The Thoughtful Travel Podcast

The statistics tell us so: more and more of us want to give back and do good when we travel. This is heartening, right? Now we just have to start figuring out the best ways to contribute to the places we visit, in genuinely useful ways - and some of these are described in this episode. First up, I chat with Roger Smith of Echidna Walkabout who gives a good overview of giving back, and shares his wisdom from a tour operator perspective. I wish every tour operator thought like Roger! Next, I speak to Meg Jerrard and Mar Pages, two hardworking women I've known for many years, who now run small group tours under their Solo Female Travelers Club brand. Through this work, they've been giving back in Tanzania, and explain the story of Glory Thobias, who runs the Tanzanian Women Guides Foundation and trains female porters and guides to work in the lucrative tourism industry at Mount Kilimanjaro. Finally, I talk to Peter Baines, founder of Hands Across the Water, a company offering cycling tours of Thailand with a ver

I had the absolute pleasure of meeting Micah Kamohoali'i when I was in Sydney for SXSW recently, and I knew immediately we would need a LONG chat! This discussion was a pleasure from start to finish: we start off discussing how Micah found himself working in the tourism industry, and what tourism in Hawai'i has been like over the years: with ups and downs of how responsible it was (and wasn't) and the different kinds of tourists they were attracting. In a wide-ranging discussion which moves us via snakes in the grass to pounding bark for cloth, and incredibly then to the story of Micah being invited to take part in New York Fashion Week, whatever we talk about, Micah's clear love of Hawai'i and Hawaiian culture shines through and we finish up by hearing about his proudest moments from a splendid (and ongoing!) career. Links: Merrie Monarch festival https://www.merriemonarch.com/  House of Kamohoali’i documentaries: London https://www.hawaiinewsnow.com/video/2023/04/11/house-kamohoalii-london/ Paris https:/

I'm not alone in finding Japanese museums about earthquakes and tsunamis interesting and impactful; I know my friend Catherine who travelled with me in Tohoku last month is the same. This episode will test out whether it's just the two of us, or if more of you share this feeling - a yearning to understand more about these kinds of disasters, to get to know more about the human stories behind them, and a keen desire to share in the "hope tourism" equation of the scenario. In this episode, I talk about three parts of my recent trip to Japan that fit under this idea of "hope tourism" - and not "dark tourism". As well as visiting the "Kaze no Denwa", we spent many hours at two new museums in northern Japan: the Iwate Tsunami Memorial Museum in Rikuzentakata, Iwate, and the Great East Japan Earthquake and Nuclear Disaster Memorial Museum in Futaba, Fukushima. We both found these visits so impactful, and I'm still mulling over a lot of what I saw and learnt there to this day. Links: “Really Long Distance” - This A

Here it is! This is the live recording of our panel at South By South West (SXSW) Sydney, from October 2023, on the topic “Why We Need Travel More Than Travel Needs Us”. It was such a thrill to be on the podcast stage at SXSW with Catherine Marshall, Susanne Etti and Justin Watson, three fabulous guests who had so many interesting stories and opinions to offer for this tricky topic.  We start off with everyone sharing a story about what travel means to them, then dive deeper into topics like wildlife tourism, overtourism, and how we can travel better. This episode was recorded live at SXSW Sydney 2023. Links: Catherine Marshall - Instagram - https://instagram.com/zizzyballord Susanne Etti - Intrepid Travel - https://www.intrepidtravel.com/ Justin Watson - Justin’s World blog - https://justins.world/  SXSW Sydney - https://sxswsydney.com/  Join our Facebook group for Thoughtful Travellers - https://www.facebook.com/groups/thoughtfultravellers Join our LinkedIn group for Thoughtful Travellers - https://notabal

There are many, many ways to see Japan, but I think I've just experienced my favourite: on foot. In late September/early October 2023, I undertook a six-day trip with Walk Japan, on the Self-Guided Basho Wayfarer walk around Sendai. And it was brilliant! In this episode, I give an overview of the content and logistics of this trip, which essentially includes hiking various segments of the route that haiku poet Matsuo Basho took in the 1700s, as he describes in his book "Narrow Road to the Deep North". It had all the elements of a trip that I need to really love it: incredible scenery, interesting sightseeing spots, truly delicious food, some great interactions with locals, and all with one of my best friends. What more could a girl ask for? Most of this episode is a chat I recorded with my travel companion, Catherine Marshall, about our highlights from the trip. We cover our favourite hiking, food, train, and accommodation moments, along with our most unexpected highlights.  Links: Walk Japan main website -

