“The people of those foreign countries are very, very ignorant. They looked curiously at the costumes we had brought from the wilds of America. They observed that we talked loudly at the table sometimes. They noticed that we looked out for expenses and got what we conveniently could out of a franc, and wondered where in the mischief we came from. In Paris they just simply opened their eyes and stared when we spoke to them in French! We never did succeed in making those idiots understand their own language.”
–Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad (1869)

Note: Before long, I will be leaving for France, where I will teach the travel-writing portion of a creative writing seminar at the Paris American Academy. I’m an old Asia hand, and I went to Paris for the first time last year, not really expecting to be all that impressed (after having experienced the likes of Angkor, Jerusalem, and Varanasi). In spite of my skepticism, however, I quickly fell in love with Paris, and I anxiously await my return. In anticipation of my Paris sojourn, my daily travel quotes will have a French theme all this week.

Many travel insurance policies are based on short-term or group travel, so I figured I’d expound here about insurance for long-term, independent travel. After all, accidents can happen, and an evacuation can cost upwards of $30,000 is some parts of the world. There are lots of coverage options available — and insurance terms can be complicated — so be sure (beyond the advice I offer here) to ask your insurance representative lots of questions when shopping for a policy, so as to ensure that the terms suit your specific needs.

That said, the first place to start when arranging travel insurance is your present insurance company. Often, your existing health insurance policy applies overseas, and emergency medical/evacuation can be added on.

In the event emergency medical and evacuation aren’t available through your existing policy, there are plenty of travel insurance specialists to choose from. Insurance Services of America, for example, provides a variety of flexible insurance plans for trips ranging from two weeks to four years. Coverage varies according to age. For age 29 and under, for example, $50,000 in medical coverage can be as low as $24 a month (the high end — $1 million in medical coverage — costs $60 a day). All ISA policies include medical evacuation, repatriation, emergency reunion, trip cancellation, trip interruption, and 24-hour worldwide assistance.

Specialty Risk International offers a plan for independent travelers, called “Liaison International“. Coverage ranges from $50,000 to $1 million in medical, and evacuation is a standard benefit with any plan. Prices are $34-$55 per month based on a $250 deductible. You have the option of choosing your own deductible through SRI (raising the deductible, of course, will lower the premium, and vice versa). An additional company to inquire with is WorldTravelCenter.com, which has an “ExPatriot Plus” plan that can work for vagabonders.

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“Such are the humiliations of the travel writer in the late twentieth century: go to the ends of the earth to search for the most exotic heretics in the world, and you find they have cornered the kebab business at the end of your street in London.”
–William Dalrymple, From the Holy Mountain (1997)

Following on to my surprised announcement on Monday that Vagabonding had been translated into Italian, here’s an English version of the review from La Repubblica. My thanks to Valentina Piffer for her translation help!

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What is freedom?
Learning the art of long-term world travel
A practical and philosophical guide on how to change your life without having to win the lottery. by DARIO OLIVERO

This book isn’t about how to take a vacation, and it’s not a tourist guide. It may have been released early this summer, but it won’t offer you suggestions for filling two weeks of holiday-time. It contains no advice about destinations, “cheap-but-clean” hotels, typical restaurants, or interesting flea markets. No, there is none of that in this book: There is much more. This is a book about how to earn your freedom — how to change your life so that it allows you to travel to each corner of the world for as long as you see fit. Despite worries about work and money, it encourages you to free your thinking and invest in life’s most valuable commodity: time.

