This month at the RolfPotts.com Travel Writers page I interview Bob Shacochis, a contributing editor for both Outside and Harper’s, and the author of books such as Swimming in the Volcano, Easy in the Islands, and The Immaculate Invasion. Here are some of the highlights from our Q&A:

• “The biggest challenge in the research process is to let go, to stop, to say enough, and then to reduce all of that beloved labor down to a few succinct paragraphs that shape the background to your narrative. I love research — that’s all the fun, especially in the field. To write, however, is to suffer, and my pieces usually come in thousands of words over the assigned length. That’s a serious flaw in my writing process — shaping and disciplining the footlockers of material one has so happily gathered.”
• “Iowa [Writing Workshop] was my first big break. Worked with great teachers — Barry Hannah, James Alan McPherson — caught the eye of a few literary lions like Robert Stone and John Irving, got an agent, started publishing short stories in the New York mags by my third semester. When my first book, Easy In The Islands, came out in 1985, I began to get calls from editors at all the big mags asking if I was interested in nonfiction assignments overseas. The surfer in me immediately responded — Are you shitting me? Send a plane ticket!“
• “I’ve worked with three or four editors I adore but most of them couldn’t teach a freshmen English class.”
• “Read every travel book you can get your hands on, starting with Homer and Virgil and the Bible, working your way through the centuries to Rory Stewart. Everything you read is, finally, influential.”
• “Love humanity, cultivate tolerance, hate injustice. Serve language, not word counts, and don’t just skate around on the glossy surface of things. Say yes to everything but hookers and drugs. To hookers and drugs say…maybe. If an editor tells you the audience you are writing for is composed of idiots who need every little obvious thing spelled out endlessly, tell the editor to go fuck himself/herself.”

Full Bob Shacochis interview online here.

“It seemed an advantage to be traveling alone. Our responses to the world are crucially molded by the company we keep, for we temper our curiosity to fit in with the expectations of others. They may have particular visions of who we are and hence may subtly prevent certain sides of us from emerging… Being closely observed by a companion can also inhibit our observation of others; then, too, we may become caught up in adjusting ourselves to the companions questions and remarks, or feel the need to make ourselves seem more normal than is good for our curiosity.”
–Alain de Botton, The Art of Travel, (2002)

Need a book to read (and swat at mosquitoes with) on the float down the Mekong? Or perhaps inspiration for the commuter train rider, the breed of cubicle dweller covertly stashing funds away in anticipation of resignation day and leaving the world of paisley ties and stale office coffee for good?

National Geographic has composed a list of the “100 Greatest Adventure Books of All Time”. The list is from 2004, but most of these books are timeless classics, with the earliest “Top 10″ book originally written in 1298.

Last year, World Hum also composed a list of the 30 Greatest Travel Books that Rolf blogged about last May.

According to National Geographic, the top 10 Greatest Adventure Books of All Time are:

1. The Worst Journey in the World by Apsley Cherry-Garrard (1922)
As a young man, Cherry-Garrard accompanied Robert Falcon Scott on his 1910 journey into the Antarctic. Among his duties were collecting emperor penguin eggs midwinter in utter darkness, as the temperature plunged to -70F.

2. Journals, by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark (1814)
Meriwether Lewis and William Clark spent over two years traveling from St. Louis, Missouri to the Pacific Ocean and back, exploring the wild Louisiana Territory. Their journals chronicle the drudgery, frustration, discovery, and triumph of their journey.

3. Wind, Sand & Stars, by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (1940)
Saint-Exupéry flew mail from France to Spain in the 1920′s and piloted his plane (which had no radio) in all weather using unreliable maps over Europe and North Africa. He faced hardship and adventure; once his plane’s engine quit without warning, leaving him and his companion stranded in the Libyan Desert without water.

4. Exploration of the Colorado River, by John Wesley Powell (1875)

5. Arabian Sands, by Wilfred Thesiger (1959)

6. Annapurna, by Maurice Herzog (1952)

7. Desert Solitaire, by Edward Abbey (1968)

8. West With the Night, by Beryl Markham (1942)

9. Into Thin Air, by Jon Krakauer (1997)

10. Travels, by Marco Polo (1298)

The complete list of 100 can be found here. Happy reading!

Cat and Girl is a regular webcomic written and illustrated by Dorothy Gambrell, featuring (naturally) a girl and a talking cat. The cartoons often tackle subjects like religion, philosophy, fashion, politics, and soft drink slogans, but with a witty and intelligent take on things. Like all good cartoonists, Gambrell examines the concepts we take for granted, and subtly deconstructs them through the thoughtful discourse of her characters.

Of particular note to Vagablogging readers (who, it is assumed, are more likely to live and travel lightly) is yesterday’s cartoon, in which American consumerism is tackled. All of Girl’s complaints are countered by a statement by Cat, wherein the assumption is that buying things will make her happy. Her response is that maybe we should look at the fundamental issues behind things rather than going out and buying more stuff we don’t need.

