Rolf Potts is my favorite travel writer, not just because he’s a great writer, but because he managed to do what I had thought to be impossible: he legitimized backpacker-style travel writing in big-time mainstream travel magazines.
inspiring
There’s Treasure Everywhere
When I first moved to Taiwan I was fascinated with everything. I walked around stupefied, a silly grin permanently plastered to my face, amazed at the incredible world that I had discovered. That lasted for about three years.
Five Awesome Travel Quotes
In no particular order:
“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness.”
– Mark Twain
“A journey is like marriage. The certain way to be wrong is to think you control it.”
– John Steinbeck
Standing in the Fireworks: A Trip to the Yenshuei Beehive Fireworks Festival, Taiwan
On Febrary 27, 2010 a Chinese New Year fireworks celebration in the Guangdong province went awry and killed 19 villagers.
Ghosts and Angels on the Beautiful Island
When I woke up around nine that Sunday morning my cell phone showed that I had 33 missed calls. It rang again in my hand. It was the head teacher from the school I worked at. “We’re at the hospital.” She told me. “Jana was hit by a bus.” On the way to the hospital I zipped and dodged through the heavy Sunday traffic on my motorcycle. The scents of sewage, fried food, and exhaust alternately wafted into my helmet. Westerners find driving in Taiwan, like in most Asian countries, to be lawless and chaotic. Cars pull slowly out in front of you without looking. Taxicabs whip by just inches from your shoulder. People drive without helmets, run red lights, and do u-turns on crowded thoroughfares as a matter of course. Driving in Taiwan, however, is not lawless; the laws are just different. There are two unspoken rules of the road: first, you’re responsible for not hitting the vehicles in front of you no matter what they do. Second, you can drive in front of anyone as long as you can force him to stop and let you by; driving in Taiwan is basically a game of chicken. The larger your vehicle is, the greater your advantage in the game.
Had Jana, driving her scooter, played chicken with a bus?
Why I Travel
Every travel writer asks himself, “Why do I travel?” I first asked myself this question while on the road from Mexico to Guatemala.
I had been pondering the question while riding in a collectivo, which is essentially a mini-bus crammed so full of Mexican’s carrying children and chickens that it seems ready to burst. It had been a long time since my last trip, and I’d only been on the road for a few days, so I was still getting back into the swing of traveling. We were driving from the Mexican city of Tapachula to the Guatemalan border.
After Typhoon Morakot Taiwan Won’t Be the Same | Cranbrook Daily Townsman
A narrative about my experience during and after Typhoon Morakot, the most destructive typhoon to hit Taiwan in 50 years.