Travel to Central Asia Western China or Middle East

Travel to Central Asia, Western China, or Middle East and then Africa?

Where to now?

Seriously, where to now is my only question. But it is a good question, the best of questions. I cannot think of a greater joy than standing at a global crossroads, looking in all directions with feelings of excitement, inquiry, and knowing that Chance is ever laying directly in front of me regardless of the Path that I choose. I am looking north, south, east, and west, just waiting for that prick of inspiration that will send me off onto another unexpected Road.
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Wade from Vagabond Journey.com
in Brooklyn, New York City- November 12, 2008
Travelogue -- Travel Photos
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There is nothing better in this world than endings, as endings just lead to new beginnings. I am excited.

This is one of the most enjoyable parts of traveling: planning, pondering, making mental lines across a map and giving free reign to all feelings of adventure, romance, and excitement. The Road is always open. I am squirming in my chair as I write this.

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Sun bright, crispy autumn leaves blowing, no clouds, people joking on picnic benches, I am writing.

Oh how I just want to run today. Autumn nostalgia is blowing through me like the wind and it is making me want to MOVE. To get away, run, to travel, and to travail. I feel like a caged bird in migration season, ever battering my plume up against the bars of my enclosure. I will not be a captive much longer.

One more month in Brooklyn, then I will break free.

I am feeling the Wanderlust hitting as hard as it always does in the migration season, as the weather changes in the north. Humans are migrators, the flying geese overhead makes my feet want to start walking. It is my impression that the migrating urge vibrates just as strongly beneath our modern, civilized human crust as it did in the earliest nomad.

But where to now?

I think about this question for a good portion of my days. Map gazing is my perhaps my most comfortable occupation – some people have comfort foods and comfort places, I just stare at maps. My gaze has been lingering in the most landlocked and mysterious center of the great Asia continent: the Stans and China's Xinjiang and Qinghai regions!

I applied for a teaching position in Uzbekistan a few days ago, and I am getting in contact with some friends and connections in the west of China. This is an incredibly huge region of the world that I am interested in, and I would like to really dig in and discover for myself what is going on.

I would be a happy traveler if I could land a temporary job in Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, or Turkmenistan. I can think of no better cover for doing an initial cultural investigation than that of the English teacher, as your job is to do nothing other than talk to people in a language that you can understand. So I am provided with a means to learn about a culture as I teach someone a skill that they wish to learn, and I get paid for it.

It means a lot more to be able to say that you are an English teacher at a university than an un-provenienceable traveler just wandering through. Having a place and a role in a community - an identity - is important to be really accepted. If cultural impressions are my goal, I know that it is much more effective to play the part of a worker - who is employed and, therefore in the same shoes as most everyone else in a community - than a lackadaisical tourist who is perceived as living the high, easy life on independent means. It just means something more if you are a part of a place.

There is a time and a place for different roles when traveling. Most of the time I enjoy just wandering into a country – a culture – and being the traveler. I arrive, I may make a couple one-night friends (or I may not talk to anyone), and then I am on my way again in a couple of days to go through the same routine. This is a good and probably the typical way to travel, but it can quickly become a warn routine after a few months.

I have found that I like to stay in regions for around two to three months. Anything over three months I begin to feel caged, anything under a month is a limited exposure and little can really be learned.

So I think that I will travel for a few months after this term in Brooklyn. Just travel, dream, and watch the world go by. But by summer I would like to land a job somewhere for a season.

Maybe Central Asia.

Maybe North-Western China.

Maybe I will take my flight back to Budapest, hop on a train to Istanbul, travel through Turkey, Syria, Jordan, Egypt, Sudan (if possible), Ethiopia, and then find work in Uganda or Tanzania for a few months before continuing south to the bottom of the great Africa continent.

These ponderings are fun.


Map of China.

Map of Kyrgystan.

Map of Uzbekistan.

Map of Tanzania.

Map of Africa.

Related Pages:
Czech Republic- Bicycle Travel to Turkey
Czech Republic- Bike Vagabond Maps to the Sickle Moon Horizon
How to Find Work while Traveling
Vagabond Journey.com Travelogue: English Teaching Urumqi Xinjiang ...
Question About Travel Money

Links to previous travelogue entries:
Lonliness, Traveling, and the Open Road
Begging for a Laugh in New York City
Ethnography Journalism and Travel Writing

Travel to Central Asia, Western China, or Middle East and then Africa
* Travel Blog Directory * Vagabond Journey.com * Travel Photos * Travel Questions and Answers

Downfall of the Maya

The following article about the downfall of Maya was published in Cafe Abroad InPrint, December 2008.

