Category: Travel

Doha travel notes

by  Tyler Cowen in

Qatar is a greatly underrated tourist destination.

The Museum of Islamic Art is one of the finest museums in the world, with a collection of unsurpassable quality, drawing on Islamic creations from as far away as Sumatra and the Philippines, as well as the more familiar Persian, Indian, Turkish, and Central Asian items.  The I.M. Pei building offers fantastic views, and there is an Alain Ducasse restaurant on the top floor.

The National Museum of Qatar is more didactic, but still I found it spectacular, including the architecture and external sculptures on the front side of the building.  Usually I dislike audiovisual displays in museums, but their films on the history of Qatar — shown on very large Imax-like screens — were spectacular.  The costumes and jewelry displays are hard to top.  “Culture” and “growth” seemed to be the organizing themes of the exhibits.  The progressions were logical, and at the end of it all I came away thinking that Qatar has had cultural sophistication for a long time, and is not just a place where they throw a lot of money at art.  I fell for their propaganda, but now I am going to read up and see just how true that is.

In value terms, the government of Qatar is the largest buyer of art in the world.  The country has other notable museums as well, but I did not have the time to visit them, as sometimes their hours are irregular, or they are private collections which require special appointments.

In most public spaces you will see some attempt to make them look creative or aesthetic.  By no means do all such displays succeed, but they are always trying.  Many of the contemporary buildings, or sculptures along the road, are worthy of inspection.

In the water you still can see wooden dhows, and on the roads you might see a man in desert gear shepherding his camels across the road.  The main souk has a whole section devoted to falcons and falconry.  The souk at dusk is magnificent.

Overall the place feels cheerier and homier than does Dubai.  Everyone I met was friendly.  English is the lingua franca, and most of the people here do in fact speak reasonable English.

“Cultural Village” and “Pearl Island” are hard to explain, but they are parts of town worth a visit, moving at times in Las Vegas and “Venetian” directions.

The nearby development of Lusail (is it a separate city?) has some iconic buildings and is worth a visit, check out the medical center, it looks better in real life than in the photos.

Doha sparkles when it comes to food.  The Parisa Persian restaurant in Souq Waqif (don’t go to the other Parisa restaurant, supposedly it is worse) was the best fesanjan I ever have had, excellent decor too.

Saasna is one local high-quality place for Qatari food.  Not cheap, but excellent ingredients.  The dishes skew in the Saudi direction (“lamb shank on saffron rice,” or “beef stewed with wheat”) rather than Persian.

Good Indian and Chinese places seem to abound, I even saw an apparently high-quality Miami restaurant.  The breakfast at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel was first-rate, most of all the pistachio labneh.

Based on n = 6, this seems to be one of those countries where they ask if you want lemon in your sparkling water, you say no, and they give it to you anyway.

On Fridays, the country does not open until 1:30 p.m., so if you are doing a short visit try to avoid that day.

The on-line visa form was easy to fill out, and I received a positive response within seconds.

Going in August, as I have done, is not crazy.  Sometimes the temperatures reach 47 degrees or higher, but somehow it is manageable, or at least it was for me.  Perhaps more people are around other times of the year?  In any case you should go, as Qatar ought to join the list of must-visit destinations, and it is easy enough to combine it with other trips, given the use of Doha as an air hub.

My views on the UFO hearings

by  Tyler Cowen in

I found them very interesting to watch, and wrote my last Bloomberg column on them.  Here is one excerpt:

I do not think that the US government has the remains of alien spacecraft, for example, including some alien bodies, as claimed by retired Air Force Major David Grusch. But the rest of the evidence was presented in a suitably serious and persuasive manner. It is clear, at least to me, that there is no conspiracy, and the US government is itself puzzled by the data about unidentified anomalous phenomena.

As for the more serious claims:

Members of Congress, to the extent they desire, have independent access to military and intelligence sources. They also have political ambitions, if only to be reelected. So the mere fact of their participation in these hearings shows that UFOs/UAPs are now being taken seriously as an issue.

