Rolf Potts's Blog, page 129

Richard Brownsdon

http://www.clearlyso.com

Age: 29

Hometown: Originally The Isle of Man, Now London

Quote: " If you have to ask then you'll never understand… Vagabonding will impact your life like nothing else can."



How did you find out about Vagabonding, and how did you find it useful before and during the trip? I first heard about it through Tim Ferriss' blog and book, The Four Hour Work Week.  It was in the "recommended few" reading list.  Since I was already kind of vagabonding at that stage, I thought it sounded great.  It was.  The stories and quotes were inspiring, and I followed up by reading some of the books mentioned.  I especially liked reading The Snow Leopard while trekking in Nepal.

How long were you on the road? It depends.  I lived in Japan for 3 years, which was fantastic but didn't really feel like vagabonding to me.  I was working as a high school teacher every day.  After Japan, I was on the road for about a year and a half.

Where all did you go? Not too many places.  I spent 3 months in China, 1 in South East Asia, 6 in India, 2 in Nepal, then a short trip home then 5 in months Europe  (including 3 months living in Spain)

What was your job or source of travel funding for this journey? By far the biggest source was my savings from teaching English in Japan.  The salary was pretty good, and I saved quite hard for my 2nd and 3rd year there.  The money goes a long way if you are not always flying from country to country.

Did you work or volunteer on the road? Apart from in Japan, I volunteered in India and Nepal.  Mostly teaching English.  It was just volunteering, not swapping services for rent.  In fact, I did do one of the volunteer programs that you pay to go on. There's quite a lot of debate about whether you should pay to volunteer or not, so I tried both.  In summary, they were both great experiences for me.

Of all the places you visited, which was your favorite? Best place to live: Japan by far. Best place to visit: India – They say you either love it or you hate it, and I loved it.  Maybe it was because I met so many loving people, or because I really enjoyed the yoga, or the food, or the energy or the colour, or maybe all of that mixed together.

Was there a place that was your least favorite, or most disappointing, or most challenging? I had high expectations of China.  I thought I'd love it, and I met some great people, but China and I, we just didn't really click.  I loved Hong Kong, but that's not really China, and the Olympics were amazing, but that's not really China either.  Maybe I don't know what China really is, and I would definitely go back, but I thought China was tough.

Did any of your pre-trip worries or concerns come true?  Did you run into any problems or obstacles that you hadn't anticipated? I'm not sure I can even remember what my pre-trip worries were, but I did get sick in India, I did get scammed in China, and I did fall in love in Japan!  That last one probably was not a pre-trip worry, so much as happy occurrence!

Which travel gear proved most useful?  Least useful? Backpack obviously!  I didn't tour with my laptop, but if I went again, I'd like to take a sturdy little notebook, or maybe even just a iPhone.  Wifi is everywhere. Obviously don't go traveling with your phone contract still on, or it will cost you a fortune! But to have a handy little camera, map, books, music all in an iPhone or iPod is really handy.   Least useful: umbrella!

What are the rewards of the vagabonding lifestyle? (Laughing) If you have to ask then you'll never understand…  To view the world in a different way. It will impact your life like nothing else can.  It will forge the direction of your prevailing careers.  It will open a myriad of global relationships.  It will affect your choice of future lovers. It will clear the clutter from your mind.  It will reveal your true passions. All this and more..

What are the challenges and sacrifices of the vagabonding lifestyle? Challenges: Sustainability.  How does one continue to pay for this life rocking experience?  That's why I came into vagabonding from The Four Hour Work Week.  The book is a kind of business manifesto for the vagabond.  Earning a living from anywhere with a few hours work at your computer? A dream for many people, and I'm still not there.  Tim Ferriss if you're listening..help!

Sacrifices: Career progression? Possibly.  It can be difficult to come back to a competitive job market.  Peers have one (or four!) years experience on you.  You probably won't come in at their wage level, if that's what you chose to do.  However, and it's a big however, when/if you do come back, you are much more likely to be doing the things you love, rather than doing the things you thought you should be doing.

