The task was easy. Out of the 15 countries we visited on this trip, five stood out the most.

Read the article to see which ones.

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A little shop that sells pills that get you high – naturally and legally – is slowly becoming a small empire. Happy High Herbs has 23 stores in Australia, and is expanding to the U.S. and England.

We stopped by the shop in Airlie Beach, gateway to the Whitsunday Islands, to talk about herbal highs.

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Ian Cumming at the WorldNomads office in Sydney

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Ian Cumming is a big nerd. He’s also a passionate traveler. These two traits combined can only result in something happy.

I’m a fan of Travellr.com, the website that Cumming, an Aussie gent, co-founded. I use it almost every time when I’m going to a new place. I have a link to it on the front page of this blog.

It’s a questions-and-answers service devoted exclusively for travelers. Ask a question about a place and it will tap into its network of self-appointed experts to answer it.

It has grown impressively since I started using it a year ago, going from a few scattered users to a solid membership. Questions get answered in a matter of minutes. This is probably one of the reasons WorldNomads, an Australian travel insurance firm with a strong social media strategy, acquired Travellr.

Disclosure: I blog occasionally for WorldNomads in exchange for travel insurance. However, I was using Travellr before this agreement.

I paid Cumming a visit when I stopped in Sydney back in April. I finally got around to this short interview.

Why did you found Travellr?

I had been traveling overseas and found that my most memorable experiences came from hanging out with locals and going to the places they liked to go. This got me thinking about how I could connect travelers with locals in order to tap into relevant, local travel advice.

This was back in 2007, and I discovered that there wasn’t much in the way of a real-time question and answer network for travelers. So I decided to build my own network, and so we founded Travellr.com.

There are plenty of established of Q&A services, like Yahoo Answers and Aardvark. Travelers and can also get their doubts answered in forums like Lonely Planet’s ThornTree. What made you think you could do better?

Q&A is a certainly a hot topic on the web at the moment and there are many companies trying to move into this space and find a way to monetize it. As well as the services you mentioned, there’s also Quora, Facebook Questions, Ask.com Answers, and TripAdvisor Answers.

The fact that all these Q&A services are launching validates the market for Travellr and shows that consumers are looking for more tailored services than just plain forums. We’ve spent the last two years researching and developing our Q&A engine around answering travel questions – the system is location aware, real-time, scalable, and learns from user’s questions and answers.

Our aim is to get a relevant answer from our network as quickly as possible, and I think from a technology point of view we are one of the leaders in this field, especially for travel questions.

What kind of questions do you see most often?

Our questions are really varied. There are obviously many questions about hotels and restaurants. But I think when people ask our network harder or more obscure questions, it really brings out the experts who are keen to share their knowledge.

Two months in India: where should I go?

I haven’t been – but here’s a few tips from our Q&A’s on Travellr.com:

* See the grand monuments in Delhi and Lucknow built by the Mughals and nawabs.
* 3-4 days in Dehli, a couple in Lucknow and a day in Agra for the Taj Mahal.
* Explore the Jimalays and visit Uttarakhand from Dehli and go to Kausani or Ranikhet.
* Visit Mumbai and spend a few days on some beaches in Tarkarli or Goa.
* For yoga and meditation, visit Rishakesh. Also Dharamsala is a good spot for Vipassna Meditation, the home of the Dalai Lama.

What kind of travelers use Travellr? Backpackers? Resort lovers? Tour group groupies?

Most people who use Travellr are seeking a more authentic experience, so we seem to have a range of backpackers, seasoned travelers, expats, tour guides, and independent travelers. I think the only common thing between our members it that they all love to travel and share their travel experience and knowledge!

Why oh why are all the questions on Indonesia only about Bali?

Bali is a popular place for Australia (of which we have a large membership), so it’s naturally a place that gets asked about a lot. Feel free to ask a question about somewhere in else in Indonesia

There’s some repetition on the site. People tend to ask questions that were already answered. How do you prevent clutter?

If you ask a question that’s already been asked, we recommend it to you when you’re asking. (See here for an example of this in action).

To prevent clutter, we’re looking at some other ways to help people find the best content quickly in search results, such as an ‘interesting’ or ‘best rated’ search filter.

If I had to pick three Middle Eastern countries to visit, which ones would you suggest?

I haven’t been to the Middle East, but our most discussed locations in this area are Iran, United Arab Emirates, and Jordan, so I’d look into going to these places!

You’ve probably answered 4 out of 5 questions I’ve asked on the site. How much of Travellr content was created exclusively by Ian Cumming?

