The Bahamas is building big-time...new airport, massive new resorts, too

I had no idea. But I guess that's why it's good to get out of the office and attend the odd function.

The folks from The Bahamas held a get-together at the King Eddy (sorry, Le Meridien King Edward Hotel) on Wednesday night to showcase such projects as the $400 million they're spending on the airport (with help from the folks at Vancouver's terrific facility), $290 million on roads, $51 million on the harbour, etc... I might have a couple of those numbers wrong; it was hard to keep up with the deluge of financial information in the video they showed the media.

Tourism Minister Vincent Vanderpool-Wallace called the current boost in The Bahamas "the greatest capital investment in our history" and one of the largest anywhere.

"It's not theoretical," he said. "It's real work that will make a substantial difference."

The biggest project is Baha Mar at Cable Beach in Nassau, just a few yards down the road from the wildly successful/crazy/over-the-top Atlantis Resort, with its massive outdoor aquarium and water slides and landscaping galore. It's not my cup of tea, having decided to spend my days in the Bahamas a year ago on quiet, and I mean QUIET, Long Island, with just two resorts on an island that measures roughly 130 km in length.

Anyway, there's a huge market for bigger and brighter and casinos and all that, and The Bahamas is providing that at Baha Mar. There will be a convention centre, large hotel-resorts (Hyatt has signed on for a 700-room Grand Hyatt and the Baha Mar folks also have partners in Rosewood Hotels and Resorts and Morgans Hotel Group) and a Jack Nicklaus-designed golf course. And probably lots of places to sit under a palm tree and sip a Bahama Mama, and I'm all for that.

Vanderpool-Wallace said there's tremendous diversity amongst the 16 islands of the Bahamas and pointed out that many of the islands are bigger than some Caribbean nations.

He also got around, and rightly so, to playing up the impossibly blue/green waters of The Bahamas. He told the media that when astronauts go to space, they say they're struck most by being able to see the Wall of China and then the waters of The Bahamas.

I flew in a tiny plane from Nassau to Long Island on my visit, and got a first-hand view of some of what he was talking about, which you can see in the photo at right.

It's a pretty spectacular place, for sure. I even had a chance on Wednesday to chat with the Prime Minister, Hubert Ingraham. He talked about his favourite fishing haunts in Abaco and said he was a big fan of Long Island, as well.

He told me the investments being made - mostly from the private sector but with government help - is "absolutely essential."

"We've had significant economic problems, like a lot of places, but we have a relatively low debt burden. We have enough to increase our spending and create a stimulus."

The Prime MInister said they're "very environmentally conscious" and have Environmental Impact Statements done on projects to be sure they won't harm the natural beauty of The Bahamas. Some, of course, might dispute how environmentally friendly a massive resort would be on Cable Beach. But there's no disputing the economic impact from a project that large, and it certainly should help with jobs. A report circulated Wednesday said the Baha Mar project alone will "stimulate a cumulative $11.2 billion over the next 20 years in The Bahamas' gross domest product, including 12,000 new jobs."

Ingraham advises visitors to check out as much as they can, of course, but says he's partial to fishing at Grand Key and says his biggest catch there is a 60-pound tuna.

"I had help bringing it in," he confessed with a grin.

 

 

New book tells 1,000 places to see in Canada, U.S. before I die ... Delaware?

Yikes. Here I am in the basement, getting ready for work, and I'm looking at the book "1,000 Places to See in the United States and Canada Before You Die."

Hey, I DON"T NEED THE PRESSURE! I like these books fine; nice and bite-sized bits of information and all. But, geez, do I really HAVE to see the Arkansas Folk Festival (no offence to Levon Helm, drummer for The Band, or to Bill Clinton). And do I really NEED to see The Great Texas Birding Trail? No, I do not. I have a backyard and sometimes see (and hear) cardinals and robins and such, and when I go to Muskoka I see ducks and loons and great blue herons, so I'm not going to sweat over some birds in Texas. Not to mention (although I guess I just did) the coastal town of Lewes, Delaware, which looks not bad for Delaware (see photo).

