Every time I post on Facebook that I’m headed to Dubai or Oman or anything with the letter “Q” in it, I immediately start receiving warnings and words of caution from my friends about where I’m going. At the moment of this writing, a handful of people have met their demise at the hands of a terrorist group called ISIS. Trust me, I’m...
Island Hopping in the Maldives I’m sitting here enjoying my last day on one of the most beautiful islands I’ve ever seen. The sand is sugary white. The palm trees lean and sway with scores of coconuts. The crabs run away and come back every time they think I’m not paying attention to them. I’m in the Maldives, a collection of...
Sometimes the Top of the Train is Better than the Inside Photo: Bill Wiatrak At the moment, I’m riding on a train in Sri Lanka towards Colombo.It’s not crowded, everyone has a seat, and it is ridiculously cheap. Since this is my first train here, I expected something much worse.Last night before I made my decision to take this mode of transport, I was...
I woke up at midnight last night (or this morning) because I still haven’t gotten adjusted to the time difference between Texas and Sri Lanka. I have plans of riding my rental motorcycle to the fish market at 6 am today, so I’ve had roughly 4 or 5 hours to contemplate the meaning of life…. Oh, and figure out where the hell I’m...
We slipped out of the museum, heads down so that our tour group wouldn’t notice us. We looked around surreptitiously hoping that no police were watching us. Not that they would necessarily know we were guilty of wrongdoing mind you, but we couldn’t take a chance. As we made our way backwards through the entrance line, I felt an...
Everyone should get robbed once while traveling. There’s nothing like that exciting feeling of not having any money in a strange country and wondering how you’re going to replace your stuff. I got robbed my second time to Europe. It sucked. I still have no desire to go back to Madrid. That was a long time ago and I vowed at that moment that it would never...
I recently got back from a trip to Central America and while traveling I posted a few pics of something a little strange I had ordered off the menu. My friends all agreed that there was no way they would ever order such a thing and couldn’t believe I would. I thought about it for a while and realized that I felt the same way but I almost had a responsibility to...
When travelers complain about luggage getting lost or start packing 2 weeks before a trip, I’ve always told them the same thing. The only two things you really need for any international trip is money and a passport.In reality you can actually get by without money for a little while if you’re resourceful, but the passport is the key that opens the lock...
As I’m going through some old photos tonight and posting them on Flickr, I see the evolution of my travels and recall my first adventures when I started discovering the world. If someone had told me when I was 20 years old that I would be gallivanting around the globe, I would probably not believed them. When I was 12, I collected stamps.I looked at each little...
I’ve always said that the first day of your vacation is the most expensive. Why is that? Chances are you don’t know prices or currency conversions. You probably have to exchange money, get transport to your hotel and then tip a bunch of people who stand between you and your hotel room and you don’t really know how much. For many people, the unknown...