Haha! That’s because you asked about places that I know about, and Travellr recommended your questions to me! There are thousands of questions and answers on Travellr and my answers don’t even make up 1% of the total content-base. I’m constantly amazed by the amount of travel knowledge we can tap into on our network.

My spell-check wants to know: Is it ‘traveller’ or ‘traveler’?

Where can I eat the best phở in Vietnam?

Not sure, ask!

Cairns isn’t just for the Great Barrier Reef. Just tow hours north is a rainforest with deadly crocodiles, virginal beaches, refreshing creeks and at least one bat.

Two hours into the sailing trip, Dave, the divemaster, brought out the pedophile jokes.

He had already riled the Irish on board (“Your body is 80 percent water, except for the Irish, which are 30 percent alcohol”) but was still several hours from touching on race (“Why is Stevie Wonder always smiling? He doesn’t know he’s black”).

It was, to be sure, an alarming start to a three-day cruise around the Whitsunday Islands.

We were 23 squeezed aboard the Apollo, a racing yacht that had won a Sydney-to-Hobart regatta. Like a used-up racehorse, the once-mighty sailboat was put out to stud, spending its golden years taking backpackers on diving trips and ivory beaches along the Great Barrier Reef.

We were given bunk beds that hugged the inside of the hull and were strikingly comfortable considering the tight quarters. Normally reserved for a full crew of 25, the boat was carrying a measly three crew members plus a backpacker that worked as cook and deck hand.

It was, we later learned, a much better deal than other budget options, like the 70-person booze cruise whose guests must spend the night on a land hostel.

The days are just packed

The crew wasted no time. Once out of the Airlie Beach marina, the Apollo headed for an island with a bustling reef. With such a skeletal crew, the passengers have to pitch in. The skipper put three men to hoist the main sail, myself included, and two on the head sail, while two ladies were stationed on a winch.

The head sail was so heavy that by the last four pulls of the rope, we had to lift our feet off the ground and let our combined body weight do the work. We watched with a disproportionate sense of accomplishment as the sails swelled and the boat tilted to the left, cruising at a laudable 10 knots.

It was an hour until we were moored at a tiny sandy cove surrounded by dense jungle. It was where we would receive our free diving lesson. That’s when Dave felt it was safe to introduce the pedophile jokes.

“What does a five year old’s penis smell like,” he asked. No one volunteered an answer, and I presumed no one really cared to know. But Dave, a fortysomething Aussie browned and leathered by so much sun and salt, indulged us anyhow: he exhaled loudly so we could smell his breath.

Lunchtime at the Apollo

The diving was everything you’d expect from the Great Barrier Reef: neon-coloured wrasses, rainbow corals, sea turtles that look like slightly bored spaceships, polka-dotted stingrays, little Nemos poking out from the anemone.

For first time divers, Dave wanted to minimize the stress, so he took five people at a time and told us to disregard the oxygen gauge and the buoyancy vests; he took care of those himself.

On top of the usual hand signals divers use to communicate under water, he taught us a few more: a W made by touching one’s thumbs together signifies “wow”. Placing the right hand on one’s head and thrusting the left hand through the resulting loop meant “fucking great”.

“If you’re German,” Dave elaborated, “you do it from behind,” and proceeded to do the same thrusting motion, but with his left hand penetrating from behind his head.

After half an hour under water, we exchanged scuba gear for snorkels and explored the reef while the next divers had their turn.

When dusk approached we were bused back to the Apollo on the life raft. The shower, they informed us, were small hoses attached to the sink in the telephone cabin-sized toilets. The minimal floorspace meant for one’s feet while using the bowl is also the shower floor. Despite it all, it felt great.

By nightfall the Apollo was safely moored a few hundred feet from an island. Amply fed, passengers broke open the beer cases and bags of goon that were perfectly chilled in three giant coolers.

Nighttime at the Apollo

Day 2: The postcard beach

By 8pm the Apollo’s diesel engine was humming. The sleeping deck began to smell like a truckers’ rest stop. The passengers that weren’t hungover were clutching plastic mugs with instant coffee or tea.

The boat was heading towards the Whitsundays’ postcard spot, Whitehaven Beach. No boat actually moors on the beach; they drop you off on the other side of the island and let you hike 15 minutes to the famous bay.

Whitehaven Beach encapsulates so much of the Australian condition. Like the country, it’s devastatingly gorgeous, but it’s crawling with things that want to hurt you.

Bianca’s rendition of the stereotypical jumping beach shot

The sand is as white and as fine as powdered sugar. The sea is impossible shade of topaz. But no one dares enter the water. It’s the tail end of jellyfish season, and irrikandji could still be floating around.