Oracle Bones: Lessons for Today from an Ancient Mayan Burial

White flecks of bone glimmered in the archaeologists’ sifting screens and the excitement among the crew was building as the remains of a human being would soon be unearthed after an undisturbed slumber of more than 1,000 years.

I watched as the old Honduran archaeologist scraped off the remaining bits of parched, baked soil from the surface of an ancient Mayan burial. A shallow layer of previously buried stones were now the only barrier that stood between us and the skeleton that surely laid beneath: a slim barrier between the world of the living and the dead.
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Wade from Vagabond Journey.com
in Brooklyn, New York- October 18, 2008
Travelogue -- Travel Photos
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I recorded field notes into an old dusty notebook and prudently took measurements as the excavators peeled up stone after stone from the long-forgotten tomb. But, as we worked, I was unable to shake the notion that I was participating in the disruption of an ancient burial, and the cold blanket of scientific study did nothing to lessen my excitement. The skeleton that we would soon uncover, disassemble, measure, and coldly stuff into a Tupperware bin was once a living, breathing member of the greatest civilization to rise out of the jungles of Central America.

The excavators dug deeper into the burial, and I became ever more engrossed in my thoughts about the rise and fall of the Mayan empire:

The ancient Maya were one of the most prominent civilizations of pre-Columbian Western Hemisphere, and occupied Central America since the 2nd century BCE. They built elaborate cities out of stone and mortar which rival the ones of today in size, flamboyance, and complexity. Their towns were replete with towering pyramids, sky-high temples, and paved roads that stretched across their jungle terrain. The ancient Maya also possessed a technological ability that was without precedence in the new world, and they had a complex knowledge of astronomy, science, mathematics, history, as well as a complete writing system.

As the Mayan civilization expanded and its technological abilities continuously improved higher and higher temples were built, ever more elaborate ceremonial centers were constructed, and the cities continuously grew in size. Slash and burn agricultural methods cut through the surrounding jungle like a fiery plague and the Mayan population was able to sprawl out of control as the society urbanized. The Maya civilization was now at its peak, and ancient Meso-America was dotted throughout with thriving cosmopolitan centers.

I was thoroughly unstuck in time as I daydreamed about the ancient Maya while standing on the once living ruins of a world now gone. But I was snapped out of my daydream as the crew of well-worn and dust encrusted Latino archaeologists arrive at the terminus of the subterranean tomb. We were now at the crescendo of the excavation and were standing before the last large stone that blanketed the burial.

Fearless of any penalties propagated by Hollywood tomb raiding movies, the old and grizzled Honduran Archaeologists matter of factly lifted the last stone away from the burial. The crew then gathered closely together around the completely exposed burial shaft and apprehensively peered down at the spoils:

Laying in the dry dust at the bottom of the trench was a patchwork of crisscrossing bleach-white bones. As I bent over the discovery it became apparent that the bones still maintained the contours of a complete human being. Even more, the freshly unearthed skeleton rested in the exact position it was placed in more than a millennia ago: thin and decrepit skeletal arms still reached down to brittle knees, tucking them up for eternity into a ribcage that was long picked clean of flesh and life. The skull was crushed by the weight of the rocks and soil, leaving an empty, cracked and dismantled cavity. Still, connected to the bottom of the skull, a beaten and battered jaw hung ominously agape.

As I looked upon the bones of the long-expired Mayan, who continued to hold himself in the embrace of death, my jaw also fell agape with the realization that the factors which lead to the collapse of the Mayan civilization mirrored those that face my own today: environmental destruction, warfare, and the misuse of natural resources.

“The Mayan here at Copan cleared all of the forests and turned this region into a desert,” one of the senior archaeologists spoke as we stood above the brittle remains of the guilty party. “They cut down all of the trees to build their cities and the sun's rays heated up the earth like an oven.”

The Mayans built their great cities from huge blocks of stone that were assembled together with a mortar and lime mixture that was manufactured in huge kilns that were fueled by wood cut from the jungle. A large amount of wood was needed to stoke the fires to a hot enough temperature, and the surrounding forests eventually perished. On top of this, Mayan agriculturalists needed to continuously clear more land using slash and burn methods in order to cultivate enough food for the exploding population. The jungles were also hunted and fished to severe depletion to meet this increased demand for food. Individual Mayan kingdoms were also continually engaged in gradient states of war with each other, and this exuded a pressure that pushed the society to the brink of collapse. A great environmental backlash overtook the ancient Mayan civilization: they had totally depleted their natural resources, wrecked havoc on their environment, and destroyed each other through warfare.

