The Cinque Terre or The Five Lands are five villages in the Liguria region of Italy: Monterosso al Mare, Vernazza, Corniglia, Manarola, and Riomaggiore. I recently visited two of them, Manarola and Riomaggiore, during a short vacation in Tuscany and Liguria. These towns are incredible; they have a special atmosphere of small medieval seaside settlements that have kept their historical face because of the surrounding mountain landscape. Over [...]

In all my travels, Turkmenistan has been, by far, the oddest place I’ve visited. Culturally, the Turkmens are “cousins” of the Uzbeks, and I found many similarities in the everyday lives and customs with their Central Asian neighbors. The languages are also similar, both routed in Turkish. These are not the reasons I found Turkmenistan [...]

A few years ago I spent a couple months in Israel and the West Bank. For one of those months I volunteered in the city of Nablus for a month, teaching English and participating in other community projects. Living in the region was an invaluable way to understand the current events in the region and [...]

People say you’ve got to see Vermont in the autumn, when the fall foliage is spectacular. But I think the state is gorgeous in the summer, when the mountains are green, just like their name suggests. Some would argue that winter in Vermont, with alpine and Nordic skiing, snowshoeing, and other winter sports, is the [...]

It’s not just betting on horses. It’s an experience. Saratoga Springs, New York is one of the best places in the United States to watch horse racing. There is definitely a horse racing culture around Saratoga Springs: not only in the breeding of race horses but spending the day at the track watching them race. [...]

This week’s Photo of the Week come to us from Berit Renser who blogs at avantourists.com It was in October of 2010 when Merapi of Central Java, Indonesia, erupted again, this time bigger than it had in over 100 years. Now the danger zone has been removed and the villages are welcoming for a visit. Small boys [...]

Despite the serene beauty that proliferates  from the battlefields surrounding Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, the 6,000 acres has witnessed one of the most horrifically violent episodes of human history. But 148 years after these battles of the United States Civil War, orchards have been replanted, hay is still grown and cut, restored cannons stand facing the enemy [...]

A short ferry ride from the small city of Kratie lies one of Cambodia’s best kept secrets. What looks like the far shore is actually a narrow island in the middle of the Mekong River dotted with rice fields, a few houses, and some of the friendliest people I’ve met in all of southeast Asia. [...]

This week’s Photo of the week comes from Juno Kim of RunawayJuno.com  “Do you have any window seat left?” is the typical question I ask at the ticket check-in counter. Like many other travelers, I prefer a window seat. Maybe because it’s slightly more private than an aisle seat, or I don’t have to move [...]

When I posted my Vientiane images to my Flickr album, my father commented to me by email that “Vientiane was often in the news in my college days, but there were never pictures.” Well, Dad, here are some pictures. None are spectacular, but my point is to give you some visuals so you have a [...]

“Humans sleep through the best part of the day,” the world famous nature photographer, Hannu Hautala, told me last week in an interview. “The best light is between sunset and sunrise.” And he’s not wrong. At 1am last week this was the view from my bedroom window. Needless to say, I couldn’t sleep with a view like [...]

          After crossing the border from Thailand we immediately boarded the slow boat bound for Luang Prabang. Riding a slow boat in Laos is one of those things you don’t want to miss while traveling in this land-locked country with over 4,600 miles of navigable waterways. Because slow boats are the [...]

Chiang Mai is a city of temples—over 300 can be found in and around the city in a variety of architectural styles. Chiang Mai is the center of northern Thailand’s tourism industry, rich with culture and tradition and plenty of tours leaving for the rest of the north and attractions surrounding the city. But you [...]

No visit to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia is complete without visiting the Skybridge of the Petronas Towers. When the towers were completed in 1998, they were the tallest buildings in the world at 451 meters, holding that title until 2004 saw the completion of Taipei 101 reach a height of 509 meters. Malaysia was understandably proud [...]

One of the most lively and interesting places in Singapore is Little India. Vastly different from the rest of the island, Little India is a neighborhood of shops spilling onto the sidewalks. Saris, flowers, CDs, trinkets, spices, vegetables are all being sold. Not only are the colors striking, but so are the sights and smells. [...]

While traveling in Borneo I visited Sepilok Orangutan Rehabilitation Centre. Even though I saw an orangutan in the wild, I still wanted a chance to observe these amazing “men of the forest” from a closer distance. You could get a sense from the mesmerized onlookers (the homo sapiens), that all were thinking the same thing—just [...]

Kampong Ayer is made up of 28 water villages on both sides of the Sungai Brunei in Brunei. It is home to 20,000 residents. The houses are built on wooden, and more recently concrete, stilts. A boardwalk high above the water surface connects many of the houses. To see more of Kampong Ayer, hire a [...]

My first afternoon in Bangkok I wandered around the back streets of Chinatown. Here Bangkok looks much as it did 100 years ago. Markets abound in the side streets and alleyways in between and around the two main parallel boulevards of Yaowarat and Charoen Krung. In Chinatown you’ll find everything from herbalists and gold dealers [...]