The Thoughtful Travel Podcast

Ah, finally, I've made it to Chiang Rai! I've wanted to visit this most northern part of Thailand my whole life, as my dear late aunty came from Chiang Rai. Spending a few days up there was delightful, and full of really fascinating experiences, but I've narrowed it down to my three favourites for this podcast episode. First: the White Temple. It's a very new temple, built on the site of an old one, and is almost more art and architecture than temple, designed and funded by well-known Thai artist Chalermchai Kositpipat. I try to describe it - but you really do have to see it to believe it. My second highlight was our day at Ahsa Farmstay, a little further north of Chiang Rai city. In this episode I explain what I loved about it and also share an interview with one of the women who run it, Aun Wannamala. Finally, I explain my day at the Ban Pang Ha village right up in the northern tip of Thailand in Mae Sai. This is another excellent community-based tourism initiative and we enjoyed massages, facials, paper-ma

This special episode is the audio of the Facebook Livestream of the August 2023 meeting of the Thoughtful Travellers Book Club, talking about Landlines by Raynor Winn with my co-host Justin Watson, and later joined by Thoughtful Travellers member Philippa. If you'd like to join the Thoughtful Travellers Book Club, all the info is at https://notaballerina.com/bookclub, and you can keep up with all the thoughts about our current books in the Thoughtful Travellers Facebook Group at https://facebook.com/groups/thoughtfultravellers See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Community-based tourism experiences are one of my favourite things to seek out when I travel, and this episode is a great explanation of what CBT is, illustrated with fabulous examples from Thailand, Jamaica and Australia. I first chat with Justin Meneguzzi who gives a great overview of community-based tourism as a whole, and then illustrates this with an example from an organic coffee farm he visited in northern Thailand. Jonathan Coleman of Untours then tells me some examples of small community-based tourism businesses that the Reset Tourism Fund is looking to support - Jonathan has the fabulous role of travelling around to find these businesses. Finally, I speak with Roger Smith from Echidna Walkabout, who has a great example of a way that a tour can support the local community with deliberate choices of accommodation. Links: Justin Meneguzzi - https://www.justinmeneguzzi.com  Suan Lahu - organic coffee farm in Thailand - https://suanlahu.org/  Jonathan Coleman - Untours Foundation https://untoursfoundati

Thailand was calling, and I had to go! Three and a half years after my last pre-Covid adventure abroad, I finally managed to get out of Australia for a short media trip to Thailand. I'm home again now and celebrating that trip along with the milestone of the three hundredth episode of The Thoughtful Travel Podcast seems very appropriate. In this episode I'll tell you a little bit about my trip to Bangkok and Chiang Rai - more to come on these destinations in future episodes - and about how I felt to be leaving Australia. I've also included an extract from a chat I recently had with my friend Jean, who took her first post-Covid trip to Iraq a couple of months ago, and had lots of similar thoughts about this "new" travel experience. Of course, I always try to be a thoughtful traveller, and like to divide ways to be thoughtful into before, during and after a trip, so in this episode I ponder how well I did with this, considering it was a trip that arose at fairly short notice. And finally, I ask our Bangkok guid

Travelling in some kind of van - a campervan, a caravan, an RV, a motorhome - is a unique and fabulous way to see the world. I was lucky enough to spend many months in a campervan as a child, exploring both Europe and Australia, and it was completely life-changing! In this episode I have three guests with a wonderful variety of van experiences. First up, I chat with Julie Kaplan, who is a self-described "reluctant" van traveller, but she tells a great story about a van trip she recently took with friends in Montenegro. Next, Staci Mellman explains one of her favourite ever trips, which happens to be a campervanning adventure around my own home state of Western Australia. Finally, I speak with Fran and Andrew Robinson, who talk about some wonderful family travels with their sons in a caravan around Australia - meeting some interesting characters along the way.   Links: Julie Kaplan - https://www.juliekaplan.com/  Staci Mellman, Senior VP, Brand USA - https://www.thebrandusa.com  Fran and Andrew Robinson from

