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Legal justice abroad (or the lack thereof) has been in the headlines in recent weeks. Roxana Saberi, an American journalist, was convicted of spying in Iran and sentenced to eight years in Tehran’s Evin Prison. Her family was initially told that she was arrested for buying a bottle of wine – forbidden in the Islamic nation. However, the charge soon evolved into not having a valid press card to work as a journalist and ultimately she was convicted of spying for the United States.
When traveling, it is important to know the rules of the countries that you are traveling to – there is only so much your own country can do for you if you get into trouble in another country. Different countries have highly variable rules, from Israel’s requirement on a license to ride bicycles to Barbados’s ban on wearing camouflage clothing (which is reserved for the military). Traveling to the United Arab Emirates with even a poppy seed can put an unknowing traveler in jail.
For a peek into the lives of the unlucky (or unwise) travelers who have wrestled with the legal systems of foreign nations, check out the new season of Locked up Abroad (the next new episode is on May 6 on the National Geographic Channel). The May 6 episode will feature four men who were arrested attempting to smuggle cocaine out of Brazil; they ended up spending time in Brazil’s notorious Carandiru prison. If you can’t wait until May 6 to watched Locked up Abroad, you can check out some online episodes here.
The swine influenza virus is all over the news this past week. While it’s not exactly a pandemic yet, the World Health Organization (WHO) claims that a pandemic is imminent.
As seen in previous worldwide outbreaks such as the avian flu and SARS, travelers are becoming both worried and wary, especially if there are confirmed cases of the outbreak in their destination. But the burden of protecting one’s self mostly lies in the hands of the traveler. According to the WHO, implementing travel bans and closed borders might have little effect:
The World Health Organization urged countries not to restrict international travel or close borders, as such measures would not in themselves stem the outbreak. Efforts to contain the outbreak by restricting travel would be unlikely to work without “draconian measures,” said Dr. Keiji Fukuda, the agency’s assistant director-general. But he said people who are ill should put off trips abroad, and people who fall ill after a trip should see a doctor.
Source: “Travel Industry Grapples With Swine Flu” by Lisa Respers France, CNN.com
If you’re planning to travel during or after an outbreak, it’s important to monitor news updates about the disease. You’ll be better equipped to protect yourself if you know more about the it, how it’s transmitted, what the symptoms are, and the alert levels raised by the government and the WHO. Learning these facts will also allow you to keep yourself healthy without being prone to needless panicking.
Also, note the contact information and addresses of the hospitals which are equipped to handle the disease. This will help you act faster in case you suspect that you or your traveling companions have been infected.
Have you ever risked traveling during an outbreak?
The venerable travel site, World Hum, is celebrating its 8th birthday this week and has been dusting off some of its older gems for your travel reading pleasure.
So far there’s been a round up of Eight Great Stories of the Shrinking Planet, Eight Great Travel Stories About Food and Eight Great Road Trip Stories. I expect more are on the way, so keep an eye on the World Hum Lists section.
Some standouts from what’s been collected so far include Home Alone, Aaron Paulson’s account of becoming a housewife in Japan, Matt Villano’s The Delicacy of the Andes (about eating guinea pigs) and Mark Edward Hornish’s tale of being towed through Wyoming by the band Whitesnake.
Congrats to World Hum on its 8th birthday.
I give a hearty ‘yes’ to Travellious’ recent post, Breaking the Rules: Don’t Sightsee.
Basically, the post questions how we travel. Don’t just follow the crowd and see something because it’s in the guidebook or because you’re expected to see it. Rather than seeing a place for the sake of ticking it off a list, choose a place where you’ll truly appreciate what it offers. If it helps, keep in mind that you can always return another time—that might asuage the fears that compel you to zip through all of the monuments.
A recent trip of mine to Seattle was exactly that type of trip—no visiting the Space Needle or ferry trips to Bainbridge Island. It was more about visiting a friend, which meant seeing neighborhoods through a local’s eyes by running errands. I liked imagining my friend and the thousands of other residents in their daily routines. It begs the question: what can I take back from this experience to my own daily life?
Of course, there will usually be a few sites you have to see on any trip, or else why wouldn’t you just be in your home town? The Eiffel Tower completes Paris, the Opera House makes Sydney. But I think it makes for more enriching travel to rethink what you want out of your experience—don’t you?
Even the most hard core of travelers seldom actually travel for more than a few years at a time. There are notable exceptions, we’ve all met that wizened traveler who’s been on the road for decades, but for most of us even extended trips are what you might call a “mini-retirement.”
