Australia's gigantic festival season is coming up, with Big Day Out preparing to suck in thousands of youngsters willing to pay $165 for a ticket and stand pressed elbow-to-sternum in 45 degree (Celsius) heat, while paying $8 for a bottle of water. Sounds like fun, right? If you still think so, and you don't want...

Fleur Britten's "On The Couch" is the first travel memoir about couchsurfing I've seen; this doesn't mean there aren't any others, naturally, but it does mean that I picked it off the library shelf with a surge of excitement. "Ooh!" I thought to myself. "This is gonna be good!" I was, unfortunately, wrong. Couchsurfing is...

We all have so many little gadgets that travel with us every day. We have mobile phones, which may or may not have internet enabled on them. Maybe we also have mp3 players to throw in our bags as well. Perhaps there's a personal organizer or diary of somekind too...if you haven't been able to...

Unless you've been living in a place where popular media does not go (like with my mother), you might have noticed that Elizabeth Gilbert's surprise hit memoir "Eat, Pray, Love" has been made into a movie starring Julia Roberts...and it's getting released, on slightly different days, around this time in lots of different countries. The...

For those of us who don't have a permanent physical disability, it can sometimes be difficult to imagine what the world is like for those who do. Buildings that are pretty easy to navigate with two working legs become impossible in a wheelchair: my university, which prides itself on being wheelchair friendly and accessible, once...

The cheerfully indomitable Marsha's blog, Single Occupancy , is well-written, humorous, and packed with links and resources. She calls it her "love letter" to solo travel -- and a bit of a diatribe against those double occupancy rooms and rates. In a world where people look at women traveling alone, even for a week or...

Sometimes as a solo traveler you need a bit more amusement; you don't have someone to tell you offensive jokes or about their first sexual experience, and you're tired of staring out the train windows at scenery or communicating by hand gestures and large grins at local small children. So then it's fun to set...

As you may have noticed, Rolf is currently in the midst of traveling around the world with only what he can carry in his pockets. He's got a toothbrush, a change of underpants, and an iPod Touch to do his blog posting from, as well as some presumably bulging cargo pants pockets. I did see...

When I was a child, my mother thought I'd join a nudist colony; I was always taking off my little toddler dresses and running around in the backyard with nothing on. As an adult, I've managed to parlay comfort with my body into an easily portable financial application: nude figure modeling. There are two genres...

Traveling alone can be a rush. You don't have that cocoon of familiarity if you travel with friends, which can insulate you from the experience. You're free to come and go as you please. Want to spend the whole day sightseeing? Want to spend the whole day at a coffee shop reading a book? You...

Want to run away and live in a sustainable treehouse community? Go to Finca Bellavista in Costa Rica. You can build your own stilthouse or other "arboreal dwelling", as long as it abides by the community guidelines , which include such things as small square-footage structures, getting rid of waste through a compact biodigestor, and...

After my previous post about grey nomads here in Australia, you might be inspired to travel by caravan...only you're not grey. You might be nomadic, though. In which case, perhaps you might want to investigate the following: small campervans made out of DIThemselves converted minivans. These wee inclusive vehicles include a queensize foldout mattress, fridge,...

Traveling solo has its benefits. Want to change your itinerary? No problem. Want to stay out all night? Go ahead. Want to wander sans clothing through your hotel room? There’s nobody to object. You can do whatever you want within your own budget and not have to worry about convincing your companions to buy in....

Part of the fun of being on the road is the experiences to be found with the great new people you meet while traveling. The road can bring us some hilarious, wise, and challenging characters. However, like many vagabonders, I relish my solitary travels. There’s nothing quite like striking out on your own, literally all...

As the possessor of two X chromosomes, this means that I am considered by pretty much everybody, myself included, to be a woman. I menstruate, I have a high-pitched voice (as much as I try to convince myself it sounds all nice and low like Marlena Dietrich), and I tend to wear bikinis to the...

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...

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,...

Ko Phangan, Thailand Not many years ago (in the grand scheme of things), most of us were in diapers, not yet knowing what country we were from or even what a country. We didn't yet know we were Christian, Muslim, Skeptical, or whatever. We didn't know we were Republican or Democrat, male or female, or...

With limited vacation time, my husband can't always accompany me on my trips. When he is unavailable, I usually call on one of the few friends who I can always count on to join me in my next adventure. But, I am embarrassed to say, I have never traveled on my own. Oh, I've gone...