These jellyfish are no larger than a navy bean and nearly impossible to see. But their sting, we were told, burns like the devil’s hot poker and persists for days. The only first aid is splashing the sting with vinegar, which kills the venomous cells that stick to the skin.

Urinating on the wound, Dave informed us, is an old wife’s tale. “If you do get stung, don’t let any Germans know, or they’ll come running three at a time to pee on you.”

Lunch aboard the Apollo was followed by snorkel time at another reef. Diving from now on cost AUS$60. No matter. The reef had more lovely sea life, including a gigantic humphead wrasse.

Back at the boat, cases of beer and box wine still weighed down the vessel. The passengers were only too happy to relieve the weight.

Day 3: feeding frenzy

Our final beach for diving was carpeted not with sand but dead corals, and so it’s painful to walk on barefoot. Wearing flippers relieved the pain but made walking impossible. The only solution was to cautiously walk backwards. With flippers. On a coral cove. Throw a bunch of African tribesmen on a skating rink and they couldn’t look as awkward as we did.

The fish in this reef have long ago equated people with food, so snorkelers are quickly surrounded by schools of hopeful fish. I brought along a bag with the final crumbs of my breakfast cereal and suddenly it became a riot. We couldn’t see one metre in any direction, so thick they huddled. Swift little bastards, it’s impossible to catch one with your hands.

We let out a collective, bubbly underwater squeal when Elvis, the resident humphead wrasse, showed up. He had a kingly and comically blasé look that said, “Let’s see what these idiots brought me today.”

Uninterested by the muesli I released into the water, he seemed more intrigued by the cereal bag itself, which I held above the water. He tried to go for it three times with the speed and intensity of someone who has a whole day to do absolutely nothing. We ran our hands over his smooth and slippery flat body. More squeals.

Our last meal was a medley of leftover fro the previous two days. The food aboard the Apollo is not luxurious, but it’s far better than the standard backpacker fare of pasta and mushy stir-fry. In the three past days we had barbecued steaks and sausages, roast chicken, fetuccini carbonara, pumpkin risotto, garlic bread, and lots of salads. By the end of it, we were hopelessly enamoured with Michelle, the sightly English girl working as the cook.

The Apollo once again hoisted its sails and howled back to Airlie Beach. It tilted so far this time that we had to all sit on the opposite side, lest we slide to starboard and swept by the sea licking at the deck.

The skipper thanked us for our business and received a raucous applause. Dave made a few more inappropriate jokes, but by this time we were inoculated to any offense from his lips.

Some of us went up to him to shake his hand and have at least one moment of sincere interaction with our divemaster who led us to a dazzling underwater world and gave us memories for life. Dave looked agonizingly unfomrfortable with the candour and quickly defused the situation with a joke involving homo-erotic buggery.

Dave, divemaster

We went with Tribal Travel in Sydney. We liked Gaz, the store’s new owner, as he was friendly and attentive. He didn’t push trips we didn’t want and offered good deals when we bought tours in bulk.

But not every trip we took was satisfying. The Fraser Island self-drive tour and the canoe trip on the Noosa River left much to be desired. But this is partly our fault for not asking the right questions before booking them.

Make sure you don’t make our mistake by asking the following:

1. What are the extra fees?

Agents make trips look cheap by excluding additional coasts like park access fees, insurance, and equipment rental. The fees are mentioned in small print on your booking confirmation, and can inflate the final price significantly.

Ask you agent to clearly spell out the fees and calculate them into the total.

2. Do you match competitors’ quotes?

An agent will normally quote a tour at a high price – just in case you didn’t shop around and are willing to pay it. If you mention a better quote from a competing agency, they may try to beat it.

However, they might ask you for proof, like a sheet scribbled with the other agency’s quotes. For this reason, some agencies will refuse to let you walk away with their price list.

In such cases, write down the prices you were given in your own notebook to show another agency.

3. What’s the trip like?

This is supremely important and will determine how much you’ll enjoy the tour. Ask the agent to describe details of the trip: how many people in a group? How much freedom do you have? Where does this tour go compared to other operators?

Our trip to Fraser Island was a disappointment, as it was too controlled and regimented. We later learned that another agency offers a similar trip where you are given greater choice of where to go and how long to stay at each place.

4. What kind of people usually take this trip?

You want to make sure you’ll be surrounded with people who have the same travel values as you. If you’re looking for activities wither a focus on learning and tranquility at night, you don’t want to get stuck on a booze cruise with a ton of college kids on holiday who just want to party.

Everyone – and I mean everyone – who took the canoe trip up the Noosa River got it for free. Tribal Travel, an agency ubiquitous in Australia, is throwing it in when you book other classic tours like Fraser Island on a 4WD and sailing on the Whitsundays.

