My latest post for the WorldNomads Off the Beaten Path blog:

What to check for before taking a cheap hotel room.

There are gems in there. Read it.

Now with 60% more explanations!
(see comments for details)

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1. A motorcycle can easily carry a family of five.
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2. The role of police is not to protect citizens, but the highest bidders.
why? Bribery has long been a part of Cambodian society. The police and the military have been known to kidnap and threaten citizens for cash.
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3. The [...]

Singapore is a trickster, but it doesn’t know it. It makes you think it’s a business city with obsessive-compulsive disorder and no sense of mirth.

What a farce. Singaporeans take their pleasure very seriously. Venture past the tourist trail of Chinatown, the malls of Orchard Rd. and the overpriced cafés of Sentosa Island and you’ll a city contending for a spot among the great capitals of fun.

If you’re there, don’t miss these delights.

Hoi An is a mandatory stop in Vietnam’s tourist trail. Secondly, because it’s a historic city, a UNESCO heritage site with lantern-lit cobblestone streets and centenarian homes that survived multiple wars.

But firstly because of fashion. There are an estimated 500 tailor and cobbler shops that make any – I mean ANY – custom-fit clothes. All this is a town of barely 120,000.

Learn from our mistakes and see a photo gallery in this post.

Adventurous travellers know that Cambodia is more than Angkor Wat and “happy” pizzas. Leave the backpacker trail and you’ll see gorgeous rural landscapes, under-explored temples, vibrant wildlife, and people who care about you beyond your wallet.

And one of the best ways to explore this country is on a motorbike, which you can rent in any city, except Siem Reap.

When selling bootleg books didn’t work, the boy turned to begging for food. He looked 12 and was still perfecting his pity pitch.

After four days in Siem Reap (and another week in Sihanoukville), I got used to saying no to child sellers and beggars. I read enough articles to know giving them money does more harm than good:

A benefit of traveling off the beaten track is that when you finally visit a well-trodden place, it’s a pleasant surprise.

The annoyances of tourism – hustlers, touts, tons of restaurants and bars catering for tourists, loud drunken backpakcers – become a cultural attraction, no longer a burden.

To add a little challenge to my trip I did the following:

1. I stuck to off-the-beaten-path locales
2. I stopped using a guidebook
3. I started arriving at strange cities at late hours and without a clue

Result: it was still laughably easy.

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

For one month now I have not used a travel guidebook once. I didn’t used one in Papua New Guinea nor in Java. I have no intention of using one from now on.

Doing away with guidebooks is like leaving the backpacker ghetto of a city and plunging yourself into its alien reality. It’s cutting off any safety lines to comfort and convenience.

It is, I daresay, real travel.