There are so many ways we can try to do better when we travel, and looking for tours or activities that have a conservation angle is one that, with a little research, can be surprisingly easy. In Episode 298 of The Thoughtful Travel Podcast, I chat with two tour operators who have been diving deep into the conservation travel area for years, and to a traveller who was impressed by a conservation project in India and made a point to visit. First up, Roger Smith from Echidna Walkabout does a good job of providing a definition of conservation travel, and then gives some great examples of what it can be and the effect it can have. It's good food for thought, too, that here in Australia, many people don't understand the value of our wildlife nor really see why it's so important to conserve it. I chat then with Jamie Van Jones from Salt and Bush Eco Tours, who has a great example of a conservation project she's been involved with centred on fairy terns, small birds which are classed as a "vulnerable" protected spec

City names like Mosul, Karbala and Basra - and of course the capital Baghdad - are familiar to us all, but not from seeing people's holiday snaps, unfortunately. Tourism in Iraq is a very small-scale affair, but I've been curious about it recently after seeing a couple of people I knew travel there - and I've interviewed two women who've recently travelled to Iraq for this episode. First up, I speak with Julie Kaplan. Curiously, Julie intended only to spend a few days in Kurdistan and on the insistent advice of friends she made there, decided to explore federal Iraq as well - and ending up spending four months there!  I then chat with longtime friend of the podcast Jean Cheney, who joined a small group tour in Iraq recently. She explained how safety issues were dealt with along with telling me about the amazing history and food of Iraq - enough to make me yearn to get there some day, for sure!   Links: Julie Kaplan's website - https://www.juliekaplan.com/  Julie’s YouTube channel, Julie from LA - https://www

Making connections - either brief or lasting - with local people when you travel can often be the highlight of a trip. In this episode, three guests tell stories about people they have befriended on their travels and I hope it inspires you to be open to these kind of connections when you are next wandering the world, too. My first guest is Antonio Cala, who talks about a stay in Mexico in the first month of he and his wife's years-long journey cycling down through Central and South America. Having an open schedule meant they could say yes to some incredible opportunities. Next, I chat with Martha Waslen, who reminds us that you can also make connections on shorter trips too - again, it's about staying open to the possibilities. She and her husband made lifelong friends amongst the locals working in a Maldives resort, and she's drawn on that lesson to start her business. Finally, Sequoia Armstrong describes a stay in Cuba when she and her friend got to know their trishaw rider and got to experience some local

Travelling overnight in a train is, I think, a very special experience. I've slept peacefully on overnight trains in Russia, Finland and Vietnam, and will happily do so again, for many reasons. Spending extended periods of time on trains is a wonderful way to get chatting to other travellers, a comfortable way to really see a country's landscapes, and of course, it's also more environmentally friendly than flying. My first guest on this episode is Justin Meneguzzi, who recently included overnight train travel to replace domestic flights on his trip to Thailand. It was great to hear about his experiences in both first and second class and has definitely inspired me to test out the Thai rail system on my next trip there. I then chat with Julie Kaplan, who not long ago spent four months travelling in Iraq. She took her first overnight train trip while she was there, and tells me about her experience travelling from Baghdad to Basra. Finally, I speak with Imogen Lepere about her trip across Russia on the Trans-Mo

Raynor Winn, bestselling author, one of my personal heroes, all-round amazingly nice person - is the guest on this deep dive episode of The Thoughtful Travel Podcast. I discovered Raynor Winn's books thanks to the Thoughtful Travellers Book Club, when one of our members, Joan, suggested we read "The Salt Path". I'm so glad she did, because it became a firm favourite amongst book club members, and we've subsequently read "The Wild Silence" and will soon discuss Raynor's third book, "Landlines", too.  In this chat, we discuss the mindset shifts from the hiking life, and what to do when you have to spend time back in "normal life"; we talk about making connections with other people on your travels; we cover the issue of homelessness, something important to both of us; we delve into how Raynor actually became a writer, and what her writing process is like now; and finally, we end with some fabulous lessons from travel.  It was such a thrill to record this chat, and I hope you all enjoy it even half as much as I d