While they’re clearly trying to promote this lesser-known trip, it has two major problems: a) it’s not really free, and b) it totally acts like it’s free.

Point (a) is simply a matter of deceptive marketing. They give you the trip for no money up front but you have to pay $69 AUD in park fees and insurance to the tour operator. Tribal doesn’t see a cent, and so it’s free for them.

Promotional flyers for this trip price it at $140. So what you’re getting is a 50 percent discount on the advertised rate.

As for point (b), think back to the freebies you’ve been offered. A pen for signing up to a credit card. A crappy T-shirt. All of them of expendable quality.

The pointless part

A van picks you up from your Noosa hostel early in the morning and takes you to a lakeside station where a crater-faced fellow wearing – unironically – a trucker cap gives you two-seater canoes, tents, cooking stoves, and waterproof drums for your belongings.

He then hands you a crayon drawing of the lakes and rivers of the area. After a curt “See you in three days” he vanishes.

To call it a map would be a riotous overstatement. The river forks and splits in far more places than the doodle suggests, making it easy to turn into the wrong lake, turn around, and take another inlet to the same dead end.

This is a refreshing change from the excessively safe and controlled tours of the Queensland coast. Getting briefly lost in a tea-coloured river flanked by dense bush, one can almost call it an adventure.

But this laissez-faire approach goes too far when you learn that 1) when you arrive at your campsite at 2 pm, you will have the rest of the day to do precisely nothing at all, and 2) that park rangers patrol the camps and ask to see a camping permit, which the tour operator does not provide you with.

There are no walking trails around the campsite, nothing that would warrant arriving there so early. So one is left with two options: get back on the canoes, backtrack for one hour and explore the lakes we passed on the way, or start drinking.

Everyone chose the second option.

The Cooloola Sandpatch

The part that matters

The highlight of the trip is the second day, in which you paddle 1.5 hours upstream then hike for another 1.5 hours to the Cooloola Sandpatch. This is a huge erosion in the middle of the forest where winds hoarded enough sand to make it unlivable for plants. You can spend a good three hours wandering around and imagining it a lifeless desert with a gorgeous ocean view.

This three-day trip could easily be condensed into two: paddle up to the sandpatch, camp, come back the next day.

The third day is hardly a day at all. You are asked to report back to the lakeside station by 9:30 where no one is waiting. After roughly two hours spent killing mosquitoes for fun, the next batch of campers arrive, and you can finally return to your hostel in Noosa.

If the point of this promotional “freebie” is to popularize it by word of mouth, it can be deemed an absolute failure. When I asked other travelers if they too took the trip, many replied, “I was about to, but someone told me it wasn’t worth it.”

To the same extent as buyers, sellers also get exactly what they pay for.

Photo by Dave Nicoll

It doesn’t take long to see that the eastern Australian backpacking trail, which stretches from Sydney to Cairns, is geared for the sub-30 set. Hundreds of young’uns, mostly European, flock to the Gold an Sunshine Coasts chasing sunny shores, bountiful alcohol, and beach-beautiful bodies.

Nothing wrong with this, but it’s not for everyone. Which is the reason that travelers 30 and above are a rare sight: it’s easy for them to feel they have outgrown this kind of budget-minded tripping.

1. You feel like a tourist, not a traveler

Byron Bay, Surfer’s Paradise, Fraser Island, the Whitsundays… All lovely places overrun with McTrips that process thousands of travellers daily. It’s difficult to feel like you’re on a journey when you’re just another body among so many others.

Yes, there are tours catering to more discriminating travelers, but the prices are well above the long-term backpacker’s budget.

2. You feel like a chaperone

Remember the last time you went to your favourite university bar or club and felt like you were officially part of another generation? It’s like this.

3. Trips are too organized

You came for a little adventure – and adventure is what the travel agencies promised – but got a grammar school trip. Everything is prepared and planned for you. You have to follow strict schedules and itineraries, even if there’s no guide. It feels like a holiday nanny state.

4. You turn your nose at goon

At some liquor stores you can buy a four-litre box of terrible wine they call goon for as little as $11. It’s a favourite on three-day tours where you must bring your own drinks: to young broke backpackers the price-to-drunkenness value is unbeatable. For you, it’s a travesty of good taste.

5. You complain about discomfort

You’re no longer content with the tissue-thin sleeping mat they provide on camping trips. You’re can’t fall asleep on rock-hard surfaces like you once could. Probably because you’re not drinking enough goon.

