Travel blogger Q&A: Jodi Ettenberg

by Alex Robertson Textor on

For many travel enthusiasts, bloggers, and armchair travelers, Jodi Ettenberg’s story is downright inspirational. For several years a successful corporate lawyer, she left her comfortable if demanding life in New York to travel the world.

Along the way, she’s had an unnerving number of bird crap incidents, documented Thailand’s red shirt protests, and provided an enticing introduction to the Perhentian Islands, among many other engagements. One constant throughout is food, and in particular street food.

Ettenberg authors a fantastic blog called Legal Nomads and maintains a very active and always interesting Twitter account.

Q: Describe your profession.

A: A few years ago, I’d have said corporate lawyer. Nowadays: hungry nomad, avid reader, mountain climber, marshmallow enthusiast, and travel blogger.

Q: What drives your instinct to travel?

A: A desire to soak up as much as possible, as intensely as possible. I know this sounds broad, but it applies to almost every facet of what I’ve done these past few years. I am continuously energized by learning new things and experiencing them firsthand. Travel can be exhausting and it can be awe-inspiring, but I’ve found the best way to balance between the two is to keep reaching out to local people wherever you go.

My time learning, eating, and traveling with locals has compelled me to keep going, from living with a local family in the Philippines to shaking my head at the sheer insanity of a crazy transportation route in Burma.

Q: Your travels have focused on South America and Asia. What drew you to these parts of the world, in very general terms?

A: For South America, the language and the people. I lived in Uruguay and Ecuador in 2002, and taught myself Spanish by compulsively writing down words in the middle of conversations and then memorizing them at night. In my months on the continent, I managed to pick up quite a bit of the language. I was able to talk to cab drivers and learn about their life stories, and ask questions about South America’s tangled history. More importantly, I was able to understand the answers to my questions, which deepened the desire to keep traveling there.

For Asia, the food, with the people a close second. It could be whatever magnificent street eats I find for breakfast, to the many soups in Burma, to sitting down in Kuala Lumpur and receiving cooking lessons in exchange for bringing tourists to a street stand near BB Plaza. I get obnoxiously excited about food, and will happily travel to another town just to try a dish. My interest in food adds a tremendously rewarding dimension to my gallivanting, especially in Asia where food is so integral to culture. I loved reading Anthony Zee’s Swallowing Clouds for that reason, as it ties together Chinese food and history and culture in an intoxicating way.

Q: The sheer duration of your travels is an inspiration to tons of travel writers and bloggers, and your pace is both slow and relaxed. Talk about this.

A: I started out traveling at a relatively quick pace, but once I hit Asia and fell in love with Asian food I started to move more slowly. I spent four months in the Philippines and two months each in Indonesia and Malaysia. The 90-hour work weeks I’d endured as a corporate lawyer gave me the freedom to truly explore whatever enticed me as I wandered through the world. I worked hard, and I feel very lucky that I now have the time, energy, and desire to keep traveling as long as I have.
Q: You were in Bangkok earlier this year while the red shirt protests raged and were quite active on Twitter during that period. Would you be comfortable making any statements about the contemporary politics of Thailand?

A: It is interesting that you framed your question around Twitter, because the role it played in Thailand’s tumultuous spring was truly eye-opening. I joined Twitter in September 2009 after dragging my feet for quite some time, and it has been a great way to learn about new things and to meet other travelers or expats in new places.

But during the red shirt protests, it became a whole other brand of useful to me and to Thailand generally. I was quoted in a Globe and Mail article after the crackdown about Twitter and its unprecedented role in Bangkok, and the examples cited in the article show how truly important the real-time updates were. From warning people of dangerous areas, to updating on the ground with pictures, to helping rescue the wounded from the downtown core during the crackdown itself, it was just so incredible to watch the organic expansion of public interaction, even when things were going pear-shaped.

I experienced this firsthand on April 10th, when the Thai media tweeted that no tear gas was currently being used just as I was in Kok Wua intersection getting teargassed. I was able to upload a picture from my BlackBerry of the teargas being dropped over the intersection as it happened, which was retweeted widely. Pictorial proof is not absolute, but the thousands and thousands of pictures uploaded by Twitter users in Thailand went a long way to keep everyone abreast of what was happening during the maelstrom of those weeks in Bangkok.