Truly, though, I enjoy these kinds of books. PARTICULARLY WHEN THEY INCLUDE CANADA, which so many lists and such I see from the U.S. do not. It's terribly frustrating to read an American-based survey of, for example, what airline has the best muffins (oh, wait, they don't even give us muffins anymore do they?) and then find out that they didn't think to include Canada, despite all our contributions to American society such as Neil Young, insulin, Mary Pickford, Mike Myers and Celine Dion (sorry about that last one).

I noted with some curiousity that of the 92 places listed in Canada, a sizable 14 are in Ontario, including Algonquin Park, The Toronto International Film Festival and, yes, Niagara Falls. There were 11 in Quebec, including Old Quebec and Old Montreal and also Montreal's Jazz Festival and Summer Festivals. Alberta also has 11.

Ontario's 14 are as many as Saskatchewan (3), Manitoba (also 3), PEI (again, 3), New Brunswick (4) and the Yukon (1) put together. But we get our butts kicked by British Columbia, which has a whopping 28 listed. It's easy to toss in the Okanagan Valley and the lovely Wickaninnish Inn in Tofino and Granville Market in Vancouver, but I don't quite see how the Fairmont Empress in Victoria (see photo) gets noted on its own as a place to see while the Chateau Frontenac or Fairmont Banff Springs don't. Mind you, the Fairmont Banff Springs does get noticed in the Banff part of Alberta's listings, and the Frontenac is in old Quebec, so I guess that's okay. And I do LIKE the Empress just fine.

I also noticed that there appear to be 25 listings for New York City alone, including the Bronx Zoo, the Empire State Building and the museums. But I don't see how Columbus Circle is that big a deal that I need to feel badly about not seeing it before I die. Lucky for me I've been there. What a relief!

California came in with a remarkable 54 listings, but I didn't see the San Francisco cable cars, which is bizarre. I also found some other oddities, such as a separate listing in Ontario for the AGO, but a lumping together of the Royal Ontario Museum and the Hockey Hall of Fame. I don't get that on any level (Bobby Orr and architect Daniel Libeskind are an odd combination) but I'm happy to see both get some ink in the book.

It got me thinking about 1,000 places to see in Toronto before I die. An apology from Doug Ford to the Toronto Star is one I'd LIKE to see.  Not to mention a street with traffic lights that are actually timed properly so I don't have to stop 16 times on the way home on the rare occasion that I drive to work.

Anyway, it's fun stuff and the book definitely is worth a look. For more information, see www.1000BeforeYouDie.com.

 

 

Lots more to Colorado than Denver and those remarkable ski resorts...

Had a brief sit-down with the folks from Colorado tourism on Monday and learned quite a bit.

I mean, I probably always knew that Mesa Verde, that incredible series of cliff dwellings, was in Colorado. But I think I forgot and just kind of put it up there in the four corners area in general; that neat geographic feat that has the corners of Colorado, Utah, Arizona and New Mexico all meet up in one spot.

Anyhoo, I didn't realize that Colorado has four national parks: Mesa Verde, Great Sand Dunes (the newest national park in the US of A, I was told; see photo), Rocky Mountain National Park and Black Canyon of the Gunnison. The latter, they say, is just as deep as the Grand Canyon but more narrow and perhaps even more imposing. Rocky Mountain National Park is more of an alpine-looking park such as we might expect. The Great Sand Dunes park really captured my attention as they're said to be the tallest dunes in North America; hundreds of meters high. You can rent a sandboard and ride down them as if carving out a track in the powdery white valleys of Whistler, or try a more conventional sled. And you don't have to worry about snow boots or icicles on your face. You also can do Jeep tours and there's a dude ranch not far away called Zapata.

Like lots of states, they're producing a fair bit of wine in Colorado, too. My contacts told me there are some 60 wineries clustered around Grand Junction, west of Denver. I've never had any Colorado wine but I've tried some from Texas and it was pretty good, and they make great stuff in Washington and Oregon and even Idaho, so why not?