6. You long for quiet contemplation

Between the big crowds, the drunken hooting, and the sound systems constantly blaring top 40 hits, your only moment of serenity is that magical time between 3 and 7 am when everyone is sleeping. If you’re lucky, you can find a quiet corner in whatever touristy town you’re saying at for reading, writing, or meditating.

7. You’re not challenged

You speak the local language. The streets are tidy and orderly. Everything is organized and predictable. You’re not in an alien culture, having to negotiate unusual customs and learning something new everyday. It quickly becomes quite boring.

8. You’re done with all the partying

You’ve already done it all: the drinking games, the random hook-ups, the next-day amnesia. With your wild days behind you, you now seek more meaningful, lasting, and vomit-free experiences.

In Alice Springs, the main town of the central Australian outback, Andrew Langford has been doing his didgeridoo show for almost 15 years.

In this video the world-touring veteran of the Aboriginal instrument talks about his passion for its sound and how anyone can learn it.

When they can’t be bothered with sound discipline, it’s customary for parents to scare their children with fantastic lies.

In Brazil, for example, children are told that if they play with fire they will wet their beds, or that cockroaches will lick their mouths at night if they neglect to brush their teeth.

And there’s the mammoth childhood lie, one that crosses many cultures and is so ridiculous that its survival is nothing less than a miracle: that a fat old man in the North Pole is monitoring every child and delivers obedience rewards on a sleigh pulled by flying reindeer.

Despite their absurdity, to the literal-minded child they are devastatingly effective. The young adult, however, is not so easily fooled. But Australian tour operators at Fraser Island have adapted the childhood scare tactic with lethal efficacy.

The premise is simple: give a group of eight fun-chasing twentysomethings an immense sandy island off the Queensland coast and an expensive four-wheel drive truck to explore it with over three days. Then fill their heads with so many dangers and threats that no one would dream of doing anything memorably fun with it.

The briefing

The day before the trip, travellers to Fraser Island are shown a one-hour video on the dangers of driving on sand. A live person, usually a worker at the hostel that organizes the tour, then repeats many of those warnings and offers further instructions.

An example: if you drive too close to the sea, the salt water will rust the body and you will be fined at least $200.

Another one: If you make a sharp turn in the sand, the truck will flip over and every passenger will be seriously hurt.

Finally, the person who manages the truck fleet and the equipment inventory completes the scare session with photos of cars that flipped over and news clippings mourning a reckless death.

They clump everyone into groups of eight, based not on compatibility but to ensure that every team has enough qualified drivers. This also boosts the chances of being paired with a zealot for rules whose burning need for control makes sure any potential for adventurous exploration is snuffed out (hiya, Lucy).

A wild dingo menacingly strolls on Fraser Island.

The trip

It starts with a barge trip from the mainland to the island. It truly is an all-sand island where a rainforest miraculously thrives. When the tide is high or rocks impede safe passage along the shore, sandy inland tracks offer a detour.

Travelers are given a detailed itinerary and everything is scheduled. Go to a lake at 2pm. Leave by 3:30. Be at the campsite by 5:30.

This is because of the tides, yes, but since it’s policy to infantilize visitors to the maximum extent, responsible independent exploration is strictly verboten. If anyone veers from the itinerary, they will be fined.

Despite the military scheduling, enforced by a group’s self-appointed despot (still here, Lucy?), the trip is lovely. Driving on sand is a unique kind of exhilaration. Soft patches make the van lurch slightly sideways and washouts, creeks of inland fresh water that seep to the sea, can make spectacular splashes if negotiated well.

Fraser Island boasts several lakes. Some are topaz blue with blindingly white sand that rival Caribbean paradises. Others are at the bottom of steep sand dunes and beg for sandboarding or just a good ol’ tumbling.

Bianca risks life and limb by enjoying a casual skip down a sand dune.

The lies exposed

By the second day on the island, most participants realize that driving on sand is actually quite safe and that no, the island’s dingoes aren’t really interested in eating  people alive.

With minimal reasoning, you realize that when driving on wet hard sand – the sand operators say offers the best traction – much of the it sticks to the underbody, taking salt water with it. And anyone who lives in a snowy country knows that cars don’t fall apart at the first contact with a salted road.

You also learn that hurtling down the pillow-soft sand dunes around Lake Wabee won’t really cause lethal spinal injuries. Or that the rough sea  won’t drag you to a drowning death if you simply wade at knee height.

And no one that I heard of suffered a cardiac arrest upon contact with a jellybean-sized jellyfish.

Still, no one wants to take chances. The organizers’ scare campaign is too refined. Their repetition overpowers common sense.

Back at the hostel we asked a staffer why they exaggerate the dangers so much. “We want to make sure you’ll be completely responsible.” My parents would be beaming with pride.