Gadling

Several months ago, French prez Nicholas Sarkozy knocked around the idea of banning the burka. Today The Telegraph points out another item to add to the ever-increasing list of dumb laws: in France it is still against the law for women to wear pants. The law reportedly has been on the books since 1800 and has survived multiple attempts to repeal it, although its application has been narrowed somewhat.

In 1892, an exception was made to the law that allowed women to wear pants "as long as the woman is holding the reins of a horse." (Sounds like something Borat might propose.) A 1909 modification to the law allowed women on bicycles to wear pants.

Though the law has obviously not been enforced in many years, the French government has little interest in overturning it. A 2003 request to repeal the law was denied by a government official who said, "Disuse is sometimes more efficient than (state) intervention in adapting the law to changing mores."

More here.

Good evening, Gadling faithful. Didn't get enough travel-related news and views on Gadling today? Check out what's happening in the rest of the travel blogosphere right now...

• Attention librophiles: Check out these photos of the world's most beautiful libraries.
• The San Francisco Chronicle's Spud Hilton is now blogging at Bad Latitude.
• Sure, Idaho's got the Potato Museum and Japan's got the Ramen Museum, but I bet you didn't know about the SPAM Museum in Minnesota. (If you did, I almost feel sorry for you.)
• To celebrate Geography Awareness Week, National Geographic asks U.S. senators if they can draw their states. Sen. Saxby Chambliss' rendering of his home state of Georgia is impeachment-worthy.
• Finally, despite the fact that I loathe both Star Trek and cruises, I've really been enjoying Rolf Potts' first two articles on World Hum about his recent Star Trek-themed cruise. Check out the accompanying video here.

More Gadlinks here.

More brain-busting Travel Trivia here.

"If you're not thinking about Japan every day," popular blogger Tyler Cowen likes to say, "you've yet to wake up."

Today's bizarrely fascinating cultural nugget from Japan: Chindogu. Literally translated as "weird tool," Chindogu is the Japanese art of creating deliberately complex devices that solve simple everyday problems. It's Rube Goldberg meets Japan.

And Chindogu, like just about everything else, has developed a cult following on the internet. There's the International Chindogu Society, the Ten Tenets of Chindogu (Number Three: "Inherent in every Chindogu is the spirit of anarchy"), and scores of websites devoted to tracking the newest, and most ridiculous, Chindogu inventions.

Here are a few of the most creative examples of Chindogu...

The Solar-Powered Lighter (above)

Tired of running out of fluid in your lighter? Fed up with wet matches that won't make a spark? Now there's a better, greener way to light your cigarette-- with the solar-powered Chindogu lighter. (Note: May not work at night, or on cloudy days, or at all.)

More examples below the fold...

Tony Martin, Kelly Ferris, and Antonio Santiago better order a few extra passport pages. Coca-Cola announced earlier today that the trio were the winners of a year-long trip to every country and territory where Coke is sold-- 206 in all.

Expedition 206, as the trip is called, will begin from Madrid on January 1, 2010, and will include stops at the World Cup in South Africa and the Winter Olympics in Vancouver. Martin, Ferris, and Santiago will promote Coke's "Open Happiness" campaign by documenting and sharing scenes of happiness from their travels.

"It's an ambitious task," says Kelly Ferris, a 23-year-old student from Brussels, "but I can't think of a better way to spend a year than exploring what makes people happy."

I spoke with the three winners this morning shortly after it was announced that their team had prevailed in the contest's online voting. They discussed how they learned about and eventually won the contest, where they're most (and least) looking forward to going, and whether 206 countries in 365 days is way too much.

You can follow the entire expedition, through the team's photos, videos, and blog posts, at Expedition206.com.

A map of the expedition's planned route is below the fold...

I'm not sure what it is about small countries that makes me so interested in them. Maybe it's the fact that they seem so manageable, so knowable. I could spend the next five years in, say, China, and still feel like I hadn't seen a fraction of what it has to offer. But in some of my favorite smaller countries-- Ecuador, Guatemala, the Czech Republic-- I've always felt like I have a fighting chance.