If beer is more your thing, Colorado is home to some 300 microbreweries and there's an annual Great American Beer Festival in Denver. This year's runs Sept. 29-Oct. 1. And there's a Telluride, Colorado Blues and Brews festival with beer and top blues musicians, and what's not to like about that?

As for city folk, the officials told me there's a new Four Seasons Hotel in Denver, which is a fun town with some fun shops and great restaurants.

 

An epic Canadian battle begins...and what's up with Air Canada wi-fi???

An incumbent with a rich history and tons of power. A couple relative newcomers making enormous, glitzy splashes of their own.

Yes, there's a war on in Canada. But I'm not talking about the coming federal election, I'm referring to the downtown Toronto hotel wars. It's a great time to be in the travel biz in this city, with all sorts of new attractions, including: the relatively new ROM, the AGO addition, the Bell Lightbox, Rob Ford's mayoralty. Even better is the astounding rise of new hotels: The Thompson, the new Le Germain at Maple Leaf Square in the burgeoning, new Bremner Blvd. neighborhood if you want to call it that, a new Holiday Inn with lots of perqs for guests rising out of an older hotel on Carlton St. Toss in the new Four Seasons that's set to come and you've got some great hotel watching on the way.

I'm getting a kick out of the suite wars, if you like; the war-within-a war. As Star Travel guy Adrian Brijbassi pointed out in our pages a few days ago, the new Ritz-Carlton downtown has a 2,500 square foot suite that goes for $6,000 a night.

"The suite features an elliptical machine, a second bathroom for visitors, a Bose sound system with MP3 dock, and an impeccably decorated study with an iPad and library collection that suitably carries a volume of 'The Best Poems in the English Language,'" our man wrote. "The suite’s evening turndown service includes the laying out of sea salt and a soothing bottle of specially made bath oil, displayed amid candle light. The walls and heated floor of the immense master bath resemble a museum hall. Its mirrors feature embedded HDTVs and the shelves are saturated with Bulgari bottles."

Pretty impressive. But The Donald is not about to be trumped. As biz reporter Tony Wong points out in today's Star, the new Trump Tower on Bay St. will have 261 rooms and suites, including a 4,000 square foot suite with 11-foot ceilings and in-room design by the Italian group Fendi. The cost? A mere $21,000 per night.

Yikes. I hope there's free Internet and a nice bathrobe. Hell, for that price, you ought to get a laptop and an entire wardrobe from Harry Rosen.

Heckuva lot of fun to watch, isn't it? And, hey, since Adrian got to test out the Ritz I think it's only right that I get to bed down at the Trump Tower suite when it opens. Might even bring my own bottle of Henckell Trocken.

AIR CANADA WI-FI WOES?

I saw on Wednesday that United/Continental has plans for wi-fi on 200 planes, adding to the fleet of airlines that offer wi-fi. Virgin America, which sadly no longer flies to Toronto despite our remarkable hotel building, has had it for a couple years now, I think. Many airlines do.

Air Canada has been studying Internet for its planes since about the time of the Beatles' White Album but a spokesman on Wednesday said they're still examining their options. Geez, guys, can you BE any slower? Did you hire the folks in charge of scheduling workers at Pearson's Canadian customs booths at March break or something? You know, the guys who were SHOCKED to find thousands of Canadians returning from Cuba and Florida in the middle of the well-advertised school break? Or maybe you have secret plans for wi-fi that are stashed in a suitcase and you're still waiting for the bag to arrive on the conveyor belt at Pearson.

NEW ZEALAND FUN

Great night at Hemingway's in Toronto last night, where they were  donating 20 per cent of the take from dinner and drinks to the earthquake relief fund in Christchurch, New Zealand. I hadn't been to Hemingway's in a while and forgot how reasonably priced it is, especially for Yorkville. Very good pub-style food, as well.

Probably it's about time for someone to do something similar for the poor folks in Japan, if someone hasn't done so already....

