It’s a new year and time for a new issue of Perceptive Travel, with offbeat stories from book authors moving through the Azores Islands of Portugal, the Sahara Desert of Algeria, and rural China.

If you’re just joining us, I launched Perceptive Travel webzine in 2006 and the blog soon after. It’s won a slew of “best travel writing” awards and gotten stories into travel writing anthologies. Each month the webzine publishes interesting narratives from wandering authors as well as reviews of new travel books and world music albums.

This month Judith Fein returns with a story about Public Art in the Azores—the islands way off the coast of Portugal. Guidebook author Jessica Lee goes exploring the desert of Southern Algeria with the Tuareg people and discovers why a simple piece of cloth is ideal Desert Wear in the Sahara. James Dorsey and his companion deliver some medical supplies in rural China and during the thank-you banquet he finds the rumors are true: they’ll eat just about any Creepy Crawlies in China.

Also, William Caverlee checks out some interesting new travel books and Graham Reid runs down some world music from four continents.

Last month one reader got a Christmas surprise when he won a Magellan GPS unit. This month we’re giving away a Granite Creek travel pants and shirt combo from Mountain Khakis. You can only win if you enter and you can only enter if you’re on the e-mail newsletter list or you follow Perceptive Travel on Facebook. Do it now!

Delhi Flickr photos by jepoirrier

There are some places in this hemisphere that have some bad air, like Los Angeles, Mexico City, and Lima. But they’ve got nothing on the smoking guns of Asia, which make these places look like a blue-sky island.

But where is the worst place to take in a lungful really? That’s not an easy question because it depends on how  you measure it. This recent study says India is the most polluted country, even in rural areas. Part of that is due to the increasing number of their blue-smoke-belching vehicles on the road and almost no restrictions in place. The attitude from this guy quoted in the piece says volumes.

“D. Saha, a scientist in the ‘Air Lab’ at India’s Central Pollution Control Board said the study’s findings were not a matter of huge concern. ‘It is a non-issue, we have other pressing problems like poverty, focus on them.’”

Delhi is only the 3rd-most-polluted city in the country says this article. Delhi was beat out by two places I’ve thankfully never been to and will be sure to avoid: Ludhiana and Kanpur.

But what about China? Time magazine says Linfen, China is the most ungodly place to breathe in a lungful and the World Bank reported in the past that 16 of the world’s 20 most polluted cities are in China.

Beijing Flickr photo by kevin dooley

The problem, as this evaluation from The Guardian notes, you can’t compare a country that releases accurate data (most of the developed world) with one that’s famous for releasing inaccurate reports—like China. The poor people who have to spend their whole lives breathing the air in China are starting to complain more loudly, however, and calling b.s. on the rosy government air reports. Many expats and locals who can read English rely more on the Twitter feed from the U.S. Embassy there. (Hint, it usually reads “hazardous” or “unhealthy.) The pollution is so bad there we’ve taken to measuring it from space.

If you look at this list from the World Health Organization of the worst cities, you probably weren’t planning to go to any of them anyway: half are in Iran and Pakistan.

In the U.S., some spots are far worse than others. Apart from a few geographic oddities like southern California and Salt Lake City, the most polluted places tend to be the ones where coal-fired power plants are prevalent. So you’ve got your industrial heartland around Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky, and West Virginia, plus places like East Tennessee and central Alabama. Then there’s the city that defined urban sprawl—Houston—and a compact one jammed with people—New York. See the full list here from the American Lung Association and some analysis from Forbes.

I’ll admit I haven’t been covering Asia travel as much the past couple months since living in Latin America has made me pay more attention to what’s outside my door. So in an attempt to make up for it, here are some things worth knowing if you’re heading off to that part of the world sometime soon.

Asia is the biggest travel growth market this year. Tourism is up 7 percent overall this year so far, but it’s not Europe that’s seeing a jump. The growth in Asia tourism has been nothing short of phenomenal, thanks in no small part to those restless Chinese. Here are the official year-over-year increases in some of the cheap destinations: Sri Lanka (+49%), Vietnam (+35%), Myanmar (+35%), and Thailand (+14%). For Thailand to be up that much after a coup and riots is especially amazing.

Just ask Stuart at Travelfish.org. He’s got a great chart on accommodation bookings made through their site after the riots started and subsequent actions got worse: What happens when you set your capital on fire. I presume it’s been rising nicely again.

Arthur Frommer says Japan is crazy expensive now that the yen has risen 30% against the dollar in the past two years after already being strong before. With China’s currency artificially low, that’s a much better option.

Some people will pay $11 to do this just to brag about it on Facebook: Singapore’s airport now has a huge slide inside that’s 40 feet high.

One of the great things about traveling in Southeast Asia is you can feel much richer than you really are. Here’s a current guide to getting custom clothes made in Hoi An, Vietnam.

Only part of Istanbul is in Asia, but I more than half like this post from Alison Stein Wellner: Staring at the evil eye in Istanbul.

Having a book out on the world’s cheapest destinations makes me a bit opinionated about which countries offer the best bang for your budget. While those options stay relatively constant, there are fluctuations from year to year, or even in the space of a month sometimes. The formulas guiding economics and spending are always receiving new variables, plus exchange rates bounce up and down, sometimes dramatically.

The grandfather of budget travel, Arthur Frommer, has a great post on his blog based on a speech he just gave at a travel show. Despite the dollar rising a fair bit in Europe, he says For This Year’s Top Travel Bargains You’ll Need to Bypass Europe. I can’t argue with that, so let’s check out his list of where the best deals are right now.

1) Las Vegas – I was just out there in December and definitely agree with him on that one. As I wrote in this Uptake Lodging blog post a while back, new hotels are still opening in Las Vegas and the city has added 6,850 new rooms since the financial meltdown happened in October of ’08. Combine that with an overall slump in visitors and getting a deal on a room there is one of the few sure bets in town. If you go mid-week, you can really splash out in a swanky hotel suite for the price of a Hampton Inn or Courtyard in other cities.

2) Central America – I’m a broken record on this one: for independent travelers (or those taking advantage of #7 below), the best place to stretch your dollars.

3) Orlando – Ugh, but if you have kids you should go now while the getting is good. These slump-driven deals won’t last forever.

4) Mexico - I go here more than anywhere and have been loving the prices this past year. Arthur says the visitor numbers are still low “…because of the lingering reluctance of many Americans to risk what they discern as drug-related-violence and swine-flu possibilities. In actual fact, the violence is almost entirely concentrated in border cities hundreds of miles from the Caribbean or Pacific resorts of Mexico, and from its capital city and colonial highlights; and swine flu is no longer a threat.”

5) China – The country that occupies the majority of places on any “most polluted cities” list in not in my future anytime soon, but if it’s in yours Arthur says there are excellent deals on package tours that include airfare. With the language barrier being what it is outside the main cities, this is a country where I’d consider it worthwhile to have a guide around all the time anyway.

6) Cruises – I wouldn’t pay any price personally, but if it’s your thing, there are plenty of cruise deals out there.

7) Small Group Adventure Tours – These are tours for people who are independent-minded, but like the camaraderie and ease of planning you can get with the likes of GAP Adventures, Intrepid, Djoser, Adventure Life, and others of that ilk. The prices are great, partly because the tours stay in independent guesthouses and small hotels—the kind of places you would probably stay if you were doing it on your own. But they get you from place to place more easily and you’ve got a handler/guide taking care of all the details and getting you access to villages. (My writer buddy Marie Javins has done Perceptive Travel stories on GAP trips to Antarctica and Bolivia.)

See the full original post here.