Bloggers | Hole In The Donut Cultural Travel

Free Photo eBook – Around the World with 40 Lonely Planet Bloggers – Available for Download

Published May 3, 2011 | By Barbara Weibel

Around the World with 40 Lonely Planet Bloggers

Nearly a year in the making, the new photography ebook “Around the World with 40 Lonely Planet Bloggers” is finally a reality. As one of the 40 bloggers featured in the book I am happy to be able to offer my readers a free copy.

New readers can receive the ebook by subscribing to receive an email each time I publish an article on Hole In The Donut. Simply fill out the form in the right-hand sidebar and click on the “subscribe” button. A follow-up email will contain a link that must be clicked to confirm the subscription. Once confirmed, a final email will provide a link to download the ebook. Readers who are already subscribed will automatically receive an email with a link that will allow the ebook to be downloaded.

This first ever joint effort by Lonely Planet BlogSherpas, as they are called, features photos of almost 70 countries, taken by bloggers who are experts in travel modes ranging from family to solo to couples travel; expat living to long-term and perpetual travel; others who specialize in adventure; and even those who focus on a particular destination or region. The gathering of this eclectic group of travel experts was born out of Lonely Planet’s effort to broaden content for their audience. They sought to shine a light on the very best writing and photography around the globe by importing articles published by top travel bloggers into destination pages of Lonely Planet’s website.

Our ebook was spearheaded by Todd Wassel, who has been on the road more than ten years and publishes the popular travel blog Todd’s Wanderings. After a few years of vagabonding Wassel could not conceive of a 9 to 5 job in an office, so he created a career as an international conflict resolution specialist for the United Nations, which requires him to move every few months to hot spots around the world. Wassel is indicative of the creative solutions that the 40 featured BlogSherpas have employed to pursue lives of travel.

Aside from being a stunning collection of photos, “Around the World with 40 Lonely Planet Bloggers” is an ideal read for anyone seeking suggestions for summer travel. Please accept it as my gift to wanderlusters everywhere.

Posted in ebooks |

Tagged bloggers, Blogging, cultural travel, culture, ebooks, free, Lonely Planet, photography, photos, Travel |

12 Comments

Help Passports with Purpose Build a Village in India

Published November 19, 2010 | By Barbara Weibel

Doing good. Helping others. Giving back. All things that have been on my mind a great deal lately here in Nepal. Over the past two months I’ve visited with children who have been denied an education simply because they are from lower caste parentage. I’ve met families living in dire poverty, sleeping five to a bed in a mud-walled shack on the shores of a filthy, trash-choked stream. And I have spoken extensively with Tibetan refugees who are unemployable because China demands that Nepal not give them citizenship; literally people without a country, they live in limbo, awaiting their chance to emigrate to other countries where they become productive citizens. These appalling experiences drive home how lucky I am to have been born in the USA, where a good education is commonplace and a world of opportunity is available to those willing to work hard. Having received so much in my life, I am now driven by a need to give back, but I have long struggled to find the best way to do so.

Passports with Purpose 2010 Campaign

Though there are myriad choices for charities and non-profit organizations with which I might have associated, it was hard to know which were the most effective. Especially with larger organizations, I worried that an inordinate portion of donations were used for administrative costs rather than benefiting the people who really needed it. Fortunately, this concern was resolved for me when some of my fellow travel bloggers, who have all seen more than their equitable share of poverty and suffering around the world, launched a non-profit initiative named Passports with Purpose three years ago. In its first year, PwP raised money online for Heifer International, an organization that donates cows to poor rural families around the world. Last year they raised $30,000 to build a school in rural Cambodia; the school opened early last month and now there are a few hundred kids learning to read and write who would not otherwise have received an education. Continue reading →

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Posted in Travel General |

Tagged bloggers, Cambodia, charity, donations, India, Passports With Purpose, PwP, Travel |

8 Comments

Meeting Up With Old and New Friends While Traveling ‘Round the World

Published October 15, 2010 | By Barbara Weibel

I met Dr. Fauziah Ahmad in 2007, during my first ever round-the-world trip. We happened to be on the same city tour of Hanoi, Vietnam, and bonded when we had to fight to get a portion of our money back because the tour operator failed to deliver on promises to take us to see the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum. We later attended a performance at the Water Puppet Theater, followed by dinner, at the end of which we exchanged contact information and she invited me to visit her in Penang, should I ever make it to Malaysia.

Dr. Fauziah Ahmad and husband, Ahmad Shukri Yahaya

Over the years we’d exchanged a few emails, but hadn’t been in regular contact, so I held off contacting her until I knew for sure my arrival dates. Once I had arrived and recovered from my horrible experience in China, I emailed to let her know I was in Penang. Realizing it was short notice, I told her I’d understand if she didn’t have time to get together, but I underestimated the bonds of friendship made during travel.