This story sounded familiar.

“So the Maya essentially destroyed themselves through technology, urbanization, and war?” I asked, not wanted to hear an affirmative response. To my disappointment, the archaeologists agreed.

Through the same practices that made their civilization great, the Maya inadvertently destroyed their civilization. They sucked dry their land of lush forests and raging rivers, and left themselves to bake dead upon a parched, uninhabitable earth of their own creation. Most of the Maya’s great achievements and amazing works fell to ruins and their cosmopolitan centers were abandoned centuries before the arrival of the first ships from the Old World. The massive cities of the Maya were abandoned to the jungle, as the people migrated to the north, south, or to return to archaic means of living. Through an unbalanced, anthropocentric relationship with the natural world, the Maya became another great civilization to fall deep into the trunk of archaeological time.


As I looked upon the stiff and grim remains of the skeleton before me, I heard the lessons from the past howling hair-raising warnings from the depths of antiquity. Again humanity is standing at the precipice of an advance civilization that, like the Maya, seeks nothing more than to expand, grow and prosper. Again, rain forest destruction, urbanization, invasive agricultural methods, and overpopulation loom as threats to our civilization. Are we, at the beginning of the 21st century, again stretching the carrying capacity of the earth in the same ways that the ancient Maya did in Central America a thousand years ago? Could we, too, essentially wipe out our own civilization by abusing nature, natural resources, the food we eat, and fighting wars of mutual annihilation?

In a great interplay of irony, the ancient Maya grew so strong that they destroyed themselves. After standing upon the ruins and looking into the death grimace of this once proud civilization, I must ask the question: can we learn from the errant ways and misdeeds of the past? Or will we, too, find ourselves disassembled, catalogued, and put on display in some history museum as the shining bones of a civilization consumed and destroyed by its own inertia.


Wade P. Shepard has been tramping around the planet for the past nine years; he has wandered into the outback of Mongolia, lived in a monastery in Tibet, ate a puppy in China, danced with mystics in India, thought he was a gardener in Ireland, and got really lost in Patagonia. He is now finally finishing his Senior Capstone semester in Brooklyn, New York with Global College, Long Island University. Visit his website at www.vagabondjourney.com and read his travelogue, at www.vagabondjourney.com/travelogue.

Related Pages:
Vagabond Journey Travel Articles
Archaeology Page
Archaeology Field School
Archaeology Education and Work
How to Become an Archaeologist?
Song of the Open Road Archaeology Labels
Mayan Arhaeology at Copan
Wikipedia Archaeology
Pre-Columbian Civilization
Maya Civilization

Links to previous travelogue entries:

• Herman Melville Pilgrimage
• American Groovy
• Photos from New York City

Oracle Bones: Lessons for Today from an Ancient Mayan Burial
* Travel Blog Directory * Vagabond Journey.com * Travel Photos * Travel Questions and Answers

Living Off Psychological Research

Living Off Psychological Research

I have been living off of doing university psychological studies in New York City.
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Wade from Vagabond Journey.com
in Brooklyn, New York City- September 29, 2008
Travelogue -- Travel Photos
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I go into a room, look at pictures, write about them, do silly computer tests, and fill out mounds of questionnaires and I am handed a $10 bill. Not bad. $10 will cover my expenses for two days.

But sometimes I have to answer questions about my deepest darkest memories.

"Think about the worse thing that has ever happened to you, think about the time when you felt your worst," the researcher instructs me as she dims the light in the room and pauses a few moments for my memories to take effect.

"Now, answer these questions."

I am unsure if this is worth a $10 bill.

Links to previous travelogue entries:

• The Book Agent
• Motorcycle Bob Completes Journalism Mission
• Another Concept of Journalism

Living Off of Psychological Research
* Travel Blog Directory * Vagabond Journey.com * Travel Photos * Travel Questions and Answers

New Travel Strategy Works

New Travel Strategy Works

I think that these past three months of traveling were the most personally enjoyable that I have had in a long time. I am now reflecting on this summer and am realizing how formative it was.
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Wade from Vagabond Journey.com
in Brooklyn, New York City, USA- September 14, 2008
Travelogue -- Travel Photos
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For 7 of my first 8 years of knocking about the world I would return to the USA and travel around the country working on archaeology sites. I would often work 60 hour weeks and save every possible cent so that I could leave the country in the autumn and wander for the rest of the year. This was a good way of earning my bean money, but it was a way of life that jumped between extremes. For three months I would not do much of anything but work, and my traveling was generally great road trips from archaeology project to archaeology project across the USA. Then when I put away a good trunk of cash I would hop a flight abroad and not work for the rest of the year. This work/ travel /work/ travel way of wandering alternated between wearing me out and leaving me idle. It was one extreme or another.