What lessons did you learn on the road? All of the above.  If you can make friends with someone who doesn't speak your language, you can make friends anywhere.

How did your personal definition of "vagabonding" develop over the course of the trip? At the start, vagabonding was just backpacking. But backpacking doesn't always take into account the slowness, letting a new place wash over you, and spending time in your own company as well as with new friends – that's what vagabonding means to me now.

If there was one thing you could have told yourself before the trip, what would it be? I wouldn't! I liked the surprises – that's all part of the adventure.

Any advice or tips for someone hoping to embark on a similar adventure? Go slow.  There's so much to see and do.  Have you seen that book – "1000 natural wonders to see before you die"? 1000?  OK, so if I do one every week for the next 20 years or so that should cover it.. ridiculous.  Sure, you can see a place, tick, move on, new place, tick move on, but that's not the way to vagabond.  So go slow, relax and enjoy yourself!

When and where do you think you'll take your next long-term journey? I've been in London a year now and I'm doing something I enjoy, so we'll see. Right now I help social and ethical entrepreneurs connect with rich private investors; some one called me Robin Hood the other day, and I quite liked that!  I'm still reading about vagabonding, 4 hour work weeks and location independent living, and I'll see where it takes me.  The journey continues…

Are you a Vagabonding reader planning, in the middle of, or returning from a journey? Would you like your travel blog or website to be featured on Vagabonding Case Studies? If so, drop us a line at [email protected] and tell us a little about yourself.

Kanchanaburi, Thailand

The photo above, which shows a gravestone belonging to one of the nearly 7,000 Allied POWs buried at the Kanchanaburi War Cemetery in Thailand, illustrates the difficulty we have in making sense of tragedy.

Last week two talented photojournalists, Chris Hondros and Tim Hetherington, were killed in the Libyan city of Misrata. In the past several days articles and tributes have painted a picture of men, one from England and the other from North Carolina, who traveled often, traveled relatively light, and traveled for a purpose.

In a New York Times article titled War, in Life and Death, David Carr writes, "Tim and Chris were very different men who died because they had something in common: each thought it important to bear witness, to make images that communicated human suffering and send them out to the world."

"Many people have died in the recent wars the two men covered," Carr continues, "and we should not make the journalist's error of elevating the deaths of Tim and Chris above those of others. But beyond the personal loss for their families and friends, there is a civic loss when good journalists are killed."

I certainly feel the loss. I've been in the habit for some time now of visiting Chris Hondros' website to check out his images, appreciating what they say about the world, about our neighbors. My favorite (if I can use the word for something so tragic) is the iconic photo of a little girl in Tel Afar, Iraq, terrified, with her parents' blood splattered on her face and clothes. In 2007, Chris recounted the incident on NPR.

This post is not a call for all travelers to head off for the Tel Afars and Misratas of the world. It is, however, a gentle reminder that travel can be about much more than gear selection and budgets and beach parties. It is also about the question of Why? What might we learn from people like Chris and Tim, who were often asked why they did what they did and could give a profound answer? How can we incorporate that into how we experience the world?

Reflecting in Vanity Fair on his friend Tim's death, Sebastian Junger says, "That's also part of what you died for: the decision to live a life that was thrown open to all the beauty and misery and ugliness and joy in the world….What a vision you had, my friend. What a goddamned terrible, beautiful vision of things."

"For as one comes to understand people who live by institutions and values different from one's own, at the same time one comes to see that these people are, nevertheless, at bottom quite like one's own people. The alien culture at first appears to us as a mask, enigmatic or repugnant. On closer acquaintance we see it as a garment for the spirit; we understand its harmonies and appreciate them. Finally, as acquaintance goes deeper still, we do not see, or for a time forget, the culture, but look only to the common humanity of the men and women underneath."

