Last week, the Campaign for the American Reader featured Vagabonding in its "page 69 test." This blog project, which is an independent initiative encouraging people to read more books, tests Marshall McLuhan's old assertion that you should choose your reading by turning to page 69 of a given book and -- if you like it...

[ Above : Rolf gets an aboriginal welcome in East Arnhem Land, Northern Territories, Australia, November 2006.] Before we get too far into 2007, I should probably try to sum up my 2006. It was really a nice year for me, in terms of travel and writing, as well as life in general. I visited...

Since the holidays are approaching, I'm going to take a brief break from Vagablogging. New posts -- including a roundup of my activities in 2006 -- will resume on January 2nd. During this holiday hiatus, you might see some visual changes to Vagablogging, since BootsnAll (who hosts this blog) is changing the content to a...

I'm still in Australia at the moment, but in a couple weeks I'll be passing through Los Angeles, where I'll performing at Vermin on the Mount in Chinatown on Sunday, December 3rd. The latest installment in this irreverent literary-readings series, organized and MC'd by LA writer Jim Ruland , will also feature journalist Daniel Hernandez...

[ Above : Allen Ginsberg performing during his 1966 "Wichita Vortex Sutra" journey.] For the second month in a row I have literary criticism appearing in The Believer -- and my new essay, " The Last Antiwar Poem ," moves beyond travel themes to discuss the poetry of Allen Ginsberg. As the American literary community...

How One Egyptian's Bad Haircut from a Greeley, Colorado Barber in 1949 Provided Ideological Fuel for 9/11 Discussed : Sayyid Qutb's experience in Greeley, Colorado, bad haircuts, the anthropology and sociology of tourist behavior, the weirdly colonialist assumptions of post-colonialist scholars, the idea that Arabs can be just as touristically dorky as their American counterparts,...

Just a quick note to let everyone know that -- after spending a couple weeks in Korea visiting friends and writing a Slate series -- I am now traveling through Australia for more adventures (and story assignments). Since I'm spending most of my time in the Outback, I'll have limited internet access -- so Justin...

The Society of American Travel Writers announced its annual Lowell Thomas Award winners late last week, and I was happy to learn that "Cycladian Rhythm," my Greek sailing story from the Spring 2006 issue of Outside Traveler , won top honors in the Marine Travel category. Of my Cycladian tale, the judges wrote: This author...

I've long been looking forward to the release of Lonely Planet's latest literary anthology, Tales from Nowhere: Unexpected Stories from Unexpected Places -- not just because it contains one of my new stories, but because I found the theme so compelling. As editor Don George says in the introduction, "Nowhere is a setting, a situation...

For those of you in southern California, I'll be talking about frieghter ship travel on the Maria Sanchez show today, starting at around 8:30 in the morning, PDT. If you live in the LA area, this show can be found on The Connection , 1590 AM. Later on this morning, I'll be on the air...

. If Sayyid Qutb had been a more mindful traveler, would al-Qaeda have never existed? That's the question at the heart of my new essay, The Tourist Who Influenced the Terrorists , which appears in this month's issue of The Believer . Subtitled "How One Egyptian’s Bad Haircut from a Greeley, Colorado Barber in 1949...

I have a short article in the current issue of Outside magazine , which is part of the "Trust Us, Your Lawn Can Wait" Summer Escapes 2006 spread (which includes other short pieces by Will Palmer, Kate Siber, Tim Nevile, Kimberly Lisagor, and Dennis Lewon). My article is called "Just Hit Escape," and details the...

A few weeks ago, Wayne Yang of Eight Diagrams interviewed me about my history as a traveler and writer. We managed to cover lots of new ground in the interview , including: How the travel experience was different during my first vagabonding journey in 1994. Why I went to Korea to teach English at age...

This July 4th finds me in Paris, where I am teaching my annual creative writing workshop at the Paris American Academy . Between teaching and my own writing projects I will be plenty busy here, but -- as was the case last year -- I hope to post Paris updates on this blog as I...

It looks like the in-flight magazines are being good to me this month. Last week, I reported that I was a part of AirTran magazine's dream-jobs article ; this week, I got news that a recent issue of Singapore Airlines' SilverKris magazine listed Vagablogging.net at the top of their travel blog roundup. In an article...

This month's issue of Islands Magazine features my latest travel tale, "Seven (or so) Sins on the Isle of Spice." Set in Grenada, it recounts how my entire experience on the small Caribbean island was charmingly altered by the fact that the airplane lost my luggage, leaving me without flip-flops: Half a dozen failed footwear...

Last month's issue of AirTran's Go magazine featured an article on dream jobs , written by Catherine Arnold. Included in the roundup are profiles of whale naturalist Amy Kennedy , film director Sylvia Caminer , antiques expert Suzanne Perrault , professional poker player Jesse Jones , and -- sharing some perspectives on travel writing --...

This week, my newest Yahoo! News travel column, Slumming the Golden Arches , focuses on a curious question: Why do travelers so often seek out McDonald's overseas, when they would never eat there at home? The answer, I posit, lies in the fact that the Golden Arches create a smoothly standardized absence of place and...

My latest Traveling Light column at Yahoo! News , You Have Now Entered the Tourist Zone , relates the story of how a curious experience in India led me to consider how the presence of travelers changes the way locals act: On the surface, Pushkar didn't seem much like a Tourist Zone: There were no...

This week at Traveling Light, I review Peter Hessler's new China book Oracle Bones , and pose a few Asia travel questions to the author. In Oracle Bones , Hessler (who I first interviewed in 2002) readily admits that China is a huge topic to tackle, and makes the apt observation that orthodox news journalism...