 

 

Japan quake/tsunami disaster hurts Japan tourism, but also the rest of the world

It's obvious that the earthquake and tsunami have had a major impact on Japan. Tourists are understandably not booking week-long trips to the battered nation. Cruise ships have pulled out in favour of longer stays in other parts of Asia.

It's sad, but that makes sense given the scale of the disaster. What some folks may not have thought about early on is the reverse flow, that is, how the troubles in Japan will impact on visits from Japanese tourists.

Hawaii already is feeling the pinch. Some folks (possibly with overactive imaginations) fear radioactive fallout in the Hawaiian islands from Japan's damaged nuclear reactors.  A larger concern is that Japanese, who are big spenders outside their home country, are cancelling trips to stay at home, as cnn.com points out. Other Asian travelers can't connect through Tokyo the way they used to, according to the Honolulu Star-Advertiser.

Here's what the Honolulu paper had to say "'Starwood Hotels & Resorts anticipates bookings for April and May in Waikiki will come in 25 percent to 30 percent lower than anticipated,' said Keith Vieira, senior vice president and director of operations for Starwood Hotels & Resorts in Hawaii and French Polynesia. The chain has experienced thousands of cancellations, especially on the group side, from Japan, Vieira said. The Hyatt Regency Waikiki Beach Resort and Spa, the Hilton Hawaiian Village and Outrigger Hotels & Resorts also have reported significant Japan decreases."

If it happens in Hawaii, chances are it will happen here, too, which means we could see a serious decrease in Japanese visitors to places such as Banff, Niagara Falls and, yes, even Anne of Green Gables country in Prince Edward Island.

The latest Conference Board of Canada report, issued Monday, suggested a downturn in Japanese visits was expected and also noted the sharp rise in visits to Canada from India and China. The latter two developments are good news but I believe the volume of visits from China is still fairly low, and it's doubtful that overseas visit increases will make up for the bad news from Japan. Not to mention increasing fuel costs and other issues.

 

 

Hotel bargains in 2010 topped by Europe, especially Ireland, says hotels.com

If you thought it was a little easier to travel last year compared to previous years, you win the prize. The folks at hotels.com sent out their Hotel Price Index for 2010 today and found a stronger Canadian dollar and the still shaky global economy helped Canadians find "significant" travel savings last year.

The study found Canadians paid eight percent less for a hotel room in Europe (averaging $159.67* per night), "as many European economies recovered at a slower rate than Canada.  On a national basis, Canadian hotel room prices were unchanged at $136 per night."

I always tell folks that Europe isn't as expensive as you might think. You can almost always a clean but modest hotel in a big city for $150 or so, and this study bears that out. I find Best Westerns to be a little sharper and sexier overseas than they are here in North America, so those almost always are worth checking out in Paris and London and such. I've stayed in some nice, small hotels near St. Germain-des-Pres in Paris for $150. And don't forget most European hotels throw in your breakfast, so that's a bonus.

The hotels.com study found that great deals were to be had in Ireland, with an average paid rate (not advertised rate but what was actually paid out of pocket) of just $112.22 per night, down  a whopping 19 percent from 2009.  In Italy, room rates were down by nine percent, while Canadians paid two percent less on average for rooms across the U.K.

“In many cases, like Ireland, there were significant savings for Canadian travellers,” said Victor Owens, vice president of North America for Hotels.com. “Even in the U.S., where the discounts were perhaps not as dramatic for Canadians, the strong Canadian dollar, coupled with discounted rates, made travelling south of the border very attractive.”

The Hotel Price Index found five of the top international destinations visited by Canadians were all in the U.S., where Canadians paid six percent less ($135.93) for rooms than they did a year earlier. Las Vegas was the top destination, followed by New York, Seattle, Orlando and San Francisco.  London dropped from number three a year earlier to number six. (Seattle is a bit of a surprise to me but it could be Vancouver folks out for a weekend in a fine city, or perhaps lured south by cheaper air fares to other destinations. Or maybe they're just Seattle Seahawks fans?)

