Has travel become such a common commodity that people are passing up ancient architecture and natural scenery for . . . sewage plants, prisons and poverty museums?  I’m not making this up.  Check out Newsweek’s article, Way Off the Beaten Path.

A quote from one person about the sewage plant tours was funny: “Don’t they have anything better to do on a Saturday morning? It smells.”

Maybe travelers are getting fed up with the traditional tourist attractions and are looking for something different. Is this a passing fad, or the beginning of a more permanent trend?

San Francisco sewage plant and Texas Prison Museum

In Tone Deaf in Bangkok, Janet Brown does a remarkable job of capturing daily life in Bangkok and chronicling her transformation from her early days exploring the city as a farang to settling into the rhythms of the city to her eventual journey back to the United States.

Nana Chen’s photography accompanies Janet Brown’s text. Chen’s captivating image of schoolboys in the rain adorns the cover while many other candid glimpses of daily life in Thailand grace the pages. From vendors hawking food in street stalls to the hazy Bangkok sunrise to people riding motorbikes and boats, the combination of Brown’s text and Chen’s images make a reader feel the hot, sticky heat of a day in Bangkok and smell the tantalizing aromas emanating from the noodle stalls.

For another glimpse into Janet Brown’s journeys in Southeast Asia, check out her blog which she frequently updates with accounts of daily life, from the Phnom Penh hotel that became a cockroach superhighway in the evening to the birds in her Bangkok yard.

When you hit the road these days are you still using a guidebook? Or have you moved on to smartphones, netbooks and mobile guides/applications? I’m still touting a guidebook myself, but I’m wondering how much longer that will last.

Conde Nast recently sent three writers off to Moscow in the dead of winter — one armed with an iPhone, another with a BlackBerry Bold, and the third with only a guidebook. The magazine then gave them a series of tasks — like booking a last minute hotel or finding a pharmacy at midnight — to see how the latest technology stacked up against the tried-and-true guidebook.

The hands down winner is the guidebook, but the tech tools actually did better than I would have expected.

For example they proved invaluable in navigating the complexities of the Kremlin, but both the iPhone and the Blackberry suffered from slow network connections, drained batteries and other tech-related woes.

Of course the whole setup is a little bit rigged, the success of the gadgets would probably have been much greater in the more tech-friendly environment like western Europe, Japan, etc. As with just about anything in your bag, whether or not a smartphone makes sense depends entirely on where you’re headed.

But perhaps the most revealing part of the article is that no guide is as good as the locals. It’s worth noting that much of the success the writer had using the traditional guidebook was in fact actually the result of helpful locals and some universal sign language.

Books — apparently moreso than smartphones — are a great way to get started in discovering a new place, but the locals you meet on the road are, and always will be, the best travel guides you’ll ever find.

[Photo from Conde Nast]

A few more contests have popped up for those with a penchant for the camera or camcorder while on the road. Give ‘em a shot! (Pun not intended.)

Verge’s Travel With Purpose Photo Contest
Win: Grand prize wins CAD$1000. Travellers’ Choice wins $1000 toward a Cross-Cultural Solutions volunteer vacation.
To apply: Submit your favorite travel photo that captures the spirit of your life-changing journey. Judging will be based on creativity, originality, and technical proficiency. Open to all Canadian residents and international subscribers of Verge Magazine.
Deadline: July 1st, 2009

WorldNomads Travel Documentary Scholarship
Win: A trip to Vietnam, where you’ll shoot a documentary that’ll be shown on National Geographic Adventure Channel.
To apply: Submit a 3-minute video documentary on the theme “Journey into an Unknown Culture.” Judging will be based on strong narrative, originality, visually-engaging story. Also submit 200-word explanation on why you should win the scholarship.
Deadline: July 5th, 2009

Good luck!

What do you do when global economic chaos nixes your travel plans? For some the answer is bartering. It’s the original form of economy: you have skills, other people have guesthouses or unused frequent flier miles — why not swap what you have for what you want?

The May issue of Budget Travel has an interesting article (online here) highlighting three travelers who swapped their skills for someone else’s house, a room in a nice inn and a free plane ticket.

All three of the people in the Budget Travel story traveled within the U.S., but similar opportunities exist abroad as well. For example, I traveled in Asia with an artist who offered to design logos or paint murals at guesthouses in exchange for a free night, or meals.

Of course, in my friend’s case, it was more casual than the examples in the Budget Travel article; he never went out of his way or made a sales pitch, generally someone would notice his sketchbook and a conversation would evolve from there. And sometimes he did something without getting anything in return.

Still, with a little planning, it’s not hard to see how you could set up quite a few barter-related stops on a long trip.

I’m curious to hear if any vagablogging readers have done anything bartering in their travels — whether a casual situation like my friend’s, or a long trip planned around bartering. Be sure to let us know how it worked in the comments below.