The following week, Fauziah arrived at my guest house and whisked me away to her home for the night, where she set me up in her guest room and introduced me to her lovely family. But that was only the beginning; she had plans for me…

Sitting in on student's practice presentation to Dr. Fauziah Ahmad

Fauziah is a geotechnical engineer specializing in soil stability, landslides, and ground improvement, and a full professor at the Universiti Sains Malaysia (Malaysia University of Science). She had timed my visit to coincide with the Hari Raya Adilfitri, one of the high Muslim Continue reading →

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Posted in SE Asia travel |

Tagged Around The World, bloggers, Blogging, cultural travel, culture, Friends, Malaysia, Penang, round the world travel, Travel, tribe |

14 Comments

Finding My Tribe Through World Travel

Published May 8, 2010 | By Barbara Weibel

Lonely Planet Blogsherpa

For most of my life, I felt like I didn’t belong. In elementary school, I was chubby, had crooked teeth and crossed eyes, and my mother, God bless her, permed my hair into a ridiculous frizzy mass. They called me four eyes and probably lots of other names I never knew about. In high school I was nearly two years younger than everyone else because I’d been moved ahead twice – being one of the “eggheads” certainly didn’t help my popularity. Throughout my adult life I had great business success, but never liked what I did for a living. Certainly, I had friends, but I always felt like there was a huge, gaping hole in my life. It wasn’t until I left the corporate life to pursue my true passions of world travel, writing, and photography that I found my true calling. I finally found my “tribe.”

About a year ago, that tribe grew exponentially when Lonely Planet invited me to join its Blogsherpa program, which imports content from member blogs to the Lonely Planet website. When visitors to the LP website search for information on a particular travel destination, they can now also read posts from Blogsherpa bloggers that refer to that destination. It was a great concept – tie a commercial site to people who are actually out there on the road, traveling the world.

Then something miraculous started to happen. Lonely Planet bloggers began to band together. A simple proposal to exchange links quickly evolved into plans to interview one another on our various blogs and publish a book about our collective world travel experiences. In the midst of all these wonderfully creative ideas, one Blogsherpa member created a special website – a Squidoo lens – where the content from all of our blogs is imported. Travel junkies can now read world travel posts from Lonely Planet’s top notch bloggers in one easy place.

Finally, I feel like I belong. I’ve found my tribe and I’m thrilled to be able to share it with all my readers.

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Posted in Travel General |

Tagged bloggers, Blogging, blogsherpa, independent, Lonely Planet, Squidoo, Travel, tribe, world travel |

24 Comments

Meeting American Expats in Mazatlan

Published March 6, 2010 | By Barbara Weibel

I’d been in Mazatlan, Mexico for exactly one day when I received an email from Nancy Dardarian. She and her husband are American expats from the Seattle area who retired to Mazatlan more than two years ago. When they first started thinking about moving permanently to Mexico, Nancy and Paul launched a blog, Countdown to Mexico, in order to chronicle the entire decision making and relocation process. Not only is it a great resource for anyone considering moving to Mexico, it’s full of the most interesting information about Mazatlan.

Nancy and Paul Dardarian, Mazatlan, Mexico

But here’s the fun part. Nancy has Google alerts set up to email her when anyone writes about Mazatlan, so when my first blog post appeared about her adopted city, she read it and emailed, asking if I would be staying long enough to get together. They picked me up at my hotel last Sunday and treated me to lunch at one of the beach palapas along the Malecon – the traditional Ceviche they served me was so huge I could hardly finish half of it. Even better, they invited another expat friend, Michael, to join us for lunch, because they knew of my plans to hike Mexico’s remote Copper Canyon and Michael has hiked it twice. As a result I now have a remarkable amount of information about Copper Canyon – the kind of stuff that can’t even be found on the Internet. Serendipitous events like this aren’t uncommon; they happen to me all the time when I travel slow, without plans, and allow the path to unfold before me.

One thing is for sure. It’s definitely a small world out there.

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Posted in Mexico travel |

Tagged Americans, bloggers, Blogging, community, countdowntomexico.com, Dardarian, expat, Mazatlan, Mexico, Nancy, Paul, small world, Travel |

35 Comments

TBEX – Travel Blog Exchange – Conference A Smashing Success

Published July 28, 2009 | By Barbara Weibel

Following two intense days at BlogHer 2009, I headed back into Chicago for Travel Blog Exchange ’09, a one day event for travel bloggers sponsored by TravelBlogExchange.com. The website was founded just last year by Kim Mance, host of Galavanting.tv, and editor-in-chief of GoGalavanting.com, as a place for those who blog about travel to connect with one another as well as members of the media, travel industry consultants, professionals, vendors, and advertisers.

Kim, along with fellow TBEXer Debbie Dubrow of DeliciousBaby.com, organized the inaugural event. And what an event! They envisioned that it would someday attract every person on their “dream list” of travel bloggers/writers they’d most like to meet. Even Kim and Debbie couldn’t have imagined their vision would become a reality on this first ever get-together, but that’s exactly what happened. Attendees included BootsnAll Travel, National Geographic Traveler ombudsman Chris Elliott, Wendy Perrin from Conde Nast Traveler, Disney, WorldHum, and Gadling, among others.

Those of you who have been following my blog for a while know that I fled from corporate life in December of 2006 to do what I love – travel writing and Continue reading →