As I’ve made final preparations for my backpacking trip the past few months, I’ve come to realize there was one thing I completely underestimated: The act of telling people of my plans and dealing with their reactions is much more time-consuming and emotionally exhausting than expected.

Even more surprising was that this happened in different ways than I’d anticipated – the reactions I imagined actually never came true, and the reactions I never expected happened on repeat.

I’d expect this to be the case for many others who are planning their first trip, so I’ll share my experience in hopes of helping you be better prepared:

What I thought vs. what happened:

Everyone will think I’m crazy. This was the number one thing I worried about. I thought people would think I was going through some life crisis, or having a break down. But nobody thought this, and instead, the most overwhelming response I’ve received was that people admire me for following my dream and are inspired.

They won’t understand “wanderlust” because they don’t have it. They get it. In fact, many of them will tell you about their friend or family member who did something similar, and how cool they think it is, and how they wish they could do it.

I’m going to be lectured on the poor economy and this being a terrible time to quit my job. I did get a couple off-hand comments about this, but for the most part, people responded with things like, “If you’re going to do something like this, now’s the time” and “A job’s a job – there will be more waiting when you get back.”

What I didn’t expect, but constantly happened:

People were afraid for my safety. As I mentioned in my post last week, I was prepared to respond to the safety concerns of others, but I wasn’t prepared for that to be the number one response I’d hear from every single family member – complete with horrified looks on their faces. I wasn’t prepared for people to refer me to articles such as the most dangerous cities in the world, or for people to take it upon themselves to research safety for me (as if I hadn’t already done so myself).

People were shocked that I’d only be bringing a backpack. In fact, a couple of my friends asked if I’d be shipping my belongings in advance. A coworker who’d just returned from a 5-day vacation with a huge suitcase was speechless. Another coworker was fascinated by the foreseen freedom that comes from such limited belongings. I’ve received about a half dozen requests for my packing list.

People were amazed that I’d be going alone. It’s important to remember that most people are used to going on “vacations” with other people. The idea of a 29-year-old woman traveling through Latin America alone can be extremely appalling to them. I’ve learned to explain that in the backpacking world this is quite common, and that I’ll meet other travelers and volunteers along the way.

A conclusion I’ve made is to remember that people who don’t travel often or have the desire for a traveling lifestyle haven’t read the hundreds of blogs and half-dozen books that I’ve read, nor been exposed to the huge online community of people who do this every day – and it’s not their fault. So it’s important to be prepared to explain it to them, and when you do, you’ll find that most people are much more understanding and accepting than you might expect.

I’ve always been one to care too much about what other people think, but this process has helped me realize it’s not worth worrying about. People who know you and care about you will support you. And as long as you’re confident in your decision, that’s the only opinion that matters.

Original article can be found here: Preparing for the unexpected responses to your travel news

A man sitting on a couch and working at a laptop. Photo: hobvias sudoneighm / Flickr

Planning a round-the-world trip can seem as complicated as a space shuttle launch.  There a million things to think about: plane tickets, visas, money, etc.  The hard part is that everything seems important.  Where to begin?

Alex MacCaw wrote a helpful, in-depth post titled, “How to travel around the world for a year.”  Although he’s mainly talking to a Silicon Valley audience, his insights and practical advice would appeal to anyone.

What struck me about his post was that MacCaw’s trip was actually a boost to his career.   Anyone who’s considered a career break has probably encountered some nay-sayers around the office.  They often say things like, “It’s a tough economy, better hold onto your job,” “You’re so close to getting a promotion!” “Don’t throw away your career!”  (Spoiler alert) By the end of the trip, MacCaw got a sweet job at Twitter.

How did the trip impact his employment prospects?  One of the decisive benefits was that travel afforded him a lot of free time, a scarce commodity in today’s fast-paced world.  He wrote a programming book, did some coding for open-source projects, and joined e-mail lists of other developers that he met up with on the road.  All of these things contributed to his resume.