Many of us like to “do good” when we travel, and getting involved in some kind of citizen science program when we travel is a fantastic way to do this. Citizen science might involve making observations of wildlife or flora, collecting other kinds of data or even working in a science lab, and the guests on this podcast have a variety of wonderful citizen science experiences to report. First up, I chat with Roger Smith of Echidna Walkabout. After running tours in Australia for several decades, largely centred on our intriguing wildlife, he has much to say about using citizen science on their tours, and has a great example from a koala project to share. I then speak with Jamie Van Jones of Salt and Bush Eco Tours. They include some kind of citizen science aspect to all their tours and Jamie explains how travellers are contributing to helping conserve a critically endangered possum in Western Australia. Finally, Justin Meneguzzi explains his experience of citizen science on an expedition cruise to Antarctica, whe

Getting animal experiences right when we travel is something we can all try hard to do - checking ahead of time whether the ways we might be about to interact with animals are ethical and appropriate.  In this episode I have a bit of theory and practice to share. First up, we hear from Nora Livingstone at Animal Experience International, an organisation which helps travellers volunteer at ethical animal experiences around the world.  We then move on to India with my long-time listener Anuj, who recently spent time in the Gir National Park in Gujarat, India, and explains both the ethics and his incredible experiences there. Links: Nora Livingstone from Animal Experience International - https://www.animalexperienceinternational.com Anuj’s Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/anujph/  Gir National Park - https://girlion.gujarat.gov.in - official site, available only in India Join our Facebook group for Thoughtful Travellers - https://www.facebook.com/groups/thoughtfultravellers  Join our LinkedIn group for Tho

There is, apparently, no end to the appetite of both me and my listeners to hear stories about things going wrong on our travels. It’s not that we want to laugh or point fingers at people who have bad things happen to them - I think it’s more an empathy and sympathy, and the kind of entertainment that arises from someone who’s told a travel story many times, and can tell it well. That’s my excuse anyway: this is just one more of quite a number of episodes on this topic! My first guest in this episode is Nora Livingston of Animal Experience International, and her tale of something going wrong does, indeed, feature an animal - a Cape buffalo, in fact, in Kenya. Fortunately, all involved come out of the experience unharmed. I then chat with Staci Mellman of Brand USA about the natural disaster kind of “things going wrong” - when cyclonic storms interrupted a boat ride while she was in Fiji a few years back. Finally, I discuss work travel with Joseph Kolapudi, who’s had quite a string of bad luck when he’s travel

This special episode is the audio of the Facebook Livestream of the March 2023 meeting of the Thoughtful Travellers Book Club, talking about Travel as a Political Act by Rick Steves. Justin and I chatted about some of the positives of this book - the various lessons learnt from travel and some guidelines for travelling thoughtfully - along with a few parts we didn't agree with so wholeheartedly. If you'd like to join the Thoughtful Travellers Book Club, all the info is at https://notaballerina.com/bookclub, and you can keep up with all the thoughts about our current books in the Thoughtful Travellers Facebook Group at https://facebook.com/groups/thoughtfultravellers See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Happy 7th birthday to The Thoughtful Travel Podcast! This is a special episode with a few interesting tidbits about the podcast, inspired by members of the Thoughtful Travellers groups who gave me some excellent suggestions. For example, I've got the stats to show you which seven episodes have been the most downloaded over the history of the podcast; I've also got our group's version of the seven deadly sins of travel. I've also combined this seven-year celebration with a trip report on my recent experience in Kununurra, in the far north-east of Western Australia. It's an incredible part of the world and I feel so blessed to have been sent there to run some workshops, and I wanted to share a few of the highlights from my experience. But I have to return to see more!!! Links: SxSW Session Select voting - https://notaballerina.com/vote  “Why We Need Travel More Than Travel Needs Us” (until 11th April 2023) My Instagram for Kununurra pics and videos - https://instagram.com/amandakendle  Join our Facebook group

