Just the words, “World Travel,” sound romantic. What’s it like to really chuck it all and travel around the world for a year? After visiting over a dozen countries on a shoestring-budget, I thought I’d do a little visual re-cap of some of the highlights. First stop, on my world travel adventure – Australia, including the Great Barrier Reef in Cairns, where I took a leap of faith as well as a leap in the ocean, and...

Just outside Siem Reap is a silk farm, where for free, you can go on a tour and see the whole process. They will even give you a free ride on their shuttle bus. Yes, they have a gift shop at the end, a very lovely one, but there is absolutely no pressure to buy anything, although you might be tempted to! And it’s nice to tip your tour guide. I was amazed at what it takes to go from a worm to a single piece of fabric. I think you will be...

He grew up in a village in Cambodia, and was working in the rice fields with his parents, making very little money and getting nowhere, so he decided to try his luck by moving to the city of Siem Reap to look for a job, which he found as a tuk tuk driver at the guesthouse where I was staying. “I have a confession to make,” he told me, as we ate lunch on my day trip to Angkor Wat. “The reason I was late this morning to pick you up was...

Siem Reap, Cambodia, is the gateway city to Angkor Wat, with exotic appeal, as well as the ease provided by being set up for the tourist trade. If you are looking for adventure, with all of the comforts of any major tourist destination, and a much cheaper price tag than most, you might want to consider a trip to Cambodia. I’d booked a guesthouse ahead, based on a recommendation from a traveler I met in a hostel in New Zealand (hostels are...

Angkor Wat. If it brings up visions of a long-ago faraway place, something you might have seen in a dream, this is an accurate picture. It is part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Cambodia, built in the 12th century, and the complex covers miles of ground. It is the largest religious monument in the world! A wat is a temple, and the famous Angkor that you see in a lot of the photos is but one of many temples here, the best preserved of them...