On a personal note, reading that post reminded me of the many computer and tech professionals I’ve met around the world.  There was one memorable occasion at a hostel in Hong Kong: every one of my roommates was either a university student majoring in computer science, or already working in information technology.  That might have rubbed off of me, since I later became a Linux user and studied web design.

Do you work with computers?  Do you work during your travels?  Please share your stories in the comments.

Original article can be found here: How a world trip made a programmer’s career

“This is the place where the bodies are burnt. Women cannot access because a few times some of them have jumped over their husbands’ pyres and died. If you see a white cloth, is a man. If you see a red sari, is a woman. I work here as a volunteer…”

A dramatic sight such as the Hindu traditional cremation on Varanasi’s ghats becomes particularly otherworldly after dark, when the flames jut out of the pyres full of wicked energy, drizzling, as if dispersing pieces of soul little by little, bit by bit into thin air.  This is a moment you want to enjoy slowly, privately, thinking of the secrets of life and death, reflecting on the differences between your own culture of the dead, and such a different one. You may want to cover your eyes as a log rolls slightly across the fire, revealing the nakedness of a burning limb… you may even have come a long way, just for this. Certainly not to be asked for cash.

The stuff of many travel legends is not something you are keen to share with everyone. Especially with that pestering local tout, aiming at you from a mile away, approaching fast. Ready to fire the same deadly tirade you do not want to hear. It happens everywhere, all over the world. In my case, the tout would not stop talking. Not even if you moved behind another foreigner, as if the vital was to talk for the sake of talking:   “This is the place where the bodies are burnt. Women cannot access because a few times some of them have jumped over their husbands’ pyres and died. If you see a white cloth, is a man. If you see a red sari, is a woman. I work here as a volunteer…”

Richard, a young New Yorker, has arrived in India after a trip to Europe. He is not green, having travelled the Northern half of the subcontinent for almost two months. He has another extended foray into Southeast Asia and Australia ahead and his face looks tired. “This country got me sick”, he confesses.

We do not know each other, but we cannot help exchanging a sympathetic gaze, a tactical strategy to join forces and leave the bugger on the side. We have not even walked all the way up the ghat’s first four steps that our “local friend” is already attacking a couple of elder tourists without even bothering to change the lines. His song is always the same:

“This is the place where the bodies are burnt. Women cannot access because a few times blah blah blah”

These days, and especially in South and Southeast Asia, touting has become a problem to cope daily with. It is legitimate to wonder whether or not travelling has to be off the beaten track to become free from such an annoyance.

My personal answer is: not really. Be it an offer for a guesthouse, a souvenir, one of those wooden frogs with a musical spine, a massage or a rickshaw ride, it appears that vagabonding may incur into a one-way only experience:  the traveller’s. Meeting someone who is genuinely interested in deepening the acquaintance is rarer and rarer, even further away from the main tourist sites. And most often, we misguide this pure contact for touting, and we are back to the start.

In this article, the author compiled a pop-song compilation of anti-sexual harassment feeling songs to keep in mind when a woman gets honed at during her travels. I think such an example may only foster the idea that something during the development of indie – and less indie – travel, has gone horribly wrong; because we, as travellers, are the first individuals to be responsible for the harassment.

Blame it on the hippy trailers or whoever you want, but as I’ve been taught “the lesser the demand, the lesser the offer”.  Turning back the history’s time wheel is definitely not an option, but trying to become more responsible in our on the road choices definitely is. Otherwise, the risk we face is to transform the World into a depressing supermarket museum, and the travel experience into another kind of empty shopping cart we try to fill up to feel great and adventurous. These things, I am sorry, we cannot buy with a credit card.

PS: An acknowledgement to Richard’s comments for having ignited the spark to write this week’s contribution.

