By Amanda Kendle
The podcast currently has 363 episodes available.
This episode is a joyful collaboration with Tracy of the UK Travel Podcast.
When one of your best friends invites you to his wedding in the Lake District in England, you say yes!
We first met Cham in Cambodia - back in Episode 114 - and we've holidayed with him across Asia ever since, but meeting up in the UK to celebrate his wedding was our most exciting adventure together yet. My 14-year-old son and I took the opportunity to explore some more of north-west England and northern Wales while we were there, taking in Manchester, Liverpool, the Lake District, and northern Wales, including Wrexham and Llangollen.
In this collab with the UK Travel Podcast, Tracy interviews me about my UK experience and I describe it through a thoughtful travel lens, from our planning, our experiences and then our post-trip reflection. There's also some unexpected sandwich chat!
Links:
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If you think of Australia, you're bound to imagine a few stereotypes of what life here is like: sun and sand might feature, and you will perhaps imagine we're a laidback nation of permanently relaxed people. Over the last year, the topic of what people think about Australia has come up with quite a few guests so I decided to compile an episode about these ideas.
I chat first with Michael Jensen who spent half a year here on student exchange in the 1980s, and recently returned for another months-long stint: what had changed? Quite a lot, as you can imagine, and we had an interesting chat.
Alex Zeringer, a German student now based in Ireland, came to Australia on a much more recent student program just last year, and I asked him about his impressions of my home town of Perth.
Our reputation often precedes us, and Julia Kaplan told me her ideas about Australia and its people although she hasn't yet been here - but she's met enough Aussies abroad on her travels to get a good idea.
Finally, I speak with Jules Park, who moved here from South Korea, and tells me some of her initial cultural shocks, including the tale of pink hair!
Links:
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Meeting new people is one of my favourite parts of travelling, and when these chance encounters turn into long-term friendships, that's just perfection! My most recent trip, three weeks in England and Wales, came about because my son and I were invited to attend the wedding of a dear travelling friend, who we originally met in Cambodia and have also travelled with in Vietnam, Malaysia and Thailand - and now England!
This episode features many such friendships, but the most unique is Daniel Troia's friendship with a family in a tiny, picturesque village in the Swiss Alps. He has spent many summers with these now long-term friends, despite not having a common language when he first met them.
My second guest is Rupert Grey who tells of his very special friendship with Bangladeshi photojournalist Shahidul Alam, who he first met back in 1992 when travelling briefly in Bangladesh with his family.
Finally, Tracy Collins tells me about several special friends from travelling, and in particular she highlights some of the many and varied ways you can more easily find yourself making friends when you're away from home.
Links:
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Learning other languages can be really hard - especially if you're sitting in your home country trying to learn from a boring textbook. The guests in this episode all decided that they'd learn another language - Thai, French, Polish and Welsh - by travelling and immersing themselves in the language, in varied and interesting ways.
First up, I hear from Paddy Jenkins about his experience of learning Thai - in fact, teaching himself Thai - while he spent six months volunteering in Chiang Mai. Spoiler alert: yes, he would literally take his notebook and dictionary even if he went to the pub or a nightclub! That's dedication.
Next, I speak with Tracy Collins who was told by her French teacher she would never be able to speak French, but proved her wrong when she moved to France to work as an au pair. She also was lucky to be working for a family that helped her out in some perhaps unexpected ways.
Love is often a reason for learning another language and this was what took Thomas Swick to living in Poland. I did laugh when he was explaining the grammatical complexities of Polish, although when you're leaning it you're more likely to cry, I think!
Finally, Pam Petro decided to make the effort to learn the lesser-spoken language of Welsh. She went through some hardcore learning and even took some surprising travels in her pursuit of Welsh fluency.
Links:
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Although I never studied abroad myself I have no doubt at all that I would have loved every minute of it - and my three guests today certainly remind me of all of the many ways a study abroad experience can be life-changing.
I start off chatting with Pam Petro who studied a graduate program in Wales, and not only learnt something from her course but began a lifetime obsession with all things Welsh.
Next, I speak with Brandon Miller who studied abroad in France. He has now co-founded the Too Fly Foundation which helps students from under-privileged backgrounds access experiences like study abroad programs, as he recognised how valuable and life-changing they are.
Finally, I talk to Alex Zeringer, who was a student I met while he was studying abroad here in Perth at Murdoch University, where I teach (among other subjects) podcasting - it was so great to catch up with him now that he's back at university in Ireland.
