If you're interested in finding out about good or bad health habit travel, turning into Gadling this week would have been a good place to start.

• Anna tuned us into the countries where people smoke the most--if you value your lungs, perhaps you should rethink that trip to Greece, or at least avoid indoor eating establishments while you're there.
• Iva gave us a tip on how to not get sick after flying--can you say inhale? Plus, she gives the lowdown on the best sunblock formula.
• If you're wondering what eating goat meat morning noon and night might due to your digestive system, read Jerry's post on how time on the Galapagos almost did him in stomach-wise.
• Kelsey provides first hand know hows on how to protect yourself from food poisoning and
• Abha looks at the use of breathalysers in clubs as a way to prevent drunk driving.

I was surprised Parisians have accepted the new smoking ban as willingly as they have.

There is, however, one resistance movement: Hookah bars. Some of them have continued to break the law by continuing to offer customers tobacco in water pipes, IHT reports.

Hookah or shisha bars, which began springing up in France more than a decade ago, became increasingly popular across Europe, both among immigrants from Islamic countries and among the hip student crowd. France had 800 hookah bars before the smoking ban, half of them in Paris or its suburbs, but perhaps one-third have closed since the ban took effect.

So far, Sarkozy's government shows no inclination to negotiate since declaring in December that there would be no exceptions to the smoking ban. Apparently, "it's a matter of public health."

That seems harsh. These are, after all, as close to private smoking clubs as you can get.

You know that feeling: the one where the contents in your stomach churn and before you can say "I think I ate something bad," you are already running for the bathroom. Fun, right?

Every time you get on the plane, bus or (in our case) in the car and travel to another country you expose yourself to the likelihood of coming down with some sort of stomach illness. Call it what you like (and we all know there are some pretty descriptive names out there) but the experience is the same and it flat out stinks.

Last week I was unlucky enough to eat something disagreeable (I believe a locally made tamale was the culprit) and spent a rather uncomfortable and feverish 24 hours trying to recover. I have been pretty lucky in the past to avoid food poisoning but I knew I was in for a rough time as I was with Tom when he succumbed to food poisoning in India a few years ago. And it really did live up to it's horrible nature.

Generally my rules to avoid food poisoning/unhappy stomach are as follows:

Willy wrote a post about the Smiley toothbrush holder, a worthy travel pal. Here's another addition to the how to take your toothbrush with you when you travel, and the how to take care of it when you get to your destination question. The Flipper toothbrush holder brings a zoo and good hygiene to any bathroom or suitcase depending how many people are your traveling cohorts.

Although there are holders available in non-animal designs, what's the fun in that? The neat thing about the Flipper toothbrush holder is that it can fasten onto a bathroom mirror so you don't need to worry about your toothbrush dropping onto a dirty carpet or into a questionable sink, or whether the sink counter is clean enough.

The holder is also designed to let moisture evaporate so you're less likely to get that crud build up. As you move from one place to another, the holder can be taken off and refastened with the bristle end of your toothbrush safely protected all the while.

I like that the holder is in one piece so the top or the bottom won't go missing. The company also makes razor holders that fasten to a mirror or shower stall using the same concept.

What would we do without The Economist and its great sidebars? This one shows just how much certain countries smoke. According to ERC, a market research company, the heaviest smokers come from Greece, with an average of 3,000 cigarettes per person in 2007. At 20 cigarettes per pack, that makes 150 packs in a year; a lot of puffing.

Despite recent smoking bans in many places, European countries still manage to hold 18 of the top 20 spots. The most surprising statistic? That France smokes less than the U.S. Whatever happened to the stereotypical image of the French, dressed in all black, a serious look on their face and a Gauloises glued to their fingers? It could have something to do with the price of cigarettes; a pack runs about 5 euros in France, equaling just a little under $8.

Click here to see how these results changed from 2006.

Forget vitamins. I am about to give you the best travel tip ever. If you want to avoid contracting a virus or bacteria on germ-infested airplanes, use nasal irrigation before and after flying.

