I travel to a different country almost every month. The places I choose are not usually on any of my friends’ top ten lists because they don’t really know anyone else who has been there or sometimes whether it’s even a real place . I might as well tell them that I’m going to Atlantis or Camelot, or Asgard… . The hard truth is most...
I was drinking a beer at a local bar the other night and as some of the regular patrons started chatting with me about things they would never remember later, we somehow started talking about Belgium. Let me rephrase that. There was Belgian ale on tap. They served it in a Bud light glass and that’s how it all got started. There are infinite segues that will get...
If you ask anyone in Texas where they go on vacation, Cancun always comes up in the conversation. Cancun is like the Las Vegas of Mexico. It’s easy to get there, easy to get to your hotel, easy to stay in your hotel and if you dare to leave, there’s a zillion excursions from zip lining to pirate dinner cruises. You don’t have to speak...
It was starting to get dark and I was in the middle of nowhere. Australia is a big country and there’s a whole lot of nothing in the middle or in Western Australia where I was headed. It was my first big backpack trip and I was on a budget of almost nothing. I had never hitchhiked in my life but after about 3 weeks of it, I was getting pretty well...
I had always wondered about the mystical islands of Fiji. When you hear “Fiji”, one automatically thinks of pure drinking water, amazing beaches and the movie “Blue Lagoon”(where it was filmed). A friend of mine had asked me to help her find a deal to Fiji and after I had done a little research for her, she changed her mind and decided...
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...
Shaman Preparing Ayuhuasca It was almost dusk. The amazon jungle completely surrounded us as we walked precariously on the wooden boards that someone had spent days or possibly years placing in position so that pedestrians wouldn’t fall in the muck. The shaman we were following looked no different than any other Peruvian we had spotted. His clothes were simple...