Original article can be found here: On being harrassed by touts and vagabonding travel

Globe-trotting with your dog is totally possible! With appropriate paperwork, a microchip, and some forethought, taking your animal traveling can help break down cultural barriers and spark conversations. My border collie, Trinity, ushered me into far more conversations in Paris than I ever would have attempted with my meager French vocabulary.

There are a few key things to take into consideration before striking off with your canine pal. First, it’s all about the paperwork. Most countries require a microchip, health certificate and proof of rabies vaccine. The Pet Travel has up-to-date information about entry laws and quarantine laws, as well as bilingual passports for purchase. Make sure to follow the steps in the fine print! Before booking flights, check into the airline’s pet rules about crate sizing, prices, and cold temperature cut-offs.  An important note: many airlines no longer permit snub-nosed breeds for the animal’s own safety.

Photo credit: Lindsey Rue

Before you go, look into Fido Friendly accommodations around the world. I’m also a fan of Couchsurfing , which has several group threads of hosts who welcome you and your pets. Over the years, I’ve camped in back yards, rented rooms and flats, and occupied a couch for a night or two with my dogs. Just make sure y’all are well behaved guests.

Some pets, dogs especially, can carry their own things in a pack, and I recommend a dehydrated pet food diet because it’s conveniently lightweight.

photo credit: Lindsey Rue

As Dwight Eisenhower once said, “The friendship of a dog is precious. It becomes even more so when one is so far removed from home…”

Have you ever traveled with a dog? Please share your stories in the comments section.

Original article can be found here: Take your dog vagabonding

Making friends. Photo: Slava / Flickr

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.  When you entrust your trip to someone who has no other qualifications besides your relationship, things can go south very quickly.

In the article, a guy named Jack describes a recent vacation to Hawaii with a buddy of his.  Both were single guys.  They followed the advice of a female friend who’d gone the year before. While the pair enjoyed the excitement and fun of Waikiki, they were thoroughly bored by another section of their trip.  The reason: two single guys might not necessarily want the same travel experience as a married woman.  This passage summed up the problem:

Your friends, no matter how well meaning, are not travel experts. They’re not going to ask you the right questions or make the right assumptions about what turns you on.

They’re just going to tell you what they like, which may be miles from anything you’d enjoy.

I can relate a similar anecdote.  When I was at a hostel in Malaysia, I became friends with a group of English backpackers.  In a lucky coincidence, they had just come in from Yogyakarta, Indonesia.  That was to be my next destination.  I asked for their recommendation of a good, inexpensive hotel.  Not only did they name the hotel, they even gave me the business card!  I thought I was set.

Turns out I was wrong.  The hotel was a rathole, with a weak shower and a dirty bed.  My mistake was not considering the travel style of the person giving me the advice. When I said “good” hotel, I should have been more specific by what I meant. As in clean and comfortable, not just cheap.

I do like staying in hostels and cheap places, but I’m willing to spend a little more for the nicest one I can find.  Those English backpackers were hard-core budget types.  Neither is better than the other, but things can go wrong when you follow advice from someone with a drastically different travel style than yours. At the other extreme, an investment banker might have recommended a four-star hotel beyond my price range.

Here’s a checklist of the right friend to give you destination advice:

1) They’ve actually been to the place.

2) They’re someone you know and trust.

3) They have a similar style of travel–as in budget, trip length, interests, etc.

It’s factor number 3 that I forget sometimes, especially if it’s a good friend that I like a lot. How do you solicit travel tips from friends? Please share your experiences in the comments.

Original article can be found here: Should you let friends plan your trip?

Clock Project. Photo: Andrew Magill / Flickr

Slow and steady wins the race, but sometimes it’s the hare that gets the best travel deals. The great productivity website Lifehacker had this article on the virtues of being late: How to plan an awesome, last-minute vacation on the cheap.

The article covers everything from choosing the destination to booking a flight to finding a place to stay.  Flights are often the biggest expense.  Reserving your flight as close to takeoff as possible allows you to reap a big discount, because the airlines will sometimes slash airfares to keep the plane from flying with empty seats.  As long as you’re not heading into a major holiday, that strategy is solid.

