How often do you get some of the most interesting travel writers together in one room? If you’re in the San Francisco area: about once a year, which happened to be this past weekend at the Book Passage Travel Writers & Photographers Conference.

If you get the chance to learn directly from your favorite editor, don’t … Read more »

Several months back I wrote a post about my love for travel networking sites like Couchsurfing or Matador Travel; today, I’d like to take a moment to re-affirm that love.

Sure, networking sites are great for sharing travel tips and practical information, reading about other people’s travel exploits, and fueling daydreams about your own. But the real pay-off is when you’re able to connect with some of those like-minded travelers, offline. … Read more »

I travel only with a backpack, and have never locked it. Ever. Nor have a ever been bothered about it because if I lose anything it will be some clothes and perhaps a pair of shoes, no big deal. Besides, my backpack has 3 zips — I refuse to have 3 locks and keys; and a chord that you have to draw to close the biggest opening of my backpack on the top, I don’t … Read more »

These days, staying in touch with family and friends back home or spread out across your numerous vagabonding locations is both easier and harder. It’s harder because, thanks to the incredible shrinking of the world, there are more and more people you can potentially vow to exchange email addresses with. Also harder because sending individual emails, calling everyone on their birthday (probably using Skype), and writing the occasional postcard can take up so much … Read more »

“A foreigner tends to see paradise where a native sees purgatory, insofar as a foreigner is in a privileged position and has more appreciative eyes, undimmed by familiarity.” –Pico Iyer, from a Powells.com interview, 2000

As the world becomes smaller, is travelling tending towards becoming obsolete?

Popular reasons for an extended period of vagabonding usually boil down to discovering more about other cultures, and finding out about yourself.

The self-discovery part is still very much alive, but surely one day there is just going to be a global mish-mash of cultures that has dissolved into one?

It wasn’t so long ago that curious lads like Christopher Columbus (or was … Read more »

So, you’re an American who’s finally quit your job and sold all your stuff, and you’re about to embark on your RTW trip. You’ve been concentrating on planning your trip – researching what to see and do, buying your plane tickets, how to get from Point A to Point B, how many pairs of underwear you can get away with packing – when all of a sudden it dawns on you one night as … Read more »

With the Pride Festival going on in Vancouver at the beginning of August, I got to thinking about how attitudes to sexuality differ across the world.

For this topic, I am by no means an expert, and can only go on the research I have conducted and the experience of varying attitudes that I have come across, so would love some of your input.

For me, travelling is all about being open to new … Read more »

“Smell is a potent wizard that transports us across thousands of miles and all the years we have lived. The odors of fruits waft me to my southern home, to my childhood frolics in the peach orchard. Other odors, instantaneous and fleeting, cause my heart to dilate joyously or contract with remembered grief. Even as I think of smells, my nose is full of scents that start awake sweet memories of summers gone and and … Read more »