At home, Canadians travelled most frequently to Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver. Prices were up four percent in Toronto ($135.62), pushed higher in part by the city hosting the G20 Summit.  The return of F1 racing to Montreal helped prop Montreal rates up six percent last year to $147.79.  Vancouver saw prices drop two percent to $140.41 from 2009 when room prices averaged $142.58. In the first half of 2010, Vancouver room rates averaged $147, indicating that room prices returned to more normal levels after peaking during the Olympics.

Canada’s top resort cities were the most expensive to visit.  Rooms in the resort area of Tofino, BC were the most expensive at $230.11 (up 7%).   Lake Louise, AB, wasn’t far behind at $213.99 (down 4%). Mont Tremblant, QC ($209.19), saw an increase of 10%, as did Whistler, BC ($177.73), according to the study.

 

Happy St. Patrick's Day - with a fine Irish breakfast in Toronto to start the day

Well, THAT was tasty.

The fine folks at Tourism Ireland put on a crazy spread at The Bay's eighth floor cooking station this morning, all part of an attempt to showcase the great variety of Irish cuisine you can find on a visit to fair Eire. I was there for 10 days a year ago and the food, I'll concede, was marvellous. Fresh fish and beef and lamb and inventive cuisine of all sorts; a far cry from what folks might've expected a couple decades ago.

Mind you, food also has come a long way in England and in Wales, where I visited a year and-a-half ago. But I digress. This day is about Ireland and that wonderful St. Patrick, who gets more ink than just about all the other saints put together when you think about it.

The tourism folks today started things off with some bread pudding laced with Bailey's - yum - and also blood or black pudding and plenty of fresh fruit; blackberries, strawberries, melon and pineapple (must've come from the real SOUTH part of Ireland). They had a couple cooks on hand and made some fine brown bread and also fresh, creamy scones with currants, grilled kippers with a pad of butter on top and, best of all, potato cakes laced with cinnamon and nutmeg (I think) and topped with warm apple compote. The potato bit sounds weird but it was one of the tastiest breakfast items I've had in some time.

Oh, and I forgot the cheese. I didn't write down all of them but included on the plate was a Guinness cheddar and an Irish whiskey cheddar.

I'm supposed to deliver a talk on Ireland to the Ashbridge's Bay Yacht Club tonight and I gotta admit I'm nervous. I've never done anything like that before, although nobody who knows me has ever accused me of lacking in verbosity so I guess I'll manage.

Luckily, I'm slightly handy with a camera and Ireland is stunningly beautiful, so I'm hoping my photos will tell the story of my visit better than I can.

 

Torontonian leaves Tokyo for safety of Hong Kong - wonders when he'll go back

Canadian journalist C. James Dale continues his fine reporting/blogging from Asia in this report from Hong Kong, where he landed the other day after finally making the decision to leave his home in Tokyo. He and his wife are staying with friends in Hong Kong.

After clocking eleven hours of sleep from Friday until Tuesday, an eight-hour slumber felt like an unearned extravagance. Breakfast was spent checking the news, checking on friends in Japan, and giving technical advice to a colleague who was about to interview survivors of Hiroshima's atomic bombing (they, like many Japanese, are experiencing this nuclear emergency on a deeper social level, given that their country is the only nation in the world to have lived through a nuclear attack).           

Even when my wife and I headed out to get some groceries for our hosts here in Hong Kong, we couldn't escape what was happening in our second home. We bumped into Chris Yates, a Toronto native who has been living in Tokyo for more than a decade. He and his wife had been watching this story unfold, wondering if things would get better or worse. The decision to leave happened quickly. 
       

      "I woke up in the morning and knew we had to go, so we booked a flight for that afternoon," he said.

They're now staying with his brother and are supposed to return to Tokyo on Sunday. But as with so many things related to this complicated crisis, there's a sense of uncertainty.
       

     "I lived there 11 years and I don't know when we're going to go back," he said sadly.

Chris is one of many ex-pats who have fled Japan reluctantly. But there are many more who have chosen to stay, like David P., who wrote to me saying he was surprised to hear I’d left.

