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A Traveler’s Night Out

Monica — Mon, 16 May 2011 10:45:40 +0000

When you’re traveling, do you see more during the day or at night? Check out these night time photos of places from around the world taken by your fellow wanderlusters.

Connie Hum

Connie quit her job and left New York City in 2009. Since then, she’s lived in Istanbul, sailed the Mediterranean, slept in a cave inside Petra, belly-danced in Cairo, practiced meditation in India, trekked the Himalayas and volunteered in Thailand. Connie is now calling Hong Kong home, if only she would stop getting lost! Follow Connie’s (mis)adventures on www.connvoyage.com or Twitter at @connvoyage.

Kelsey Freeman

Kelsey is something of a nomadic jack-of-all-trades. After having moved 28 times in 8 years, she’s currently living near Washington DC. She works odd jobs as well as being a graphic designer, web designer, photographer, and writer.

She is also a former professional tall ship sailor, she’s working on her private pilot’s license, and she rides a vintage Russian sidecar motorcycle. She is an avid historical reenactor and travels frequently within the east coast to attend events. Photography is her true calling though and she is passionate about exposing people to cultures, places, and people they might otherwise never know about.

She loves to travel and used to live on a small, rural island in South Korea. Her favourite country is Switzerland, she’s currently planning a journalism expedition to Mongolia, and she once spent a year living out of her truck, couchsurfing around the USA and Canada!

Kevin Revolinski

Kevin Revolinski is the author of The Yogurt Man Cometh: Tales of an American Teacher in Turkey and the Bangkok expert for NileGuide.com. His website and blog are at The Mad Traveler.

Michael Hodson

Michael just completed a sixteen month, round-the-world trip without taking a single plane. His blog — One Lap, No Jetlag — is at www.mobilelawyer.blogspot.com and you can Twitter him at @mobilelawyer.

Lash

Lash is passionate about traveling the world nomadically and sharing her adventures and the cultures of countries she visits. Way back in 1991 she quit my job in the USA, packed up and moved to Japan. She lived in Kyoto for 6 years, saving money to travel the world. In 1997, mission accomplished. She left Japan and began her world travels… Fast forward to 2010: still traveling! Check out her blog Lash World Tour.

Toby

Toby and Karen are your hosts at the Gibbs Bay Inn. Toby grew up in Nepal, India and West Africa and Karen is from a small village in East Sussex, England. They have a passion the mansion, service, the Caribbean, family life and running this beautiful old Guest House. “We love how there is always some old timer on the island who has an anecdote or scandal about the property from the old days. As we watch the sun disappear over the yard-arm with our guests we always feel we have found our Nirvana.”

Photos From Mid-Autumn Festival 2010

Monica — Tue, 28 Sep 2010 10:45:00 +0000

Some rights reserved by Michael Cavén

Mid-Autumn Festival happens every year on the 15th day of the 8th month according to the Lunar calendar. The popular harvest festivities are celebrated by the Chinese, Vietnamese, Japanese and Koreans. There are so many variations of the story behind this day.

My favorite one is the story about how the Chinese used their cleverness to defeat the Mongol empire. In ancient times, people told time based on their surroundings. The Chinese were able to synchronized their tactics by picking a day when the moon was the biggest and brightest - the 15th day of the 8th month. Because the Mongols did not fancy mooncakes, the Chinese were able to spread the message about a coordinate attack by sending mooncakes with hidden messages inside. They successfully the Mongol empire and established the Ming dynasty.

Check out the photos below for photos of the Mid-Autumn festivals.

Singapore

Photo by CHEN Jinghui (景晖) a.k.a TAN GengHui

For more of Tan’s photos from Singapore, check out his blog, Photojournalist, and his Flickr.

Vietnam

Photo By Adam Bray

Photo by Adam Bray

Photo by Rob Somberville

Korea

Photo by Mireille

China

For more travel stories and photos from Mike, please visit Art of Backpacking and follow him on Twitter @djskylab.

Nine Warning Signs of Empty Travel

Monica — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 12:00:21 +0000

Guest post by @magicant

Business travel is an oxymoron, like plastic silverware. It’s not travel. It’s just a bunch of meetings after a really long commute. I’ve been fortunate to see a lot of the world while on the company dime, but I rarely got to experience the places I visited.

Most overseas groups that want to work with American companies are looking to bring America to what they’re doing, so it tends to be a very insular experience. Meetings are in English. The hotels are the chains we’re familiar with. People you deal with were educated at western universities. About the only cultural thing I really learned in my travels was the formality involved in the exchange of business cards.

All that adds up to my desire to break free and someday go back to those places I never really got to know.

Do you think you have a similar problem? Here are some warning signs that mean you need to seek help (with apologies to that redneck guy).

If you force your taxi driver in Dubai to stop at Dunkin Donuts because you don’t have them in California… you might be a business traveler
If checking out the local bar means taking a Snickers from a mini-fridge in Dusseldorf… you might be a business traveler
If you think Sunday mass at the Vatican would flow better with bullet points and clip art… you might be a business traveler
If the ending of “Up In The Air” was a happy one…. you might be a business traveler
If you’re excited that MTV in Seoul actually shows music videos… you might be a business traveler
If people in Singapore take you to an Italian restaurant for dinner… you might be a business traveler
If most of the photos of your Hong Kong trip are of the city’s high tech new escalator system… you might be a business traveler
If you try to figure out financial models and revenue stream potential while walking through Amsterdam… you might be a business traveler
If the only memory you have of London is “Hey, check out the cool looking taxis!”… you might be a business traveler

For those people exhibiting 3 or more of the symptoms above, there are professional counselors standing by. Don’t look at me, I’m guilty of at least 5 of them.

About Joel:

The Freedonia Post is not a blog for travel writing. It’s comedy written while traveling. Well, that’s the plan. I have to start traveling first. And figure out the comedy. The writing? I’m kind of hoping that will happen on its own somehow.