[Photo Credit: 29cm, Flickr]

This poem, called “I Go Back To The House For A Book,” reminds me of all the times I’ve imagined going somewhere, doing something, seeing someplace ELSE, while I was busy going, doing, and being somewhere already.  Life is full of so many threads, and sometimes lots of them seem interesting but you have to choose one, at least until they invent cloning.

I turn around on the gravel and go back to the house for a book, something to read at the doctor’s office, and while I am inside, running the finger of inquisition along a shelf, another me that did not bother to go back to the house for a book heads out on his own, rolls down the driveway, and swings left toward town, a ghost in his ghost car, another knot in the string of time, a good three minutes ahead of me — a spacing that will now continue for the rest of my life. 

- Billy Collins

A reader named Christina recently emailed me about jobs in travel writing and television. “I am absolutely fascinated by your work and your bio,” she wrote. “I recently graduated from college and after a year of being in TV news reporting I would love to write and travel for a magazine such as National Geographic and hopefully add in an environmentally friendly aspect. Any advice on how to go about writing for these magazines? What about the networks themselves for TV related jobs?”

This is what I told her:

Thanks for your message, and best of luck in your career! I get questions like yours a lot, so I’ve set up a Travel Writers page at my website to help address basic questions about my career (including interviews with nearly 100 other travel writers).

I think the most important thing to remember is that nobody is just going to give you a travel-writing job. You have to get out there and travel on your own first, build up some experience in your area of expertise. If TV is where you want to go, take off for six months and travel the world with a camera. My book Vagabonding can tell you how to travel long-term without going broke, and many travel writers and filmmakers have developed their careers along the way (“A Map For Saturday” filmmaker Brook Silva-Braga being a recent case-in-point). Once you have ground experience (and sample video footage) in, say, eco-travel, your odds of getting the attention of the big guys are much stronger. Don’t be afraid to use blogs and vlogs to make a name for yourself, either.

Okay guys, here’s some great tracks to look for the next time you hit iTunes. Brave New Traveler has compiled a list of 30 Songs that Capture the Spirit of Travel.

For me, what really makes think of travel are the soundtracks from movies set in foreign countries. For example, I always get warm, fuzzy memories of Japan when I hear a song from Sofia Coppola’s “Lost in Translation.”

Us vagabonders can be an opinionated bunch, and I’m certain the list has left out some amazing tunes. Fill in the gaps by putting your suggestions in the comments. If you have links to a music video on YouTube, bonus points!

I love drawing when I’m on the road. Even when I’m lugging around a decent digital camera, nothing beats recreating impressions, scenes, objects, and people with your hand. For me, drawing feels more intimate because you get to notice details that are often overlooked when taking a photograph.

But carrying around a full set of paints and brushes is contradictory to my practice of traveling light. Usually, I just take a pencil, a kneaded eraser, and three gel pens in different line weights. I stick to drawing in ink because it’s more portable.

For trips where I’d prefer to paint, I’ll take a very small sketchbook and watercolors. There are many reasons why I prefer to bring watercolors as opposed to oil or acrylic paints when traveling. First of all, they can come in either tubes or dried cakes, with the latter being easier to pack when they come in a set. When watercolors get too dry, all you have to do is add a bit of water and you can use them again. Also, since watercolors require a lot of water, small quantities can last very long on the road.

If you want to take a more exciting and challenging approach, you can use readily-available materials. Some artists I know use coffee, tea, and natural dyes from plants. While these materials might not last as long as synthesized paints or inks, you can always coat them with a layer of transparent acrylic latex, fixative, or a preserving spray when you return home.

Do you draw or paint during your trips? If you do, please share your experiences with us in the comments.

Image by CaroFarion from sxc.hu

Ask ten people and you’ll get ten different answers. Part of that is understandable — it depends where you go, how you travel and what you want to do. But what if you just want a solid figure, a rough estimate?

That’s a question long time traveler Nora Dunn recently set out to answer over at Ramit Sethi’s I Will Teach You to be Rich blog (don’t worry, the site isn’t as obnoxious as the title makes it sound).

Dunn’s conclusion? You can travel the world for $14,000 a year.

Ultra-budget vagabonds might complain that that figure is a bit high, but for those just getting started, it makes a good rough estimate. And Dunn has quite a few tips to help keep your spending down, if you think that’s too high.

Many of the budget slimming suggestions and cheap travel websites will be familiar for vagabonds, but one standout that I’d never heard of before is the budget airline search engine WhichBudget.com. Which Budget is a bit different than most airline search engines in that it doesn’t book flights. Rather the site is designed to help you find small, often regional budget airlines that offer cheap fares, but don’t get listed in the major flight search engines.

Say for instance you want to fly from Bangkok to Singapore. Plug that search into a big search engine like Expedia and you might well miss out on results from Tiger Airways, JetStar and other budget airlines that Which Budget recommends. Which Budget doesn’t book flights, but it is a great tool for making sure you check all your options (even the ones you don’t know about).

The rest of Dunn’s piece covers perennial vagabond tricks like working for accommodation, volunteering, homestays and many other great ways to save some money on the road. Check it out and be sure to add Which Budget to your bookmarks.