There was some travel news this weeks that did catch my eyes and heart more than others. It went rollercoaster with a touch of: the island reef job, dengue fever and a tourist murder. Quite a mix!
- A new Insane rollercoaster is built up at Gröna Lund Tivoli in Stockholm, Sweden, premier the 25th of April!
*go insane & scream*
Looks totally insane yes, especially for me that doesn’t even wanna ride in the old one!!!
- From over 34 000 applicants from all over the world for the best job in the world, Paradise Island Caretaker or Island reef job, 50 finalist were picked and among them a cool Dj from Sweden.
See his video and vote for him as a wildcard if you like him: Felippe
- Several hundreds of cases of dengue fever has occured in Australia the past months, also at the popular tourist destination Cairns near the Great Barrier Reef. Because of the flooding, cyclones and mosquitos that is spreading the dengue fever, it’s not wise to go there right now.
The dengue fever is spreading in other places too. 23 cases of dengue fever has been reported since January among Swedish travelers.
I hope it’s not increasing more, I want it to vanish. I hate the fact that potential risks of getting some diseases would stop me from going there. *sigh*
- A Swedish man were tragically shot to death in a bungalow at the Brazilian vacation destination Praia da Pipa, south of Natal, last Sunday, probably by a burglar. His wife were chocked of course and the other Swedes staying there demanded to be moved from Porto do Sol to other hotels.
The reason for me to react on this is that we we’ve been in the Natal area during our South America trip in 2005 and we have a couple of friends living a bit outside Natal too.
In my opinion, this could happen anywhere over there, if not the hotel is guarded constantly. It’s a country with so much poverty and the criminality following it. I wish it were not.
- The gross video horror story of the Canduru Toothpick Fish.
This really could make me stop swimming when we’re abroad…
Had enough? Have a great week!
Lifecruiser ♥ Travel
I want to go Insane in that roller-coaster one day with you – okay?
Wishing you a great week too!
Best Hoax of 2009
Most of the English speaking world has heard about the “Island reef Job” or “The Best Job in the World” contest run by Tourism Queensland in Australia. The promotion has been heralded as one of the greatest marketing phenomenon ever and initially appeared so.
Well it is more than a well crafted promotion. It is a HOAX.
The winner was already determined before the contest even opened. David Whitehill and his agency Creative Representation are in league with Tourism Queensland and Cummins Nitro in designing this hoax. It was loosely based on the current crop of reality shows currently on TV. Sort of a survivor / big brother blend except the winner was already decided before Christmas in 2008!
Unfortunately for them the contest side of the promotion grew out of control when the world media ran with the initial story. Thousands of media outlets and tens of thousands unsuspecting applicants inundated the poorly designed TQ operation. Some folks have spent significant resources providing video (estimate $30 – 20 million in total) and media outlets have to this date (March 4, 2009) provided ($80 million) in free publicity! “For a $US1.8 million ($NZ3.6 million) campaign we have received nearly $US80 million in publicity,” said Ms Boyle (State of Queensland Minister of Tourism).
The applicants who put their heart and soul into this hoax are very angry about this revelation. The millions of viewers are disappointed. The media outlets have expressed disbelief as to their gullibility.
After viewing the top50 and looking up David Hill’s cult status in Queensland the hoax becomes obvious. David is miles ahead of the selected top50 applications. That and the obvious bias for less than 30 years of age crowd were also given away to the selection process plan. A few of the top50 videos were over the 60 second rule that caused some applicants so much grief. One top50 video from China didn’t even have any spoken English. The real big clue to the hoax was that the final winner is ultimately to be decided by Tourism Queensland. This will allow for David Hill to be given the work and use it as a launching pad for his acting career.
The Queensland people will accept this much better now that a local boy is keeping the cash in the area.
“There were rumours of a hoax from the beginning.” Michael Branagh, boss of Cummins Nitro’s Brisbane office said he was delighted with the success of the project which had generated huge amounts of worldwide publicity. He said the video was put on the site to “seed” it and AAP had only itself to blame for being fooled. He said: “Bad luck to them. They should have known better.”
Hoping never meet the canduru! My god!!!!!!!! I’m scary!
I had a friend, a teacher, who met the dengue in Hong Kong at the hostel as she didn’t protect herself with the cream in a such marvelous and modern place , her bedroom was! She told me what happened to her! Scary too!
The Great Barrier Reef sure is getting a lot of bad publicity these days. There was an articel couple of weeks back which said it’s one of the 5 most endangered palces by global warming. And we can’t visit it because that would only speed upteh global warming.
Funny, we here in Queensland have never heard about that job being a hoax.
I hadn’t realised the dengue fever scare had been published in the papers overseas. It is very scary and we hope it doesn’t come down this far. At the moment we have a large cyclone hovering off the coast. It’s been there for about four days and hasn’t made up its mind yet where its going to go. We’re just watching and waiting very anxiously.
Do you know its snowing on your blog? Just checking! We will soon (in an hour) be traveling from Varmland til Norway…any travel advisories for us? Wild Swedish Moose on the loose at the Swedish border maybe? Or worse…..customs control! (TULL!!)
Yeah, @Diane, the snowing on the blog is supposed to mirror our reality, unfortunately it’s snowing and has been all day!
I was hoping for spring to finally arriving, but now…. *deep sigh*