Emirates, the world's 8th best airline according to some survey that someone invented, has been on a tear to raise its global profile.

The "fast-growing" airline recently expanded to Dulles and has been pushing Boeing to manufacture more and more airplanes. Even their in-flight magazine is reportedly doing well.

Wait a minute, you might say that this point. The Emirates PR people actually got a journalist to do a full writeup about their magazine? Yes. And not only that, but that's not even the most obnoxiously aggressive publicity stunt the airline has recently pulled. It turns out that Emirates is sponsoring a cable car and two London Underground stations in London, for a period not less than ten years.

Let's say you've just flown to...ohhh....Bali, Indonesia. The beach, the sunset, the tropical fruits, the warm temperatures and the laidback atmosphere already have you thinking of your next vacation. Whether you know it or not, you're making decisions and being influenced by the leisure branding around you, and doesn't Air Asia know it.

Air Asia, the Malaysia-based low-cost carrier, flies into Denpasar-Bali (DPS) from Darwin, Perth, Bangkok, Phuket, Jakarta, Bandung, Singapore and Kuala Lumpur. In Bali, you'll find them advertising on roadside billboards of course, but also all along Seminyak and Kuta beaches, thanks to their plastering their logo atop umbrellas of some beach chair vendors.

When we travel, one of our favorite things to do is to pop into a local grocery store and check out the food products and candies we'd never find anywhere else. So we're trying out this new feature, Foreign Grocery Friday, where each week we'll feature some of our (and your) favorite overseas treats. Got a recommendation? This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

If there's one thing we've learned during international travels far and wide, it's that potato chips are the universal snack of choice. As is to be expected, most of the creative flavors have roots in English cuisine, as the empire today is less "for queen and country" and more "for baked or ripples."

Well SmarterTravel has done their homework on this very important topic of chip domination, discovering what they name the 15 Craziest Potato Chip Flavors Around the World. Though we could easily supplant these flavors just off the top of our head (we ate Unagi Kabayaki, Salmon Sushi and Mong Kok BBQ sausage-flavor chips just last week), let's take a look:

This weekend's most anticipated movie is definitely Johnny Depp and Tim Burton's take on the 1970's soap opera Dark Shadows, about a vampire named Barnabas set free after being imprisoned for centuries. He returns to his ancestral home, where he meets his dysfunctional descendants.

The castle that Barnabas calls home acts like another character in the movie, and on occasion even comes alive. But, sadly, the house doesn't exist in real life. It was built for the movie at Pinewood Studios in the U.K, along with the town that surrounds it, Collinsport. After the movie wrapped last year, the fictional town of Collinsport was torn down, leaving nothing behind for would-be movie tourists.