I've never stepped foot in China, but sometimes I feel like I've come pretty close! I've sampled wonton soup on Kuala Lumpur's Petaling street, browsed in Chinese antique shops in San Francisco, and spent lazy afternoons feasting on hot homemade pork dumplings at Vanessa's Dumpling House in NYC's Lower East Side. Fragments of China seem...

Before I left for my first trip, I often would imagine that moment when I arrived in my first destination, Quetzaltenango, Guatemala. What would I actually do? How, exactly, do I do this traveling thing I’ve been reading so much about? I just imagined myself standing there, feeling lost. I’d read this post, Surving your...

Exploring the world is a treat at any time of year, but a traveler is especially lucky to take part in local celebration. Whether watching la Semana Santa parade from a Valencia balcony or firing super soakers for Thailand's Songkran festival, nothing beats the awe-inspiring experience of participating in local fete. Holidays give the traveler...

I was talking with a friend a while ago and he mentioned that the way he had managed to live the life of his dreams was by the 4 P's - prudence, patience, planning, and prioritizing. Ain't that the truth? No matter what it is that you want to do, you'll do it by following...

We here at Vagabonding hope that everyone is enjoying our exciting new crop of regular contributors! Whether it's traveling with children, starting off on a first adventure, or learning how to make a living with a guitar, we're showing that anyone can break the mold. As I to alluded back in January , we've got...

Gone are the days where Thailand is all Thai and France is all French. Thanks to human migration and globalization, there's a bit of Bangkok in Paris and a slice of Paris in Bangkok. As my seventh month of travel approaches an end, I realize that I've learned just as much about other countries than...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=In5sR-tUhCM&list=UUuw8B6Uv0cMWtV5vbNpeH_A&index=1&feature=plcp When you look back at photos of your travels, do you find yourself quickly flipping past the famous landmarks to the smaller, intimate moments? That's what street photography is all about, capturing those slices of life. The team at DigitalRev TV produced a video titled Street Photography Do's and Don'ts . DigitalRev is a...

I’m writing this from Rome’s Fiumicino airport, where over the course of my two-hour layover, I sampled Italian-style pizza, bought a bag of biscotti, and ate a cannoli (or, to be correct, a single cannolo). True, it was an airport cannolo, which means that it was probably not the best cannolo on earth. And I'm...

More than likely you’ve heard of the legendary Moleskine notebooks that were revered by artists, writers and travelers alike. Originally they were covered in a woven cotton fabric which was sheared, making it soft on one side. Bruce Chatwin describes this ‘Paris’ notebook in The Song Lines , “The pages were squared and the end-papers...

When I was contemplating finally quitting my job and following my dream to travel, there was one thought I always came back to that eventually convinced me to go for it: The fact that when I’m 90, I will want to look back and know that I’ve seen as much of this world as possible,...

Indian hawker stalls in Singapore, hot dog vendors in Manhattan, roasted duck head carts in China. Over 2.5 billion people eat street food everyday, and in addition to providing cheap food for urban dwellers, the art of eating street food has also become a traveler's rite of passage. One of the best ways to get...

For those who strive to maintain fitness while traveling, running is one of the more accessible forms of exercise. All you need is a good pair of running shoes, a nice stretch of trail/road/shoreline and the will to pound some proverbial pavement and you've got the potential for a great workout. And let's be honest,...

When I first started traveling, a friend bought me a cheap three-dollar safety whistle from REI. “For your protection,” she said. For years afterwards, I dutifully took it on trips, even though I never quite figured out how it would come in handy. But I knew that if I threw it away, I’d end up...

Sometimes, it's hard to explain why we travel. Us travelers like to view ourselves as different than tourists, and our journeys as different than vacations. We enjoy experiences, people and perhaps most importantly those unpredictable things that come from freely roaming. There's a feeling that comes with these experiences that can simply be hard to...

It's possible that some of you have seen this viral study by Australian palliative nurse Bonnie Ware. In this article, which has since become a book , she records the most common regrets of her patients in their last weeks of life. She witnesses end-of-life epiphanies and received overwhelmingly consistent responses when she asked about...

Carpe diem. Seize the day. Make the most of today. Don’t worry about the future. We’ve all heard it. We’ve all heard the urgings of others pushing us toward our dreams. “Live for today,” they say. “Let tomorrow take care of itself.” But should we? Society has raised us for something different. We’ve been taught...

Occasional vagablogging contributor Kristin Van Tassel sends us this guidebook review from Mexico: Last October Moon published the travel handbook Moon San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato and the Bajio , written by Julie Doherty Meade. In February I traveled to Central Mexico for the first time, and Meade’s book was of great help to me....

This post is the fourth in a series on pre-trip planning (see the Intro , post #1: research , post #2: travel insurance , and post #3: gear ). When I think of how technology has improved the way I travel, two words instantly come to mind: Dropbox and Kindle. Dropbox, for those of you...

Many moons ago I was flown to the Nicoya Peninsula in Costa Rica to evaluate a business plan for horse tours on a 2,024 hectare family owned ranch. It has mangroves, jungle, two river estuaries and 3.5 km of undeveloped shoreline. The family was in the beginning stages of protecting a good chunk of that...

Last week, So Many Places posted this biggest, baddest RTW to do list , an extensive task list beginning a year before departure. I imagine this will be very helpful to many planners and am happy to see this information available. As evidenced by this list, there’s a lot involved in planning a trip –...