Just a reminder that this Sunday, December 3rd, Rolf will be in Los Angeles performing at Vermin on the Mount, “an irreverent literary-readings series,” held at The Mountain bar, 473 Gin Ling Way.

For more information, check out the Vermin on the Mount blog.

Recently, I got a travel question from a Florida reader named Justin Cecil, who wrote:

I have just graduated high school and will attend college at the end of August. One of my goals in life is to travel the world — and I plan on backpacking through Europe within the next few years. Ultimately, I would like to be able to travel all of the time. Do you have any advice for people who want to vagabond until they die? What type of careers or jobs would be available? I’m trying to figure out what to do with my life and would greatly appreciate any advice.

This is what I told Justin:

Traveling full-time is definitely something that is possible to do — but first I’d recommend just traveling for six months or a year or so to see how you like it. Regardless of what I tell you now, that initial vagabonding journey will teach you most everything you need to know — not only about traveling for the rest of your life, but also about where your passions and interests lie, and where you want to go next. As you travel, keep your eyes out for people who are traveling full-time as a career. These people include safari guides, divemasters, overseas English teachers, international traders, IT workers, health workers, NGO administrators, and all manner of fascinating professions. If you decide to tackle college (and it’s not a bad idea, since it will increase your employment options anywhere), you might try Peace Corps when you’re done — as this agency has taught many people how to make life into one ongoing journey.

As you begin to plan and think about these travels, you should get a subscription to Transitions Abroad magazine, as it is perfect for providing resources and putting you into the mindset you want to achieve.

Back in September I wrote about Lonely Planet’s curious new guidebook, Micronations: The Lonely Planet Guide to Home-Made Nations¸ by John Ryan, George Dunford, and Simon Sellars. This week over at Yahoo! Travel, Rolf caught up with John via email to learn more about the micronations of our world, and the necessary conditions a territory must posses to be a part of the gang.

“People define micronation in different ways. For some, it simply means small nations (either in area or population), such as Lichtenstein, the Vatican or Tuvalu. I’m interested in a more playful definition: nations that have been proclaimed as existing in the world, but not recognized as a real nation. Yet.”

What Rolf finds, however, is the book is less of a go-here, do-this guidebook and more of an investigation of the sometimes far-out founding fathers—a picking apart of the minds behind the quirky locales contained within its pages.

“President Baugh [of Molossia] has a wickedly funny sense of humor, and uses it to lampoon real countries while operating the most entertaining micronation in the book. He has a space program, a movie industry, a railway, the death penalty (for smoking), a national cuisine, and many other trappings of nationhood. To top it off, he dresses like a 1970s-era tin-pot dictator.”

These endeavors aren’t cheap, though, and like many “real” countries, the micronation relies on microtourism to generate the funds necessary to stay afloat, and fund the occasional space program.

To read the full interview, head over to Yahoo! Travel.

For more information about Micronations: The Lonely Planet Guide to Home-Made Nations ($14.99), visit LonelyPlanet.com.

“Reporting — one of history’s oldest professions, even as it has gone under different names — will survive and prosper, while “journalism” as a respected discipline threatens to dissolve into another branch of the entertainment industry. How will good reporting survive? Individual men and women will slip away from the crowd — away from the panels and seminars, the courses and conferences, away from the writers’ hangouts and e-mail networks — to cultivate loneliness. They will demand of themselves not to write a word about a place or a subject until they know it firsthand. And they will do this out of curiosity — for as the illusion of knowledge grows daily, the reality of places themselves becomes more of a mystery.”
–Robert D. Kaplan, “Cultivating Loneliness“, Columbia Journalism Review, Jan-Feb 2006

This week at Yahoo! Travel, Rolf relives the rollercoaster ride that was expatriate life in Busan, South Korea, where he taught English as a second language. It wasn’t all fun and games, however — long hours, cold winters, and bouts of loneliness almost sent him back home, but he stuck with it and came away a stronger teacher, learner, traveler, and individual.

“To this day I remember this initial expatriate experience as a vivid turning point in the way I viewed the world. Just as Hemingway considered his Paris sojourn “a necessary part of a man’s education,” I consider my Busan experience to be an essential rite of passage in my own life. “

Expatriate life—while often rewarding—isn’t always as romantic as it sounds. Though with proper planning, and the willingness to adapt to undesirable situations, your ability to navigating around some of the more common pittfals that come with expatriate life can be achieved with minimal planning, and an open mind. It’s important to familiarize yourself with the ups and downs this lifestyle introduces before jumping headfirst into a long-term commitment. If nothing else, a little pre-planning can make the acculturation process enjoyable rather than a something to resist.