As a foreigner in Thailand, it is important to tread very lightly with any political statements. I tried to keep my blog focused on pictures and links to articles about the red shirt rallies or politics, as opposed to making judgments myself. I was only there for a few months, and though I was lucky enough to have been thrust into the core of the protests (both by purposely running around in the rallies and taking pictures and by living in Din Daeng, an area devastated by the resulting crackdown), I am certainly no expert when it comes to Thai politics. I will say that things have, on the surface, returned to normal, but that under the surface, resentment still percolates as many of the underlying issues leading up to the protests have not been addressed by the government. Yesterday’s downtown Bangkok bomb explosion, which followed a local by-election, demonstrates that reconciliation has yet to occur.

Q: Where are you headed next?

A: I was supposed to head over to Nepal and trek with my brother and his friends at the end of the summer, but unfortunately my lingering bronchial issues (from inhaling burnt tire smoke in Bangkok during the protests) have made the trip a no-go. My aim is to move back to Asia on a more permanent basis come 2011. Ideally, I would like to keep writing about my travels on a freelance basis, and get involved with a microcredit organization in Asia.

Q: Can you offer three tips for prospective long-term or RTW (round-the-world) travelers?

A: From my own experiences, I’d offer the following:

1. Do not buy a RTW ticket. If you’ve got a set time frame, then a RTW ticket might be for you. But otherwise I encourage everyone to see where their travels take them, as that freedom is part of the fun. Had I booked a RTW ticket, I would have never made it to the Philippines, Burma, or Ecuador. I understand that many people want structure within their travels, but so much of what makes travel exciting to me is the ability to jump somewhere enticing if the opportunity arises.

2. Bring duct tape. I’ve taped up the rips in my pack cover, holes in the window screens in malarial zones, leaks in my tents on a variety of camping trips, and the cord to my eeePC when rats chewed through it in the Philippines. I wrap the tape around itself so it has no hole in the center.

3. Read as much as you can about a place before you go. Many travelers are well-informed about their destination but know little about the historical or cultural quirks prior to arrival. I could only gape at a tourist in Burma who said enthusiastically “this country is so peaceful!” He had read nothing about the place and hadn’t realized how much of the country was off limits and why. He just arrived, saw the sights, and left, without trying to dig deeper to understand what made things the way they are. I’m not saying that you need to be able to give a dissertation upon arriving somewhere new! But along the way, it is great to pick up a book or two, if only to add an additional, important layer that will make your visit more satisfying overall.

GadlingTV’s Travel Talk – Behind the Scenes of BBC’s ‘Life’ with Roger Munns!

by Stephen Greenwood on

GadlingTV’s Travel Talk, episode 19 – Click above to watch video after the jump

For Roger Munns, jumping in the ocean with 100 ton whales while they fight for the female is just another day at work; come with us as we go behind the scenes of BBC’s ‘Life’ series. Roger gives us the inside scoop on what it’s like to dive with whales, all while holding his breath and keeping the camera steady.

Click through to check out the interview and see some of the amazing footage he shot while capturing the never-before-seen Humpback Whale Heat Run for BBC’s ‘Life’.


If you have any questions or comments about Travel Talk, you can email us at talk AT gadling DOT com.

Subscribe via iTunes:
[iTunes] Subscribe to the Show directly in iTunes (M4V).
[RSS M4V] Add the Travel Talk feed (M4V) to your RSS aggregator and have it delivered automatically.

Links
Read more about Roger right here!
Check out BBC’s ‘Life’ series – just in time for Father’s Day!
Find out more about Humpback Whales & heat runs.
Want to see who else is behind the cameras? Check out award winning filming/photography company ScubaZoo.



Hosts: Aaron Murphy-Crews
Special Guests: Roger Munns

Produced, Edited, and Directed by: Stephen Greenwood, Aaron Murphy-Crews, Drew Mylrea

Ten great markets around the world

by Kyle Ellison on

All too often, the first stop on our tourist itineraries is at the local museum, mosque or castle. But an arguably better place to start your visit is at the market. A visit to a local market is the perfect place to pick up some souvenirs, try out the local cuisine and get a taste of authentic culture on your next trip. Here’s ten of our favorite markets from around the world. Take a look.