     "There is no danger whatsoever here, nor was there yesterday. I was really disgusted by the way ignorant users of social media whipped up hysteria," he said. "The panic and hysteria is more dangerous than the actual threat in Tokyo."

Perhaps there’s some truth to that. But what I’ve told David, Chris, and several others these past 24 hours, one's reasons for getting out of (possible) harm's way are varied, complex, and ultimately personal. When we’re faced with threats both natural and unnatural, we should support and respect a person’s need to do what feels right for them. 
       

Having said that, I’ve been actively pressuring a friend who has stayed behind in Tokyo to come join us in Hong Kong. She won’t leave because she fears she’ll lose her job, and as a journalist she is driven to cover the story, but she wants to get away, at least for a weekend.
       

     “I am starting to get physically affected from the emotional turmoil of having to continuously present news about devastation, death tolls and problems at the nuclear plant so close to home,” she wrote, while at the same time noting that many Japanese are far worse off. Instead of coming here, she’s heading to Kobe for the weekend.
       

My wife and I have been worrying about work too, but another companion from Tokyo is trying to cheer us up.
       

     "Please don't even think about your job,” Sarah Krull wrote from Berlin. “Health and safety are more important."

I told you Sarah’s story in this blog a few days ago. She left for Germany earlier this week and had a painful parting with her fiancé, Masa, who felt an obligation to stay with his parents. But now that things have changed in Japan, he’s decided to head to Europe to be with his future wife. I don’t imagine they’re debating whether his decision is being driven by panic, hysteria, or good sense. They just know they want to be together during these trying times.

Star Travel man escapes from Tokyo, safe in Hong Kong. But the guilt lingers

This is a report from C. James Dale, a frequent contributor to the Star's Travel section, both online and in print. He's been living in Tokyo and files this report, post-earthquake/tsunami.

HONG KONG – When you’ve had an earthquake-tsunami-nuclear threat kind of few days, you get a good idea of who your friends are pretty quickly.

I’m writing from the guest bedroom of a cozy apartment in this city’s leafy Pok Fu Lam neighbourhood as my wife enjoys some much needed down time, reading and catching up on email. We wouldn’t be here without the help and hospitality of our good friends, Peter and Helen, British natives who’ve called Hong Kong home for several years

I think this calm and quiet is what we’ve been looking after an emotional rollercoaster ride that started at 2:46 p.m. on Friday, March 11. We’re survivors of Japan’s big quake, but we’re by far the lucky ones. Lucky enough to be away from the destruction caused by the monster tsunami, or the health risk posed by some of the country’s volatile and unstable nuclear power plants.

“I can’t believe we’re out of there. I can’t believe any of this,” my wife just said to me, looking up from her magazine.

It’s something we’ve both voiced and thought many times recently, and the word “surreal” is getting a lot of play, too. How to describe that feeling of helplessness and fear as our low-rise apartment pitched back and forth like a boat in rough seas, or the anxiety generated by the constant aftershocks? As these emotions played out, they were enhanced as the sentiment in Tokyo shifted from relief to dread, thanks to those runaway nuclear reactors and to the warning by Japan’s Meteorological Agency that another earthquake could strike in the coming days.

At a certain point it became clear that many people in Tokyo, ex-pats and Japanese alike, were planning their exit. The risks seemed too great, and the images of the misery from the country’s northeast weighed heavily. The time came when we started to think about what we would do.

My wife and I had been staying with our friend, Catherine, in Tokyo’s Hiroo neighbourhood for no reason other than we felt safer watching this crisis evolve together. But soon we were checking travel websites, calling agencies, and strategizing. Should we take a high-speed train west to Osaka? Should we go somewhere else in Asia? Should we just go back to Canada?

But when you’ve been running on three hours sleep a night, making decisions is tough work. In the end, Peter and Helen made it for us. They called their travel agent in Hong Kong and had found a flight out. Were we interested? Minutes later, it was booked.