Links:
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For travellers like us, knowing a tourism business we are about to use is properly thoughtful, taking into account the impact we will have on the community and the environment, is important. But with an industry full of greenwashing and unsubstantiated eco-credentials, it's sometimes difficult to know what we can trust.
Over the past few years now I've had a growing awareness of B Corps but was very keen to dig deeper, so this podcast episode is here to satisfy my own desires to know more, but also to help my listeners understand what makes a B Corp so they can make decisions about their travel with care.
My first guest is Jonathan Coleman from Untours. When I chatted with Jonathan last year, he explained to me that Untours was, in fact, the very first B Corp back in 2007, and learning how this came about was the impetus for me to find some more people to talk to about this important topic.
I speak next with Narelle Wilson of Volta Consulting, who knows a lot about the process of how a business applies to be certified as a B Corp, and explains it clearly!
Finally, I talked to Aurora Expedition's Chief Marketing Officer, Hayley Peacock-Gower, about Aurora's recent B Corp certification. She gives some interesting examples of some of the improvements Aurora is making as part of the continuous improvement that the B Corp movement encourages.
Links:
Jonathan Coleman from Untours Foundation - https://untoursfoundation.org/
Narelle Wilson from Volta Consulting - https://voltaconsulting.com.au/
Aurora Expeditions - https://www.auroraexpeditions.com.au/
Aurora’s journey to becoming a B Corp - https://www.auroraexpeditions.com.au/blog/our-b-corp-journey/
Join our Facebook group for Thoughtful Travellers - https://www.facebook.com/groups/thoughtfultravellers
Join our LinkedIn group for Thoughtful Travellers - https://notaballerina.com/linkedin
Sign up for the Thoughtful Travellers newsletter at Substack - https://thoughtfultravel.substack.com
Show notes: https://notaballerina.com/321
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This is an episode I never imagined I'd need to make; family lore was that my mum June would live to a hundred. But very sadly, after a sudden terminal cancer diagnosis in late January, my beautiful mum passed away early in February. As the biggest fan of The Thoughtful Travel Podcast, I knew I couldn't restart it after my time away without mentioning my mum and how she encouraged me to travel - I definitely wouldn't be here creating this podcast without her influence throughout my life.
My dear friend Di Bortoletto and I sat in her spare room last weekend to record this chat about my mum's travel experiences and about some of the special experiences we'd had together as well, and I wanted to share that with you all.
Links:
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Staying in someone’s home is the ultimate in starting to understand the local way of life when you travel, and I’ve had some brilliant homestay experiences in the past. In this episode devoted to homestay accommodation, I first tell you my own tales of Russian homestays, with some of the delightful interactions with homestay hosts in Vladivostok, Yekaterinburg, Moscow and St Petersburg.
I then chat with Nina Karnikowski who explains many of the thoughtful values of homestays, and has a great example of her own experience in India. My other guest is Iris Villarreal, who tells me about some homestays she has done in Guatemala, learning much about the local culture along the way.
Links:
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When I was first introduced to Gevorg Babayan and his company LikeLocal.io, which matches travellers with local experiences, I knew he'd be a good guest for The Thoughtful Travel Podcast, but as I got to know him more through interactions in the Thoughtful Travellers Facebook group, I soon realised that a quick chat wouldn't be enough - we would need a deep dive!
In this chat, I learn more about Gevorg's background in Armenia, his work in tourism there and abroad in places like Cambodia, and most impressively to me, some of the unique approaches to tours he offers his visitors. I loved hearing about his creativity in coming up with different ways that travellers can get to know more about a destination and its people, and I'm sure you will too.
Links:
Netflix Episode with Olafur Eliasson on Abstract: The Art of Design - https://www.netflix.com/title/80057883
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Tales of things going wrong - or almost - are always popular, and I think if you throw in the trickiness of a border crossing, these stories are top-notch entertainment! In this episode, I start off chatting with Michael Jensen about a triple-border experience in northern Thailand recently - made more fun by knowing exactly the spot he was talking about as I was lucky enough to visit that same spot just last year.
I then talk to Antonio Cala who has not one but two border crossing tales to tell from a long motorcycle trip he and his wife took from the top to the bottom of Africa in 2022. The first involves the river border between Cameroon and the Central African Republic, a tale that had me worrying the whole time about hippos. Antonio's second story takes place on the border between Algeria and Mauritania, a spot that wasn't even a tourist border crossing at all until 2019, and let's just say, that doesn't go smoothly at all.
Links:
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The podcast currently has 363 episodes available.