–Robert Redfield, "The Study of Culture in General Education, " Social Education, Oct. 1947

Man asleep at work. Photo: cell105 / Flickr

In my post last week, I talked about whether it's safe to travel now.  As a bit of a follow-up, I'll talk about when it's dangerous to sit still for too long: always.

Have you ever been stuck in class or at the office and felt like you were dying inside?  It might not just be your mind playing tricks on you.  The New York Times had an alarming article titled, Is sitting a lethal activity? This quote by a doctor summed it up nicely:

"Go into cubeland in a tightly controlled corporate environment and you immediately sense that there is a malaise about being tied behind a computer screen seated all day," he said. "The soul of the nation is sapped, and now it's time for the soul of the nation to rise."

Whether you've traveled or not, many of us can relate to that dread of being at a desk job.  The computer monitor attacks your eyes, the fluorescent lights can harm your skin, and fat builds up in your body from your lack of movement.  That doesn't even cover stress, which is a leading cause of a whole host of physical and mental problems.

On the flip side, travel is much more active.  You're walking to sights, you're flexing brain muscles by navigating a new place, you're carrying your backpack, etc.  You're 100% engaged, physically and mentally.  When I was traveling, I gained a trim figure without seemingly exercising.  But I actually was working out, by doing the day-to-day tasks of being on the road.

Have you ever come back from a trip in better shape than when you left?  Please share your thoughts in the comments.

Perhaps the perma-vagabonding life isn't quite within reach and you need a job that will not only value your love for travel, but also will pay you enough so you can squirrel away cash for that travel. How do you know which companies support a healthy work-life balance?

Outside magazine's May issue helps you weed through the companies who just talk a good game and identifies the 50 best places to work, sorted by location, average salary and more. Not only that, but an article about winning company philosophies on work-life balance shows that more organizations are taking similar paths. To round out the feature, company leaders share their thoughts about what makes their business stand out from the rest.

If working for yourself isn't in the cards, and those lottery tickets haven't yet paid off—why not work for a company that cares about the things you care about?

One of the fun parts of travel is getting out and trying to navigate a foreign city on your own. Many travelers relish the simple task of trying to navigate public transit from the airport to the hostel where they are staying. There is simply a fresh zeal to figuring the workings of local buses and rail systems to get out and see all of the sights a place has to offer.

I've always enjoyed this particular element of travel, however after a trip to Kyoto – with its multiple separate metro lines that require their own separate transit tickets – I found myself singing the praises of the simple and efficient public transit system back home in Korea.

The whole of the Korean transit system is accessible with the country's T-Money card. The small credit card-sized transit card can be loaded and reloaded endlessly. The credit that you load onto your T-Money card never expires, so it is common to see locals loading the equivalent of hundreds of dollars onto their cards to avoid frequent reloading. Reloading machines are in every metro terminal and are available in English.

Absolutely all forms of public transit are accessible with the card. The buses, metro, and even taxis use the card as fare. What's more, the entire country uses this card. The same transit fare card that is used in Seoul is used in Busan and Gwanju, and indeed everywhere in the country. If navigating travel terminals frustrates you, or if you are simply short on time, the T-Money system can save you on a lot of hassles.

In places like Seoul, public transit in extremely cheap. A single fare in one direction is usually 900won, or close to about US80cents. Seoul is rather large, and if you find yourself needing to transfer between metro and bus to get to your destination, both legs of your commute is counted as a single fare if you make the transfer in less than 30 minutes.

In all of my travels, I have yet to find a public transit system so simple, efficient, and cheap.

Shannon O'Donnell

http://alittleadrift.com

Age: 27

Hometown: St. Petersburg, FL

Quote: "Between the two – living frugally and working part-time – I have been able to support slow travel. I try to limit the number of plane tickets I have to buy and in that way tend to stay in a region for at least four months at a time."