By the time we got to Tokyo's Haneda airport Tuesday morning, we were doubting ourselves, even  though we’d been woken up by an aftershock at 5 a.m. Were things really that bad in Tokyo? Yes, some food supplies were running low, but it wasn’t anything like what people have been facing in the hardest hit areas, not to mention folks looking for loved ones (see  AP photo, couresty of the Star). The “abandon ship” guilt was gnawing away at our guts. So we asked the agent at the counter if we could put our ticket on hold until Friday.

“You can, but you’ll be on the waiting list,” she said. “The flights are all filling up.”

We looked at each other and decided to go. Turns out we weren’t the only ones with conflicting emotions. Before I sat down on the plane, I met Anil Kumar, a diamond seller who’s lived in Tokyo for 30 years. He was getting a connecting flight in Hong Kong to Delhi, heading home for two weeks or a month with his 13-year-old daughter, Arisa. His wife couldn’t get a seat on the plane so she left from Narita.

“I feel like a rat. I don’t feel good about it,” he said. “It’s like leaving everything behind when actually you’re needed out here.”

But Anil said family and safety come first.

Satomi Ito also seemed worried as I talked to her on the way to customs after we landed safely in Hong Kong. She’s taking a sightseeing trip to get away from Japan for a while. “I needed a rest,” she said.

I only came to terms with my own decision to leave Japan when Peter and Helen picked us up at the airport. Another nuclear reactor had experienced an explosion, they told us. Health officials had recorded low levels of radiation in Tokyo. The airports were filling up and tickets were in short supply. Some airlines, such as Lufthansa, were avoiding Tokyo altogether.

Now it’s close to midnight and this long day is almost over. My mind is racing after the events of the past few days. I’m worried about the friends we’ve left behind in Japan, Catherine and others, my fellow journalists who are working tirelessly to cover the developments of this disaster, and of course the people who are facing hardship in the northeast.

In the end, this kind of decision is never easy. I’m just lucky to have friends, family, and a wife who have my best interests at heart. I promise to pay it forward.

 

Post-quake, Tokyo resident C. James Dale wonders: Should we stay or go?

C. James Dale, a frequent contributor to Star Travel. files this report Monday morning Tokyo time...

TOKYO - The sun's about to come up here in Tokyo. It's Monday. The Monday after the worst disaster I've ever lived through, the worst one on record for a country I've come to love and consider home in many ways.

Even after seeing the video, the photos, and hearing the terrible stories, the extent of the devastation in Japan is hard to grasp. The major concern, of course, is for the survivors and the missing. But even though it seems things can't get much worse, people all over this country are worried they just might.

Authorities are struggling to keep some nuclear facilities in Fukushima Prefecture from melting down and spilling high levels of radiation into the environment. Already, tens of thousands of people have been moved out of a large area surrounding the nuclear plants and their over-heating reactors.

The question for those of us further south in Tokyo is: should we stay or should we go?  I spoke to a number of ex-pats on Sunday and they're divided. Robert Grou-Szabo, a Montrealer, isn't planning on leaving. Eric Hamilton, a native of San Francisco who runs a business here, has an exit strategy planned so he and his wife, Yuriko, and their daughter can get out if the situation gets worse.

Then there's Sarah Krull, an American who also has German citizenship. Germany has told its nationals to leave Japan, so she's booked a ticket out of Tokyo on Tuesday. Problem is, her fiance, Masa, is Japanese and is torn about leaving his parents. This young couple, who plan to marry this year, is trying to come to terms with what will be an impossibly painful goodbye.

And then there's me and the woman I love. I have to admit I've been working so hard for a couple of news organizations these past few days that I know that, while I've told people in Canada over and over again about the aftermath of this terrible tragedy, I haven't told her enough that I love her and that I couldn't imagine living without her.

She's been pretty brave since 2:46PM on March 11, when our world was shaken hard and changed in ways seen and unseen. We've decided to assess the situation on Monday morning and make a decision about staying or going after we get some much needed sleep. Our families want us back in Canada. Our friends in Hong Kong, Paris, and Los Angeles have all kindly extended their hospitality.

Now we just have to see what we learn after the sun comes up. I'm hoping for a little bit of clarity in all of this confusion.