But my words can’t do justice to the cartoon, and I’ve blathered on enough, so the best thing to do is click on over and read it: “Renewable Energy Source.”

New installments of Cat and Girl are posted every Tuesday, Thursday and Friday on catandgirl.com.

Matt Gross’s travel column for the New York Times, The Frugal Traveler, is usually good for a travel tip or two. But for folks headed for Europe this summer, Gross’s latest column — on the variety of low-cost European airlines — is a must-read.

If you’ve traveled in Europe in the past decade or so, you’ve probably at least heard of RyanAir, the low-cost Irish airline famous for fares as low as € 0.99 on flights throughout the continent. They offer some great deals, but often fly in and out of some remote airports. So RyanAir can’t always get you to where you want to be.

But there are dozens of other low-fare carriers in Europe. So many even that when you’re planning a trip, it’s hard to know where to start. Or at least it used to be.

Gross planned his low-cost odyssey using the very helpful flylc.com, a booking engine for most (if not all) of Europe’s budget carriers. It’s a snap to use. You just choose your departure and destination cities from dropdown menus and flylc.com tells you which airlines service that route, and gives links to their Web sites.

Granted, even with this easier booking process, buying tickets is maybe the least painful part of the low-cost experience. Budget airlines are notorious for their shoddy service and uncomfortable planes. And Gross finds this out the hard way. But he also turns up some surprisingly posh carriers. (Hint: FlyBaboo and EasyJet come up roses.) If you’re a vagabonder, no doubt you’re willing to sacrifice some leg room to stretch your buck. Still, it’s good to know that comfortable budget flights are out there (and that they’re easy to find).

For the past seven years, I’ve been asking my various travel writer interview subjects how they got started writing. Frank Bures recently asked me that same question for a travel-writing class he’s teaching, and this is what I told him:

My writing aspirations can be traced back to about age 13, when I started writing horror stories in the style of Stephen King. This horror-writing phase didn’t last long, but it helped winnow the creative urge, and familiarize me with the basics of putting a prose narrative together. Later I became involved with my high school newspaper, and I wrote a humor column for my campus newspaper in college. After college, I traveled the United States for eight months, living out of a VW van. Fancying myself a kind of new Jack Kerouac, I tried to write a book about this travel experience, but that ultimately failed when I couldn’t interest any agents or editors. Out of money and not sure what to do next, I went to Korea to teach English for a couple years.

In Korea, I learned how to live within another culture, and I became a more seasoned, instinctive traveler. I also learned from the shortcomings of my failed USA travel book, and sharpened my writing, keeping in mind the narrative needs of my readers. During my second year in Korea, I rewrote one of my USA book chapters (about Las Vegas) and sold it to Salon.com’s travel section. Encouraged by this small success, I strengthened my relationship with my Salon editor by writing some travel stories about Korea. He published about five of them.

At this point, I’d saved a lot of money from teaching, and I’d planned on traveling through Asia and Europe for over a year. Since I had an editorial contact at Salon, I decided to pitch him with a travel column idea. He wasn’t sure about this idea at first, so I hit the road on my trip and continued to write stories. It just so happened that Leonardo DiCaprio was shooting the travel-oriented movie “The Beach” in Thailand, so I decided to try and sneak onto the set of the movie as an experiment about the motivations and idiosyncrasies of travel. My attempt to sneak onto the movie set failed, but the resulting story, “Storming ‘The Beach’”, made the cover of Salon and landed in the 2000 edition of The Best American Travel Writing. I got the travel column at Salon, and that turned out to be a big turning point in my career, as it raised my exposure one-hundred-fold. Editors of glossy magazines like Condé Nast Traveler invited me to write for them, and I’ve been freelancing for various travel venues — National Geographic Traveler, Outside, Slate, Islands, the San Francisco Chronicle, etc. — ever since. My book, Vagabonding, came out in 2003. I’ve also maintained an author website since 1998, and a blog since 2002, and both have been good for promoting and showcasing my work.

These days, travel is still the core of my work, though I occasionally write literary criticism, interviews, and other types of writing. I’d say travel writing is 80% of what I do.

“That is the charm of a map. It represents the other side of the horizon where everything is possible. It has the magic of anticipation without the toil and sweat of realization. The greatest romance ever written pales before the possibilities of adventure that lie in the faint blue trails from sea to sea. The perfect journey is never finished, the goal is always just across the next river, round the shoulder of the next mountain. There is always one more track to follow, one more mirage to explore. Achievement is the price which the wanderer pays for the right to venture.”
–Rosita Forbes, From Red Sea to Blue Nile (1925)

If you like travel and you like games, you’ll love BootsnAll’s latest contest: the BootsnAll Treasure Hunt, and it begins in May. Unlike some contests, where the winner might get something he or she has no need for and immediately tries to sell, the winner of our contest will get to select the prize that works best for him/her. Plus, the prizes in this contest are all travel-related, perfect for anyone with itchy feet. We’re not going to tell you that you’ve got to take the round-the-world ticket (worth $2000 US), especially if you’d rather have the adventure trip in Turkey! That’s right, if you’re the first to complete the month-long hunt, you’ll get your pick of the litter. We’re also giving away weekly prizes as well, so there’s plenty of winning to be done here.

