The question of taking mini-breaks at home between legs of a RTW trip came up on the BootsnAll boards (and consequently here on Vagablogging) earlier this year, so when I saw this thread on the boards I thought it was an interesting follow-up. BootsnAll member K2 is currently in Johannesburg and, he says, feeling a...

The rising fortunes of the emerging economies and the lowering of barriers have given students a whole world of educational opportunities. Governments are investing in improving facilities at home. Meanwhile, students impatient to get ahead are already applying to overseas schools in droves, as this TechCrunch article explains: The Global Education Race . Studying abroad...

Jerusalem In her book Down the Nile: Alone in a Fisherman’s Skiff , Rosemary Mahoney recounts the following: The French naturalist Charles Sonnini had witnessed a clitoridectomy while in Egypt in 1778 and reported that the woman who performed the surgery had told him if the clitoris was allowed to grow unchecked “by the age...

Each week Rolf brings us a new quote that makes us look at travel from a broader perspective, or perhaps in a different light. It’s interesting to note that some of these quotations come from all manner of sources, and not simply travel related literature. Indeed it seems easy to find fragments of writing that...

Since the glory days of Ernst Hemingway and Gertrude Stein in Paris, there's been a certain glamor about being a writer while living abroad. CNNgo had an article about the expat writer scene in Bangkok . The piece quickly bursts the bubble of starry-eyed dreamers. The writers interviewed were frank about the state of the...

We hope you've been following along with Rolf's recent round-the-world trip, the No Baggage Challenge , and that it's served as some kind of inspiration to you in planning your own adventures. It's unlikely that most of you will travel in an extreme style like Rolf - with not only no luggage but on such...

One of the most eye-opening moments when working abroad is finding about all the differences between your host culture and home culture. For example, a Japanese salaryman might accept unpaid overtime as business as usual. A French worker, on the other hand, might disagree with staying beyond normal business hours. Salon.com did a detailed comparison...

Qadisha Valley, Lebanon There are places in this world that urge you to pause, and Lebanon’s Qadisha Valley is one. As the day ends over this historic landscape, you look around and sense that the sun has set here for thousands of years, well before you were born, and will continue to set long after...

"Travel is an education" is something many vagabonders would agree with. Who hasn't come back from a trip filled with new knowledge, new friends, and great stories to tell? The personal finance website Mint.com dedicated a blog post to the venerable gap year: The Gap Year: why taking time off to travel is good The...

The seasons are changing, and for so many people a new season is a trigger for travel. Leaf-peeping, skiing, winter sun, road trips, summer sun. However, seasonal travel seems to be absent from the world of vagabonding. Maybe because it's "cliche", maybe because it implies doing the same thing as everyone else, or having your...

Having been on the road a fair bit lately, I naturally find myself in the company of other travelers. Conversation invariably turns toward where we’ve been, where we are going, and a highlights list of some of our most dazzling and death defying experiences on the road. Hoping to bump an earlier flight out of...

Not long ago I mentioned that one of the most common questions that comes up among people planning a RTW trip is "is my itinerary okay?" That's a broad question, obviously, and it can break down into several smaller questions easily. One of them, and the topic if this month's highlight from the BootsnAll travel...

As usual, the media is full of stories of disasters rocking foreign countries. For a good status report, check out this CNNMoney article: 5 tourist spots in turmoil . Savvy travelers are cashing in on the deep discounts being offered by travel providers. I know an American expat in Thailand who's been booking Air Asia...

Asia's big cities are a great place to live the "car-free" lifestyle. Thanks to onerous taxes levied on cars and license plates, many governments also encourage usage of mass transit to relieve traffic congestion. Travel + Leisure Southeast Asia did a round-up of the rails: Asian city public transport guide . Hong Kong, Singapore, Taipei,...

The truth of a place is revealed by its scent. Forget political boundaries -- if you want to know what two places or lifestyles have in common, compare their smells. Tracing a fence along the back of the Allentown Fair last week, past the carny trailers, I smelled India. It was both a surprise and...

There are fun parts of planning a RTW trip, and then there are the not-so-fun parts of trip planning. Unfortunately, despite the fact that budgeting falls into the un-fun category, it's one of those necessary evils of making sure your RTW trip is a successful one. Budgeting well for a RTW trip means more than...

The goal of many vagabonders is to blend in with the locals so well that they become invisible. Although the color of our skin sometimes makes that impossible, it's still fun to try. The Life magazine website had a great slideshow called How New Yorkers Can Spot a Tourist . Some of the points are...

Bogotá, Colombia A little self-disclosure: I’m suspicious of people who like to party all the time, and I tend not to travel with those who think the apex of a journey involves getting drunk off your rocker in Cancun or even in some Siberian tavern filled with Russian coal miners. If you put me at...

Do words construct worlds? That's the idea behind this Wall Street Journal article: Lost in translation . Scientists and linguists have been doing some fascinating research into how languages affect cultures. Even the simple act of reading can be quite complex and revealing. English speakers read from right to left, but Hebrew speakers read from...

Although we plan and save and daydream about traveling for months on end, I'm wondering if you could share what are the immediate causes, if any, that precipitate your decision to travel. You could call it the Travel Eureka Moment -- that instant when you decide that it's time for a trip. Here are a...