https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mvz9BLjhexw

Here’s a story: a university student posts up funny videos of her random observations on life.  She builds up a huge audience with a million subscribers on YouTube. Now she’s a popular vlogger. She’s about to graduate and unsure of what to do next.  So she calls up Lonely Planet and asks if they would sponsor her on an around-the-world trip. The deal is that she keeps making videos along the way.

Sound too … Read more »

A top goal if you’re living abroad as an expat is to pick up a new foreign language.  Benny Lewis from Fluentin3Months.com came on an interview with the Expert Enough podcast show.  He explained his rapid-fire approach to learning new languages.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=HlA6xv_yM6M

Lewis makes the point that you should avoid being too “academic” when studying.  He stresses the importance of getting out on the street, conversing with locals, and … Read more »

“There is nothing exclusive about tourism. Quite the contrary: it is primarily inclusive. It is an industry determined to embrace you. It wants you to check in to the right hotels; it wants you to spend as much as you can on fatuous souvenirs; it wants you to do Machu Picchu or the Taj Mahal; it wants you to have the Rainforest experience or the Mysterious East experience or the Rose Red City Half as … Read more »

“When a person says, in a foreign place, “I feel right at home here,” he is making a statement about the nature of travel, not in the texture of the place he’s in. …I don’t belittle this sort of travel, which I regard as Traveling As A Version Of Being At Home; but it is wrong to mistake it as the sort of travel that allows a person to make discoveries. Many people travel in … Read more »

Every vagabonder travels for different reasons. Some like to visit the most famous museums the world has to offer. Some want to hike the tallest mountains and deepest canyons. Others hope to experience cultures completely different than their own. Then there are the foodies hoping to taste that next bite of Heaven, the gap-year students looking to party and have a good time, and the quarter-life crisis travelers hitting the open road instead of settling … Read more »

Seems like the ideal setup: you’re about to visit a country that one of your friends has already been to. Naturally, you ask your pal for advice on where to go and what to do.  What could go wrong?

Plenty, as it turns out. The Tnooz tech travel blog had an article called Why the social travel model will never truly work.  … Read more »

“For many habitual travelers, hating America is a given. Not just America at home, but the detritus of America abroad. The States are the font of all ignorant interference, all destabilizing of delicate cultures and economies. America is the cause and the symptom of what’s going wrong. Of course the people on whose behalf travel writers feel this righteous ire adore America. They may not care for its alternately tentative and strident foreign policy, … Read more »

Ken Anderberg

2bagsandapack.wordpress.com

Age:

Hometown: Asheville, NC

Quote: “I enjoy trying to ‘get by’ in new countries, to navigate everyday tasks without local knowledge or local language.”

“When some tourists accuse those other tourists of not being good enough tourists, not open enough, not interested in adventures and new challenges, they fall back on the normative ideal developed from the days of the Grand Tour and onwards. They forget that behind the tourist label there are very different kinds of explorers. Some are out to discover exotic worlds or meet new people, for others a vacation is a chance to explore the … Read more »

Just a reminder that the deadline to apply to join the team here at Vagablogging is fast approaching. If you’re been putting off submitting something, head to the nearest internet cafe and fire off an e-mail.

We’re looking for a few new contributors to post once or twice a week on vagabonding-related topics of their choice — from travel tips to destination suggestions to reviews of travel media.

The ideal writer should be familiar with Read more »