Damnoen Saduak Floating Market, Bangkok, Thailand
Swap the shopping cart for a dugout canoe, and the store aisle for a muddy canal, and suddenly you’ve found yourself bartering for fresh cut pineapple from a floating vendor at Bangkok’s Damnoen Saduak Floating Market. A longtime tourist draw, the market has skyrocketed in popularity, and on busy days the canals can get packed to the point of “canoe gridlock”. Well-prepared shoppers will bring small bills to avoid having to make change, and an adequate form of sun protection to survive the open-air journey.

Istanbul Grand Bazaar, Istanbul, Turkey
The granddaddy of its genre, Istanbul’s Grand Bazaar is the world’s oldest–and one of the world’s largest–covered markets. Slinging everything from traditional pottery to precious gemstones, the market has roughly 4000 different shops, and the restaurants feature some of the most palate-whetting, finger-licking good food on the planet. Savvy travelers to the market bring a pocketful of cash (as few stalls accept credit cards), hardy bargaining skills, and a voracious appetite.

Monastiraki Flea Market, Athens, Greece
On Sunday mornings in Athens, the Monastiraki Flea Market is simply the place to be. Rural merchants and urban store owners alike all crowd the streets with their wares, as street performers and local musicians provide background ambiance to the entire scene. While many of the goods found in the market can be classified as typical tourist junk, the intuitive shopper can easily be rewarded by hunting out the quirky local characters and some of the tucked away stores. One such store features a sign out front that simply states, “No tourists allowed. Travelers welcome”, attesting to the shopper it hopes to attract.
Night Market, Luang Prabang, Laos
Seeing as the entire city of Luang Prabang is listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, it comes as no surprise that it also features one of the most colorful, exquisite markets in all of Asia. Each evening, ethnic Hmong villagers descend from nearby hill communities to ply their handicrafts at the Night Market, with the most popular being the handsewn silk scarves. If all the shopping works up an appetite, an incredibly narrow alleyway features a cornucopia of fresh meat, vegetables, and fish, where you can tackle an “all-you can fit” style plate to the tune of a whopping $3.

Jalan Gaya Street Fair, Kota Kinabalu, Borneo, Malaysia
There aren’t all that many markets in the world where you can purchase a fresh handful of Rambutan fruit, handpainted blowdarts, and top it all off with a live snake for lunch. This is exactly the case, however, at the Jalan Gaya Street Fair held each Sunday in this bustling Borneo metropolis. For a curious array of fresh seafood, check down the street at the seafood market along the waterfront. Highly eclectic and culturally diverse, the entire scene takes place under the watchful eye of 13,435 ft. Mt. Kinabalu, looming stoically in the distance.

Chiconcuac Tianguis, Mexico City, Mexico
With the third-largest metropolitan area on the planet and a culturally diverse native population, Mexico City is bound to offer up some colorful street shopping experiences, for those who know where to look. Traditional tianguis (Aztec for market) are located all over the city, the largest being the Chiconcuac Market on the outskirts of the city, where up to 3,000 merchants swap handwoven clothing, pottery, and various forms of produce.

The Medina, Tangiers, Morocco
With its shoulder width alleyways and constant cloud of wafting spices, navigating the Tangiers Medina is a shopping experience entirely unto itself. While many of the Medina (old towns, usually featuring tightly knit houses and narrow alleys) in other Moroccan cities have become somewhat of tourist-traps, the Tangiers Medina is an authentic cultural experience. Spend enough time in the Medina, and there’s a good chance you’ll wind up drinking tea on a rooftop with a local carpet merchant, haggling over color schemes and which neighbor cooks the best lunch.

Chinatown Night Market, Singapore
Under a string of red lanterns in the moist equatorial air, the experience of the Chinatown Market comes alive once the sun goes down. A juxtaposition of tradition and modernity, you can haggle for knockoff watches and purses while eating a plate of fried manta ray wings, or examine the markings on a handpainted mask while enjoying a cold Tiger beer. While the market is always a hotbed of energy, the streets explode with activity during the Chinese New Year.

Portobello Market, London, England
Set in West London’s Notting HIll district (yes, the same one as the film), the Portobello Market held each Saturday turns two miles of Portobello Rd. into a teeming street scene of market stalls and browsing pedestrians. In proper British fashion, the market is subdivided into categories so that merchandise of the same genre can all be found clustered together in the same vicinity.