How did you find out about Vagabonding, and how did you find it useful before and during the trip? The archives of the site offer up so many great tips and tricks – shortcuts to the travel process that make so many moments on the road infinitely easier. That's why I love using this site—for the tips and tricks you can only learn from someone who spends their life on the road.

How long were you on the road? My formal round the world trip lasted 11 months; since then I've continued traveling and I'm on my third year of travel and still going strong!

Where all did you go? Back in 2008 I felt like I just needed to get the heck out of Los Angeles, so booked my first flight to Australia and worked my way back toward North America. I backpacked through Southeast Asia and fell in love, (this is where I've temporarily expat-ed myself since my RTW has ended) then continued on through India and Nepal before wallowing in delicious Italian food when I made it to Europe.

After far less gelato than I would have liked, I ferried over to Croatia and used the fantastic rail system in Europe to train throughout Bosnia, Slovenia, Czech, and the Netherlands. My entire trip was actually planned around making it to Scotland by August for the annual Edinburgh Fringe Festival – an item that had been on my bucket list for a decade at that point. I finished up in Ireland in the fall and headed home for the family time over holidays before backpacking through Central America.

Whew, all of that travel wiped me out and I flew back to Southeast Asia earlier this year to live in Chiang Mai, Thailand for six months and explore the region from a home-base.

What was your job or source of travel funding for this journey? I am an active freelance writer and SEO consultant; that has always been my source of funding and I have worked the whole way around the world. To save up the initial nest-egg to springboard my RTW trip I also sold most of my major possessions – my car, my TV, all of the furniture in my LA apartment. It all went up on Craigslist and what was still left was donated to Goodwill.

Between the two – living frugally and working part-time – I have been able to support slow travel. I try to limit the number of plane tickets I have to buy and in that way tend to stay in a region for at least four months at a time.

Did you work or volunteer on the road? My most memorable experiences over the past two years are, consistently, the volunteer work I did throughout Cambodia, Nepal, Guatemala and Thailand. I am so grateful to the people in each place who shared their lives with me for those brief weeks, and allowed me to share some of my experiences and skills with them.

Of all the places you visited, which was your favorite? Ack! The favorite question. I feel like a parent trying to pick my most loved child. If I have to go with a single country (and it's seeming like I do) I pick India. The country is vibrant and engaging and you are absolutely guaranteed to leave with a story.

Traveling through India can be difficult; the highs and lows in India were intense for me, but the food and culture made up for those questionable moments. I've been a vegetarian for over a decade, and India was, by far, the easiest country to travel through for me – the diversity of options was overwhelming at first and I spent my first several restaurant experiences in the country pouring over the menu for more than 20 minutes!

And just to break the rules a bit – Laos and Guatemala get a shout-out for second place from me. I am so thoroughly in love with the experiences and memories of both these countries.

Was there a place that was your least favorite, or most disappointing, or most challenging? Bosnia was incredibly difficult food-wise; the culture is not vegetarian friendly and the lack of widespread tourism in the region (a leftover from the war) meant I spent many days munching on apples from the grocery store instead of tasty local eats. That being said, I would go back in a heartbeat, but maybe this time with a phrase guidebook and some extra granola bars packed in my sack!

Did any of your pre-trip worries or concerns come true?  Did you run into any problems or obstacles that you hadn't anticipated? I got sick an awful lot for the first year. This was a worry before I left, and it did manifest on the road. I don't have a particularly strong immune system, and beyond that I have a tendency toward street food and local eats – most of the time this is a solid option…sometimes though, not so much! But it hasn't been enough to keep me from traveling, more like, "okay fine, I guess this is just how it's going to be!"

Which travel gear proved most useful?  Least useful? I adore my backpack. A well fitting, small backpack is the best investment I made. I use an Eagle Creek backpack specially made for women, meaning it fits well across the waist and chest. I've crossed paths with other travelers who were exhausted and in pain from ill-fitting packs and made me grateful I picked a good one!

