About five years ago, San Francisco Chronicle travel editor John Flinn published a column called " A few things I've learned in a quarter-century-plus of travel ." I enjoyed his insights so much I saved the article as a text file -- and I recently stumbled across it again on my laptop. Here are my...

If you’re vagabonding in SEA and trying to get off the beaten track the Indonesian island of Sulawesi is a great place to do just that, especially during the low season of Dec. - Feb. There is a reasonably reliable network of bus service around the island but the roads are terrible and the rate...

Cost/day: FREE (airfare not included - ha!) What’s the strangest thing you’ve seen lately? As I write this, it is now 3:40am and I'm bunking in the San Francisco Airport after 16 hours of flight changes, delays and one emergency turn-around. Some of the things I've seen tonight include: Watching the pilots pack their bags...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jjY_hJL3nxY Planning a trip can be a logistical tangle. At any one time, I'll have more than half-a-dozen tabs open in my web browser, each a different website. For example: Wikitravel - Get general info. Air Asia - Find cheap flights in Asia. Hostelworld - Book hostels. Urbanrail - Look at subway maps. Travelfish -...

When you're planning a one- or two-week trip somewhere, figuring out your route is essentially the same as figuring out your itinerary. You'll fly into Rome, take a train to Florence , rent a car and drive around Tuscany for a week, and then spend a couple days in Venice before flying home again. People...

We've mentioned several times before how common budget questions are when talking about long-term travel. Unless you've got a means for making money as you travel - whether through a web-based business or by taking odd jobs along the way - you'll need to save up whatever you plan to live off of before you...

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...

This month's Round the World Ticket Watch newsletter from BootsnAll focused on the topic of how to narrow down a route for a RTW trip. The post about this month's RTW ticket deals earlier this month talked a little bit about picking an itinerary. And itinerary questions remain the most common ones on the BootsnAll...

One of the most common questions any vagabonder has to answer is "what route will I take?" The number of requests for feedback on a person's RTW itinerary on the BootsnAll travel message boards is staggering, especially after so many years of relatively similar questions being answered already. But if a RTW trip is something...

Lonely Planet has been releasing a free roadtrip itinerary each week, from its new title USA’s Best Trips: 99 Themed Itineraries Across America , due out in September. The itineraries are available in .PDF form until the end of August (Labor Day to Americans). If you're in the States and want to test their road...

I'd like to build on my post from last week about tour groups. This week, travel agents -- do you ever work with travel agents, and if so, how? Here's why I think domestic travel agents and vagabonding don't mix: 1) The travel agent doesn't understand the appeal of long-term, independent travel. Especially when the...

Last summer the Italian newspaper La Repubblica asked me to spell out five travel tips, as well as five travel "don'ts" for the coming year. This is what I told them: Five tips for going on vacation Travel to cheaper parts of the world, like Southeast Asia or the Middle East. Your money will go...