El Rastro, Madrid, Spain
An essential stop on any Madrid itinerary, El Rastro is a Sunday morning flurry of street commerce that takes up multiple streets in the Spanish capital. While the usual market items are available for purchase, the top-prize at El Rastro is to come away with a good price on a handcrafted sword from the nearby town of Toledo, home of all the weaponry found in the movie series Lord of the Rings.

Related:
* 20 best destinations for shopping
* 16 great farmers’ markets

Trade Mocked

by Andrew Evans on

You were a cheerleader, you dated a cheerleader, or you hated the cheerleaders. As I recall, that’s how high school worked.

Thanks to travel PR, that same primeval paradigm lives on long after graduation. That miniskirts-shouting-slogans thing still works, whether you’re a used car salesman, Miley Cyrus on VH1 or the tourist board of a small Balkan nation. When it comes to selling your destination in today’s busy world of busy people, a country’s name just isn’t enough–just like school spirit, you need colors, a pep band, a mascot, a brand and most important–a cheer.

It’s tragic but true: tourist boards don’t trust their country’s name to inspire appropriate thoughts in your brain. Toponyms are too open-ended and too untrustworthy–also, way too obvious. For example, what’s the first thing that pops into your head when I say . . . Monte Carlo? How about Australia? The Bahamas? Kuwait? The Gambia?

Whatever you’re thinking, it’s not enough. Tourist boards want you to choose their destination over all others, then allocate all of your vacation days to them and then come spend your money on very specific things–like miniature golf by the sea or hot air balloon rides across the prairie. In short, they want your school spirit so much they’re churning out cheers to fill up all the Swiss cheese holes in your mental map of the world.

Like a good cheer, a good destination slogan is simple and so memorable it sticks in your head like two-sided tape. Sex sells, but then so does love: “Virginia is for Lovers”, Hungary offers visitors “A Love for Life”, Albania promises “A New Mediterranean Love”, while the highlighted “I feel Slovenia” spells out sweetly “I Feel Love”. Meanwhile, Bosnia & Herzegovina call themselves “the Heart Shaped Land” and Denmark’s logo is a red heart with a white cross. Colombia and Dubai have red hearts in their logo. Everybody else uses sunshine.
There is a direct correlation between sunshine deprivation and travelers with disposable income–sunny places sell, which is why Maldives is “the Sunny Side of Life”, Sicily says “Everything else is in the shade”, Ethiopia quizzically boasts “13 Months of Sunshine”, Portugal is “Europe’s West Coast”, and Spain used to be “Everything Under the Sun”. Spain was also the first country ever to have a logo-the splashy red sun painted by Joan Miró in 1983. Some destination logos work–like the black and red “I LOVE NY” design of Milton Glaser that’s been around ever since the 70s. Others fail to grasp the spirit of a place (cough, Italia). Reducing one’s country to a crazy font and some cheesy clip art often detracts from that country’s best assets. Like nature.

When chasing the crunchy yuppie granola suburbanite dollar on vacation, you’ve gotta roll out Nature and promise them the kind of purity that lacks from their daily life. British Virgin Islands claims “Nature’s Little Secrets” while Belize counterclaims with “Mother Nature’s Best Kept Secret”. Switzerland urges us to “Get Natural”, Poland is “The Natural Choice”, Iceland is “Pure, Natural, Unspoiled”, Ecuador is Life in a Pure State, “Pure Michigan” is just as pure, Costa Rica is “No Artificial Ingredients”, and like a clothing tag that makes you feel good, New Zealand is simply “100% Pure”. New Zealand also wants us to believe that they’re the “youngest country on earth” but that’s pushing it. The youngest country on earth is actually Kosovo (Born February 2008)–so young they’re still working on their slogan.

And there’s a tough one–how do you sell a country that’s just poking its head out from under the covers of war and bloodshed? Kosovo’s big bad next-door neighbor Serbia asks us frankly to “Take a New Look at Your Old Neighbor”; “It’s Beautiful–It’s Pakistan” steers clear of the conflict, Colombia owns up to its knack for kidnapping by insisting, “The Only Risk is Wanting to Stay”, and Vietnam nudges our memories away from the past and towards “The Hidden Charm” of today.