This year I set out to change this. I did not return to the USA to work the summer archaeology season. This was a gamble, and one in which I knew that I could find myself belly up without a dime. Rather than digging in the dirt I decided that I would dig into happenstance, intuition, and the internet as I worked each day on the Road. Mainly, this was an experiment to see if I could travel the world continuously on the strength of my own grit, wit, and determination. So I continued working vigorously on Vagabond Journey.com, I began trading hotel pages on Hobohideout.com for free accommodation, and I took on any little job that presented itself: I translated a brochure for a geology museum, I painted oil pipes, I wrote an article about a celebration in the Czech Republic, worked on Andy's Hobohideout.com hotel website, and I finally took a job as a receptionist in a hostel in Hungary. In all, I think this summer proved to be a success. I am unsure if I am any more gritty or witty for my efforts, but I know that I can now live well in travel without relying on archaeological fieldwork for booting my bean money.

My grandmother would always say that you can do anything in the world if you just set your mind to it.

I say that you can do anything in the world if you just do it.

It became evident to me that I can continuously travel the world without wearing myself dry in contract archaeology; that I can obtain what I need to survive from writing, trading, and working on various projects and short term jobs.

I exchanged one set of wings for another though trying to make up a living as a traveling writer is perhaps the most time consuming job that I have ever had. I am at work from the time that I wake up until the time I go to sleep. Everything that I do in a day is done through the lens of writing about it. This is a very good way to go insane.

But I am hearing a small tap at the door, and I am beginning to suspect that this is working.

Not counting the amount of money that I put into buying plane tickets, I think that my European travel expenses just about broke even - I somehow very nearly earned as much money as I spent. A large part of this was because of the Hobohideout.com trades which kept my expenses low and funds raised from my websites.

I am happy. I set out in this internet writing journey in May of 2007 with the intention of giving myself a two year trial run to see if I could really travel on the strength of the written word. I think when the two year point hits next year there is a good possibility this could work.

For me, success is nothing more than $15 a day doing something that I love.

I am falling in love with this work.

Links to previous travelogue entries:

• Scholarship to Travel the World
• Worlds Most Traveled Motorcycle
• Couchsurfing in New York City

New Travel Strategy Works
* Travel Blog Directory * Vagabond Journey.com * Travel Photos * Travel Questions and Answers

English Teaching Urumqi Xinjiang China

English Teaching Job Urumqi Xinjiang China

I very, very nearly left this New York City fiasco behind and took the first flight out to Urumqi in the Xinjiang Autonomous Region of China. The prospect of a high paying math/ science teaching job reached my ears and I jumped on it.
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Wade from Vagabond Journey.com
in Philadelphia, PA, USA- September 7, 2008
Travelogue -- Travel Photos
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This job was to be at an advanced high school that needed a foreign teacher to teach math, science, and computers in English to prepare the students for university in the west. I received an email from my friend Carl, who has been teaching English in China for the better part of this decade, and I replied that I was interested - of course. I was then looking for anyway to get out of filling out a rent application and dealing with the tidings of what can only be called the "real world of responsibility, commitment, and strife."

This way of living finds me sadly unfit.

So I told Carl that I would take the first flight out to China as soon as I was sent my contract. I reassembled my English teaching CV, lied about a few details, and mailed it into the teaching organization's headquarters in Beijing.

Luckily for my much coveted university degree, I did not get the job.

Good. Now I can stay in Brooklyn without the prospect of a premature leave. I can remain in New York City with a clear mind that is unclouded by desert daydreams of Islamic China. I can go to Muslim lands once I am covered by the sheepskin of my matured and completed university education.

English teaching jobs are easy to get in China. This is especially true as of late because of the visa changes that the Chinese government carried out prior to the Olympics. You now cannot change a tourist visa to a working visa and the Chinese consulates have recently been less inclined to give foreigners working permits. The result is that there is now a great deficit of qualified native speaking English teachers in China to fill the great demand, which will mean that when I am finished in New York I will probably have many teaching jobs available to me all through China. I really want to go make a few month stop in Xingjiang, and teaching English is a good "in" into a culture, as it provides the traveler with a plethora of opportunities to befriend people as well as a thorough identity within a community.

