Vagablogging contributer Joel Carillet won the Solas Award for best travel writing in 2008 with his short nonfiction essay " Red Lights and a Rose ." A touching and raw account of his interactions with the street and club girls in Bangkok's red light district, it leaves you questioning...and reaching for a paradise you never...

Saving money for an extended trip is hard. "Like titanium alloy hard," as Erin at neverendingvoyage.com puts it, but that doesn't mean it's impossible. In fact, with a little perseverance, Erin and Simon were able to save 75 percent of their income. To help you do the same, they've detailed the process they used in...

The European Union believes travel is a fundamental human right and plans to offer money for those who would not otherwise be able to travel. The National Post quotes Antonio Tajani , the European Union commissioner for enterprise and industry, as saying "travelling for tourism today is a right... the way we spend our holidays...

I broke a contract this week. I'd agreed to take a room at a miniature guesthouse here in Varanasi , but backed out at the last second. Changed my mind and went with an equally priced room in a much larger guesthouse. Why? For the neighbors. Here at the new spot, I just opened the...

When most people (outside of Australia) think of Bali, they tend to think of a tropical island paradise, dense with brightly-colored birds and laughing brown faces. Maybe they think of Elizabeth Gilbert's ubiquitous Eat, Pray, Love or Susan Golden Gelman's Tales of a Female Nomad or a destination wedding. In Australia, many people pop over...

Fflying is without a doubt the fastest and easiest way to get abroad. Flying even has its own mystic, as films like Up In The Air celebrate, but flying is not without its downsides -- you miss out on the scenery, the people and all the experiences of traveling by land or sea. Flying is,...

Cairo, Egypt It may seem incongruent to have a bar song come to mind while walking through the medieval mosques and alleys of Islamic Cairo. But so it goes. The bar song I'm thinking of is the theme to the old television show "Cheers." Here are the lyrics (and the one-minute youtube video , in...

The wonderful website Traveling For The Young, Fabulous, and Broke has an article entitled " The Motivation for Long Term Travel ." This interview series profiles 11 long-term travelers, and is packed full of useful, inspirational, or interesting links. The most interesting part for me was the inclusion of children in this vagabonding lifestyle; when...

Cairo, Egypt Stability and control: that's the role of an aircraft spoiler. As your jet prepares to land, the spoiler may rise to decrease lift, increasing the rate at which the aircraft descends or slowing the speed of the aircraft down. The Wright brothers would have been impressed. For the long-term traveler, however, the spoiler,...

The Plastiki -- the world's first boat made of recycled plastic bottles -- recently set off on its journey across the Pacific. The Plastiki is made of recycled 2-liter bottles; some 12,000 of them give the boat its buoyancy. The goal of the project is to raise awareness about plastic waste in the ocean, which,...

No matter where you go, there's always danger in being oblivious. Quicksand, scams, and plain old disease wait for those who don't know any better. But travel also plunges us into a healthy oblivion -- the sort of state that reminds us just how little knowledge we carry with us. I could spend all day...

Initiation ceremony -- it conjures images of torchlight processions, Masonic robes, fratboys with paddle bruises, Navy SEALs hoisting logs. Initiation ceremonies mark a transition from one place to another, and it's often more of a psychological step than a physical one. While settling into what I'll call "India mode" over the past two weeks, I've...

One of the gifts of aiming big is that sometimes, you actually reach your goals. It's all too easy to fall into the idea that if you've never done something before, well, then, you probably can't do it at all, or at least not right away. You've never lived abroad? Best not to jump into...

Gulf of Thailand There are no icebergs in the Gulf of Thailand, but at any given moment there is, in this and many other seas, someone thinking about the Titanic—or at least about Leonardo Dicaprio. I almost didn’t take this photograph. For most of three hours I had been lying on a bench on deck,...

Two days ago, I spent all 14 hours of the New York - Delhi nonstop flight worrying that my seatmate was quietly infecting me with something nasty. He stayed bundled in his ski parka and wool hat the enitre flight. He had a telltale IV drip bandage on the back of his hand, sat eyes...

The number one question I've ever been asked by anyone when I'm preparing to go anywhere is: Why on earth are you going alone? There is a pervasive fear that solo travelers, particularly women, will probably be raped, maimed, or at the very least, incredibly lonely within seconds of setting foot outside your apartment. Instead,...

The stereotypical Western expat in China is the investment banker in Hong Kong or the executive doing deals in Shanghai. On the other hand, the creative set has also been setting up shop in the Middle Kingdom, according to this New York Times article: For China's Western Expats, Creative Lives of Plenty . Five artists...

You might have heard that 2010 is a Jubilee Year on the Camino de Santiago, the pilgrimage route that filters into Spain from all over Europe . The number of walking pilgrims is expected to double to 200,000, all because St. James ' Day falls on a Sunday. Demand won't only be running high for...

With the Ugandan anti-gay death penalty legislation raising international ire (like Sweden cutting $50 million aid funding ), and Argentinian transvestites suffering kidnapping and torture by the local police, it might feel like the whole world's against gays these days. Even Thailand's famed gateu-i , while widely accepted on the street, are required by law...

As the Nord-Pas-de-Calais region begins to shake off its wintry stranglehold, France’s epic Carnaval de Dunkerque is already underway. Dunkerque is a small city in the North of France, right along the Belgian border. The festivities are a longstanding tradition whose roots trace back hundreds of years to Shrove Tuesday. Shrove Tuesday was a day...