparently resulted from some confusion over the characters for “dry” and “to do”)
• Lost in translation:

• When closing the door: “Please Steek Gently” (Apparently, to steek is means “to shut” in a dialect of Scottish and the word found its way into a Chinese-English dictionary):

• We hope this means the surface is only slippery:

“What a shame!” Swine Flu comes from America video

In case you have not flown to or around China lately, you may find this Civil Aviation Administration of China's swine flu warning video both helpful and absolutely hilarious! The cutesy jingle with the cartoon reminds passengers that:

Swine influenza comes from America… spreads around the world… its true name is A(H1N1)… what a shame!

Actually and according to the Wall Street Journal’s China Journal blog, the Chinese lyrics make a broad reference to the American continents and uses the word “mei zhou” rather than the word “mei guo” (for the USA itself) but the the English subtitles simply say America. Either way, passengers are sure to get the picture!