While we’re not giving away too much just yet about how to play the game, you can register today so you’ll be ready to go come May 1 when the first clues go up.

Good luck!

With over 27 million hits since its debut on December 31, 1999, Dave’s ESL Cafe has enlightened, educated, and inspired countless English as a Second Language teachers. Created by Dave Sperling, the site is a virtual clearinghouse of ESL information.

There is an “Idea Cookbook” where teachers exchange ideas on everything from how to tame a group of unruly kindergartners to selecting the perfect text accompaniment for a class. “Phonics Jenga,” “Student Penfriend Pie” (think letter writing, not cooking), and “Mr. Monster” are just a few of the dozens of activities exchanged by teachers on the message boards. Teachers also offer advice geared towards working with particular age levels, from preschool-aged children right on through adult business students.

A job board is another important component of the site, allowing visitors to post their resumes, and view and apply for jobs throughout the world. There is also an advice board, allowing ESL teachers venturing to all corners of the globe to exchange tips, tricks, and company recommendations specific to their region. A newbie board welcomes those with more rudimentary questions about the world of ESL.

English Language Learners can also find a wealth of information on the site, from grammar and geography quizzes to a list of slang terms, some of which can baffle even native speakers. Even as a life long English speaker, I never knew that ammunition was a slang word for toilet paper.

Blogs also offer insight into the ESL expat lifestyle, with coverage of the day-to-day events not shared in most web forums. The Daily Kimchi is a blog by two Canadians who are teaching English in Seoul, South Korea. They offer a day-to-day perspective on everything from buying cases of Ceylon Tea at Costco, to Korean women’s infatuation with high heels, to the particular difficulties that go with living in that region of the world, including the yellow dust that blows in from the deserts of neighboring countries, coating everything from the subway to the lungs of those who forgo dust masks.

The Daily Kimchi would not be complete without video footage of daily life in Seoul, including the singing cab driver serenading the Canadian duo with an unknown (to them) song.

Between Dave’s ESL Café message boards and the blogs out in the great wide blogosphere, getting a variety of perspectives on ESL and the many options that come with it are readily available to anyone willing to venture a few keystrokes.

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Getting Out: Your Guide to Leaving America by Mark Ehrman. Reviewed by Jason Erik Lundberg

Getting Out: Your Guide to Leaving America (previously mentioned here) is volume 2 in Process Media’s Self-Reliance series, and aspires to be an all-purpose guide for expatriation from the USA. Written with a pessimistic slant toward the current state of the nation (only natural, since Process’s books tend to lean firmly to the left), the book presents a compelling case for leaving the country, be it for political or economic reasons, or for a chance at adventure.

Ehrman splits up the book into eight parts — Ways to Leave; Getting In; Foreign Citizenship and How to Get It; Work, Study, or Slack; Choosing a Country; The Top 50 Expat Meccas (which takes up fully half of the book); Doing It; and Web Resources — each presenting the details necessary for a move abroad (including website links when available), and peppered throughout with testimonials on living in a foreign country. Of especial note are the sections on obtaining a visa, working overseas, and health care (although this section could have been much expanded, as it is one of highest worries on an American’s mind today).

The greatest resource in the book, however, is its biggest chapter: The Top 50 Expat Meccas. Broken down are the statistics on style of government, population, currency, languages spoken, religion, ethnicity, cost of living, visa requirements, climate, infrastructure, internet access, health care, popular expat professions, taxes, crime rates, and attitudes toward cannabis use, homosexuality, and abortion. This information, coupled with the aformentioned testimonials, as well as first-person experiences, provide a wealth of information on choosing a new country in which to live.

Notably absent to this list, however, is Singapore, to which I just immigrated only two weeks ago. It is a country with one of the best health care systems in the world, excellent public transportation, and a hunger for recruiting foreign workers (specifically English teachers and professionals in science and engineering). It may have been overlooked because of its small size (approximately only as big as New York City), or possibly its socialist style of government, but there is no way to know; the criteria for which countries made it into the top 50 and why are not evident within the text, and the reasoning behind the choices made is vague.

There is also a surprising lack of deepness to the book, in that Ehrman provides a lot of information, but does not go as in-depth as similar books on the subject. This gives a broad but shallow reading experience, which may help to narrow down your choices on where to move, but is lacking in what to do after that. All the space given to first-person accounts is helpful (word of mouth is a powerful persuader), but Ehrman relies on it overmuch, and some of that space could have been re-allocated to more research from third-party sources.

Still, if you are considering moving overseas, Getting Out is a good place to start.

The book is available direct from the Process website, as well as through BookSense
and Amazon.