The Thoughtful Travel Podcast

You know I'm all about travelling more thoughtfully and purposefully - and you might find it strange that I'm talking in Episode 237 with the author of a book about *not* travelling! Jenny Herbert's book "The Art of Being a Tourist at Home" is, as the title suggests, about how to get that travel feeling, and many of the benefits of travel, without straying far from your home turf, and certainly without hopping on a plane or landing on the doorstep of a community overcrowded by other tourists. I agree with her premises for not travelling, although I do think there is still an important role for thoughtful travel even in a world fighting climate change and pandemics. In this interview with Jenny, we talk about some of her tips for gaining the benefits of travel in your hometown, when it might be okay to travel, how wonderful walking can be for getting some of the "travel feeling", whether you need to immerse yourself in a foreign culture to grow and how to carve out time for staycation-style travel. Links: Jenny Herbert’s book The Art of Being a Tourist at Home - https://amzn.to/3tcXnfX  Ep 220 How Travel Really Helps Us Understand the World - https://notaballerina.com/220 Ep 140 Being a Thoughtful Traveller in Denmark: Pre-Trip Thoughts - https://notaballerina.com/140 Join our Facebook group for Thoughtful Travellers - https://www.facebook.com/groups/thoughtfultravellers Show notes: https://notaballerina.com/237 Support the show: https://thoughtfultravel.substack.com/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

It's nearly a year since I recorded an episode about how Covid-19 was affecting us here in Western Australia, and what I thought about travel then and for the future: so it's time for another one.  In this special solo episode of The Thoughtful Travel Podcast - inspired by a visit to the airport! - I talk about the Covid experience in Perth, Australia, over the past twelve months, and also share my thoughts and feelings about travel in the near future. You might want to listen back to Episode 190 first and then follow on with this, so you can see what's changed over the past year. Links: Episode 190 - Covid-19 Thoughts from Perth, Australia - https://notaballerina.com/190 Join our Facebook group for Thoughtful Travellers - https://www.facebook.com/groups/thoughtfultravellers Show notes: https://notaballerina.com/236  Support the show: https://thoughtfultravel.substack.com/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Dive into the transformative journey of Cheryl Strayed's 'Wild', exploring personal growth and resilience. The hosts appreciate the book's emotional depth and the humor in packing blunders for travel. They also dissect the contrasts between the book and its film adaptation, highlighting the storytelling richness lost in visuals. Plus, excitement brews as they look ahead to tales of couch surfing in Iran, emphasizing the joys and challenges of travel, particularly for women.

Things inevitably go wrong when we travel and I know from experience that listeners of The Thoughtful Travel Podcast quite enjoy hearing these tales! In Episode 235 I have three guests sharing some travel slip ups - some of their own making and some quite out of their control. My first guest is Bob DiMenna who was travelling in Peru with two friends when they had an issue with, well, punctuality - but not what you might expect! I then chat with Kayla Ridley who has a sorry luggage tale to tell from a cruise ship trip she took as a high school student.  Finally, Patti Buff shares her story of a mishap when she and her cousin were exploring the coast of one of the Aran Islands off the west coast of Ireland. Their excursion doesn't end how she would have liked it to! Links: Bob DiMenna from The Travelers Blueprint podcast - https://thetravelersblueprint.com Kayla Ridley of Kayski Creations - https://kayskicreations.com/  Patti Buff - https://pattibuff.wordpress.com  Join our Facebook group for Thoughtful Travellers - https://www.facebook.com/groups/thoughtfultravellers Show notes: https://notaballerina.com/235 Support the show: https://thoughtfultravel.substack.com/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Much of the fun of travelling is about bumping up against other cultures and habits - and these days as thoughtful travellers, we usually try to be prepared for this and learn what we can before we arrive. But cultural faux pas or "gross moments" happen to the best of us and there are some great examples to be found in Episode 234 of The Thoughtful Travel Podcast. First up, I chat with Bev Malzard who tells me a series of fabulous tales about her own unfortunate cultural moments during the course of many years of travels. Some hilarious, some serious - all things that Bev would do differently the second time around! I then speak with Pam Mandel about a common cultural blunder - dressing inappropriately. Some years back Pam ended up unintentionally in Pakistan - unprepared and ill-informed - and made a cultural blunder she didn't intend to. Links: Bev’s blog TravelGal on the Move - https://travelgaltravels.com/  Pam Mandel’s website - https://www.nerdseyeview.com Pam’s book The Same River Twice - https://amzn.to/319lwbq  Join our Facebook group for Thoughtful Travellers - https://www.facebook.com/groups/thoughtfultravellers Show notes: https://notaballerina.com/234  Support the show: https://thoughtfultravel.substack.com/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Opportunities for university or college students to study abroad - during non-Covid times, of course - are very special. While I didn't get an opportunity to study abroad for any part of my university education, it's something I definitely want to encourage my son to do and putting together Episode 233 of The Thoughtful Travel Podcast reminded me of many reasons why. First up, I chat with Jennifer Johnston who spent time in the United States studying abroad as part of her Australia-based university degree. She speaks of many of the advantages of study abroad programs and the huge changes they can make in the students who take them. I then speak with Tinsley Rios about her shorter study abroad experience in Peru - a reminder that it doesn't need to be a long program to have a lasting impact. Finally, Patti Buff tells me about her experiences as a college exchange student in Dublin, Ireland - and we chat about some of the many extra-curricular parts of being on a study abroad program which are just as valuable as any time in the lecture hall. Links: Jennifer Johnston - Travel Bug Within - https://travelbugwithin.com.au/  Tinsley - Travel with Tinsley - https://travelwithtinsley.com/  Patti Buff - https://pattibuff.wordpress.com Join our Facebook group for Thoughtful Travellers - https://www.facebook.com/groups/thoughtfultravellers Show notes: https://notaballerina.com/233 Support the show: https://thoughtfultravel.substack.com/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