But I have realized that I am ever on the mercy of wild whims of leaving. If offered a way out of anywhere I am sure to take it. To say yes to everything is to live a life free from the arduous perils of discretion.

But the old Javanese proverb again rings in my ears:

"When going north, go north. Do not go east, west, or south."

I began going north when I began my university studies and I continued going north when I returned to the USA to complete my degree. Now I shall continue in this direction until its gentle way has been traveled to fruition.

Until graduation.

"No sleep til Brooklyn."

Links to previous travelogue entries:

• Travel Notes Hungary
• Caving Under Budapest
• Living in Brooklyn

English Teaching Urumqi Xinjiang China
* Travel Blog Directory * Vagabond Journey.com * Travel Photos * Travel Questions and Answers

International Study Travel

International Study Travel

My friend Andy the Hobotraveler has been on me for some time to share the specifics of how I have been traveling the past 9 years; namely, the ways in which studying internationally has enabled me to continuously move about the globe. For a long time I did not think that there was anything significant about how I have acquired the means to travel: I work a little, take financial aid a little, have won a few big scholarships, work a little more, write words, and work a little more. This all seemed very straight forward to me and I found no real reason to write about this in detail. But a few days ago I began thinking of the logistics of how I have been making up my bean money, and it became apparent that it is not as sluiced down and obvious as I have previously thought.
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Wade from Vagabond Journey.com
in Budapest, Hungary- August 12, 2008
Travelogue -- Travel Photos
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It struck me that there is a flip side to the reasons that I have been sporadically studying for so long (my first time in college was after I got kicked out of high school in January of 1999) and this is that I have found that I can fund my travels when I go broke by taking semesters of international study. Putting aside for a moment all of the other benefits of international study - such as learning language, cultural studies, and having experiences that are not really available to the lone traveler - I have found that through enrolling in study abroad programs I can acquire the means to live for extended periods of time in foreign lands comfortably. Up to here I have been awarded over $60,000 in scholarship, grants, and financial aid (though the high costs of Global College greatly offsets this rather large seeming amount), have been able to find somewhat comfortable living arrangements, and have had the time and space to work and earn money in the countries that I've studied in. In part, because of intermittent bouts of international study, I have been able to keep moving about the world so continuously without always needing to get my hands dirty.

With international study comes living stipends. It is as simple as this. I found that I could use scholarships, grants, and student loans to not only pay for my education but also my living expense. I have also realized that I can live far cheaper than the average student and tend to be able to use this money to travel vastly farther. So, with a certain amount of diligence and restraint, the living stipend for one semester of international study can easily get a traveler six months of wandering.

The time, space, and personal contacts that are inherent to studying and having a "base" in a country also means that the possibilities for working - particularly teaching English - are far greater. Each dollar that a traveler can make in their travels is a dollar more that they can put between themselves and going home. I take work wherever I can get it.

Another side advantage to studying is that tax breaks are available to students based upon the cost of their educational expense. I do not make enough money each year to have any tax liability - I do not even bother to have taxes taken out of my paychecks when working around the USA - though if I study for at lease one semester a year I find that I can get a "refund" of around a thousand dollars. This extra money is a fifth of my yearly expenses.

Therefore, it was my goal and intention to stretch my undergraduate education out as long as I possibly could. So I studied for a semester in Japan and then traveled for a year and a half, then studied for a semester in China and then spent the summer in Central America, just to return to Asia and study for a semester in India to return to China, and so on - ever splicing periods of straight travel with financial aid, student loan, and grant sponsored international study. I have found this to be a good formula for world travel.

Though I really do enjoy these bouts of study, especially as much of it was done independently and I was able to travel where I wanted and study what ever struck my fancy. Studying also allows me to break up the routine of continuous travel, learn more, and have access within a culture that I could not otherwise have. Being a student also provides a traveler with an identity, which is important if you really want to talk with people, do interviews, and find out about a place and the folks who live there. The guise of the international student is one that almost every culture can accept as permittable. If you tell someone that you are a student and study culture then they are far more apt to tell you about themselves, what they do, and bear with all of your stupid questions. The international student is also a very benign and accepted identity when trying to penetrate the outer walls of a culture: you are not a stupid tourist, you are not a suspicious journalist, you are not a fear evoking government official, you are safe, open, and eager-to-learn student. An easily understandable and obvious identity is often needed to look behind the mask of culture. Everyone needs to be someone, and being a student is a good way to open up the floodgates to being taught.

