Stroll past the dozens of stalls serving food to the fascinated tourists excitedly pointing at giant, steaming woks of noodles, dried sticks of skewered insects and whirring blenders filled with local fruits, and you'll find the experience to be an exquisite assault on the senses. Bright lights above each stall harshly illuminate the menus, which...

Ray, a bearded New Yorker who had recently dropped out of college to travel the world, was convinced that southern Laos was turning into a horrific cesspool of death and disease. “I’m telling you,” he said to me as we stood outside the small ice-cream stand near the Phonsavanh Hotel in Pakse. “Cholera is completely...

Southeast Asia is has long been a standard on the backpacking circuit and you’ll be hard pressed to find a country that doesn’t have it’s share of well worn boot tracks between hostels and suggested highlights. Laos is no exception. It is, perhaps, less traversed than Thailand and Vietnam, which sandwich it’s long narrow countryside...

I’m an avid reader. I’ve long made it a practice to choose books that followed my journeys. It’s a wonderful way to add depth and richness to my own experiences and observations, and to see the world through more eyes, more lives, than just my own. Last summer I found myself on parade of bumpy...

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...

“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.” --Mark Twain The Innocents Abroad/Roughing It It’s an interesting thing to be a...

Picture credit: Hans Kemp/Burmese Light Visionary World from Hong Kong is about to release "Burmese Light" , a pictorial travel book assembled by photographer Hans Kemp and travel writer Tom Vater . The project is an attempt to capture the current changing situation of Myanmar, a country that, despite its troubled past, is making waves...

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...

I came across an interesting article on making the right first impression in Asia. The author goes through a number of countries, from Japan to South Korea, Thailand and India, giving a few suggestions on giving that important, successful first impression, party starter, or whatever you want to call it. Because indeed, traveling in countries...

Some twenty odd years ago, Ian Mckaye - at the time the angry singer of straight edge punk pioneers Minor Threat - sung “guilty of being white”. The lines of the aggressive chorus blazed into my mind as I stepped at the airport’s immigration line to re-enter Malaysia; a bunch of what seemed young Australians...

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...

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...

Rickshawallas on parade, ready to strike!! “This is the place where the bodies are burnt. Women cannot access because a few times some of them have jumped over their husbands’ pyres and died. If you see a white cloth, is a man. If you see a red sari, is a woman. I work here as...

Hat Yai, Thailand Hat Yai is known as southern Thailand's transportation hub and sex capital. But too few know it has the West Side Saloon , where bartenders and waitstaff are dressed in cowboy gear, serving jovial customers -- mostly Malaysians who've hopped across the border for a short holiday -- as a band plays...

The New York Times travel section is recently dedicated to covering the Far East: 37 Asian Odysseys . Although the media is dominated by coverage of Japan's natural and nuclear disaster, the rest of the continent is humming along as usual. With booming economies and traditional cultures, Asia has long had a special place in...

Southeast Asia draws travelers for many reasons; for the experience of a foreign culture quite unlike one’s own, for the lush scenery, or the life experience. However, like most other areas of the world, there is an undeniable amount of party culture associated with this region that draws a certain traveler. I’ve seen photos and...

Food in the Philippines provides great variety. One can find the same standard American style fast food chains found all over the world. There is also a good presence of Mexican, Chinese, Japanese, and Italian restaurants to choose from. Depending on where you go in the country, this variety is either more or less plentiful....

Social enterprises have become a more popular way of developing impoverished villages. There is a compelling argument that building thriving businesses is more sustainable than donations and handouts. It also empowers locals to take more responsibility over how to develop their towns. Tourism is a natural fit, and also creates jobs at many levels of...

Hue, Vietnam There is a problem with automobiles, and I'm not talking about break-downs or pollution. I'm talking about how they seal us off from the world around us. Listen to this excerpt from Paul McHugh's "The Pure Jones of It," as he compares the automobile to the motorbike: By contrast, most human drivers of...

[Note: Each Saturday this month, Vagablogging is featuring self-published travel books reviewed by self-published travel authors. This week, Grant Lingel reviews Planet Backpacker .] Review by Grant Lingel On the back of Robert Downes’ book, Planet Backpacker , there is a caution to readers: "WARNING: Reading this book could cause your feet to wander." There...