What are the rewards of the vagabonding lifestyle? Perspective and inquisitiveness. You certainly don't have to be a vagabond to possess both of these qualities, but I have found that travel accelerates growth in both areas. I find myself more intrigued by the little moments in life than I was in the past – I pay attention and notice more, which leads to more questions, and then more learning.

I regularly use the phrase "all knowledge is worth having," and I wholly believe it's true. There is so much to see and learn about, and you're never going to regret taking that Thai cooking classes on your two-week vacation to Thailand…quite the opposite in fact.

What are the challenges and sacrifices of the vagabonding lifestyle? I spend less time with my family and longtime friends than I would like too. I know that it's a trade-off, and I have knowingly sacrificed being there for weddings and births, birthdays and holidays. Even knowing that I made the choice to be far away though, it's still an active challenge and something I try to mitigate through frequent Skype calls to those I love.

What lessons did you learn on the road? I have learned humbleness. So many times on the road I've had to eat that infamous "humble pie" our parents tried to serve up throughout childhood. I had (still have no doubt) arrogant assumptions and opinions about people, places, ideas – all sorts of experiences and situations I had never seen nor experienced.

And now that I have traveled, and I have actually seen these places and people, I realize how much less I actually know. How much more there is to learn about the world…and how standing on a soap box and talking about how something ought to be is a whole lot different than going there and experiencing it.

How did your personal definition of "vagabonding" develop over the course of the trip? One of the central, core tenants of vagabonding is the idea that you are "homeless" and to some people in my life that has meant "aimless." But they're not the same thing, and that's what I have come to understand over the past two plus years of travel. I may not have the firmest plans in place, but I love the direction my life has taken – the travels have filled a piece of my life that was missing before. And far from being homeless, I still consider my hometown "home;" I may not live there, but all of the people I love in my life live within a 60 mile radius. So, although I travel for the better part of every year, I guess I now understand that vagabonds can still attach to the term home and have a direction and purpose to their wanderings.

If there was one thing you could have told yourself before the trip, what would it be? "Actually keep up your journal, Shannon. Or send yourself emails. Something! Your travel blog is not the same thing – many people and experiences will not make it into the blog and you will want more personal evidence of this journey."

Any advice or tips for someone hoping to embark on a similar adventure? Plan less! I worried and stressed myself into a nervous wreck in the days leading up to my RTW trip; at the point that the planning stops being enjoyable…just stop. Take care of the essentials (vaccines and gear) and then stop. You can truly figure everything else out on the road, taking the advice of other backpackers as you go.

When and where do you think you'll take your next long-term journey? I head home to the United States for the summer…and then my plans are so up in the air. I have so many ideas and the "plan" changes constantly. Last month I was sure that I was going to backpack South America this winter and fulfill my dream to visit Antarctica. Now I am dreaming of truly taking off a few months and backpacking through Burma. Who knows?! It's one of those things I'm leaving open-ended right now to see where life takes me over the next few months.

Are you a Vagabonding reader planning, in the middle of, or returning from a journey? Would you like your travel blog or website to be featured on Vagabonding Case Studies? If so, drop us a line at [email protected] and tell us a little about yourself.

A 1972 Monty Python sketch called "Travel Agent" contains a classic scene where the Eric Idle character goes on an over-the-top rant about package tourism, at the expense of Michael Palin's travel-agent character. Many of the references are dated now — and the whole scene is drenched in hyperbole — but many of the frustrations of overly structured group-travel still ring true. Here's the rant in full:

