Greece Makes Me Feel Wonderful
Right now, I’m in the Athens airport, rushing to write this article before embarking on the flight back home, to Bucharest. Over the past 10 days, since I’ve arrived here, I’ve been gathering comments from people about the financial crisis which, to be honest, stirs…
How I Got Work Abroad
Before I went travelling I had no idea about how to get a job abroad. I was beset by other fears: language, accommodation, money and the difficulty of beating my own complacency. If I had thought about it too much and if I had listened to my inner demons (“Who…
The Republic of Moldova — First Impressions
There is something rather alien about arriving in a new country like Moldova, where you don’t know your way round, you don’t have any of the local currency and you don’t know anyone. I am sitting in a cafe in Chisinau, the capital of Moldova, a tiny…
Working in Berlin
Berlin has played an important part in my life: it was the first place I visited on my trip to Tibet and I spent a month there in 1986, before the wall came down, and I was lucky enough to get a good look at a city that had been carved up by the great powers. The…
Kayaking in Sweden
When I was a kid we lived in a white house by the Firth of Forth, an estuary just north of Edinburgh. The house was so close to the sea that waves would splash into the garden when it was rough. Inside one of the garden sheds was an old kayak made of thin fibre glass…
The Paradox of Sweden
I’m staying in an old military base on one of the thirty thousand islands that lie outside Stockholm. From where I am sitting I can see massive cruise ships pass by, en route to the capital city, making their way through the forested islands. “A submarine…
Why Live Abroad?
By Silvana Some time ago Rupert asked me to explain why I live abroad and what are the advantages of travelling. After a while I thought maybe I’m complicating my life too much. Maybe I should stop living in a foreign country (Germany at the moment, France…
I was Wrong About the Romani Gypsies
For many years I thought I knew the answer to the problems faced by the Romani Gypsies: education. If we could just make school more appealing to this population their situation of marginalisation would gradually end, and they would learn the skills needed to…
What I Learned from Camping
My first thought about camping is that I don’t want to do it: it’s cold and wet outside and even thinking about what I would need to pack sends a shiver down my spine. So much easier to sit in my warm room, go to work and meet a friend for a pizza this evening. Then I…
5 Reasons for Travelling Alone
Travelling alone was the only option when I went to Asia for two years. It was what I aspired to, what I planned for and what I built up to. The first page of my book, 9 Months in Tibet, is about overcoming my fear of travelling alone. Although I had a loving…
Dealing With Nationalists
Some of the most interesting places in the world are beset by nationalists and extremists: minority groups wanting to break away and form an independent state; high levels of anger between ethnic groups and almost everywhere you go the people hate, and blame, the…
Can George Get a Job in Mongolia?
My friend George asked me if I thought he could get a job in Mongolia and, even though I don’t know anything about the jobs market in Mongolia I instantly replied: “of course you can.” Before explaining why I am so confident in my answer I would like to introduce…
How to Adapt to Foreign Cultures
Learning to Adapt to foreign cultures is easier than you might assume. It’s all about attitude rather than about studying the country you’re planning to visit. Of course some people intensively study the culture, language and history of the place they’re visiting and…
Is Macedonia a “Fully Fledged Mafia State”?
A friend recently emailed me from Macedonia and said “we are witnessing a fully-fledged mafia state being endorsed for EU membership by some of the leading democracies on the planet.” I groaned. I couldn’t be bothered. I was on the road, visiting Istanbul at the time…
Did Cannabis Help me Write and Travel?
The quick answer is NO – cannabis did not help me write and travel – in fact, it did the exact opposite: it made me unable to write and paranoid when travelling. If I hadn’t given up the evil weed I don’t think I would have made it to Tibet or written a book about my…
Travelling Alone in the USA — How I Got Away
Manuela Boghian tells the story of how she got it together to go travelling in the USA for three months. When I wrote this article I was travelling on the Seattle – Fargo train. I was on that train for about 38 hours. My phone died so I was guessing the time…
Protected: A Beautifully Written but Unconvincing Book about Romania
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Improve Your Travel Skills on Weekends & Holidays
Weekends and holidays are the ideal opportunity to practice your travel skills. Most of us use weekends to catch up with sleep, housework, movies and other things which, in the grand scheme of things, are irrelevant for our personal development. I’m horrified by how…
How Hitchhiking Suppressed my Fear of Travelling Alone
Fear of travel was a real problem for me. As soon as I got out of the suffocating grip of university I planned to escape, to travel to the other side of the world, to travel alone for years and to find a job somewhere in Shanghai.
How to Get a Grant
Here is a story about how to get a grant. When I was in Montenegro recently I checked into a small guest house and asked if they had internet. “Of course we do” boomed the big cheery lady who runs the place, but when I tried to get online it didn’t work. I asked for…
Working in Vietnam
Riding a Belorussian motorbike, teaching English, avoiding expats, crazy street life in Hanoi…working in Vietnam.
The Beauty of Getting Lost
Getting lost in an unknown location is central to my approach to travel. If you have a sense of faith (“everything’s going to be okay”) and are not liable to panic, getting lost can result in discovering wonderful things and meeting new people. There’s also a…
Introduction to Working Abroad
There’s a curious relationship between cash and independent travel. On the one hand any form of travel is impossible without it while, on the other hand, money is the last thing I want to think about when planning a trip. In my experience the key to independent travel…
10 Skills for Independent Travel
There was no way I could have travelled to Tibet and spent two years abroad without building up what I call independent travel skills. These are the practices that enabled me to thrive in foreign cultures. In this article I will explain these skills in the hope that…