The Pentagon issued a statement claiming it holds no alien bodies, but it did nothing to contradict the statements of [Ryan] Graves (or others with similar claims, outside the hearings). More broadly, there have been no signs of anyone with eyewitness experience asserting that Graves and the other pilots are unreliable.

As is so often the case, the most notable events are those that did not happen. The most serious claims from the hearings survived unscathed: those about inexplicable phenomena and possible national-security threats, not the hypotheses about alien craft or visits.

And to conclude:

I suspect that, from here on out, this topic will become more popular — and somewhat less respectable. A few years ago, UAPs were an issue on which a few people “in the know” could speculate, secure in the knowledge they weren’t going to receive much publicity or pushback. As the chatter increases, the issue will become more prominent, but at the same time a lot of smart observers will dismiss the whole thing because they heard that someone testified before Congress about seeing dead aliens.

I am well aware that many people may conclude that some US officials, or some parts of the US government, have gone absolutely crazy. But even under that dismissive interpretation, it is likely that there will be further surprises.

I thank commenter Naveen for the point about declining respectability.  A broader question — which I will continue to ponder — is why it is the United States that held these hearings, rather than other nations (NB: I hope you don’t fall for that Twitter map suggesting that UAP sighting are mainly an Anglo phenomenon).

The European Visa Mess

by  Alex Tabarrok in

A US passport used to allow visa free travel to more countries than almost any other passport. No longer.

Yahoo: The days of visa-free travel throughout most of Europe are about to change. Starting early next year, the European Union will implement the European Travel Information and Authorization System requiring all visitors from visa-free countries to obtain travel authorization prior to their departure.

Terrorism! Crime! Paperwork!

Of course, this inconvenience will reduce travel to Europe (see here) but tell that to the Europeans and they respond, well the US imposes similar requirements on Europeans. This is not a logical response. As Ronald Reagan liked to say, “if one partner in the boat shoots a hole in the boat, it doesn’t make much sense for the other partner to shoot another hole in the boat.” Logical or not, however, it’s a predictable response so I blame the US and the EU for ruining a good thing.

I hate to be the grumpy old man but one day, not too long from now, I will be telling my children, “I remember when you didn’t need a visa to travel abroad. I also remember when there were no anti-money laundering and know your customer laws!” The kids probably won’t believe me. Of course, if I were a little older I could have said, I remember when you didn’t need a passport to travel abroad! The modern passport dates only to World War I:

Wikipedia: During World War I, European governments introduced border passport requirements for security reasons, and to control the emigration of people with useful skills (italics added,AT). These controls remained in place after the war, becoming a standard, though controversial, procedure. British tourists of the 1920s complained, especially about attached photographs and physical descriptions, which they considered led to a “nasty dehumanisation”.

Try to tell anyone today, however, that we should have a world with no passports and they will think you bonkers. In a few years, Americans will not be able to imagine a world without visas. Apparently, we have gotten used to dehumanisation.

One simple reason why travel is important

by  Tyler Cowen in

Travel makes you a better reader, especially for history, geography, (factual) economics, and political science.

I have been reading two good books about Sri Lanka, namely K.M. de Silva’s Sri Lanka and the Defeat of the LTTE and also his A History of Sri Lanka.  Both would be very difficult to follow if I didn’t already have a decent sense of the place names, how the country “fits together,” and many other features of life here.  If I read about a 12th century Buddhist kingdom, in fact I absorb and retain much more of that knowledge if I have visited the ruins of said kingdom.  It is more intellectually and emotionally salient to me, whether or not that process is rational.

In part you visit places simply to make your later reading about them more productive.

And there is nowhere in the world that is not a place.

Addendum: This effect is not a small one.  If a said civilization has vanished, or is almost entirely gone, that is also an enormous blow to our reading.  It is so much easier to keep track of “the Florentines” than “the Assyrians.”  There is also a question of optimal timing — don’t read about a place too early!  Yet some early reading is necessary, so that you may develop the curiosity to want to go there.

