Fisheye camera lenses produce all sorts of fun photos, and this example is no exception. Shared by Gadling Flickr Pool member m24instudio, it puts a wild perspective on the Sagano Bamboo Forest, located in Kyoto, Japan.


We'd love to feature your photos and videos on Gadling, so please add them to our Flickr Pool (with Creative Commons licensing!), tag @GadlingTravel on Instagram or email us at OfTheDay@gadling.com.

Tourists to Thailand may soon be charged an entrance fee of 500 baht. That comes out to about $16, not really overkill for getting into a country that's full of street markets, pad Thai and full moon parties, now is it?

The proposed entry fee is backed by the Ministry of Tourism and Sports, the Ministry of Public Health and the Royal Thai Police, and the collected fees would of course go back into government initiatives. But it's not necessarily raking in fee money that has the Thai government behind it. It has to do with who they want and don't want in the country. And they want better tourists.

Rethink your travel plans families: if you're adventuring with children, the best airport you can travel to, from and through in Europe is London Heathrow.

That's a big deal if you consider the fact that only last year it was ranked as the worst.

The rankings come via Skyscanner, which did a study focusing on families with children under 4 years old and looked at travel from June to September 2013.

You think you're feeling cooped up and need to get out and explore? What about that teddy bear of yours that hasn't emerged from your storage closet since 1985?

A Japanese travel agency, Unagi Travel, which calls itself a "travel agency for stuffed animals," has been taking plush animals on trips for the last three years. Why? To allow their owners to live vicariously through them. In fact, many of Unagi Travel's customers are physically impaired. Well, and photos of traveling stuffed animals are cute.

Congratulations to Sean McLachlan, whose story "Video Games With a Refugee" won the Personal Comment Gold Award in this year's Lowell Thomas Travel Journalism Awards. The awards are given annually by the Society of American Travel Writers. Sean's story was part of his a 17-day journey across Iraq in search of "adventure, archaeology and AK-47s."

Gadling and AOL Travel contributors David Farley, Doug Mack and Elaine Glusac also captured awards.

Looking for a haunted house this Halloween season? The online guide Hauntworld will help you find the best one.

Hosted by Hauntworld Magazine, a trade journal for those running haunted houses, it lists creepy attractions in every state in the U.S. and many in Canada too. Most listings just have promotional material from the businesses themselves, while some have garnered numerous reviews and comments, making it as sort of TripAdvisor for scary attractions.


In my old stomping grounds of Tucson, Arizona, there's Nightfall, which earned nine out of ten skulls. For even bigger scares, check out their Most Extreme and Shocking list. The number one place goes to the Erebus 4 Story Haunted Attraction in Pontiac, Michigan. HauntWorld says "Erebus is by far the most unique haunted house in America because they have monsters, animations, and props that touch the customers some even swallow customers whole. Erebus is a multi-story haunted house with special fx you'll see no where in the World but at Erebus near Detroit Michigan."

The caption says it all -- "Texas Hill Country sure is pretty."

Where did you go over the weekend? Was it as scenic as this photo submitted to the Gadling Flickr Pool?

We'd love to feature your photos and videos on Gadling, so please add them to our Flickr Pool (with Creative Commons licensing!), tag @GadlingTravel on Instagram or email us at OfTheDay@gadling.com.

If you're like many hotel guests, you probably just waltz right past the concierge desk without a second thought. After all, unless you need a hard-to-get restaurant reservation or last minute theater tickets, you can probably figure out whatever you want to know with a quick search of Google. But what if we told you your concierge might be able to help you quell that nasty hangover, or that they could put the spark back into your love life?

A growing number of high end hotels are bringing in specialty concierges whose job is to provide more personalized services to hotel guests. For example, Westin Hotels & Resorts has recently employed a running concierge who can share advice and help guests achieve their fitness goals. Meanwhile the Viceroy Riviera Maya has its own soap concierge for the traveler who just can't bathe without some hand-shaved artisanal soap.

On a course headed for what might have been the worst disaster in aviation history, two Boeing 747 aircraft came within 100 feet of each other in a near-miss event over Scotland.

It happened in June of this year but the report is just now being released by by the UK Airprox Board, which examines near misses in UK airspace. The planes were 30 miles north of Glasgow when an air traffic controller noticed they were moving closer together. Ordered to fly in different directions, cockpit crews apparently got the instructions reversed and wound up flying towards each other.

"It was apparent that both crews had taken each others' instructions, and the board found it hard to determine why this had occurred," noted the Airprox report, a reported in a SkyNews article.

Historically, the idea of independent travel was not an option for Indian women. They typically stayed at home, cared for by a husband or a father figure. But with more female opportunities in education and employment, the role of India's women is changing. Say hello to Indian travel clubs.

Traditional travel groups for Indian women included widows, abandoned wives and the elderly. But even those women traveled with a male chaperone, mostly to religious sites. Today's Indian travel for women includes trips around the world, from the the Taj Mahal to the Antarctic.

"In a typical Indian family holiday women end up in a role-playing mode of being a mother, wife, daughter and are often unable to experience a destination as an individual," says Piya Bose, owner of Mumbai-based women's travel group, GOTG (Girls on the Go) in an Aljazeera article.