Pic credit:Flickr/Chloester " Marrying into a culture is a strange pinnacle of interaction. All of these travelers and travel writers think they’re so “extreme” because they visited this place or that place or ate this or bungee jumped off that, but — in my experience — there is nothing more challenging than truly learning language...

Kek Lok Si temple @ Penang - Picture by Kit Chan 2010 Most people passing through Penang do so because of the UNESCO World Heritage status given to this Malaysian tropical island on July 7 th , 2008. Few stay more than the couple days needed to breeze through the main sites and have a...

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...

More expats are moving to China, attracted by business opportunities and hopes of advancing their careers. However, working with the locals can be tricky, as illustrated by this New York Times article: For American workers in China, a culture clash . The Chinese have a saying that captures this challenge neatly: "same bed, different dreams."...

I suppose you could call me an expat in training. I’ve dipped my toe in by purchasing property in another country (Honduras) and have even begun to build my island dream home. But I’m years away from actually chucking it all and living there full time. A few weeks ago, Matador Abroad featured an article...

"Those who have gone native are easy to identify. They speak the local language, get the local humor. They wear the local dress. In some cases, they develop immunities to local microbes. I remember meeting an Englishman who had lived in India for so long he could actually drink the tap water and not die....