Hue, Vietnam

There is a problem with automobiles, and I’m not talking about break-downs or pollution. I’m talking about how they seal us off from the world around us. Listen to this excerpt from Paul McHugh’s “The Pure Jones of It,” as he compares the automobile to the motorbike:

By contrast, most human drivers … Read more »

Seasoned traveler and adventure-seeker Tim Cahill has a story in Hold the Enlightenment about hiking into the dense rainforest on one of the Queen Charlotte Islands off the coast of northwestern Canada. He fell down a mossy cliff and cracked open his head. Knowing that he’d never be found if he rested on the forest floor, he bandaged his head and staggered down to the ocean, and swam around the island towards the camp … Read more »

Headphones are often criticized as one of the fastest ways to close yourself off to a culture. The bell of the rickshaw about to run you over is no match for speakers in your ear blasting, well, anything. However, if you’re going to trade local sounds for an MP3, why not expand your knowledge of a place with a few tracks from the audio tour underground?

This ain’t … Read more »

World traveler Chris Guillebeau recently wrote a post on Anderson Cooper 360 about all the things he wished he’d known before he started traveling.  While a lot of his tips – keep all receipts until you are out of the country, travel with cash, and check your credit card statement weekly for fraudulent charges – seem like common sense to me now, I remember floundering with … Read more »

Passports with Purpose is a group of travel bloggers making an effort to give back to the places they’ve visited.

The group recently launched a fundraising effort to support American Assistance for Cambodia (AAfC) an independent, nonprofit organization dedicated to improving opportunities for the youth and rural poor in Cambodia.

The goal of this year’s fundraising event is to collect $13,000 USD which … Read more »

One of the things I end up most fascinated by when I’m traveling is accents.  I remember being a Canadian exchange student to an Italian high school, which was located in the Dolomites so they all actually spoke Ladino, and they took me on a field trip to Paris, where I had a conversation with the Serbian check out clerk in our hotel in French, and thought, Wow, language is neat!

And the first time … Read more »