Sri Lanka travel notes

by  Tyler Cowen in

Have you ever been to a perfect spot and wished “there should be an amazing hotel right there, except I want the hotel without any accompanying crowding or corruptions of tourism?”

If that is your desire, Sri Lanka is the country for you.  (Who cares if that is an apparent violation of the laws of economics and location theory?)  If you have visited Sri Lanka, likely you will know what I mean — it is simply so nice.  So much the right blend of exotic and comfortable.  It feels so unspoilt, so fresh, and so natural.  So easy on the visitor, as if it were a well-run state of India with a big dose of Buddhism and a vaguely Caribbean vibe, and without the extreme population density.

Here was my Kandalama hotel, let the link rotate through all the images.

Here is my current hotel, only about 30 or 40 feet away from one of the world’s major Buddhist temple complexes, medieval and mostly dating from the 12th century.  None of it is close to expensive, no matter how high the quality.

Galle, on the southern coast, is a lovely colonial city, largely intact, with notable Dutch, Portuguese, and British buildings, as well as mosques.  It is ringed by an old fort, and has numerous good views of the ocean.  Everything is walkable.  Russians are the single largest tourist group there (no visa required), and yet the town does not feel overwhelmed, even on the cusp of August.  Try Galle Fort Hotel, which is also a UNESCO heritage site.

There is an aesthetic look to so many things.  If a farmer builds a tree house so he can monitor his crops at night without being stomped by elephants, the tree house will be pretty nice, even though the farmer is poor.

So much of Sri Lanka feels like the 1980s, in a way that is good for you but not good for them.  On the plus side, education, literacy (92%), and social indicators are high.  Life expectancy is higher than in the United States.  You can drive around deep into the rural areas, and you just won’t see extreme poverty.  Nor are the drivers crazy, so the travel isn’t stressful.  The country never seems internet-obsessed.

The total fertility rate is currently about 2.0, a blessing in the short run but likely a disaster over time.  At about 4k per capita income (about 14k PPP), Sri Lanka cannot afford to grow old before it becomes wealthy.  And I can assure you, it is not on the verge of becoming wealthy.

The important buildings — and there are many of them — are all of earlier vintages.  The hotels of Geoffrey Bawa — in a style sometimes called “tropical modernism” — are of special interest.  Simply tracking down all of the Bawa hotels would be a good way of organizing your trip.  Sri Lanka is one of the few countries in the world where the very nice old architecture and the very nice newer architecture bear some aesthetic relation to each other.

Did I mention this?:

In 2022, with its GDP contracting by 7.8%, Sri Lanka was one of the worst performing economies in the world. Annual inflation was around 60%, and the currency depreciated by over 80%. These quantifiable measures of pain were exacerbated by severe shortages and uncertainty in accessing fuel, gas and medicines. Daily power cuts became normalized.

Living standards remain lower, yet visible signs of those earlier troubles are gone.  The infrastructure now works once again, yet the country feels psychically scarred by the recent economic collapse.

One Sri Lankan MR reader, with whom I chatted, argued that the country has no person or not even a group “in charge” at the wheel.  So small problems drift and sometimes turn into major crises.  The country’s “immune system” simply is not functioning.

It is striking that none of the major parties have good ideas, as there is mainly corrupt oligarchy or Marxists.  Liberalism is nowhere to be seen.  Behind the scenes, Sri Lanka is a country that outside parties (most of all China and India, earlier the colonial powers) have cared about far too much.  It never feels like there is a stable political equilibrium upon which to build, because the outsiders have so much power.

Internally, they still have not generated a true consensus on what the country is about, and if they are all willing to live in peace with each other.  As one of my drivers put it succinctly: “I don’t like the other religions.”

With textiles and tea as the major exports, the country shows no signs of moving up the value chain. Nonetheless Sri Lanka remains richer per capita than India.  And easier to handle, albeit far less dynamic.  Someone could write a very Sri Lankan version of “the complacent class.”

