Social enterprises have become a more popular way of developing impoverished villages. There is a compelling argument that building thriving businesses is more sustainable than donations and handouts. It also empowers locals to take more responsibility over how to develop their towns.

Tourism is a natural fit, and also creates jobs at many levels of society. The Wall Street Journal profiled two Southeast Asian villages in this article: A Fresh Start.

I’ll confess that … Read more »

Bangkok, Thailand

Selecting reading material for the road can be a daunting task, even in a relatively small bookstore such as the one in Bangkok pictured above. Interestingly, one of my favorite reads came not from a bookstore directly but from my mom through the mail. I was traveling … Read more »

Planes, trains, and buses. These are the modes of long-haul transportation that vagabonders are most familiar with. However, every continent save Antarctica has a great river running through it.

The shortest is the Murray River in Australia at 1,476 miles, with the longest being the river at the heart of civilization, the great Nile at 4,132 miles. The Yangtze and the Amazon are both a close second at around 4,000, with the Mississippi … Read more »

Since I seem to have fallen behind on updating my Events page, I wanted to announce that I’ll be giving a travel presentation in the Dallas area this weekend as part of the Irving Chautauqua series at the Irving Public Library. The event starts at 2 p.m. on Saturday, February 13 at the Central Library, 801 W. Irving Blvd. The program is free and open to all ages.

Other venues that will … Read more »

The recent Machu Picchu rescues succeeded admirably, but in most emergencies there won’t be a helicopter ready to whisk you to safety. Whether at home or abroad, you have to be prepared to rely on your feet.

Be prepared to walk to the nearest gas station, through a pitch-black subway tunnel, or down the fire escape. Through waist-deep monsoon rain in Trivandrum, out of New … Read more »

What do you get when combine CouchSurfing with sailboats? Vagabond Sailing, of course. Vagabond Sailing (a name inspired by Rolf’s Vagabonding) aims to be a way for vagabonds and travelers of all stripes to connect for a group travel experience on the high seas.

Sailing might not be the first thing that pops in your head when you think of budget travel, but … Read more »

Do you yearn for the red desert of the isolated Australian outback? Want a weird experience that might lead you to a promising career choice?  Consider delivering the mail (for a day) on a 550 km (that’s 342 miles, for Americans) round trip leaving from Broken Hill, NSW, a town familiar to anyone who’s ever watched an Australian movie set in some desolate outpost of civilization.

To do the trip yourself: The Bush Mail … Read more »

The legendary Venice Carnival started last Saturday, and will rage for 10 days before culminating in Fat Tuesday, on February 16th. The streets and public squares of the city will be packed with seemingly endless live entertainment. Grab your masks and sit back and enjoy music and dancing, trapeze and tightrope walkers, acrobats, theater performances, and … Read more »

“The best kind of travel involves a particular state of mind, in which one is not merely open to the occurrence of the unexpected, but to deep involvement in the unexpected, indeed, open to the possibility of having one’s life changed forever by a chance encounter.” –Elisabeth Eaves, “Wanderlust,” World Hum, Feb. 12, 2009

Around the BootsnAll office we’re always dreaming about our next adventure – usually even before we’ve unpacked our bags from the last one. Come February each year, we’re already plotting trips to warmer climates in order to focus on something other than the typically gray Portland weather.

For most of us, we’re thinking in terms of a quick getaway to someplace sunny or reminiscing about spring break trips of our youth – but we … Read more »