Our nostalgia for simpler, better, pre-tourist times invokes our most romantic notions about travel: Croatia is “The Mediterranean as it Once Was”, Tahiti consists of “Islands the Way they Used to Be”, and Bangladesh employs a kind of reverse psychology to insist we “Come to Bangladesh, Before the Tourists.” Such slogans of unaffectedness mirror the push for national validation by tourism, where actual authenticity is second to perceived authenticity, hence Malaysia is “Truly Asia”, Zambia is “The Real Africa”, and the Rocky Mountain States make up “The Real America”. Greece is “The True Experience” and Morocco is “Travel For Real”. Everybody wants to be legit.

Countries without the certified organic label try merely to stupefy us: Israel “Wonders”, Germany is “Simply Inspiring”, Chile is “Always Surprising”, Estonia is “Positively Surprising”, “Amazing Thailand” amazes, and Dominica claims to “Defy the Everyday”. To that same surprising end, Latin America loves trademarking their exclamation points (see ¡Viva Cuba!, Brazil’s one-word essay “Sensational!” and El Salvador’s “Impressive!”)

Where punctuated enthusiasm falls short, countries might confront the traveler with a challenge or a dare. Jamaica projects the burden of proof on its tourists by claiming “Once You Go You Know”, Peru asks that we “Live the Legend”, Canada insists we “Keep Exploring”, South Africa answers your every question with a smiley “It’s Possible”. Meanwhile, Greenland sets an impossibly high bar with “The Greatest Experience”.

Working the totality of a country’s experience into a good slogan is a challenge that often leads to open-ended grandstanding: “It’s Got to be Austria” might be the answer to any question (and sounds better when spoken with an Austrian accent). Next-door Slovakia is the “Little Big Country”, insisting that size is second to experience. Philippines offers “More than the Usual” and small, self-deprecating Andorra confesses, “There’s Just So Much More” (I think what they meant to say is, “come back please”). Really big numbers carries the thought even further: Papua New Guinea is made up of “A Million Different Journeys”; Ireland brightens with “100,000 Welcomes”.

When all else fails, aim for easy alliteration, as in “Enjoy England“, “Incredible India“, “Mystical Myanmar”, and the “Breathtaking Beauty” of Montenegro. (For more on the correlation between simplistic phrases and high mental retention, See Black Eyed Peas-Lyrics).

The point of all this is that today, the internet is our atlas and Google is our guidebook. It’s how we travel, how we think about travel and how we plan our travel. Punch in a country like Tunisia and you’re greeted with a dreamy curly-cue phrase like “Jewel of the Mediterranean”–Type in next-door neighbor Algeria and you get a glaring State Department warning saying “Keep Away.” In a scramble for those top ten search results, destinations compete with a sea of digital ideas that pre-define their tourist appeal. It’s why we’ll never find that page proclaiming Iran “The Land of Civilized and Friendly People” but why a simple “Dubai” turns up Dubai Tourism in first place, along with their moniker “Nowhere Like Dubai” (which should win some kind of truth in advertising prize.)

That aggressive, American-style marketing has taken over the billion-dollar travel industry is obvious. Nobody’s crying over the fact that we sell destinations like breakfast cereal–that countries need a bigger and brighter box with a promised prize inside in order to lull unassuming tourist shoppers into stopping, pulling it off the shelf, reading the back and eventually sticking it in their cart. I guess the sad part is how the whole gregarious exercise limits travel and the very meaning of travel. By boiling down a country into some bland reduction sauce of a slogan, we cancel out the diversity of experience and place, trade wanderlust for jingoism, and turn our hopeful worldview into a kind of commercial ADHD in which we suddenly crave the Jersey Shore like a kid craves a Happy Meal.

Nobody’s ever asked me to join their tourist board focus group, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have my own opinions and tastes. For instance, my daily reality is a stereo cityscape of car alarms and jackhammers. Any country that simply placed the word “Quiet” or “Peaceful” in lower-case Times New Roman, 24-point font white type in the upper right hand corner of a double-truncated landscape spread–well, I’d be there in a heartbeat. Better yet–how about a one-minute TV commercial of total silence. (“Oh, wow honey, look!–that’s where I wanna go.”)

