A personal story about the true cost of travel and why I still do it.
Category: Advice
The Solo Adventurer
How going solo became my preferred way of travel
Travel Maps
For those of us that want to track our travels, there are quite a few options out there. I’ve compiled a bunch of the online sites that allow you to create your own custom travel map with info and photos for comparison: Traveller’s Point https://secure.travellerspoint.com/ Pros: You can change the…
Pretending to be Canadian/Australian
It’s no secret that American tourists have a bad reputation abroad. We are seen in stereotypes of being loud, obnoxious, culturally insensitive, paranoid, overweight conservatives who expect everyone to speak English, etc. I’ve often to been tempted to claim another nationality while travelling, especially when you experience outright bias or…
Surviving Long Flights
For those of us who don’t travel full-time, our vacations are sandwiched between two long flights and we don’t have the time to recover from jet lag. Here are some lessons I’ve learned along the way to help ease the pain of those long, international flights: Drink Water Yea, everyone’s…
My Travel Essentials
A list of things I rarely travel without (in order of necessity): Disclaimer: I value high quality, so this list isn’t cheap. Victorinox Packable Backpack It’s a slim, lightweight backpack that folds down to about the size of an iPad Mini. I always throw this in the bottom of my bag just in case.…
Travel Photo Books with Shutterfly
How to create keepsake travel book albums with Shutterfly
How I use OneNote to Organize my Travels
I never thought I would be such a proponent of a Microsoft product, but here I am: I LOVE Microsoft OneNote (it’s free; I’m not getting any kickbacks) and use it to organize many things in life, including my travel plans. This is how I use it for my vacation planning.…
Travel as Therapy
However mean your life is, meet it and live it. – Henry David Thoreau How Travel can be Healing & Why Iceland Worked for Me In 2008, my world turned upside down. Within a matter of months, I got dumped from a boyfriend of 5 years, my sister died, my…
Voluntourism: My experience in Cambodia
Voluntourism is “the conscious, seamlessly integrated combination of voluntary service to a destination and the best, traditional elements of travel — arts, culture, geography, history and recreation — in that destination.” Source: http://www.voluntourism.org In 2011, I guest-lectured at the University of Queensland for an undergraduate Tourism class on my experience with…