However, the article didn’t cover one of my favorite aspects of travel: food.  One of my top tricks is to look up restaurants on Chowhound, a popular discussion board for serious foodies and gourmets.  There are hot discussion threads on cuisines from all over the world, for a wide range of budgets.

Do you have any stories of snagging great deals on the fly?  Please share your stories in the comments.

Original article can be found here: Procrastinator’s discount: when booking late pays off

Many Vagablogging readers are familiar with Matt Kepnes, or Nomadic Matt. Kepnes’s website is packed full of information on travel deals, travel tips, travel guides, and loads of interesting travel tales suited to any genre. Now Kepnes has taken the next step and has published his own Ebook.

Kepnes’s book is a smooth read. Even over the details of dollars, budgets, and savings options, it never reads like a dry financial manual. Kepnes’s book documents specific dollar amounts for many elements of his travels. He starts with how to save money before you even hit the road by detailing the more advantageous international banking options and airline carriers.

Kapnes’s book isn’t just for the new traveler in the beginning stages of planning out their trip. There is a lot of useful information that, even after years of long-term stints on the road, I still haven’t quite been able to work out, like making air miles work for you, or all of the ropes and rules of upgrading to business class on those long flights. Sure, there are loads of details for beginning travelers, like how to pick the right backpack for the road or how to save for your trip before you depart. Though there is something for everyone in this book. Whether you’re a novice when it comes to air miles, or if you’re trying to decipher the endless web of ESL jobs or volunteer options abroad.

There is also a Destinations section in the book, where Kepnes offers readers a look at likely travel budgets for areas on nearly all continents of the globe. He even includes budgets for activities popular to a particular destination, like scuba diving in Southeast Asia. Kepnes also compiles a list of great hostels and budget guesthouses for various locations, along with discount coupons should you be in the area and decide check out one of the accommodations.

You can download a PDF format of the book from Kepnes’s website for US$14. The book is also available for your Kindle or Ipad.

Original article can be found here: How to Travel the World on $50 a Day: a new Ebook from Nomadic Matt

Nigel Marsh, the author of Fat, Forty and Fired, gave a great talk at the TED Sydney conference that addresses something many long term travelers deal with — how do you balance your life and the need to work and earn money?

As Marsh notes, “I found it quite easy to balance work and life when I wasn’t working.” That’s a sentiment almost any long term traveler can relate to. But what happens when you come home? When you’re no longer on the road, even if it’s only between trips, it’s easy to get trapped into thinking that life is nothing but work and drudgery and only travel is real living.

Travel becomes your escape from a life out of balance.

It works; travel can be a very effective escape. In fact, many people work very hard to turn their traveling into a full-time experience, but that usually involves working on the road, which often has mixed results — turns out it’s hard to earn money on the road. Chances are your travel blog isn’t going to earn you enough money to travel, there are exceptions, but the odds of you becoming one are slim. Even if you’re lucky enough to work in a field that allows you to be on the road and still earning money, you’re still working. You’re stilling going to have to find a balance between work and your life.

Marsh argues, that it isn’t some radical upheaval — another long trip, another new place — that we need but that “with the smallest investment in the right places you can radically transform your life.”

Original article can be found here: Find the balance between work and life

About five years ago, San Francisco Chronicle travel editor John Flinn published a column called “A few things I’ve learned in a quarter-century-plus of travel.” I enjoyed his insights so much I saved the article as a text file — and I recently stumbled across it again on my laptop. Here are my ten favorite bits of advice from Flinn’s column:

1. When you’re on a lean budget, one step up from rock-bottom is always worth it. Five dollars is often all it takes to upgrade from squalid to tolerable. It’s the difference between sweaty torpor and air conditioning in a Marrakesh hotel room, between a writhing dog-pile and a seat of your own on the bus to Dharamsala, between dicey hygiene and the meal of your life in a Luang Prabang restaurant. Don’t be a cheapskate masochist.