Yes, I agree that squirting saline solution into your nose is not the most pleasant thing, but it works so well! Nasal irrigation clears out excess mucus and particulates and moisturize the nasal cavity. It also cleans allergens, irritants, bacteria and viruses from the nose reducing the frequency of infection.

If you think about it, it makes sense. People contract most germs through their nose. Rinsing the nasal cavity with salt water is a great way to keep it clean. It's not at all a new technique. Nasal irrigation is an ancient Ayurvedic technique known as "jala neti," which literally means "nasal cleansing with water" in Sanskrit, where the practitioner uses a neti pot to perform the irrigation.

I have tried several different nasal irrigation squirt bottles and I like the NeilMed bottle the best. It makes it really easy and relatively quick to squirt 8 oz of saline into your nose. I do it after every single flight I take and I try to do it before I fly, as well. I also using after using extremely packed public transportation.

It is magic.

One thing we've learned at Gadling this week is that oodles of people want those free Southwest Airlines tickets. So far, as of 3:44 pm, there are 1,162. Visiting people seems to be the biggest theme of many of the contenders' wishes.

Other numbers of note this week:

• Abha hooked us into a Web site that pairs 100 photos with 100 words in a single moment;
• Jeffrey noted that more than 600 people were rescued off a stranded ship in the Baltic Sea;
• In her world's most dangerous beaches post, Iva cited that in 2006, Americans took 55 million trips to a beach;
• Matthew clued us in on the 780,000 porno hits one man logged from his office in Japan; and
• Anna discovered that the world's longest bridge, located in China, is 22.4 miles long. If you drive across it too slowly, you'll get a fine. Since May 1, when it first opened, 300 people have had to pay up.

Share your numbers of note with us if you have any. One to think about is, how far can you get on one gallon of gas?

We don't really have a bedbug fetish here at Gadling, but we've had something to say about these blood sucking critters on occasion. Here's just one more that will make you think twice about sitting down on those fairly harmless looking wooden benches while you're waiting for a subway in New York City. Wooden benches, like motel mattresses, can be a real bedbug hangout, according to this article in the New York Post.

These bedbugs are not happy just sitting on a bench minding their own business. Instead, they can jump on you for a ride on your business. A city authority on bedbugs admitted there have been sightings of these blood lovers down where the commuters wait for a ride. Exclamations like "That's gross!" have been heard.

All subway stations aren't involved in the invasion. To my dismay, the Union Square station, the one that is closest to where my brother lives, is mentioned twice. It's one of those sprawling stations that goes every which way, so I have no idea which benches you should avoid.

Bedbugs have also been sighted at the Fordham Road stations and the Hoyt-Schermerhorn station in Brooklyn. Maybe they've become tired of their hotel digs.

Other Gadling bedbug stories:

• Don't Let the Bed Bugs Bite
• Hotels Let the Bed Bugs Bite
• Dogs cracking down on bed bugs in New York hotel
• Bed bugs still biting a year later

Science Daily released an interesting article, based on research conducted at University of Massachusetts Amherst, that shows the low risk of air travel and bacterial illness.

Bacteria that was present in aircraft -- with exotic names like Psuedomonas, Bacillus and Staphylococcus -- are commonly found on healthy skin and not generally causative organisms of disease.

The research team sampled the air from twelve aircraft (Boeing 767) cabins with flight times of 4.5 to 6.5 hours. The samples were taken from the coach section of the plane at 6 different intervals, including boarding, climb, cruise and deplaning. As expected, the highest concentrations of bacteria was found during boarding and deplaning. When the passengers move through the plane, their activity stirs up dust and skin bacteria, releasing it into the cabin air. During the flight, the bacteria levels decreased, likely due to a decrease in activity in the cabin.

April Fool's Day, 2007, I wrote a post on Linfen, China. Although it was written as a joke, the premise is true. Linfen is a royal mess. Its mighty pollution problem has earned it the number 2 spot on the recent "Hells on Earth" list. The air quality in Linfen is so horrific that there is a perpetual feeling of dusk in this coal dust laden city.

Here's the rest of the ten places that have a hellish quality. Perhaps you know of others that should have made the cut.