What really goes on behind the scenes of travel writers, content creators and podcasters, and their counterparts in the tourism and travel industry, public relations firms and tourism boards? I recently spent the best part of a week in Sydney immersed in this world and I realised that lifting the curtain on how this part of travel and tourism works might prove interesting for my listeners. This episode is part trip report (in short: Sydney is gorgeous) and part BTS of IMM Australia, and more. The what? You'll have to listen to find out! I also chat with Christina Koullas of CK PR who gives us a great rundown on how public relations in general works within the travel industry. Links: Christina Koullas of CK PR - https://ckpr.com.au/  Christina’s blog about working with a journalist - https://ckpr.com.au/how-we-secured-a-cover-story/ The resulting article from Catherine Marshall - https://www.traveller.com.au/cape-york-queensland-travel-guide-the-last-great-adventure-destination-in-australia-h1twly TravMedia -

It'd be great if any time we took ourselves travelling and volunteered somewhere that it was a purely good act. The problem is, of course, that we are now getting to understand just how damaging some kinds of volunteer tourism can be. Is it all bad, though? I don't think so! But we definitely have to be very, very thoughtful any time we sign up for voluntourism. In Episode 288 of The Thoughtful Travel Podcast, I chat with three travellers about their thoughts and experiences with volunteer travel. First up, I speak with Eliza Raymond of Good Travel, who has a very telling story about an experience she had volunteering in Guatemala at just eighteen years of age. Next, I talk to Jonathan Coleman from the Reset Tourism Fund at the UnTours Foundation. After working with NGOs hosting volunteer groups, along with various other tourism experiences throughout his career, he's very sceptical about the ability of almost any travel volunteer experience to be a truly worthwhile one for every party involved. Finally, I ch

I don't think I'm the kind of traveller who's going to board a five-thousand-passenger cruise ship any time soon. But when I chatted with these three guests about their experiences with what I've called "not your typical" cruises, then I'm feeling much more inclined to pack my bags and my seasickness tablets! My first guest is Rick Antonson, an author of many fantastic travel books, and veteran of nearly no cruises! He did, however, have a brilliant experience on a river cruise in Myanmar a few years back, and does a good job of convincing me that it's my kind of cruise, too. Next, I chat to Noah Barnes, captain of a sailboat or windjammer off the Maine Coast, about how the trips he runs are absolutely not your typical cruise. I'm literally ready to sign up. Finally, I speak with Justin Meneguzzi about an experience he had on the kind of cruise that's always appealed to me - an expedition cruise. You'll have to listen to find out why three hundred passengers all abandoned their dinner and grabbed their camera

One of my very favourite cities anywhere is Melbourne, Australia. It's a city I seriously considering moving to when I returned from living abroad, and I have so many friends there - long story short, I always love visiting Melbourne. When my son was picked as a goalkeeper for the Western Australian state indoor soccer team, and we found out he'd be headed to Melbourne for the National Fustal Championships in January 2023, I was equally excited about his inclusion in the team and the fact that we'd "have to" go to Melbourne! This episode is a trip report about our experiences on sports travel, as well as a few days down in San Remo and Phillip Island, topped off with a city staycation in the heart of my beloved Melbourne. Links: Penguins at Phillip Island - https://www.penguins.org.au/ Voco Melbourne Central - https://www.ihg.com/voco/hotels/us/en/melbourne/melct/hoteldetail Immigration Museum - https://museumsvictoria.com.au/immigrationmuseum/  Join our Facebook group for Thoughtful Travellers - https://www

I've always wanted to get to Hawai'i some day - but now I know why I haven't made it yet. I needed to read this brilliant book first! This episode of The Thoughtful Travel Podcast is an interview with Annie Daly and Kainoa Daines, the authors of "Island Wisdom: Hawaiian Traditions and Practices for a Meaningful Life". It's one of those brilliant books - all too rare - which serve the function of teaching us really important things about a destination before we arrive, and enrich the experience we have once we're there. Having read this book, I know for certain I'll get so much more out of a future Hawai'i trip then if I hadn't read it. I had such a wonderful chat with Annie and Kainoa, and I've tried to edit it down a little - we couldn't stop talking! - but it's still a little longer than a regular episode. Hope you enjoy it and that if you've visited Hawai'i before, it gives you some extra context, or that it enriches a future trip if you're like me and haven't had the magic of a Hawaiian experience just ye