But what if you want more than just a long trip? What if you want to get rid of the “mini” and just, you know, retire? Not later, now, at say, 30? Sounds impossible right?
Well, as John Bardos over at jetsetcitizen.com recently pointed out, you don’t necessarily have to be rich to retire. Especially not if you’re willing to retire abroad (and where else would a vagabond retire?).
Too many people still believe that retirement is for the 65 and older crowd who have worked and saved their whole lives and still have trouble making ends meet. How much money do you really need to retire? What if you could retire now, for as little as $500 per month? Of course, that means cutting back on most luxuries and living a relatively simple life but it does seem possible in lower income countries like The Philippines, Cambodia, Thailand, and Bali.
Just about everyone who’s spent any time traveling to somewhere that’s significantly cheaper than their native country has probably thought, “wow, I could just move here.” And that’s exactly what a host of books like The Four Hour Work Week preach — earn money in high value currencies (generally your home country) and spend it in low value currencies abroad. It’s not revolutionary, it’s the basis of budget travel.
Bardos is just extending that idea from travel to permanent retirement living (though Bardos does say that he plans to continue working a few hours a week). For more details on Bardos’ plan, including an informative breakdown of projected living expenses, check out the full post: Can you Retire on $500 per month?.
It may not be something that everyone can or wants to do, but I’m quite sure at least a few readers of this site have done something similar and are reading this from the comfort of their beach-side hammock. Share you thoughts and experiences below.
[Photo credit: Gaetan Lee, Flickr]
I mentioned a little bit about this scholarship in an earlier post I made on this blog, but I felt it warranted a bit more interest all on its own.
Rotary International is a community-based service group, whose members are often leaders of industry (read: lawyers, CEOs, bankers, etc, although there are certainly less white-collar members). They have a lot of projects on the go, including a “stamp out polio” campaign, drinking water campaigns, and sponsoring global fellowship, which is a generic term for “getting people from different cultures together to hang out and fix some problems.” For example, Scholars for Schools is a Valparaiso, Chile-based project that provides local schoolchildren with media libraries (books in Chile are pretty expensive), and Project Patagonia builds computer labs for schools in Argentina.
Both of these projects were started by Rotary Ambassadorial Scholars. Scholarships range from a 3- or 6-month language and culture study (for which you can receive either $11,000 or $16,000, respectively), and the larger Academic Year or Two-Year scholarships (which provide a flat $24,000). With this money, Scholars go to a country of their proposing and go to school (most scholarships are, not really remarkably, based on schooling). They live and work and meet with people in this country and, while there, interact with Rotary clubs, take on some projects, and attempt to serve the community. Ultimately, it’s a way to get young people actively reaching out to other countries, while funding their way there.
It’s not just $24,000 free dollars, however. There are a lot of steps to take, and the Rotarians are pretty picky about who they offer their money to; after all, the money for that scholarship could be going to fund a different project, one that allows a child to learn how to read or a mother to get clean water. So Scholars have a lot of responsibility. But the application process is there, and there’s no age limit. Anyone can apply.
Most of us have seen things in our travels that make us want to help the people and places we visit. Whether it be extreme poverty, oppressive governments or even slavery, the world is not always a pretty place.
Traveler Allen Burt went a step further than most of us and set up a small nonprofit to address different social causes while he was traveling around the world.
Burt’s current project is Library for Laos which is kicking off a fundraising drive this week to raise $5000 in 5 days. All of the money will go to Big Brother Mouse, a literacy organization that’s trying to get books in the hands school children around Laos.
Rural Laos is full of remote villages, many accessible only by long and grueling bus rides over some truly horrific road (I loved Laos, I spent two months there, but I have nothing positive to say about the roads). Other villages can only be reach by riverboat and only then when the water is high enough and still others are reachable only on foot.
Because many people in Laos live so far from what we would call civilization, books are a rarity, which what Big Brother Mouse and the Library for Laos fundraiser are trying to change.
The fundraiser kicks off today and runs through May, 1st. If you’d like to donate, head over to the Library for Laos site and click the donate button. You may donate any amount you’re comfortable with and keep in mind that a mere $50 can supply over 25 books to a school that currently has none.
All money raised will be donated to the local Laos based charity, Big Brother Mouse to fund children’s book purchases and reading programs. Big Brother Mouse writes, publishes, and distributes children’s books written in the native Laos language (a rarity, especially in rural areas of Laos). For more info, check out the Big Brother Mouse website (also see Matador’s excellent write up for some background on Big Brother Mouse).