This is probably why I’ve never been in a focus group. For all the focus on authenticity and reality, I find most tourism slogans lacking in both. For the most part, they are limiting and unoriginal, easily dropped into any of the above categories. Even worse, today’s slogans challenge actual truths gained through travel experience. One day spent in any place offers a lifetime of material for long-lasting personal travel slogans. My own favorites include Russia (“Still Cold”), Turkey (“Not Really Europe At All”), England (“Drizzles Often”), Orlando (“Cheesy as Hell”), and Ireland (“Freakin’ Expensive”).

As a writer, I must argue against the cheerleaders and in favor of words–the more words we attach to a destination the better the sell. I think it’s safe to assume that Bruce Chatwin’s In Patagonia has done more for Argentina tourism than any of their own slogans. Similarly, Jack London gives props to Alaska, Mark Twain mystifies us with the Mississippi, and Rudyard Kipling keeps sending people to India. All four authors wrote about love, nature, and sunshine. They wrote long books filled with enthusiasm and punctuated with exclamation marks. They made us fall in love and yearn for places we never saw or knew.

No matter how many millions get spent on tourist slogans, today’s trademarked PR phraseology has generally failed to hit the mark. Perhaps they’ll make us rethink a place–reconsider a country we’d somehow looked over, but can a two or three word slogan ever touch us in that tender way, make us save up all our money, pack our bags and run away?

I don’t think so.

10 great destinations for outdoor adventure

by Gadling Staff on

With the possible exception of beach-goers, very few people want to travel in order to sit. Travel is all about experiencing the best of what a destination has to offer, and in many cases, the best of what a destination can offer is adventure. From mountain climbing to snowshoeing to hill-walking — yes, “hill-walking” is an adventure sport! — here are ten of the world’s best destinations for outdoor adventure.

Now get off your duff and get out there!

Squamish, British Columbia, Canada – Snowshoeing
Discover the outbacks of Garibaldi Provincial Park in Squamish, British Columbia at Elfin Lakes, where a cluster of little lakes reside at 5,446 ft (1,660 m), about 11 kilometers from the trailhead.

We threw on skins on skis and hiked up (and skiied down later, for a great powdery ride out!). For the less initiated, snowshoeing is a fun and easy way to enjoy this slice of paradise outdoors, where the immense expanse of snowy playground past Paul Ridge (the highest point) will turn your dreary winter into a delightful wonder.

The first four kilometers are the steepest, which lead to Red Heather Meadows at (4,757 ft) 1,450 m, but the remaining seven kilometers even out on the plateau of Paul Ridge, leading to Elfin Hut, which is surrounded by mountains on all sides. It’s a glorious experience you wouldn’t want to miss.

Bonus: You can also do this, as a hike, in the summer.


Kota Kinabalu, Sabah, Malaysia – Mountain Climbing
Want to reach the top of the world without climbing Everest? You can, at Mount Kinabalu, the highest mountain in Southeast Asia and the focal point of the Kinabalu National Park, Malaysia‘s first World Heritage site.

The good news is, you don’t need technical skills or gear to climb this mountain. All you need is strong legs and good cardio. We took about seven hours to reach the peak (if you’re really fit, you might get there faster), through what seemed to be an endless set of steps – but this giant jungle trek upward is worth the glorious views that await at Low’s Peak.

The sheer effort will make the experience a breath-taking one (literally), but the exhilaration of reaching the peak at 13,435 ft (4,095 m) makes it all worthwhile.


Kingston, Ontario, Canada – Camping and Canoeing
Nature-lovers will not miss the chance to camp and canoe in the summertime. Be it swimming in lakes, enjoying a campfire at night or sleeping in a tent outdoors, you’ll get an unforgettable taste of nature at Frontenac Provincial Park, located in southern Ontario about 40 kilometers north of the historical city of Kingston.

Rent a canoe, paddle out into the interiors, portage to one of the 48 interior camp sites, jump into the lake waters, or hike any of its 160 kilometers of trails. We recommend the Little Salmon Lake Loop, which is about 15 kilometers and takes about three to five hours. Outdoor enthusiasts will have a field day in this beautiful national park.

