When you wake up on a concrete floor with only a bamboo mat between you and the cold you might just wonder what the hell you were thinking the night before. This was my situation a few years back while I traveled the world for a year or so. Some days it felt longer and this was one of them. I lay there body sore, taught as a fisherman’s net soaked with salt, dried in the hot afternoon sun. Rubbing my eyes, I dared to take a day light look at my … [Read more...]
Viet Yum – Close Encounters of the Turd Kind
Vietnam’s Traveler Cafes Offer Much More Than Just Joe WEASEL COFFEE: $300-$600 A POUND On the far shore of an artificial lake in Hanoi, Vietnam, I found a much-needed antidote to restaurant hell, with its reckless gastronomical woes on untranslatable menus (involving Indochinese delicacies like baked sparrows with the feathers still on, fried scorpions, sautéed snakes, roasted rats, and “No Cock, only Fanta Orange”). It was a coffee … [Read more...]
Learning to Breathe
Long time Photojournalist Alison Wright has traveled to the far corners of the planet photographing endangered cultures and people. Her work has been dangerous at times - including covering demonstrations that became violent in Nepal. And she has certainly been involved in a number of mishaps in her career. But this story is not about those adventures. It is about a horrific crash involving a bus she was in and a logging truck on a windy … [Read more...]
An Interview with Bruce Northam
John M. Edwards Liquors Up and Loosens the Tongue of Adventure Journalist Bruce Northam, the Guru of Globetrotter Dogma Award-winning travel journalist Bruce Northam has wandered freestyle in over 100 countries on seven continents, with experiences ranging from drifting with Burma’s sea gypsies, playing naked Frisbee with New Guinea natives, and beholding the beguiling shores of Antarctica. With three books under his equatorial belt and a … [Read more...]
Body Laotian
John M. Edwards sings the Buddha electric, embarking on a quest in the Laotian capital for the world’s most unique body posture. People thought I was a lunatic for coming all the way to Laos, a landlocked nation without any beaches, for a “vacation”? Even I thought I was out of my mind. After a couple of days lying on the wavy grass in the hazy egg-yolk-shaped sun of Vientiane, a Southeast Asian Wild West boomtown, though, I was bronzed … [Read more...]
The Journey of a Lifetime
As I hastily climbed the stairs of my neighbor’s house, gasping for air with sweat dripping across my forehead, I had one goal in mind: to win this game of Hide and Go Seek. I had no idea that this simple game would change my life forever. Continuing up the stairs I had the mentality of many young children - my life seemed invincible and the thought of death was distant and abstract. Thinking that I would outsmart everyone, I climbed onto a … [Read more...]
Where is the Ho Chi Minh Trail?
Disoriented is a term that means being lost or unclear about where you are. It originated from when the East or the Orient was considered the center of the world. If you have lost the orient you are dis-oriented and are not sure of where you are. From a young age, I have been oriented to travel from when my family moved to Georgia when my dad was in the army or moving to California as a young child or my many years of living at sea. Parts of the … [Read more...]
Deadline and Last Call for 2011 Around the World Travel Adventure Competition
SANTA MONICA, CA (5 January 2011) - Outside magazine calls it, "One of the 50 Most Amazing Trips in the World," Peter Greenberg says that, "Unlike The Amazing Race, this challenge is more about your ability to connect with cultures," while NationalGeographic.com says the travel competition is, "like Survivor, The Amazing Race and the Eco-Challenge all rolled into one except with much more cultural interaction." The 7th annual Global Scavenger … [Read more...]
Shh…Quiet. I’m in Norway
July 7 - Subject: Greetings from quiet Norway! Shh... the first words we heard on the train from the airport to the city center were "please respect the quiet zone." And its been incredibly quiet ever since! A well known Norwegian painter once wrote that the beauty of the mountains moves him into silence. If that's the case then perhaps people will stop talking altogether once we drive into the mountains. I always like to be keenly aware … [Read more...]
Swiftboating the Mekong River
Pnomh Penh, Cambodia Dec. 19, 2004 After a hot and sweaty bus ride south from Saigon, I thought we reached the South China Sea when we first came across this open body of water. Then the driver filled us in that this was the Mekong River, still sixty kilometers inland from the sea. It is a truly massive river, a good deal wider than the Mississippi River down by New Orleans. From its headwaters in Tibet it has traveled about 4300 kilometers … [Read more...]