The Travel Wire: best travel reads #24

50 years of travel tips, Vietnam’s Ha Giang loop, the 'White Lotus effect', and more travel reads.

Welcome to The Travel Wire, where I curate the best travel reads of the week.

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Travel reads

• 50 years of travel tips [Kevin Kelly]

“I took everything I have learned from a half century of serious travel and put all my travel tips into one document for easy reading and sharing.” (Via Recomendo)

• Sheer drops and hairy near-misses: Exploring Vietnam’s untouched landscapes by motorbike [Independent]

• Measuring the 'White Lotus effect': How TV and film locations impact travel (archive) [BBC]

• Why I always visit a cemetery when I travel [Afar]

I like to haunt cemeteries when I travel, from the Magnificent Seven cemeteries of London to the colonial cemeteries in Asia where people died from shipwrecks and old-timey diseases.

• Ireland Diaries: Up, up and away [Tom Fish]

"Devils, northerners and dodgy political metaphors on Ireland's highest mountain."

• The timeless appeal of Puerto Vallarta (archive) [The New York Times]

"In the 1960s, Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor hid away in what was a bucolic town on the Pacific Coast of Mexico. Decades later, a writer discovered why."

When I went to Puerto Vallarta, Wandering Earl told me to go to Tacon de Marlin. I’m glad to read they are still going.

• ‘I explored Benidorm with an open mind’: the famous Spanish seaside town is captured in a new photo book [Wallpaper]

• Muri, Rarotonga: The perfect holiday town? [Planet Whitley]

"On Rarotonga in the Cook Islands, David Whitley discovers that a decade can make a substantial difference."

• Why are so many unusual skyscrapers being built in Tirana? [Dezeen]

• I walked Japan's Kiso Valley and it felt like stepping into a woodblock print [Travel + Leisure]

• Meet the shop cats of Hong Kong’s Sheung Wan district [Huck]

"Feline good — Traditionally adopted to keep away rats from expensive produce, the feline guardians have become part of the central neighbourhood’s fabric. Erica’s online series captures the local celebrities."

• Well-behaved Dalmatian sits quietly in Singapore Airlines business class for 5.5 hours [Says]

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James Clark (Nomadic Notes)