Bill Wiatrak is a travel author, entertainer and video producer of travel content. He is visiting every country in the world.
By The Traveling Wizard There are certain things you expect when visiting a tropical island in the South Pacific. Palm trees. Beautiful water. Friendly locals. Maybe a little beachfront bar where you can sit with a cold drink and contemplate how lucky you are to be in paradise. And then there’s Nauru. Nauru is one of the smallest countries in the world, a tiny island...
BillsPlaces.com: Where the Stay Is Part of theAdventure BillsPlaces.com: Where the Stay Is Part of the Adventure Pirate ships, a Van Gogh-inspired floating retreat, a Victorian steampunk adventure, vintage Hawaiian paradise, and some of the most unusual accommodations in Texas. Why settle for an ordinary hotel room when you could sleep aboard a pirate ship, step into...
Mexican Food Was Never Supposed to Be Fancy (And That’s Exactly Why It Works) Mexican food didn’t come from chefs. It came from people who were hungry, annoyed, occupied, invaded, broke, or late. If you’re imagining a calm abuela gently perfecting recipes in a sunlit kitchen for centuries, let me ruin that for you right now. Most of Mexico’s most famous dishes were...
How many Ukrainians can you fit into a trunk? It wasn’t a joke when we asked the question. Oleksandra shifted her body under the seat and we piled a few blankets over her. That definitely wasn’t going to work. How were we going to get her across the border? She had initially had her Ukrainian passport turned down for a visa by the Indian government, but in the...
“This is the nicest cruise ship I’ve ever been on” said my 85 year old mother as she surveyed the promenade area of Royal Caribbean’s Navigator of the Seas. The Navigator is loaded with lots of luxurious light fixtures, bronze statues, beautiful nautical themed areas and a funky sofa that frames the person sitting in it. The main deck is kind of like walking...
Malawi made big news when Madonna adopted kids from there in 2017, but I first heard about this East African country while hitchhiking from Kenya to Botswana on a crazy overland trip through the continent. Over half of Malawi’s eastern border is a massive sea of fresh water, named appropriately enough, Lake Malawi. The lake is beautiful, full of tropical fish and...
CLICK HERE FOR AIRBNB LISTINGS. We’ve all rented an Airbnb that has us scratching our heads of how we ended up there. There’s few things that are as depressing as being stuck in a room with a non-working AC, bare walls, and bedspreads that look like they came from someone’s Grandma’s garage sale. I try not to book such places, but on those...
The Rise and Fall of Le Chat Noir “What is up with the man holding the umbrella over a cat?” “It’s Banksy. And the large cat on the door is the 19th century logo of Le Chat Noir, a famous night spot in Paris.” The room was full of Pearland residents who had come to oppose my zoning change. Their glazed-over eyes indicated that they’d never heard of this Banksy fellow...
The greatest book ever written! (lately). Do you like to hear about other people's miserable vacations? This might be the book for you.
Visiting Santa Claus’s lair while traveling in Finland was one of the highlights of my arctic trip but a refrigerator magnet just didn’t seem like a sufficient memoir for such an amazing stop. I settled on buying a fur of one of Santa’s “former workers” when the opportunity presented itself. For $130, it turns out that one can purchase a full reindeer hide at...