Even locals sometimes get it wrong

Jerusalem

In her book Down the Nile: Alone in a Fisherman’s Skiff, Rosemary Mahoney recounts the following:

The French naturalist Charles Sonnini had witnessed a clitoridectomy while in Egypt in 1778 and reported that the woman who performed the surgery had told him if the clitoris was allowed to … Read more »

Posted by | Comments Off on Even locals sometimes get it wrong  | October 12, 2010
Category: Images from the road, Notes from the collective travel mind

Another good travel blog

Over at Shetravels, an image-intensive, witty travel blog chronicles the account of a woman and her husband who are spending a year traveling around the world.  The pictures are basically travel porn: if you can sit at your desk drooling over them and NOT want to give everything up and move to Cambodia, you’re the only one.

Posted by | Comments (1)  | October 12, 2010
Category: Backpacking, Family Travel, Female Travelers, Images from the road, Travel Writing

Travel quotes and music

Each week Rolf brings us a new quote that makes us look at travel from a broader perspective, or perhaps in a different light. It’s interesting to note that some of these quotations come from all manner of sources, and not simply travel related literature. Indeed it seems easy to find fragments of writing that speak to us about travel and our own paths in life while reading a physics text, a random novel, or … Read more »

Posted by | Comments (2)  | October 11, 2010
Category: Notes from the collective travel mind, Travel Quote of the Day

W.H. Auden on the challenges of literary travel writing

“Of all possible subjects, travel is the most difficult for an artist, as it is the easiest for a journalist. For the latter, the interesting event is the new, the extraordinary, the comic, the shocking, and all that the peripatetic journalist requires is a flair for being on the spot where and when such events happen — the rest is merely passive typewriter thumping: meaning, relation, importance, are not his quarry. The artist, on the … Read more »

Posted by | Comments Off on W.H. Auden on the challenges of literary travel writing  | October 11, 2010
Category: Travel Quote of the Day

Are trusted traveler programs worth it?

I regularly fly through Houston’s IAH airport when I’m returning from travel to Central and South America, and lately, I’ve been running into brochures for the Global Entry Trusted Traveler Program. Enrolling allows members to speed past those horribly long immigration lines, and check in at a kiosk instead, currently available at 20 airports in the United States and Puerto Rico.

So far, because I’m … Read more »

Posted by | Comments (1)  | October 8, 2010
Category: Air Travel, Travel Safety

The life of an expat writer in Thailand

Since the glory days of Ernst Hemingway and Gertrude Stein in Paris, there’s been a certain glamor about being a writer while living abroad. CNNgo had an article about the expat writer scene in Bangkok.

The piece quickly bursts the bubble of starry-eyed dreamers.  The writers interviewed were frank about the state of the industry. John Burdett, author of Bangkok 8, said: “A lot of expat writing on Thailand — fiction and non-fiction — … Read more »

Posted by | Comments (1)  | October 8, 2010
Category: Asia, Expat Life, Notes from the collective travel mind

Review: Life is a Trip

A hollywood screenwriter turned travel journalist, Judith Fein knows how to find and tell a story. Her latest compilation, “Life is a Trip: The Transformative Magic of Travel” highlights people and places that have been pivotal moments in her life. A true vagabond at heart, she isn’t content unless she is exploring the world and connecting with local cultures, allowing their histories, traditions, and ways of seeing the … Read more »

Posted by | Comments Off on Review: Life is a Trip  | October 7, 2010
Category: Lifestyle Design, Travel Writing

Review: Keen’s New Airport Way Backpack

For extended travels your pack is your single most important piece of gear (unless of course you opt to go minimalist and skip the bag altogether). If you’re good at packing light, but want some extra protection for your laptop and other electronic gizmos, Keen’s Airport Way backpack makes a great choice.

The bag is slightly larger than your average school backpack and … Read more »

Posted by | Comments (1)  | October 5, 2010
Category: Travel Gear

Eat, Pray, base your travels on someone else’s experiences

Unless you’ve been living in a place where popular media does not go (like with my mother), you might have noticed that Elizabeth Gilbert’s surprise hit memoir “Eat, Pray, Love” has been made into a movie starring Julia Roberts…and it’s getting released, on slightly different days, around this time in lots of different countries.

The book 9and presumably the film) divides Gilbert’s life-changing journey into three segments: robust Italy (the “eat” section, where Gilbert reports … Read more »

Posted by | Comments (5)  | October 5, 2010
Category: Adventure Travel, Female Travelers, General, Solo Travel

The comforts and discomforts of Japan’s Shinkansen train

On a recent trip to Japan, I had the opportunity to experience the country’s Shinkansen train service. The Shinkansen, sometimes called the bullet train, is a network of high-speed trains that carry passengers across the country at speeds up to around 450km/h. Japan is notorious for its vast and efficient transportation system. True, tickets can be dauntingly expensive, but transportation in the country is nearly flawlessly reliable and easy to use.

As a … Read more »

Posted by | Comments (1)  | October 4, 2010
Category: Travel Health