Vagabonding: The Art of Traveling the World is all this. It was written by 32-year-old Rolf Potts, an untiring globetrotter who has been living out of a backpack for the last nine years. Early in the book, Potts illustrates a certain mindset by quoting a passage from the movie Wall Street, where a young stockbroker (Charlie Sheen) says, “I think if I can make a bundle of cash before I

“Are we correct that all cultural values are being destroyed? Or are they once again changing, under the press of circumstance and from their own internal dynamics, while we, the anthropologists, disapprove of the changes or at least do not comprehend them? To argue globally against cultural change is a startling position; to accept all change as good is mindless and cruel. The challenge, as yet unmet, is to conceptualize communities as a complex process of stability and change, and then to factor in the changes tourism brings. To this end, the evaluation of tourism cannot be accomplished by measuring the impact of tourism against a static background. Some of what we see as destruction is construction. Some is the result of a lack of any other viable option; and some the result of choices that could be made differently. Which is which is by no means an easy matter to decide, but is clear that anthropologists have not yet met these problems head on.”
–Davydd J. Greenwood, from Valene Smith’s Hosts and Guests: The Anthropology of Tourism (1977)

Monsoon season in southern Thailand can be a strange time of year. The heavy rains can last all day, and sometimes the clouds gather so thick that high noon feels like late evening. In the process, weird things happen inside my apartment, like the swarming colony of red ants that took refuge in my bed when I was gone to Bangkok for five days, or the wooly mold I recently found growing inside my toaster.

Thus, I was amazed to wake up yesterday and gaze out my window at a completely clear sky. Not a cloud in sight. I sat down at my keyboard to get some work done, but — as hard as I tried to write — my mind kept filling up with broad stretches of blue sky. In no mood to fight the urge, I snapped my laptop shut, rented a motorbike from my landlady, and headed for the horizon.

There aren’t many roads in the jungle-mountains near my home, so I mainly stuck to the old byways built for tin mining operations half a century ago. Rainforest foliage has overwhelmed a lot of the old mining sites, and these scarred swathes of jungle can at times seem otherworldly.

Surroundings aside, however, the most satisfying thing about my motorcycle journey was the aimless, ecstatic feeling of motion itself. And, for all the beauties and rewards that come on the vagabonding road, there are times when I think that simple motion is one of the best parts of travel (I know this may seem ironic, given yesterday’s travel quote, but bear with me). It’s a feeling I’ve savored for many years’ worth of summers.

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“To stop being a tourist, sometimes all you have to do is start standing still.”
–Taras Grescoe, End of Elsewhere: Travels Among the Tourists (2003)

Yesterday evening, I learned — with no small sense of astonishment — that La Repubblica, the largest national paper in Italy, had featured a glowing review of Vagabonding in its Sunday culture section.

The astonishing thing is not just that this is the Italian equivalent of a warm thumbs-up from the New York Times Sunday Book Review — but that nobody told me the book had been translated into Italian! I literally had no clue that an Italian edition of Vagabonding had been issued.

Maybe it’s the fact that I’m living in provincial Thailand — or maybe my American publisher just isn’t into sharing advance details about foreign rights — but this is certainly a pleasant and completely unexpected shock. I really think Europeans in general will embrace the book for it’s philosophical bent, and I’m curious to know where else it will be translated.

My thanks to Max Arcangeloni for clueing me in on this surprising development (and assuring me that the review was enthusiastic and positive). I’ll post again about this later this week, once we’ve translated the entire review into English. For a peek at the Italian cover of Vagabonding: L’arte Di Girare il Mondo, click here.

“Vagabonding is not like bulk shopping: The value of your travels does not hinge on how many stamps you have in your passport when you get home — and the slow, nuanced experience of a single country is always better than the hurried, superficial experience of forty countries.”
–Rolf Potts, Vagabonding (2003)

Complaining about things you don’t like is a natural symptom of the culture shock that comes with travel: we all do it from time to time. Even when you’re trying to keep a positive attitude amidst the rigors of new lands, it can be easy to fall into (dubiously therapeutic) bitching sessions with other travelers. The problem is that complaining can quickly snowball and — if you’re not careful — it can cheapen your experience and make you lose sight of the truer pleasures of travel. After all, isn’t travel itself a positive alternative to the dull complaints of home?

I’ve learned to implement this strategy on the road: Whenever I catch myself whining about something, I just go for a walk. Usually I can find something — a sight or a person or a moment — that’s more worthwhile than whatever I was griping about.