"What's the point of going abroad if you're just another tourist carted around in buses surrounded by sweaty mindless oafs from Kettering and Coventry in their cloth caps and their cardigans and their transistor radios and their Sunday Mirrors, complaining about the tea — "Oh they don't make it properly here, do they, not like at home" — and stopping at Majorcan bodegas selling fish and chips and Watney's Red Barrel and calamares and two-veg and sitting in their cotton frocks squirting Timothy White's suncream all over their puffy raw swollen purulent flesh 'cos they "overdid it on the first day." And being herded into endless Hotel Miramars and Bellvueses and Continentals with their modern international luxury roomettes and draught Red Barrel and swimming pools full of fat German businessmen pretending they're acrobats forming pyramids and frightening the children and barging into queues and if you're not at your table spot on seven you miss the bowl of Campbell's Cream of Mushroom soup, the first item on the menu of International Cuisine, and every Thursday night the hotel has a bloody cabaret in the bar, featuring a tiny emaciated dago with nine-inch hips and some bloated fat tart with her hair brylcreemed down and a big arse presenting "Flamenco for Foreigners." And adenoidal typists from Birmingham with flabby white legs and diarrhea trying to pick up hairy bandy-legged wop waiters called Manuel and once a week there's an excursion to the local Roman remains to buy cherryade and melted ice cream and bleeding Watney's Red Barrel and one evening you visit the so called typical restaurant with local color and atmosphere and you sit next to a party from Rhyl who keep singing "Torremolinos, torremolinos" and complaining about the food — "It's so greasy isn't it?" — and you get cornered by some drunken greengrocer from Luton with an Instamatic camera and Dr. Scholl sandals and last Tuesday's Daily Express and he drones on and on about how Mr. Smith should be running this country and how many languages Enoch Powell can speak and then he throws up over the Cuba Libres. And sending tinted postcards, of places they don't realize they haven't even visited, to: "All at number 22, weather wonderful, our room is marked with an 'X'. Food very greasy but we've found a charming little local place hidden away in the back streets where they serve Watney's Red Barrel and cheese and onion crisps and the accordionist plays 'Maybe it's because I'm a Londoner'." And spending four days on the tarmac at Luton airport on a five-day package tour with nothing to eat but dried BEA-type sandwiches and you can't even get a drink of Watney's Red Barrel because you're still in England and the bloody bar closes every time you're thirsty and there's nowhere to sleep and the kids are crying and vomiting and breaking the plastic ash-trays and they keep telling you it'll only be another hour although your plane is still in Iceland and has to take some Swedes to Yugoslavia before it can load you up at 3 a.m. in the bloody morning and you sit on the tarmac till six because of "unforeseen difficulties", i.e. the permanent strike of Air Traffic Control in Paris — and nobody can go to the lavatory until you take off at 8, and when you get to Malaga airport everybody's swallowing "enterovioform" and queuing for the toilets and queuing for the armed customs officers, and queuing for the bloody bus that isn't there to take you to the hotel that hasn't yet been finished. And when you finally get to the half-built Algerian ruin called the Hotel del Sol by paying half your holiday money to a licensed bandit in a taxi you find there's no water in the pool, there's no water in the taps, there's no water in the bog and there's only a bleeding lizard in the bidet. And half the rooms are double booked and you can't sleep anyway because of the permanent twenty-four-hour drilling of the foundations of the hotel next door — and you're plagued by appalling apprentice chemists from Ealing pretending to be hippies, and middle-class stockbrokers' wives busily buying identical holiday villas in suburban development plots just like Esher, in case the Labour government gets in again, and fat American matrons with sloppy-buttocks and Hawaiian-patterned ski pants looking for any mulatto male who can keep it up long enough when they finally let it all flop out. And the Spanish Tourist Board promises you that the raging cholera epidemic is merely a case of mild Spanish tummy, like the previous outbreak of Spanish tummy in 1660 which killed half London and decimated Europe — and meanwhile the bloody Guardia are busy arresting sixteen-year-olds for kissing in the streets and shooting anyone under nineteen who doesn't like Franco. And then on the last day in the airport lounge everyone's comparing sunburns, drinking Nasty Spumante, buying cartons of duty free "cigarillos" and using up their last pesetas on horrid dolls in Spanish National costume and awful straw donkeys and bullfight posters with your name on "Ordoney, El Cordobes and Brian Pules of Norwich" and 3-D pictures of the Pope and Kennedy and Franco, and everybody's talking about coming again next year and you swear you never will although there you are tumbling bleary-eyed out of a tourist-tight antique Iberian airplane…"