Sydney, Australia – Mountain Hiking
Australia isn’t just home to the koalas and kangaroos – it also houses The Three Sisters, a three-mountain range in the scenic Blue Mountains, 50 km from the city of Sydney. Legend has it that three beautiful sisters were turned into stone to protect them from harm. But the witch doctor who was supposed to transform them back into human form died, leaving them in permanent structure forever.

To get the best views of The Three Sisters, take the Scenic Walkway, a two-kilometer hike on boardwalk through the rainforest. Ride down the steepest incline railway in the world – it’s almost vertical in direction! The 415 m descent takes you through a cliff-side tunnel into ancient rainforest. From there, explore the Scenic Walkway, or find your way to the 1,000 steps that will take you to Echo Point, where The Three Sisters sit.


Vermont, United States – Alpine Skiing

Why let all that snow go to waste in the winter? The heavenly mountains of New England, USA, offer multitudinous slopes that are a skier’s haven.

For the “best powder,” we love Jay Peak in Vermont, which claims to accumulate more snow than any other ski resort in the East. With 50 miles of trails on 385 acres serviced by seven lifts and the most recommended glade skiing, what more can you ask for?

Pro tip: Go off the wider trails and glide through the glades at Jay Peak, which offer great depths of snow for those who love their pow’.

Phuket, Thailand – Scuba Diving
Sun worshippers will discover a tropical paradise on the island of Phuket, Thailand, where spectacular surfing, snorkeling and diving await those who seek the secrets of the deep.

Besides a flamboyant nightlight at Phuket’s Patong Beach, Asia’s most popular beach destination offers lush white sands along palm-lined beaches as well as world-class diving in the Andaman Sea. Many travel adventure outfits in town offer scuba diving courses and PADI certification.

Book your scuba trip via speedboat to the surrounding islands (we loved the beautiful, clear waters around Phi Phi island), don your diving suit and enter the unparalleled underwater world beneath.

Canmore, Alberta, Canada – Backcountry Ski Touring
For those who can’t get enough of winter, take skiing one step further and head out into the backcountry of the Canadian Rockies, where unspoiled wilderness and untouched powder snow await – minus the cost of lift tickets.

Near the town of Canmore lies the Wapta Icefields, a magnificent stretch of nature that spans many miles north along the continental divide from the Lake Louise area. The Icefields house vast glaciers, easy peaks and warming huts along the way.

If you’re a beginner, the four-day ski traverse run by Yamnuska Mountain Adventures is the perfect outfit to offer an experience in classical ski-mountaineering.

Koh Samui, Thailand – Kite-Surfing
Instead of diving down deep into the sea, take to the skies instead with kite-surfing at Koh Samui, Thailand.

Rather like a parachute jump in reverse, get harnessed to a parachute before being gently released into the air from the back of a speedboat, and remain attached for the duration of the ride.

At Lamai beach, its kite surf center features an outer reef which creates a natural barrier against waves. This ensures that the waist-deep water remains flat and the bottom is soft sand as well.

Check out Kiteboarding Asia, whose schools are certified by the International Kiteboarding Organization (IKO), at Lamai or Chaweng beaches.

Cumbria, Lake District, England – Hill-Walking
For a postcard-perfect encounter with nature, England’s largest national park – Lake District National Park – is a walker’s paradise, flanked by gorgeous mountains and beautiful lakes.

With 2,292 square kilometers of vast beauty to explore and admire, the hiking options are endless. We suggest a hike to Scafell Peak. At 3,210 ft, it is the highest mountain in England and a popular spot for hill-walking, as the British call it.

For the more adventurous, take the more challenging route at Helvellyn. The narrow ridge of Striding Edge will raise your heartbeat in more ways than one.

Queenstown, New Zealand – Bungee Jumping
Who would have thought that jumping off a bridge with a long elastic cord tied to your ankles can be considered fun? In Queenstown, New Zealand, somebody evidently thought so – and promptly catapulted this city to fame with this thrill-seeking activity. This person was AJ Hackett, who opened the first commercial bungee jumping operation from the Kawarau Bridge (43 m high) over the Kawarau River in 1888.

For your personalized experience, you can choose from a number of options: topple over backwards; forwards, with another person, spin, or somersault. You can even choose to bob above the water, touch it, or even be fully immersed! Not for the faint-of-heart.