Backpacking
Don’t Stop Until You’re Back Where You Started: Around The World Travel Guide
It’s a dreamy concept, isn’t it? Imagine the stories, the passport stamps, the experiences traveling around the world would be. Heck, the three letters “RTW” send me off to distant lands. Yeah, I’ve thought about it — and thought about it hard — haven’t we all? Over at Wanderlust, they just compiled and posted a […]
Traveling Mission Statement
A poem from iPoems for the Dolphins to Click Home About For those who wish to stand before the horizon and smile at its attainability, for those who desire to enter the culture of the world, to walk in the paths of past kings, to fluently speak the language of the world, to dream the […]
Fighting The Flashpacker Label (What Is A Flashpacker Anyway?)
When I first heard the term “flashpacker,” I instantly thought of the Bill Bryson book, “A Walk in the Woods.” The main characters are hiking the Appalachian Trail and running into people representing, more or less, a microcosm of society. One person they met was totally and utterly clueless about what it takes to complete […]
How To Get A Visa For Vietnam
What’s more fun than getting off a plane and immediately being hit up for cash just to step foot outside the airport? (I’ll answer my own question. The answer is: getting the seat next to the lavatory for your 16-hour flight. Oh the stories you’ll tell.) The fact is, visas are never fun, especially for […]
Take The Spirit Of Adventure, Leave The Bags (Rolf’s No Baggage Challenge)
Rolf Potts, author of “Marco Polo Didn’t Go There” and receiver of all questions travel-related in the column “Ask Rolf” on World Hum, has decided to pack his bags this late August and hit the road, traveling through 12 countries, five continents, and crossing the equator four times. So what, you ask? People do these […]
Forget Pandora: A Trek Into Earth’s Oldest Rainforest
By Justin Calderon Button-faced gibbons lankily toss themselves through the canopy, a petite mouse deer gnaws at a bush below, and Betek — the chief and shaman of his tribe — methodically whittles another blow dart to such slender precision it nearly becomes invisible to the eye. He sheathes the final product into a vacant […]
Tales From Backpackers On The Road
Friday, late August, cool summer breezes . . . um, why are you sitting here reading this site? Oh yeah, that pesky day job. First off, thanks, come again. Second, let’s be honest, by this time of day you’ve already checked out mentally a long time ago, so to give you a little bit of […]
Should I Wash My Underwear While Traveling? Answer: No!
Let’s face it, we travelers put up with a lot of aggravation on the road: lost baggage, missing passports, loud hostels, etc. . . . And we see a lot of things that bother us around the world: obnoxious tourists, environmental degradation, the plight of the world’s poor. But there’s one thing that annoys us […]
Experiencing The Garden Of Eden That Is Ha Long Bay
I never saw the movie “Indochine.” According to its summary, the flick was released in 1992, and is about a French naval officer and his young Vietnamese lover who are escaping banishment. They seek refuge in the labyrinthine crags erupting from the sea in Ha Long Bay. Those of you that caught the flick were […]
Compassion In Cambodia: A Traveler’s Dilemna
Compassion comes in many forms. You can give away your life savings, some extra change in your pocket, or a bottle of water to a thirsty child. It’s easy to change one person’s life, but much more difficult to change many. In fact, I think it’s probably near impossible to change everyone’s world, spreading yourself like […]