How good is Buddhism for economic growth anyway?

I will do a separate post on food in Sri Lanka.

The Harried Leisure Class

by  Alex Tabarrok in

How easy is it for a male breadwinner to raise a family? Oren Cass argues that the cost of “thriving,” is increasing. That’s false. When you do the numbers correctly, Winship and Horpedahl show that the cost of thriving is falling. It’s falling more slowly than we would like–but it’s still the case that current generations are, on the whole, better off than previous generations. 

Still, Winship and Horpedahl face an upward battle because while they are right on the numbers many people feel that they are wrong. Almost every generation harbors a nostalgic belief that circumstances were more favorable during their youth. Moreover, even though people are better off today, social media may have magnified invidious comparisons so everyone feels they are worse off than someone else.

I offer a third reason: the Linder Theorem. Real GDP per capita has doubled since the early 1980s but there are still only 24 hours in a day. How do consumers  respond to all that increased wealth and no additional time? By focusing consumption on goods that are cheap to consume in time. We consume “fast food,” we choose to watch television or movies “on demand,” rather than read books or go to plays or live music performances. We consume multiple goods at the same time as when we eat and watch, talk and drive, and exercise and listen. And we manage, schedule and control our time more carefully with time planners, “to do” lists and calendaring. A search at Amazon for “time management,” for example, leads to over 10,000 hits.

Time management is a cognitively strenuous task, leaving us feeling harried. As the opportunity cost of time increases, our concern about “wasting” our precious hours grows more acute. On balance, we are better off, but the blessing of high-value time can overwhelm some individuals, just as can the ready availability of high-calorie food.

So, whose time has seen an especially remarkable appreciation in the past few decades? Women’s time has experienced a surge in value. As more women have pursued higher education and stepped into professional roles, their time’s value has more than doubled, incentivizing a substantial reorganization of daily life with consequent transaction costs.

It’s expensive for highly educated women to be homemakers but that means substituting the wife’s time for a host of market services, day care, house cleaning, transportation and so forth. Juggling all of these tasks is difficult. Women’s time has become more valuable but also more constrained and requiring more strategic allocation and optimization for both spouses. In previous eras, a spouse who stayed at home served as a reserve pool of time, providing a buffer to manage unexpected disruptions such as a sick child or a car breakdown with greater ease. Today, the same disruption require a cascade of rescheduling and negotiations to manage the situation effectively. It feels hard.

By the way, the same theory also explains why life often appears to unfold at a slower, more serene pace in developing nations. It’s not just an illusion of being on holiday. In places where time is less economically valuable, meals stretch more leisurely, conversations delve deeper, and time itself seems to trudge rather than race. In contrast, with economic development comes an increased pace of life–characterized by a proliferation of fast food, accelerated conversation, and even brisker walking (Levine & Norenzayan, 1999).

Linder’s theorem, as you may have correctly surmised, is related to Baumol’s theorem. In fact, Baumol (1973, p. 630) explained Linder’s theorem succinctly, “rising productivity decreases the demand for commodities whose consumption is expensive in time.” In essence, Baumol’s theorem is about the cost of production while Linder’s theorem is about the cost of consumption. I discuss Baumol and Linder at greater length here (ungated).

If the value of time fell, we might find ourselves eating more leisurely meals and taking more time to appreciate the simple pleasures in life. But, contrary to popular belief, neither Baumol nor Linder effects reduce our well-being; instead, they are a byproduct of economic growth and greater wealth. Rather than lamenting the rise in relative prices, we should recognize and appreciate our ability to afford them, and even acknowledge that on certain occasions, they are worth paying.