As for the countries below, the world's five smallest, you could get to know most of them pretty well in an afternoon. Here's a quick 'n dirty guide that proves that size, as the old adage goes, is not everything...

Vatican City

In a nutshell: The world's smallest sovereign state at just under two-tenths of a square mile, Vatican City is headquarters of the Catholic Church and home to the Pope. The Vatican, an enclave within the city of Rome, features the magnificent Sistine Chapel, famous for its Michelangelo-painted ceiling, as well as St. Peter's Basilica, the world's biggest Christian church.

Turn-ons: Carpenters from Nazareth, piety, extolling the Christian virtues of humility and simplicity in the midst of unparalleled opulence

Turn-offs: Prostitution, drugs, promiscuity, and just about anything else fun

Interesting factoid: The College of Cardinals has never made it to an NCAA Tournament.

Hey there, Gadling readers, and welcome to another edition of Gadlinks, your daily source for the best of the rest from the travel blogosphere. Here's a look at what's going on today...

• Like Bizarre Foods on the Travel Channel? Bootsnall suggests six places to do your best Andrew Zimmern impression.
• Via The Onion, United Airlines Exploring Viability of Stacking Them Like Cordwood.
• CNN Travel looks at websites that hook up solo travelers with one another.
• Sure, the airlines are struggling, says Bob Ecker over at World Hum. So why don't they "go Nascar" and throw some gaudy ads on their planes?
• Amazon's Kindle gets the Chris Blattman Seal of Approval, barely. His nostalgia for books is still there, but it's "outweighed only by the half-a-suitcase saved."

More Gadlinks here.

In addition to being a traveler and a blogger, I am also, in my spare time, a full-time law student. (Should it be the other way around? Oh well.) As a future lawyer interested in criminal law, I've had a couple of opportunities to see the inside of American prisons, and they were just as you probably imagine them-- sterile without being clean, well-lit without being remotely pleasant, and overall just depressing as hell.

Because of my twin interests in criminal law and travel, I was especially interested to stumble across a post full of photographs from inside a Colombian prison, a place that most of us (let's hope) will only ever see in photographs. The shots themselves were mostly taken by the inmates at the prison, and they are the culmination of a one-week documentary photography class taught by Vance Jacobs, a photojournalist invited by an English language school in Medellin to teach eight inmates photography.

The Colombian prison system bears a lot of resemblance to the American one, with a couple notable exceptions:

• Not all inmates receive a cell. Because of overcrowding, prisoners who want a cell are expected to rent or purchase them. Those without cells are called "pirates."
• Despite popular misconceptions, many American prisons do not allow conjugal visits. In Colombia, however, about 3,500 women arrive at the prison every Sunday to "visit" with their husbands and boyfriends.
• Inmates with money may hire other inmates to cook for them, clean their cells, and do their laundry.

For the entire fascinating (to me, anyway) post, head right here.

The Caribbean coast of Belize is known the world over for its spectacular scuba diving and snorkeling. In addition to the 180-mile barrier reef just off the coast and the famous dive spot known as the Blue Hole, the Belizean coast features the backpacker paradise of Caye Caulker, the more upscale San Pedro, and the laid-back one-horse town of Hopkins in the south.

But there's more to Belize than scuba diving, snorkeling, and catching rays on the beach. Belize, Central America's only English-speaking country, also has plenty to offer in its often-overlooked western half, including waterfalls and caves that pepper the highlands, ancient Mayan ruins just begging to be explored, and even a pretty, backpacker-friendly town or two.

Here are five reasons you shouldn't miss the Cayo District, which makes up most of Belize's other side:

5. Big Rock Falls Located in the heart of the wonderful Mountain Pine Ridge Forest Reserve, Big Rock Falls (pictured above) is a 150-foot waterfall surrounded by, you guessed it, some pretty big rocks. As nice as the waterfall is to look at, it's exponentially more fun to climb up to the 35-foot-high perch next to the falls, work up your courage, and take the epic plunge. For the less adventurous, like, um, myself, swim hard against the current to reach the spot where the water comes crashing down on you. It feels like getting punched in the head over and over, but, you know, in a good way.