About Me (Barbara Weibel)

Barbara Weibel After years of working 70 hours a week at jobs I detested, I felt like the proverbial "hole in the donut" - solid on the outside, but empty on the inside. Searching for meaning in my life, I abandoned my successful but unsatisfying career and set out on a six-month solo backpacking trip around the world to pursue my true passions of travel, writing, and photography. My blog features stories about the destinations I visit, people I meet, the crazy things...Read more here....


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

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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Some of my most enduring travel memories are inextricably linked with music. As I trekked a jungle trail connecting temples at the Angkor Wat complex in Cambodia, I happened upon a group of musicians performing traditional Khmer wedding songs. They sat or squatted on a crude raised wooden platform in front of exotic instruments, producing an ethereal sound that stopped me in my tracks. So mesmerized was I by the haunting melodies that I almost missed the crudely lettered sign explaining that the musicians were victims of land mines. Startled, I looked more closely and spotted three prosthetic legs propped up against the stage; at least two of the musicians were amputees and two were blind. I later learned that thousands of land mines still lie undiscovered in Cambodia and that hundreds suffer severe injuries or are killed in land mine accidents each year.

Victims of land mines play in the jungles of Angkor Wat, Cambodia

In an area of central India so remote that locals had never before seen a white person, the young women of the tribe fitted my fingers with tiny cymbals and pulled me into their circle. To traditional music played on hand-carved flutes and rudimentary stringed instruments, we stomped out rhythmic steps – two steps forward, one back – while tribal elders looked on, pointing and gesticulating, as if to say, “look, she’s doing it!”

Dancing with tribal women in central India

Throughout much of history, the only way to experience the diversity of world music was to travel, but in recent years technology has made it possible to sample music from around the globe without leaving home. The new primetime PBS series, Sound Tracks: Music Without Borders, will take us on a musical odyssey that reveals how music is transforming Continue reading

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Between moving out of Sarasota and traveling for the Thanksgiving holiday, I have been somewhat silent for the past two weeks. But things are settling down now and I can’t think of a better reason to get back into the swing than to tell you about a wonderful charity effort being mounted by my fellow travel writers through Passports With Purpose.

This year, the Passports with Purpose fund raising effort is supporting American Assistance for Cambodia (AAfC), an independent, nonprofit organization dedicated to improving opportunities for the youth and rural poor in Cambodia, with a goal of raising $13,000 to build a school. In order to achieve this goal, travel bloggers have either personally donated prizes or arranged for companies to donate prizes. These items are then raffled off online, with each $10 donation entering the donor into a drawing for the prize of his or her choice.

Passports-With-Purpose

Smiling children like this little girl hawk merchandise on the streets all day rather than attending school

I know first hand how much this is needed in Cambodia. When I visited the country in 2007, I was particularly struck by droves of children who roamed the streets, carrying baskets heaped with hand-made jewelry or toting hand-woven mats twice their size. Without exception, they interspersed pesky sales pitches and arm tugs with the few words of English they knew:

“Hello, where you from?”

“U.S.A.”

“Oh, U.S.A., A-Number one. President George Bush; capitol Washington, D.C.”

These children, some of them barely old enough to be left alone, much less on the streets all day selling merchandise, seemed desperate to learn. I can think of no better way to celebrate the holidays than to help build a school for these lovely children.

If you wish to join me in supporting this worthy cause, check out the list of prizes being offered at Passports With Purpose. Select the drawings you’d like to enter and indicate how many $10 donations you want to make for each prize. For example, I entered “3″ in the box to the right of the $100 Amazon.com gift card donated by Continue reading

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preahkhan_temple_siem_reap_cambodia

This young boy peeked out at me with soulful eyes as I crossed a bridge at the Angkor Wat Complex in Siem Reap, Cambodia, on my way to to the Preah Khan Temple

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Music is one of the joys of traveling. In SE Asia I discovered Cambodian wedding songs. Hindu legends set to music charmed me in Bali. And music in Tanzania and Zanzibar was an amazing melange of drums, rhythm, and harmonizing voices. In years past, the only way to sample music around the world was to travel to these places. Fortunately, this genre of music has become very popular over the past few years, thus collections are more readily available in the U.S.

worldmusicOne example is Sony’s new “A Night In” World Music Collection. Each of the collection’s ten CD’s features the music of a different country. “A Night in Cuba” features the outstanding singers and songwriters of Salsa, Son, and other Latin rhythms, while “A Night In Italy” presents the most exquisite voices of opera. Tango is the focus of “A Night In Argentina” and “A Night In Puerto Rico” encompasses the Afro-Carribbean rhythms of the Salsa, Plena, and Bomba styles. Romantic melodies and quirky jazz are the basis for “A Night In France” and “A Night In Spain” showcases artists who have Continue reading

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When I began this trip I decided I would select three words that best described each country I visited. Initially I was going to wait until the ed of the trip and compile them all into one post, but I have decided to do this immediately upon departing each country, as the reasons for selecting those particular words will be fresh in my mind. So, here goes for the countries I have visited to date:

VIETNAM

  1. Industrious (With the possible exception of Hanoi, people were bustling about everywhere I went – busy selling, buying, doing. Not surprising, since Vietnam is currently the fastest growing economy in the world)
  2. Emerging (rather than poor)
  3. Stuck (There is severe mistrust between the multitude of ethnic groups that inhabit Vietnam and abiding oppression of the non-Viet peoples by the government; there is distinct dislike between North and South Vietnamese – I heard over and over again from northerners that they wouldn’t want their daughters to marry a slow, stupid southerner and from southerners I heard repeatedly how northerners couldn’t be trusted; and there is severe corruption in the country at the government level. The result is that Vietnam is identity-less – the people themselves do not yet have a feeling for who they are as a nationality, much less a national identity. They are well and truly stuck.)

BALI:

  1. Lush (Greenery and lush jungle was everywhere)
  2. Spiritual (The most beautiful temples I have seen anywhere in the world)
  3. Beautiful (A feast for the eyes in a small island that has such diversity – dense jungle, towering active volcanoes, colorful offshore reefs, and lovely beaches)

CAMBODIA: Continue reading

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