When you're planning a one- or two-week trip somewhere, figuring out your route is essentially the same as figuring out your itinerary. You'll fly into Rome, take a train to Florence, rent a car and drive around Tuscany for a week, and then spend a couple days in Venice before flying home again. People agonize over these details – what order to go in, how to get from place to place – but the truth is they're relatively easy to figure out compared to laying out a whole RTW route.

One major consideration is which direction to travel in – do you head west first? East? Maybe south or north? – but the direction is only part of the route-planning equation. Carrying everything on your back means you'll want to pack light, and the best way to do that is to stick to warmer locations whenever possible – so watching the seasons is another thing to keep in mind when you're planning a RTW route.

Other things to think about when figuring out a route for your RTW trip include which places are more budget-friendly (do you go to expensive places first, or make your money last longer by starting where it's cheaper?) and which ones require particular visas and immunizations (can you string together a series of destinations that all require the same shots, so you don't have to get some again later on?).

This month's RTW travel newsletter from BootsnAll is all about planning a RTW route, so be sure to sign up so you don't miss anything.

Emergency shelter sign in Beijing, China. Photo: Ivan Walsh / Flickr

There's always trouble going on somewhere in the world, but 2011 has been a particularly wrenching period.  Revolution has swept the Middle East; Japan has endured disaster after disaster; America is carrying out military operations in three countries. One has to ask, "Is it safe to travel now?"

The answer is "Yes," according to travel writer Paul Theroux. He made a moving call to action in this essay that appeared in The New York Times: An Argument for Travel During Turbulent Times.

Now this doesn't mean you should buy a plane ticket to a war zone. Theroux's piece encourages us to regain a proper perspective on safety.  Similar to what our Rolf Potts said in his book Vagabonding, the trouble is often confined to one spot in a country. However, the mass media often paints an entire country as being a risk.

In some cases, the possibility of disaster can be a strong reason to travel now, to see that place you've always wanted to see before something happens to it. I faced this dilemma in 2010, when I had to decide whether to do my long-awaited trip around Japan. I worried about not having enough time, money, and the usual suspects.  In the end, I went.  The resulting stories and photos are up at my blog, Marcus Goes Global.  Now I'm glad I went, because my family would be too concerned for my health if I went there now.

Speaking of family, they can be the most opposed to your travels.  You can alleviate their fears by doing your homework. Go deeper than the sound bites to find the real story.  Is all the trouble in just one city or one region of that country?  Is infrastructure intact everywhere else?  These are the things we should check up on anyway.

Your government's foreign ministry can be biased against travel, as well as having a political agenda to push.  A good resource for objective information is Hotspots, a newsletter published by ASI Group, which does global risk management.  You can get up-to-date news on how crises are unfolding all over the world.

Travel insurance is a must, regardless if you're going a tourist area free of bad news.  Make sure it covers "emergency evacuation" and "emergency repatriation."  The first is if you have to be flown to the nearest country with a developed hospital.  The second is if you have to be flown back to your home country.  These services can easily cost over US$10,000, so it's worth it to buy insurance in advance.

International SOS is my favorite choice.  The main reason is that they're more than an insurance company.  They're a medical service provider that operates the hospitals, flies the planes, and sends in the doctors.  The advantage of this is that you can be served immediately, without waiting for an insurance company to approve of surgery, evacuation, or whatever.  I've also heard good things about Medex Assist.

Safety is definitely a priority when going abroad.  Just don't wait to travel until the whole world is safe.

Have you ever traveled to a place before it was touched by disaster?  Share your stories in the comments.