2. Street food is always cheap and often excellent, but limit yourself to items fresh off the grill. Don’t eat anything that’s been sitting around; watch the guy cook what’s going into your mouth.

3. Plan your trip well, prepare a Plan B in case circumstances change — and be ready to toss both plans out the window when an unexpected opportunity presents itself.

4. Force yourself to be an extrovert. Talk to people. You might find that the white-haired man at the bus stop in Yorkshire flew in the Battle of Britain, or that the Indian woman on the ferry to Koh Samui is a vacationing Bollywood movie star.

5. Build time into your schedule to wander aimlessly. Those magic moments rarely happen when you’re following a tight itinerary.

6. Everyday experiences take on new poignancy in foreign countries. Wandering through a Guatemalan supermarket or attending a church service in Rarotonga can provide more cultural insight than a week of guided tours.

7. Watching television in foreign countries is always fun and sometimes instructive, even if you don’t understand a word.

8. Force yourself to get up early. Before 9 a.m., even the most tourist-clogged of cities belong to the locals. You’ll find corner vegetable markets, fishermen hauling in their nets and nobody but locals in the cafes. Jet lag is your friend here: On your first day or two in Europe, you won’t have to set your alarm to wake up at 5 a.m.

9. When things go wrong — and they probably will — remind yourself that if this doesn’t kill you — and it probably won’t — it will make a great story. Your friends don’t want to hear how beautiful the Taj Mahal is. They want to hear about the psychotic driver who kicked you off the bus and left you stranded in a one-dog town.

10. Remember: An imperfect trip is always better than a perfect trip you never get around to taking.

Original article can be found here: 10 small strategies that will improve your journey

Screenshot of an infected computer. Photo: Danny Thompson / Flickr

More and more of our data is digital. It’s valuable, and we should be as careful with our information as we are with our wallet or purse. Since these possessions are virtual, however, it can be easy to neglect them.

The New York Times had a great piece titled Threats to Traveling Data. While mostly aimed at business travelers, the issues raised apply to everyone who logs on in a foreign country.

The tech world was rocked by the controversial Firesheep. An extension for Firefox, it allows anyone to become a hacker by spying on anyone using a Wi-Fi connection.  Eric Butler, the developer of Firesheep, intended to raise awareness of the gaping security holes in most websites. He succeeded, as the online community went into a frenzy. Here’s a commentary article by TechCrunch: Firesheep in Wolves’ Clothing.

Here are some tips:

–Bring your own computer. Internet cafés can be easily infected with malware, since anyone can use their public computers. Having your own laptop or netbook can reduce this risk.

–Don’t use wireless Internet. It’s much easier for hackers to tap into Wi-Fi vs. a hardwired connection.

–Only log into websites with HTTPS. This is a protocol that encrypts your user name and password, to prevent anyone else from seeing this data.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has created a web browser plugin called HTTPS Everywhere. This forces your browser to call up the secure login pages for popular websites like Facebook and Twitter. However, HTTPS may disable some popular apps from working.

–At the login page, always un-check the “remember me” or “remember my password” feature before logging in to the site. If you have many user accounts, you might want to take up a trusted password manager like LastPass.

–At the end of an Internet session, clear the history and cookies in the web browser. That way, the next person who uses your computer can’t find out which sites you’ve visited and your login details. For most browsers, you have to go into “Tools” > “History” > “Clear History.”

–Don’t use Windows and Internet Explorer. Since they are the most popular programs, hackers specifically try to breach them. With Apple and its devices overtaking PCs, it’s likely they will be increasingly targeted in the future. Some would say it’s already happening, and the company doesn’t admit the problem: Apple won’t give users free virus protection.  (FYI: I use Ubuntu, a Linux-based operating system.)

Have you ever gotten hacked? Got more tips? Please share in the comments.

Original article can be found here: Protecting your data on the road