Southeast Asia is has long been a standard on the backpacking circuit and you’ll be hard pressed to find a country that doesn’t have it’s share of well worn boot tracks between hostels and suggested highlights. Laos is no exception. It is, perhaps, less traversed than Thailand and Vietnam, which sandwich it’s long narrow countryside...

I admit it, I have been lacking a few posts and overall been bogged down with work ( yes, work, because even to sustain a life abroad we need some, in a form or the other ), and I beg your pardon. To start off the New Year right, I believe you might love reading...

“C’mon, try it.” They floated in a thick, dark sauce. The nails had been cut off, but the rest of each finger stared back at me without eyes from the plastic plate, livid in vinegar. Truncated joints just below the feathers’ line. As I kept staring at my prospective dinner, I wondered how low a...

A journey is made of milestones. It has to. Without milestones, we would not be able to ponder our experiences, to stop and wonder about what we have accomplished during all this while. One of the most shiny accomplishments of my 6 years stint on the road – on many roads, in many countries, with...

I’m an avid reader. I’ve long made it a practice to choose books that followed my journeys. It’s a wonderful way to add depth and richness to my own experiences and observations, and to see the world through more eyes, more lives, than just my own. Last summer I found myself on parade of bumpy...

GHOST MONEY by Andrew Nette Published by Snubnose Press, 2012. Available in eBook format and paperback . I believe that to be better travellers, we must know about the history of the places we visit. Ghost Money , a crime novel by Australian writer Andrew Nette , helps do the trick for Cambodia, the popular...

I take this week's chance to announce the release of the second issue of Wicked World , a digital magazine project that dares to be different. Unrestricted by commercial considerations, it remains free to challenge, question, and tell the truth about the business of international travel. We’re not here to sell expensive guided tours, round-the-world...

When it comes to travel on a shoestring - my favorite style - the amount of money you spend or save on accommodation becomes a serious matter. There was a time when travelling to China was very, very cheap, and accommodation options where everywhere. Unfortunately, with China experiencing the economic boom, things have changed quite...

Picture credits: Flickr/Travel Aficionado It’s been in the air for a while, buzzing among the Southeast Asian traveler’s enclave, and making the day of many resolute overlanders. We all knew that the Golden land of Myanmar was changing. After the liberation of Aung San Suu Kyi, punk rockers storming the streets of Yangon, and everyone...

We loved Samalona Island… It's a tiny speck of an island off of the coast of the bigger island of Sulawesi, in central Indonesia. If you find yourself in Makassar, it's well worth a few days of your time, or even a few hours if that's all you've got, to retreat to this little isle...

Khiva, Uzbekistan I know it's pretty last minute, but so is life, at times :-) If you are in or around Toronto this weekend, you may be interested in checking out Sonchy’s Silk Road Adventure Central Asian Film Event. Michael Soncina is trying to get some attention on a very adventurous part of the world...

As I noticed that readers enjoyed my post on China bus travel , I thought to continue giving some extra advice on the Middle Kingdom... Image Credit: Flickr/SBoyd So are you departing from China, right? You have indeed a few border options: Mongolia, Russia, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan… or probably much easier: Hong Kong. So many people...

Picture credit: Flickr/Helga's Lobster Stew China. A place that changes so much and so fast, one can never know how it's going to look next. However, there are always a few rules of thumb for first time travelers to the Middle Kingdom, especially for those who cannot speak any Mandarin Chinese. I am going to...

In the past few months, I have complained several times about the current status of travel writing and how it does not satisfy my needs. In this sense, it would have been too easy to just sit there and complain without actually doing something about it. And that's exactly what I did by joining forces...

Burmese Light - Impressions of the Golden Land by Hans Kemp and Tom Vater Visionary World, 2013 ( buy on Amazon ) “Impressions of the Golden Land” is quite an apt subtitle for Burmese Light as this book literally brings to the table (a coffee-table, to be precise) two kinds of impressions. The visual impressions...

Cost per day (for a family of five): $68 $18 room $25 food $25 entertainment Strangest things we've seen lately: Back home, before 2011 when we hit the road to become The Nomadic Family, we used to not move without seat belts. I would allow the kids to unbuckle only when the car came to...

The following story happened too many times along the back roads of deep Asia. And today, it got me inspired... They offered me a cup full of hot water and they poured some tea leaves in there, too. It was too hot to handle so I put it down first while I kept observing the...

As a first stop during my “charity discovery tour” in India I visited the village of Sujata, just behind Buddhist pilgrimage center – and Tibetan refugee colony – Bodhgaya , in Bihar state. If Bodhgaya is a bit more developed, although desperately poor, Sujata represents a real Bihar’s backwater: the kind of Indian village where...

Cost/day: $100 What’s the strangest thing you’ve seen lately? For the first time in ten months, North Korean soldiers came down from their posts and took pictures of each other right outside the conference building joining North and South--while I was getting a tour inside the building. However high the tension between the countries, it...

Tearing up the Silk Road: A Modern Journey from China to Istanbul, through Central Asia, Iran and the Caucasus by Tom Coote Garnett publishing, 2012 ( buy on AMAZON ) With nine weeks on your hands, the last thing you want to do is breeze from Asia to England through the Silk Road and the...