It's party time!! The Thoughtful Travel Podcast, in the past week, has both turned five years old (ready to start school now!!) and download numbers have hit half a million. It's been a very exciting week in our household! In this special celebration episode, I start off with a quick chat about podcast statistics and where The Thoughtful Travel Podcast fits into download numbers in general (remember, I like statistics - I love maths!). But then I digress to chat about how I've reached this stage, and reference psychologist Angela Duckworth's book Grit, which I'm currently re-reading - it's an interesting thing to consider how passion and persistence can work hand in hand and then suddenly, I have a five-year-old podcast and a much clearer vision of what else I want to do with it (and thoughtful travel in general) in the future. Finally, I give in to a directive from my son who, on listening to some older episodes, instructed me to tell more of my own travel stories. I've linked them to this fifth anniversary in a typically quirky fashion but just bear with me and enjoy the tales!   Links: Average podcast stats - https://www.thepodcasthost.com/planning/whats-a-good-number-of-downloads-for-a-podcast/ Grit - Angela Duckworth - https://amzn.to/3fneKr3  Join our Facebook group for Thoughtful Travellers - https://www.facebook.com/groups/thoughtfultravellers Show notes: https://notaballerina.com/232Support the show: https://thoughtfultravel.substack.com/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

We all have some kind of unconscious bias - or a few! - some stereotypes or misconceptions that we think deep down, even if in our conscious minds we don't think we do. It's human nature, but yet another marvellous part of travelling is it often helps us identify and confront these unconscious biases, and the examples from the guests in Episode 231 of The Thoughtful Travel Podcast demonstrate this perfectly. First up, I chat with Tonya Fitzpatrick who first tells me one of her own experiences in recognising and confronting an unconscious bias, and then explains another example from a traveller she'd interviewed on her own podcast. I then speak with Pam Mandel, who's travelled more than usual within her home country of the United States in the past few years, and found she also needed to confront and overcome some unconscious biases about her homeland. Links: Tonya Fitzpatrick of World Footprints - https://WorldFootprints.com  Pam Mandel’s website - https://www.nerdseyeview.com Pam’s book The Same River Twice - https://amzn.to/319lwbq Pam’s project The Statesider - https://statesider.us/  Harvard’s Implicit Association Test - https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/  Article critiquing the IAT - https://www.thecut.com/2017/01/psychologys-racism-measuring-tool-isnt-up-to-the-job.html  Join our Facebook group for Thoughtful Travellers - https://www.facebook.com/groups/thoughtfultravellers Show notes: https://notaballerina.com/231 Support the show: https://thoughtfultravel.substack.com/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This special episode is the audio of the Facebook Livestream of the March 2021 meeting of the Thoughtful Travellers Book Club, talking about Turn Right at Machu Picchu by Mark Adams. 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 Support the show: https://thoughtfultravel.substack.com/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

For this special round-numbered episode I wanted to muse on just one of the important lessons the 2020 pandemic has taught me about travel. In this episode I talk about issues like taking relaxing holidays (I'm bad at it; and most of the Thoughtful Travellers community agreed it's not their style); travelling close to home and staycationing, and some of the reasons I really miss the ability to travel further afield, to different cultures, languages and countries. Links: Support the podcast on Patreon - https://www.notaballerina.com/support Join our Facebook group for Thoughtful Travellers - https://www.facebook.com/groups/thoughtfultravellers Show notes: https://notaballerina.com/230 Support the show: https://thoughtfultravel.substack.com/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.