It's a strange phenomenon, but podcast episodes full of stories of things going wrong on our travels are always popular! For Episode 307, I've got two stories of strange goings-on while my guests are at sea. Enjoy?! First up, Antonio Cala tells the story of that time he and his wife needed to be rescued by the Jamaican coastguard. Fortunately, we know they lived to tell the tale, but let's just say life on their catamaran in the Caribbean was not all plain sailing. I then chat with Imogen Lepere, who has a story to share from her very first press trip, aboard a boat in Indonesia on which she and her photographer boyfriend became the only passengers after everyone else cancelled after a tsunami the day before it set sail. Things only got stranger after that!  Links: Antonio Cala - Adventure Fix - https://www.adventurefix.co/  Imogen Lepere - https://www.imogenleperewriter.com/  Join our Facebook group for Thoughtful Travellers - https://www.facebook.com/groups/thoughtfultravellers Join our LinkedIn group for

If we want to be mindful of our carbon footprint when we travel, a good way to do this is to consider more carefully the kinds of places where we choose to stay - like focusing on eco-accommodation. This is a part of my travel I definitely haven't given enough thought to in the past, and this episode has inspired me with stories about all kinds of accommodation options which are more sustainable and environmentally friendly. First up, I chat with Dara Brewton who spent a month in Chiang Mai, Thailand, recently. By chance, almost, she ended up choosing some eco-friendly accommodation which has the added bonus of also looking adorable! I then speak with Fran and Andrew Robinson, who are owners of certified eco-friendly chalets near Busselton, Western Australia - since they also have their own trees (thousands of them!), they actually personally offset more carbon than their business produces. Finally, travel writer Nina Karnikowski gives a couple of great examples of sustainable accommodations options that she

Travel experiences should be accessible to everyone - I strongly believe that's an important part of the whole thoughtful travel ethos. As part of the Year of Accessible Tourism in Queensland, I've put together this episode about accessible travel on the Gold Coast in Queensland, Australia - it's full of great stories of people doing better, and I hope you enjoy it! First up, I chat with Daniel Watkins, world champion wake boarder turned owner of the Gold Coast Wake Park and Gold Coast Aqua Park. Daniel tells me all about their recent trial of all-abilities sessions and how important it is to him to make access to these experiences available to everyone going forward. I then speak with Mike Brigg of iFly Gold Coast, a skydiver and instructor who loves helping people discover what it feels like to fly. He has some really interesting stories to tell of the experiences of people with disabilities at iFly. Finally, Anna Carroll from HOTA Home of the Arts explains what they have done as a multi-arts facility to re

Bangkok is a city which rewards many repeat visits and my recent trip there proved it! Putting together Episode 304 was a special chance for me to chat with several friends, old and new, who I had the joy of travelling with on our recent trip to Thailand.  In this episode, I start of chatting with Paddy Jenkins about our mutually favourite part of this Bangkok trip - visiting the Portuguese quarter or Kudijin (Kudichin). Diving deeper into the history of Bangkok here and learning about the Portuguese influence was so interesting (and side note, also delicious!). Next up, I speak with Bonnie Grima about another fun part of our Bangkok days, exploring some of its most famous temples, Wat Arun and Wat Pho. This time, we had with us master guide Suree, and she helped us know more of the extra-interesting details about these temples, both historical and modern. For Jules Park, a committed foodie, our evening in Chinatown was an especially memorable part of our Bangkok stay and we had a good chat about the atmosphe

Thank you internet: you've made many things possible, two of them being podcasts, and working as a digital nomad. In this episode on digital nomading, I've got three guests who all bring quite different perspectives on digital nomad life, and I hope it sparks some thinking! First up, I chat with Will Hatton, aka The Broke Backpacker, who's spent many years wandering the world, making money in various ways online, including through his well-known blog. He describes his digital entrepreneurship trajectory and also gives some tips for prospective nomads. I then speak with Dara Brewton, who has been working as a freelancer for about five years and recently started doing some digital nomad stints, like a month working out of Chiang Mai in Thailand during her son's summer school vacation. Finally, I talk to Chris Christou of the End of Tourism podcast. Chris has lived in Oaxaca, Mexico, for about eight years now, and it's a real digital nomad hotspot - this has caused Chris to have a deeper think about digital noma

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