Naturally, Rolf rounds out the piece with some tips on getting started down the path of overseas living. To see those tips, along with the rest of the article, head on over to Yahoo! Travel.

Exploring the joys of expatriate life at Yahoo! Travel

Related:
-“Expats in Asia” at Slate.com
-Getting Out: Your Guide to Leaving America
-Book review: Tales from the Expat Harem
-Aly in Korea - Wandering Seoul

Over at the Cheapest Destinations blog, Tim Leffel discusses the safety of traveling abroad, and offers up some sound advice for those of you who have a friend or family member that worries about the level of crime where ever you may be traveling to.

“… do some digging around and get some stats to compare apples with apples. Chances are you’ll be amazed how much worse crime is in your own home town than where you’re going on the other side of the world.”

I decided to do just that for my upcoming trip to India this December. According to Wikipedia, the population of Mumbai (my first destination in India) in 2001 was 11,914,398. Springfield, Missouri—where I currently live—has a population of 151,580. The number of recorded murders in Mumbai in 2004 was 250, while the number of murders in Springfield, Missouri in 2004 was 8. So for Mumbai, that makes 1 murder in every 47,657 people, and for Springfield, 1 murder in every 18,947. Statistically speaking, my chances of getting murdered at home are more than double than when I am in Mumbai. This is far from accurate, but it’s a fairly good approximation. So there you go, Mom.

Check out Tim Leffel’s blog post on the safety of traveling abroad.

Happy Thanksgiving!

I recently got an email from Nathan, an English teacher in Hangzhou, China, who wrote:

I’ve read your book several times and really really loved it. I was thinking the other day about you saying you took a motorcycle trip across China, and I had a one question. How did you manage to get around the language barrier? Did you study any Mandarin before you came? Did you just rely on the basics ( hand signals, acting things out, finger counting)? I’ve been in Hangzhou for about 4 months and I lived in another city for 10 months before that, and my biggest daily challenge is the language.

Nathan references an anecdote from Chapter One of Vagabonding, but it was just a hypothetical example — I’ve never motorcycled across China myself. Still, based on my general experiences in China, I told him this:

My advice for such a journey would be two things — first, to learn as much Mandarin as possible while you’re in-country. This will require discipline! Second is to become comfortable with non-lingual communication — body language and hand signs and such. A combination of these two things (rudimentary Mandarin plus body language), along with the goodwill of most of the people you meet, should serve you fine.

If you really do plan on motorcycling across China, start researching the paperwork ASAP. Independent travel from province to province can require a lot of red tape; you might want to employ the help of a Chinese fixer or
travel agent. Good luck!

This is the precise reason I love YouTube.

Have a look at this clip featuring Jack Kerouac on the Steve Allen Show in 1959 discussing On the Road, and reciting poetry.

[via boingboing]

I’m still in Australia at the moment, but in a couple weeks I’ll be passing through Los Angeles, where I’ll performing at Vermin on the Mount in Chinatown on Sunday, December 3rd.

The latest installment in this irreverent literary-readings series, organized and MC’d by LA writer Jim Ruland, will also feature journalist Daniel Hernandez, filmmaker Theresa Duncan, and essayist/fiction writer Stephan Clark. The event takes place at The Mountain, which is located at 473 Gin Ling Way in the pedestrian plaza between Hill and Broadway in Chinatown. According to Vermin organizers,

…the fun typically starts at 7 pm with readings getting underway around 8 pm and lasting as long as they last. Vermin on the Mount is always free, but if you don’t tip the batenders, we’ll find other ways of making you pay.

For more information, check out the Vermin on the Mount blog here.

This week’s Traveling Light column revolves around a question from Mark in Elk Rapids, who asks:

I am about to embark on a trip to Eastern Europe. Should I be bartering over the cost of hotel stays?

I tell Mark that it’s worth the effort to bargain over your hotel prices anywhere in the world you travel, including the United States. Naturally, the effectiveness of your haggling will vary according to season. Haggling over rooms is rather pointless during festivals, public events, or tourist high season, for example, since rooms are often full and difficult to find. On the other hand, bargaining for the price of your room is worth a try most any other time of year — especially during tourist low season (this means non-Christmas winter-time in Eastern Europe).

For my full reply, click over to my Yahoo! News travel column here.