The air is unbreathable, hot, and terribly humid. The air conditioner perched at the top of the wall at my right is just an empty plastic shell that reminds me that there could be some extra comfort, if someone had cared to replace the wiring. Instead, rivulets of sweat pour down my forehead and temples,...

Before you get to the right angle, you might find yourself stuck in a dangerous corner/ picture by Kit Yeng Chan The email you have been waiting for a long time has finally landed in your inbox. Fat, juicy, inviting bold caps lure your eyes in. It’s no matter of life or death, but if...

I admit it, I have been lacking a few posts and overall been bogged down with work ( yes, work, because even to sustain a life abroad we need some, in a form or the other ), and I beg your pardon. To start off the New Year right, I believe you might love reading...

“C’mon, try it.” They floated in a thick, dark sauce. The nails had been cut off, but the rest of each finger stared back at me without eyes from the plastic plate, livid in vinegar. Truncated joints just below the feathers’ line. As I kept staring at my prospective dinner, I wondered how low a...

A journey is made of milestones. It has to. Without milestones, we would not be able to ponder our experiences, to stop and wonder about what we have accomplished during all this while. One of the most shiny accomplishments of my 6 years stint on the road – on many roads, in many countries, with...

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...

GHOST MONEY by Andrew Nette Published by Snubnose Press, 2012. Available in eBook format and paperback . I believe that to be better travellers, we must know about the history of the places we visit. Ghost Money , a crime novel by Australian writer Andrew Nette , helps do the trick for Cambodia, the popular...

I take this week's chance to announce the release of the second issue of Wicked World , a digital magazine project that dares to be different. Unrestricted by commercial considerations, it remains free to challenge, question, and tell the truth about the business of international travel. We’re not here to sell expensive guided tours, round-the-world...

Picture credits: Flickr/Travel Aficionado It’s been in the air for a while, buzzing among the Southeast Asian traveler’s enclave, and making the day of many resolute overlanders. We all knew that the Golden land of Myanmar was changing. After the liberation of Aung San Suu Kyi, punk rockers storming the streets of Yangon, and everyone...

Picture credit: Flickr/Helga's Lobster Stew China. A place that changes so much and so fast, one can never know how it's going to look next. However, there are always a few rules of thumb for first time travelers to the Middle Kingdom, especially for those who cannot speak any Mandarin Chinese. I am going to...

In the past few months, I have complained several times about the current status of travel writing and how it does not satisfy my needs. In this sense, it would have been too easy to just sit there and complain without actually doing something about it. And that's exactly what I did by joining forces...

Burmese Light - Impressions of the Golden Land by Hans Kemp and Tom Vater Visionary World, 2013 ( buy on Amazon ) “Impressions of the Golden Land” is quite an apt subtitle for Burmese Light as this book literally brings to the table (a coffee-table, to be precise) two kinds of impressions. The visual impressions...

I sat down and tried to calculate how much money I spent visiting India last year, my way: the balance is ridiculously low. India is a cheap country, yes, but this would not have been possible without a few tricks. Here is a lowdown on how I managed to spend 110$ for 6 weeks travelling...

Picture credit: Flickr/ Marcio Cabral de Moura Living in Asia and trying to have real, normal friends can often bring to “that” conversation topic: travel. And whenever I say I have been to 50 countries, my friends roll eyes and vent out some long, strange sounds before freezing in awe with open mouths. Then, their...

Picture credit: Flickr/ shenamt Compared to most of my unemployed – or struggling to keep that one job that keeps them floating –friends back home, I have to feel privileged. This was the bottom line of a phone conversation I recently had with my parents. As more and more people struggle to make ends meet...

Picture credit: Flickr/ United Nations Photo When I moved to Asia in 2007, I was still tied under the wheels of the Machine, back home. Everything I was doing, experiencing, and trying to translate into a piece of writing, or any other form of “artistic text”, I did so with the wish that someone, back...

picture credit: Flickr/ niallkennedy I stumbled upon a list of the most popular travel sites in the world and ended up reading this post from Nomadic Matt, rated as number one: apparently, he is not “nomadic” anymore, as he has settled down in New York City. Crawling back to the other links embedded in the...

It was 2010 and I had been working and traveling in Asia for three years filled to the brim with excitement, discoveries and cultural experiences into the ‘Other’. Time was going slow, and it was a good sign: I learnt that when you start feeling that you have more time than you can handle, it...

Lonely Planet guidebooks have inevitably become the kind of extra weight I rarely want to put in my backpack anymore. Why? Because they lead a traveler to the same ol’ tired paths everybody else is going to: a kind of one way ticket for jaded travel entertainment made up of bars, guesthouses and a bunch...

There are some places in the world where we, as travelers, or as humans, are discouraged from going. First of all there is Afghanistan, the mother of all evil. Then comes Iraq, Pakistan, Libya, Somalia, Iran, and a few more monsters on the list. I did not expect that Turkey was on it, too. But...