Pristina notes

by  Tyler Cowen in

Imagine a third-tier Ottoman city, accidentally elevated to the status of a national capital, and you have Pristina.  Furthermore, that is a pretty good thing!  The town is charming, walkable, and has first-rate street and cafe life.  There is one good monastery nearby and some quality Brutalist architecture.  My favorite site was the National Library of Kosovo:

National Library of Kosovo – Pristina, Kosovo - Atlas Obscura

Here are additional views of the building, is it fair to call it one of the greatest Communist achievements of Yugoslavia?  1982.

Government debt is only about five percent of gdp.  I am not sure how accurate is the data, but growth rates are not so bad.  The country has about 5k per capita gdp, but about 15k PPP-adjusted, that is a large gap and maybe the truth lies somewhere in between.

Might this be the cheapest country in all of Europe?   I had one good meal in a nice restaurant with nice decor for only five euros.

Tiffany served the tastiest and also most representative meal, there is no menu and they simply bring you what they have.  The food is in general excellent, though not varied.  Be ready for meats, sausage, cheese, tomato, kebab, green and red peppers, and bread.  There is pasta too, but few other foreign offerings.  I didn’t see any Asian food whatsoever, or any international fast food chains, or any Starbucks.

Throughout the town you find scattered statues, such as the obligatory Mother Teresa, and the others of very masculine heroes, often labeled explicitly as “heroes.”  The quotient for sexual dimorphism is reasonably high.

It is quite safe, so more people should visit.  In three days I saw zero tourists.  It is not a “thrills destination,” but where else can you ponder all the historical reasons why, for so long, a “Greater Albania” has proven impossible?

Cheat sheet of neighboring countries:

Serbia: Feels imperial, “seen better days,” no longer a transport hub, looks toward Moscow.

North Macedonia: Stands a bit apart, closer to Bulgarian culture, less recent historical trauma, more right-wing and pro-U.S., keen to integrate with the West.

Albania: Tenacious, spent decades lost in the wilderness, never been able to “play its hand” on that Greater Albania thing, did it ever recover from the fall of Venetian Albania?

Few parts of the world are more interesting, or unsettling.  All of these are great countries to visit.

My Conversation with the excellent Kevin Kelly

by  Tyler Cowen in

Here is the audio, video, and transcript.  Here is part of the summary:

…Kevin and Tyler start this conversation on advice: what kinds of advice Kevin was afraid to give, his worst advice, how to get better at following advice, and whether people who ask for advice really want it in the first place. Then they move on to the best places to see traditional cultures in Asia, the one thing in Kevin’s travel kit he can’t be without, his favorite part of India, why he’s so excited about brain-computer interfaces, how AI will change religion, what the Amish can teach us about tech adoption, the most underrated documentary, his initial entry point into tech, why he’s impressed by the way Jeff Bezos handles power, the last thing he’s changed his mind about, how growing up in Westfield, New Jersey affected him, his next project called the Hundred Year Desirable Future, and more.

Here is one excerpt:

COWEN: Do you ever feel that if you don’t photograph a place, you haven’t really been there? Does it hold a different status? Like you haven’t organized the information; it’s just out on Pluto somewhere?

KELLY: Yes, I did. When I was younger, I had a religious conversion and I decided to ride my bicycle across the US. And part of that problem — part of the thing was that I was on my way to die, and I decided to leave my camera behind for this magnificent journey of a bicycle crossing the US. It was the most difficult thing I ever did, because I was just imagining all the magnificent pictures that I could take, that I wasn’t going to take. I took a sketchbook instead, and that appeased some of my desire to capture things visually.

But you’re absolutely right. It was a little bit of an addiction, where the framing of a photograph was how I saw the world. Still images: I was basically, in my head, clicking — I was clicking the shutter at the right moments when something would happen. That, I think, was not necessarily healthy — to be so dependent on that framing to enjoy the world.

I’ve learned to wean myself off from that necessity. Now I can travel with just a phone for the selfies that you might want to take.

COWEN: Maybe the earlier habit was better.

Recommended.  And here is Kevin’s new book Excellent Advice: Wisdom I Wish I’d Known Earlier.

