Travel

Chinese authorities tracked down Westwood resident Mike Su recently at a networking banquet in Beijing. They forced him to pack his bags, then whisked him away to a budget hotel on the edge of the city where they detained him for a week. Su's crime? On his flight from Los Angeles, the website director had the misfortune of sitting near someone who had allegedly contracted the H1N1 flu.

In the heady days of corporate travel, employees who had to take long flights, particularly overseas, could get their employers to spring for more comfy business-class seats.

"It's just before midnight and we just have been attacked by pirates." So began a not entirely atypical blog post by Kaye Caldwell of Hermosa Beach, who since last summer has been traveling the world with her husband and three children.

California Atty.Gen. Jerry Brown on Thursday reached a legal settlement with a Midwestern Internet travel business that the state had accused of running "an elaborate pyramid scheme.

As she approached the immigration counter at Beijing's international airport at 7 a.m. Sunday, bleary-eyed after flying all night from Bali, Lucia Rocio heard the agitated whispering of the Chinese officials.

A crack appeared Thursday in a White House communications operation known for staying on message -- in the form of a vice president with a habit of speaking his mind.

Airlines are flying some nearly empty planes from the U.S. to Mexico, a sign that swine flu worries may be keeping travelers home. Travelers had reserved fewer than half the available seats on six Continental Airlines flights Wednesday night, according to the airline's website.

The best arguments for visiting Hawaii's Big Island have always been elemental -- fiery volcanoes, trade winds raking black-lava badlands, jungle waterfalls draining down to beaches of many colors, rainbows as common as foreclosures in California's high desert.