Ok, so your hotel won’t look like this, but we want it to feel like it does.

Things were look­ing rather bleak. Our attempts to buy air­line tick­ets from Siem Reap, Cam­bo­dia to Hanoi, Viet­nam online had failed mul­ti­ple times, and we wanted to fly out the next day. Nick and I trudged back to our guest­house to see if the man­ager, Meang, could pos­si­bly help. His response?

“Sure, let me text mes­sage a friend who works in a travel office, she’ll reserve the tick­ets, and we can go over tomor­row to pick them up. It’ll be cheaper if we do it for you any­ways. Does that sound ok?”

The next morn­ing, Meang per­son­ally drove us to the travel agency to pur­chase the tick­ets at a 33% dis­count, waited until the trans­ac­tion was com­plete, and then drove us to a restau­rant he rec­om­mended for break­fast. After hav­ing the door opened for us to walk in, we were greeted by three smil­ing servers. The omelettes proved excel­lent, and each included a bowl of per­fectly ripe exotic fruit, which wasn’t even men­tioned on the menu.

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Ditch the tourism super­high­ways and leave the asphalt behind.

As we’re cur­rently back­pack­ing through South­east Asia for a few weeks, we thought it would be a good idea to work on a col­lab­o­ra­tive post for the first time. We’ve both been to tourist traps like Paris, and far-flung places like rural Poland, and we have found there are sev­eral ways you can avoid the crowds, see the best and least-trodden attrac­tions, and also get by on the cheap in pretty much any coun­try out there.  This post will be the first in a series of self-directed travel guides.

Why You Should Blaze Your Own Trail Abroad

There’s a rea­son every­one should see the Eif­fel Tower, the Colos­seum, and Lon­don Museum — they’re all gor­geous, and most peo­ple can appre­ci­ate these beau­ti­ful sights. And there’s noth­ing wrong with want­ing to see these for your­self, in fact we encour­age it.

How­ever, along with pop­u­lar des­ti­na­tions come a vari­ety of annoy­ances, frus­tra­tions, and even dan­gers. Here’s just a few:

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Make your time in Europe a walk in the park

It was the sum­mer of 2008.  I had just landed in Kiev, Ukraine with my pass­port, $20.00 US, and not much else. The cus­toms inspec­tor didn’t speak a word  Eng­lish, and I didn’t have a Ukrain­ian point of con­tact, nor an address of res­i­dency. Was I wor­ried? Cer­tainly not, and the trip proved a com­plete suc­cess. I had exper­i­mented with min­i­mal­ist travel on a pre­vi­ous trip to Europe, and extend­ing it fur­ther was a great expe­ri­ence. This time I hopped on the air­plane with no con­crete plans, no train tick­ets, and no room or board sched­uled.  Over the course of a month I got to see seven spec­tac­u­lar coun­tries, and not once had a seri­ous logis­tics prob­lem.  Although plan­ning may be a com­pul­sion, or even a joy for you, I rec­om­mend plan­ning at least one trip by not plan­ning at all.

No cash?  You’ll end up sav­ing money

In the past, my par­ents went to AAA and brought hun­dreds of dol­lars in traveler’s checks before a trip.  Oth­ers go to the bank and get large amounts in for­eign cur­rency.  Besides being a has­sle, the exchange rates are usu­ally bad, and you have the bur­den of hav­ing a lot of cash that could be poten­tially stolen (pick­pock­ets are a fact of travel).  As I have found in both West­ern and East­ern Europe, credit cards are nearly as ubiq­ui­tous as they are in the US. And given the right credit card, the exchange rates are always within 1% of mar­ket value, far bet­ter than any cur­rency exchange ser­vice will give. Read More

Find­ing inter­est­ing things to do in Africa is a breeze.

I’ve been busy for the past few weeks mov­ing and get­ting set up here in Tan­za­nia for the sum­mer, where I’m work­ing on a pub­lic health project, but I’m back with some ideas divined from the expe­ri­ence thus far. This is my third trip to the con­ti­nent, and each time I find myself con­stantly stunned with new real­iza­tions about it’s vibrant atmos­phere. Plain and sim­ple, Africa is prob­a­bly not what you think it is, and it’s prob­a­bly not what I think it is either, but there are sev­eral things that stand out that I’d like to share.

Africa is Not One Coun­try — No, Really

Even though I give you, the reader, more credit than the sev­eral politi­cians who have referred to Africa as a “coun­try,” there is still a ten­dency to talk about the con­ti­nent as one homo­ge­neous blob of tribal war­riors and bongo music. But imply­ing that all Africans are the same is like say­ing that all North Amer­i­cans are the same or that Euro­peans pretty much resem­ble one another — it’s just patently incor­rect, and it robs a place made up of 61 ter­ri­to­ries, over a bil­lion peo­ple (sec­ond only to Asia in pop­u­la­tion), count­less lan­guages, reli­gions and cul­tures, and a rich and sto­ried his­tory of its diversity.

From Berber nomads in Morocco to Mas­sai war­riors in Kenya and Tan­za­nia to European-descended South Africans, very few Africans are exactly alike. yet they all con­sider them­selves Africans, much in the way both Serbs and Scots con­sider them­selves Euro­peans. The more I see the more I real­ize how com­plex and vibrant the earth is, and how quickly gen­er­al­iza­tions break down. Read More