Articles Archive
A Different Type Of Travel – With Kids
You and your partner are finally taking your dream vacation. The only thing is, by the time you got around to taking that dream vacation it’s no longer just you and your partner; it’s you, your partner and the kids. It’s not the end of the world…
Volunteerism vs. Voluntourism: Are They Synonymous?
A few years ago I joined a travel-related website while researching a trip to Panama. Some of you know will know it as Travellerspoint.com. I have spent quite a bit of my online time over there and one of the common questions posed in the forums deals with volunteerism. “This company charges $X,XXX for a 2 month program. Is that cheap?” or “Is this company on the up & up?” or “Shouldn’t volunteering be free as long as I get there? I’m volunteering, after all.” All good questions. Ones that make me think daily as I remember volunteerism as something you did not pay for, except your transportation to get where you were needed.
Lessons From a Cancelled Trip
My husband and I made the decision this past October to cancel a trip to Spain and Morocco that I’d spent innumerable hours planning. It was a complicated trip – several legs, transportation utilizing planes, trains and automobiles; 12 days in foreign countries. Since it’s been a brutal winter for many of us and thoughts of summer travel are rampant daydreams, I thought I’d finally sit down and share a few hard-earned tips for you to remember when planning your next trip abroad.
Create Your Location Independent Business the More Practical Way
Editor’s Introduction: Anyone who enjoys traveling, or has had their dreams haunted by picturesque places, has most likely thought to themselves, “If I worked for myself, I could just hop a plane for destinations unknown”. Sadly, and all too often, the alarm clock rings or the boss walks in or something snaps us back into reality. Honestly, there are those out there enjoying the fruits of location independent business opportunities and Jason Batansky is one of the fortunate. Here, he shares his beginnings, his dream business idea and what he has learned about making location independent business ventures successful.
Dumpster Diving: A Travel Strategy for Free Food
Dumpster Diving: The act of throwing the body into a dumpster in hopes of finding edible food; picking usable goods out of the trash; a good travel strategy.
I concurrently came upon the art of dumpster diving with the first steps I took off the family farm when I was 18. Before leaving on my first journey, my grandfather took me aside and bestowed some fine words of advice up me:
“If you ever don’t have enough money to get food, find a donut shop, go in back of it, and there you will find more free food than you can eat.”
Do Travel Disasters Make the Best Travel Stories?
Less than one week into a nearly six-month stint in Brussels and I had already racked up my first travel mishap. Heading out to an Internet café for a scheduled online chat session, I was so sure of my route until I came up against a dead end with no sign of the correct street. Only then did I realize that I had walked a good 20 minutes in the wrong direction. I dejectedly backtracked, arriving at the café 30 minutes late only to discover it was closed.
While frustrating and a bit demoralizing, my story is nothing compared with the travel disasters most of us will accumulate in our lives on the go. But it still highlights that no matter how much you travel, no matter how experienced you think you are, stuff happens. I blogged about this topic – travel disasters – last year, insisting that things that go wrong, while maddening at the time, actually become our best travel stories.
How the Economy Affected 16 Travellers in 2009
How has the economy affected your travels in 2009?
That’s the question I put to the internet’s finest travel bloggers last week. For some, the economic crisis put trips on hold, while for others it seems to have had no impact whatsoever. Whatever the case, their responses show one thing: if you’re passionate about travel, you can pretty much always find a way to indulge that passion.
Travel Photography with a Disposable Camera (it’s NOT an oxymoron)
Your camera equipment was stolen in Portugal. A clumsy bauble above the Seine left the river owning the digital SLR. You own no camera equipment, but there’s something you really want to photograph on your upcoming trip. Lots of scenarios could result in a disposable/single use film camera landing in your hands. The good news is great photos (even artistic photos) can be achieved with the simple equipment.
Existential Migration: Feeling at Home as the Foreigner
I could tell it was time to move on. Eight years I had spent working for the same company. It had been good for both me and them, but times were changing. My boss and mentor had been let go, and the business focus of my department was shifting away from my core skill set. I needed to find something new to do.
This is the position I found myself in during the first few months of 2008. I thought about what I wanted to do next, and came up with a number of options, including moving to another division, moving to another company, starting a new career, starting my own business or going back to school. I spent a month musing on my next move. One idea kept coming forward, getting stronger and stronger as the month progressed. In March, about two weeks before I finally made a final decision on what I would do, I decided to create a list of the options and my thoughts on what I should do next. For one of the options, I wrote the following:
Option: Quit job and move to London.
Analysis: Least sensible option, but for some reason this feels important to do.
Racism on the Road: Experiences of a Mixed-Race Couple
I read a number of recent posts from those thinking of travelling who are either anxious, or put off entirely, by the threat of racism on their journey. Having spent much of the last 20 years travelling with my wife, who is Indian, I thought I’d take the time to share our experiences of being a mixed race travelling couple and hopefully offer some reassurance to other travellers.
