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Extended, round the world travel has been gaining plenty of steam over the last decade here in the United States. And while it isn’t an accepted, mainstream way of traveling quite yet, I do feel like it’s at least on the way.
It’s difficult to undo generations of teaching and upbringing, which is why there’s still a whole lot of people out there who love to travel, have possibly thought of taking extended … Read more »
There were a lot of comments on my last blog entry for this site, relative to the normal amount these posts receive. (“The What-ness, part 2: Choose what to lose”, can be read at http://www.vagablogging.net/the-what-ness-part-2-choose-what-to-lose.html). The post was about avoiding easy clichés and sterile recounting in your travel writing, and putting in the effort to drill down into the core experience and character of the place.
I lived in China as a foreign expert teacher in 2007/2008: back then, things were definitely starting to look like the country would have immensely changed. Grey skeletons of new mass construction works were scarring the land all over, so much that, month by month, the only similar thing … Read more »
It’s not every day you see a 1985 camper painted like a giraffe.
I’d spotted this distinctive vehicle a few times over the past week and a half. But as luck would have it its driver, Steve pulled in behind me at the post office parking lot. Across both sides in large white letters reads, “The World Happiness Party.com” I could have jotted down the web address or taken a photo with my … Read more »
Most dreams die because the dreamers can’t take the requisite and always terrifying step into the unknown. The best laid plans and sincerest intentions are no protection against the stomach-lurching sensation when you let go of the lifeline.
Cila Warnke is currently writing a book – THE BOOK, as she refers to … Read more »
When you drop off your baggage at the check-in counter, it sets off a modern Rube Goldberg-like system to keep your stuff on track. Bags are sent along conveyors, scanned, sorted and carried by humans to the right plane. Yet a recent article stated that 26 million checked bags go missing every year.
The story interviews several airline industry veterans, each giving conflicting … Read more »
“Travel does what good novelists also do to the life of everyday, placing it like a picture in a frame or a gem in its setting, so that the intrinsic qualities are made more clear. Travel does this with the very stuff that everyday life is made of, giving to it the sharp contour and meaning of art.” –Freya Stark, Riding to the Tigris
With over 20 million people, Seoul is the second largest urban agglomeration in the world, far behind the endless tentacles of that postmodern monster commonly known as Tokyo. But Korea beat Japan in something his neighbour is famous: in fact Korea is the most ethnically and linguistic … Read more »
When you’re trying to write about your experience of a place, whether for yourself or an audience, it’s tempting to adopt the narrative form we were taught in school. After all, it was drilled into us for years, over and over again. Therefore it’s no surprise that when you open many a travel journal or travelogue you’ll often see rote accounts of trips. Many of them read like a bureaucrat’s report to the head office. … Read more »
A couple weeks ago, giant hospitality sharing website Couchsurfing has launched his new Android application you can download for free here. I must admit, it was about time. Travelling a lot and being an active Couchsurfer, I was really stoked at the user unfriendliness of the famous website over a … Read more »
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