It only takes about five minutes, and even donating just a few dollars can change the life of a child forever. For those of you on the road, Big Brother Mouse has offices in Vientienne and Luang Prabang where you can buy some books and pass them out as you travel around the country.
[image courtesy of Big Brother Mouse]
An 18-year-old reader named Brennan recently wrote me with a question about the traveling life. “When I recently told my friends that I wanted to be a vagabond,” he wrote, “they thought it was the same thing as being poor. What can I do to prepare myself financially to spend my life traveling? I enjoy writing and considered a career in journalism, but would that be financially sufficient to travel the entire world?”
This is what I told him:
Thanks for your message, and good luck with your vagabonding ambitions! In many ways I wrote Vagabonding to my 18-year-old self, since it contains the kind of information and inspiration I wish someone had given me when I was that age. In the book, you’ll notice that “vagabonding” doesn’t need to be an irresponsible or bum-like endeavor. Sure, you’ll want to save money and travel cheaply, but this is all directly connected to making your life as purposeful and amazing as possible. Travel need not be an escape from your home life, but something that can enhance and inform the life you live when you return home.
As for financial preparations, the specifics are less important than your attitude. That is, whatever job you take to travel the world and/or fund your journeys, the most important thing is to stay positive, live simply, and discipline yourself in such a way that you save your money. For my first vagabonding journey around the North America when I was 23, I worked as a landscaper for 8 months. This wasn’t a super high-paying job, but by living simply I was able to save enough money to travel the USA by van for eight months. It was an amazing experience. Later, I got a job teaching English for two years in South Korea. In addition to earning me enough money to travel Asia for two years when I’d finished, this was also an amazing opportunity to live in another culture and get a sense for how things work in other countries. I highly recommend working abroad — be it teaching or otherwise — to anyone who wants a sense for living and traveling in far-flung corners of the world.
Since these experiences of landscaping and teaching, I’ve since gone on to work as a full-time travel journalist. But in pointing out my other jobs, I just want to show that one need not be an international journalist to fund travel. I have friends that work as carpenters and venture capitalists and teachers and park rangers and IT workers and graphic designers who travel as much or more as me.
So again, it doesn’t really matter where you work, so long as you live simply enough to save up a “nest egg” for travel (and travel cheaply enough to make this nest-egg last). Check out my book for more specific ideas on resources for how to do this.
On a final note, I think it’s great that you’re planning your travel career at this point in your life — and don’t get stressed about hitting the road too soon. If you start planning your travels now, those travels will be a part of you, no matter if you leave tomorrow or in five years. I didn’t start traveling outside of North America until my mid-twenties — and now that I’m in my mid-thirties I feel like I have as many travel opportunities as ever. So be patient, and travel smart.
How far are you willing to go for a good cup of coffee? While seeing spectacular sights is great, some of my best times overseas has been sitting with a cup of coffee and watching the world go by.
Terry Ward has an article at World Hum about the Best Cities to Drink Coffee. The writer does a good of job of sprinkling a little history and local language throughout the piece. You can also find lots of useful tips on specific places to get your caffeine fix within each city and how to avoid cultural faux pas
From Reuters
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Where was the best cup of coffee you ever had?
The words “budget” and “Europe” often feel like an oxymoron when they’re too close together. After all, how can a place where an espresso often sets you back 5€ really be budget friendly?
The answer is to broaden your conception of Europe. Europe isn’t just western Europe, there are plenty of gems to be found farther east, especially in countries where the euro isn’t used.
The Guardian’s recent Europe without the Euro article offers a nice rundown on some often overlooked destinations in Europe that are more budget-friendly than traditional hotspots like France, Italy or Spain.
Fancy a cheap stay at the beach? Check out Bulgaria’s Black Sea towns or Turkey’s coastline. Lithuania and Poland are also great bargains, though Poland is on the Euro now, so it’s not quite as cheap as you may have heard from other backpackers.
Rolf also recently addressed the budget Europe dilemma over at World Hum, suggesting that even countries using the Euro have hidden deals. Rolf consulted budget travel guru, Tim Leffel, who says that getting off the beaten path is the key.
“Prices drop noticeably when you get outside the major cities,” Leffel says, “this is especially true in Hungary and the Czech Republic, which offer some of the best deals on the continent.”
I’ll admit that when I’m planning a trip, I often ignore Europe because, at first glance, it seems so expensive. However, keep in mind that while Asia and South America are cheaper once you get on the ground, the airfare is often significantly more expensive (from the U.S. anyway).
Score a cheap ticket to Paris, hop a train east and you may find you’re spending no more than you would in Thailand.
[photo of Bulgarian beach by Boby Dimitrov, Flickr]
