The sharper edge to traveling in Asia

Archive for the 'Hawaii/Pacific' Category

WoWasis book review: ‘On Holiday’ how your money is reaped by vacation companies

Ever wonder how the travel industry decides how to best take your money? To those of us here at WoWasis, it’s a fascinating topic. It’s not just about how that industry markets to us, either. It’s making sure that we like our vacation experiences enough that we’ll do it again and tell all our friends […]

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WoWasis book back in time: ‘Kon-Tiki’ by Thor Heyerdahl

Veteran WoWasis readers are aware of our penchant for reviewing books on Asia and the Pacific, especially older classics. Why? For one thing, younger readers may have missed them. And Boomers and Gen Xers might not have read them either, although they’ve certainly heard of them. Thor Heyerdahl’s Kon-Tiki: Across the Pacific by Raft is […]

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WoWasis book back in time: ‘South Pacific’ by James Michener

There are so many books out there, and seemingly never enough time to get to them all, we here at WoWasis tell ourselves. Decades into your life, you muse, you realize you never got around to some of the classics. We don’t know how many people are reading James Michener’s classic Tales of the South […]

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WoWasis book review: Paul Gauguin in Tahiti: Noa Noa

Noa Noa, painter Paul Gauguin’s short book on his time in Tahiti, often gets ignored today. Gauguin, after all, has been chastised for “cutting and running,” leaving a family behind there. Gauguin, who died in 1903, isn’t alive to rebut anything, of course. But he does leave the reader with his sometimes whimsical and at […]

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WoWasis book review: About Selkirk, the real Robinson Crusoe

Crusoe, of course, was a fictional character created by Daniel Defoe, who published his book in 1719. But his story was partly inspired by the true story of a man who was marooned on an uninhabited island. Diana Souhami’s Selkirk’s Island: The True and Strange Adventures of the Real Robinson Crusoe (2001, ISBN 0-15-100526-5) tells […]

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WoWasis book review: ‘Scams & Swindlers’: investment disasters to be avoided

Bruce Brown’s classic Scams and Swindlers: Investment Disasters and How To Avoid Them (1998, ISBN 1-86339-201-7) flies a bit under the radar these days, but it shouldn’t, particularly for those following the increasingly strange Cambodian death saga of Canadian journalist Dave Walker. Before we get to that, here’s why the book is compelling. Author Brown […]

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WoWasis book review: The Lurline, when exotic luxury sailed the Hawaiian seas

Not many of us could have afforded to steam from the west coast of the United States to Hawaii aboard the S.S. Lurline, Matson Lines’ luxurious floating palace. Nor on her sister ships the Matsonia, Mariposa, Malolo, or Monterey, either. By 1970, it was all a moot point anyway, as comparatively inexpensive air travel killed […]

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WoWasis book review: Early exotic air travel to Hawaii: ‘The History of Pan American’s Flying Boats’

We here at WoWasis have all see those pictures of those magnificent flying boats leaving to Hawaii, the Golden Gate Bridge or the Bay Bridge in the background. And we wondered: what was it like to fly in them? What services were offered? How much did a flight cost? Can we still see them in […]

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WoWasis book review: ‘Art of the Aloha Shirt,’ indispensable for collectors

Every casual guy, it seems, loves aloha shirts from Hawaii, and that includes your WoWasis review staff. They’re not typically all that expensive, and cotton and rayon fabrics hold up well with many wearings (not so, unfortunately, with Tommy Bahama silks — even with mild washing, we’ve found they tend to rip apart by the […]

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WoWasis book review: ‘Aloha Attire,’ a handsome history of Hawaii’s fashion trade

Hawaii’s apparel industry encompasses more than aloha shirts, and the whole story, including women’s fashion, is told informatively by Linda B. Arthur, in her highly informative Aloha Attire: Hawaiian Dress in the Twentieth Century (2000, ISBN 0-7643-1015-1). We here at WoWasis loved the book. The author focuses on four traditional garment types worn in Hawaii, […]

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