Harry Mitsidis is the founder of NomadMania, one of the world’s leading communities for serious and “out of the box” travelers. Born in London and raised in Athens, he completed visits to all 193 UN-recognized countries by age 36 and has since visited all of them again, one of four people known to have visited every country twice. He created NomadMania to help travelers track, verify and share their journeys while promoting deeper exploration beyond simply collecting countries. He is widely regarded as one of the world’s biggest travelers. Q. […]

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We arrived in at Beijing International, always an overwhelming airport based on its immense girth. But our gate was very close to immigration and we breezed through without much delay as officials kept opening new lanes as the lines swelled from the arriving flights. We discovered a small short-stay airport hotel and without hesitation spent the $40 for a two hour stay. Showers after long flights are one of the best things one can gift one’s body after long flights. Then it was a 15 minute shuttle bus to Terminal […]

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Matthew Polly is the national bestselling author of American Shaolin, Tapped Out and Bruce Lee: A Life. A Princeton University graduate and Rhodes Scholar, he spent two years studying kung fu at the Shaolin Temple in Henan, China. His writing has appeared in The Washington Post, Esquire, Slate, Playboy, and The Nation. He is a fellow at Yale University and lives in New Haven, Connecticut. Q1. Kung Fu, Chinese culture, and language were at the forefront of your life in your younger years. Could you tell us a bit about your background, and how your interest in kung […]

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Paul Salopek is a two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and writer from the US, raised in central Mexico. He has reported globally for the Chicago Tribune, Foreign Policy, The Atlantic, National Geographic Magazine and many other publications. His Out of Eden Walk is a multiyear, 21,000-mile storytelling odyssey across the globe, following the footsteps of our ancestors. He began his journey in Ethiopia in 2013 and will walk 33,800 kilometers (21,000 miles) to the southern tip of South America. Along the way, he is walking with guides, stopping to speak with […]

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Not long ago, I was enticed to watch a Netflix travel show – “Jack Whitehall: Travels with My Father”. The show follows Jack Whitehall, a British comedian on a gap year. Jack thought it would be fun to bring his old-school father, Michael Whitehall on an epic trip around the world. Through endless funny scenes and hilarious exchanges, the show wittily portrays the conspicuous generation gap between the father and son. At around the same time, my mother expressed her wish to travel to Beijing, mainly to check off the […]

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The Tran-Siberian Railway is the ultimate rail journey: the longest in the world – possibly the coldest if you go at the wrong time of year. A journey of almost mythical proportions that spans two continents while staying in a single country; without leaving your seat you clatter your way along almost a third of the globe. There are three routes that travellers can take to explore the Siberian expanse: The Moscow-to-Vladivostok route at over 6000 miles, and two routes from Moscow to Beijing: one through Mongolia, taking six days […]

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Semi-Quarantine in Singapore   Or The Best Laid Plans of Men and Microbes By Joshua Samuel Brown, Special for Dave’s Travel Corner   “Mmm…yes. Tsk.” Doctor Eung shone his light into my partner’s inflamed right ear canal. “You say you flew yesterday, is it?” Stephanie nodded grimly, her face swollen in several places. “Better you had not,” said the doctor. The illness had hit a few days earlier, caught from an old friend in Brisbane who’d have been better off staying in bed than playing tour guide. By the time […]

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Our dear tai chi master, Dr. Paul Lam, and his partner Hazel invited us to join them as part of a small group on a two-week tai chi workshop/tour of China. Dr. Lam said he designed the trip to be “fun and serious, leisurely and exciting, like the yin and yang of tai chi.” This design of contrasts generated a trip of remarkable paradoxes: Absolutely clean wide modern streets and filthy holes-in-the-ground bathrooms. Great Wall preserved from history and high-speed trains speeding into the future at over 300 km/hour. Ancient […]

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I didn’t think much of it at first. His face was somewhat pale and the ever-present smile had been replaced by a slightly anguished expression. He mentioned he was cold but how could this be? We were in the middle of the hot and humid Cambodian jungle. Maybe it was just exhaustion from a long day of exploring Angkor Wat? I figured if we just rested a while, we’d be OK. Then 💩 happened. Literally. The next few hours were spent assisting him back and forth from the toilet to […]

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“Ante Romam Treveris stetit annis mille trecentis” (Trier stood 1300 years before Rome) – legend of Trier’s founding.   Trier is the UNESCO World Heritage city you’ve never heard of. While you were busy swooning over Berlin’s modern architecture or Munich’s copious beer gardens, you’ve missed Germany’s most remarkable city, quietly minding its own business along the banks of the Mosel river, the way it always has for two and a half millennia. Visiting Trier puts the visitor in a bind – should she primarily focus on Trier’s Roman or […]

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“I speak and speak. But the listener retains only the words he is expecting.” So cautioned Marco Polo as he left the court of the great Kublai Khan in Dadu (modern day Beijing) in the year 1295 C.E. Certainly this was a timely reminder for me as I stepped off the plane in Beijing for the first time. Over the years, I had heard lots about Beijing, most of which with a negative slant. Much to my delight, I encountered a wonderful and fascinating city full of surprises and contradictions. If you are […]

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Somewhere between the modern and the traditional, there lies Ulaanbaatar. Mongolia’s fascinating capital is a city evolving before our very eyes. Its population is rapidly trading its ancestral, nomadic ways for a more modern life while still trying to retain the uniqueness of its rich culture. Ulaanbaatar is a city in transition, moved by dynamics bigger than itself. It lies at the intersection of globalization, capitalism, the legacy of state-run communism, and the imperative to modernize. All while struggling to retain the ancient tradition of the horse people. In the […]

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As I was wading the fetid swamp of high school adolescence, I didn’t have many friends. I was teased and, not being a large boy, pushed around occasionally. I was also fairly bright, though not necessarily the brightest, and I found fart jokes or pinging bras by the high school boys to be crass and mundane. The jokes I found funny either soared over the low brows of my peers, or possibly were completely devoid of humour. I prefer to believe the former. Because of this, I felt socially a […]

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World’s Most Dangerous Border The bitter wind tore through my parka, as I stood less than 25 feet away from an armed North Korean soldier.  I shivered again, but this time in reflection of where I stood.  Sharply uniformed North and South Korean soldiers were patrolling with weapons by their side.  I was in the DMZ, the demilitarized zone that bisects North and South Korea.  Former President Bill Clinton, described it as the “the scariest place on Earth” with over 1,000,000 hostile soldiers facing off.  Ironically, despite the name, the […]

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