“Almost space” markets in everything

by  Tyler Cowen in

The space race just got a new entrant. France’s Zephalto is offering passengers the chance to travel to the stratosphere in a balloon, starting at €120,000 ($132,000) per person in 2025.

“I partnered with the French space agency, and we worked on the concept of the balloon together,” says Zephalto founder and aerospace engineer Vincent Farret d’Astiès.

He tells Bloomberg that he’s planning on 60 flights a year, with just six passengers on board each flight. The company aims to provide an experience that brings the best bits of French hospitality—fine food, wine and design—to the edges of space for those who can afford the six-figure ticket.

Balloons filled with helium or hydrogen will depart from France with two pilots on board and rise 25 kilometers (15.5 miles) into the stratosphere for 1 1/2 hours. Once at peak altitude, which is about three times higher than for a commercial airliner, the balloon will stay for three hours, giving guests a chance to take in views previously seen only by astronauts. The descent will take a further hour and a half, for a six-hour round trip.

Here is more from Sarah Rappaport at Bloomberg.  Via Daniel Lippman.

How to visit Italy

by  Tyler Cowen in

Ajit requests such a post, and I note that plenty of people have plenty of experience with this topic.  So I’ll offer a few observations at the margin:

1. Venice, Florence, and Rome have, on average, the worst food in Italy.  They have some wonderful places, but possibly hard to get into, requiring advance planning, and often expensive.  For random meals, those cities are not impressive, noting that Rome, due to its size, is much better than Venice or Florence.

2. My favorite “single sights” in Italy, moving beyond the core sights of Rome, Venice and Florence, are the Giotto chapel in Padua, the Basilica in Ravenna, and the Cathedral in Monreale in Sicily (near Palermo).  To this day, they remain underrated sights.  As for the major cities, both Genoa and Torino are underrated.

3. My favorite food in Italy would be in Sicily, Naples, and the lower-tier towns of the North, such as Bologna and Parma.  The area near Torino/Piedmont would be another contender.  I have heard Veneto is wonderful for food, though have only had a single meal there, which was indeed outstanding.  In Sicily, don’t order the usual Italian dishes (which are available and excellent), rather look for regional offerings which reflect the area’s Arabic heritage.  Orange slice and mint — bring it on!

4. Usually there is little gain from pursuing Michelin-starred restaurants in Italy.  You want the “two-forker” places with outstanding regional cuisine.  Originality, which is rewarded by the Michelin system, too often is a negative in Italian food.

5. Italy has a large number of third-tier towns which are wonderful for walking through.  But you don’t need to overnight in them, so there is much to be said for randomly driving around Italy, but avoiding the larger cities.  Stop, walk for a few hours, take a meal, and then move on.

6. There is a great deal of available trip prep material for Italy in the form of movies, fiction, and history.  Most of all, however, you should focus on using picture books to have an advance sense of the art and architecture.  The classic book on Italy, Luigi Barzini’s The Italians, is still worth reading.  And often the postwar fiction, or even Manzoni, are better trip prep than the very famous classics such as Dante and Petrarch (though you should read them anyway, but for other reasons).

What else?

What should I ask Kevin Kelly?

by  Tyler Cowen in

From Wikipedia:

Kevin Kelly (born 1952) is the founding executive editor of Wired magazine, and a former editor/publisher of the Whole Earth Review. He has also been a writer, photographer, conservationist, and student of Asian and digital culture…

Among Kelly’s personal involvements is a campaign to make a full inventory of all living species on earth, an effort also known as the Linnaean enterprise. He is also sequencing his genome and co-organizes the Bay Area Quantified Self Meetup Group.

His Out of Control is a wonderful Hayekian book.  His three-volume Vanishing Asia is one of the greatest picture books of all time.  His new book (I haven’t read it yet) is Excellent Advice for Living: Wisdom I Wish I’d Known Earlier.  Here is Kevin on Twitter, here is his home page.

I will be doing a Conversation with him, so what should I ask?