soapbox

Tag Archives: soapbox

Experiencing the World Through a Female Lens

Posted on 11. Sep, 2011 by Steph.

The Frugal Traveler, a great column in the NYT, had an interesting article last week focusing on what it’s like to travel as a woman alone. It’s a good article, but the author Seth Kugel, seems amazed by the fact that, yes, women often have a different travel experience than men. That’s funny, because as [...]

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Why I Don’t Have a Bucket List

Posted on 06. Feb, 2011 by Steph.

Have you heard of a bucket list? It’s both the name of some Jack Nicholson movie I’ve never seen, and a term for a list of things you want to do before you die (or you know, kick the bucket). Bucket Lists are really popular in the travel community because people who travel are usually [...]

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Ko Phi Phi is Disneyland for Grown-Ups

Posted on 11. Jan, 2011 by Steph.

In retrospect maybe my expectations were out of whack. After all Ko Phi Phi is a tiny island in the Andaman Sea, but it’s also a HUGE tourist destination. In my head I pictured white beaches, sparkling water, a coconut in my hand- basically paradise. Instead what I found was a smaller, more backpacker friendly [...]

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Haters Gonna Hate

Posted on 24. Aug, 2010 by Steph.

The internet has been making me cranky lately. I’ve been sensing this growing resentment towards travelers and it’s making my skin itch. There’s the snotty comments scattered across the interwebs, there’s some weird infighting drama going on in the travel blogosphere (which I’m not going to touch), and then there’s the Eat Pray Love backlash. [...]

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Good Tourist/Bad Tourist: A Local’s Perspective

Posted on 11. Apr, 2010 by Steph.

Along with the fluffy pink cherry blossoms ( and abundant sunshine, something else begins popping up in Washington around April. Tourists. From April to August DC is awash with out-of-towners. Great locust sized hordes of them clog the metro and swamp the mall. I will say up front: everybody is a tourist at least some [...]

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We’re All Travelers Here

Posted on 21. Mar, 2010 by Steph.

Warning: this post is ranty… Last week I wrote a post about how much I love the online travel community. And I really do, but every once in awhile (actually it seems to be happening quite frequently lately) I come across a certain kind of blog post that really rubs me the wrong way. These [...]

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Do the Thing that Scares You

Posted on 23. Feb, 2010 by Steph.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about why so few people actually make their travel dreams reality. Anyone who is a frequent traveler knows the common refrain from others of “I wish I could do that!” To which I always answer that you can. For some reason people don’t seem to believe this. A lot [...]

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When Getting Lost is a Good Thing

Posted on 19. Jan, 2010 by Steph.

We have maps. We have GPSs. We have 5-year plans. We have everything laid out ahead of us to specifically prevent ourselves from losing our way. That’s just smart living; getting lost is scary. It’s frustrating. It’s an encounter with the unknown, the unforeseen and the unpredictable. It’s these exact same characteristics that make getting [...]

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What It’s a Wonderful Life Can Teach Us About Travel

Posted on 27. Dec, 2009 by Steph.

One of the side effects of writing this blog is that I’m constantly in the traveler mindset. I notice a lot of things that I’ve never picked up on before. I must have seen It’s a Wonderful Life a thousand times, but it never resonated with me quite the way as it did this past [...]

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