The writer is the perpetual idiot, and, likewise, the implications behind being a student are very similar: it is the job of the student to learn because they do not know anything. I have found it easy to prove to people that my vessel is empty by telling them that I am a student. Gratefully for me, many people around the world seem to like filling up empty vessels. I can only learn if I can prove that I know nothing. Tell someone that you are a student and you find yourself with a wild card that sanctions stupid questions and the learning that inherently comes from such.

I want to keep up my one semester a year pattern of travel. Luckily for me, if I finish up my B.A. these next few months in Brooklyn I have an entire world of grad school to travel on. I essentially get to begin my studies all over again. I have another four year degree that I can stretch out to eight, a myriad of possibilities for international study, and something that I could not get as an undergrad: funding for research. Yes, grad students get paid to study.

I look at what I have haphazardly accomplished during the shaky ebb and flow of my undergrad education: I have studied in over seven countries on five continents, wrote a decent thesis on Traditional Japanese Tattooing, and have assembled a modest, yet solid body of published work. Because I unintentionally gave myself the time and space to develop while working on my B.A. I have accomplished far more than the average 22 year old graduate.

I think that with the proper amount of diligence I can repeat what I did in undergrad in graduate school, and do so with a large amount of funding. I think that I may be able to continue making a good portion of my travel funds - and continue collecting tax refunds - by regularly taking one semester of school a year.

(Yet I do not understand why anthropologists need funding to conduct their studies. As with only a couple big bags of rice, a few nice machetes, and a truckload of Marlboro cigarettes an ethnographer can become welcomed in almost any primitive society on earth.)

But the flip-side to this travel strategy is that I am buried in student debt. But as my mother, as well as my grandmother before her, would always say: "You can't get blood from a stone." If I remain a poor man then I have no worries, if I someday happen to make money I should conceivably have enough money to pay off these loans.

I am not concerned by mere fetters.

Links to previous travelogue entries:

• Photo Copy Travel Guides
• How to Drink Absinthe
• Round Trip Plane Ticket from Budapest to New York

International Study Travel
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Hostel Work in Budapest

Hostel Work in Budapest

Hostel work. Everyone goes about planning and doing their days all around me. I look over maps with them and tell them to go here or there, to buy stuff here and to eat over there, to walk up the hill over the river or to get beer cheaper in the 24 hours stores rather than the bars. They then go out and do their days. I bumble around stumbling here and there, writing words, reading a few more, smoking my pipe, talking about tattoos with tattooed Gypsy boys, and doing just about everything except my day.

This is how I do my day. I stopped an Australian girl short the other day when I could bear the arrogant usage of this poor verb no longer. She talked of how she did this country, did that country, and how she wanted to do some other unsuspecting country. She really had a thing for doing places.

"So you did Croatia?" I asked.

"Yes," she replied rather sprightly.

"What the hell did you do to it?" I questioned her and received a blank stare in reply (she apparently did not do my joke).
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Wade from Vagabond Journey.com
in Budapest, Hungary- August 6, 2008
Travelogue -- Travel Photos
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You do people.

You do not do countries. What could anyone ever do to a country? Seriously. I find them big, dumb, and clearly un-doable. Maybe I just don't get it. Maybe I am not man enough to do countries.

I have taken a job in reception at the Bubble Hostel . . .. or so I think. I answer the door, show people to their beds, offer them coffee or tea, and help them do Budapest to the best of my ability. I have not been kicked out yet, so I guess I work here.

As Henry Miller put it, I am in Budapest until "The chair is taken out from under my ass."

Or until I can bear this city of stone no longer.

But I do enjoy the hostel work. I can answer the door like a lunatic and pretend to be friendly. Shake hands with tourists and act like I know what I am talking about. I suppose work gives the vagabond a task, and, thankfully, the hostel chores keep me away from the computer chores for a little more time each day. I feel much more human because of this.

I have realized that my quality of life is inversely proportional to how much time a day I spend in front of a computer screen.

The prices of hostels in Budapest are insanely expensive. I met a group of travelers in the streets a couple of nights ago. I was on a mid-night bike ride around the city and one of them flagged me down and asked for directions to a hostel. I just laughed at them. They told me that they hitch-hiked into town and that they could not find a place to stay. One kid was from Portland, Oregon - and looked very much from Portland, Oregon. He was traveling with two friends from Sweden. I welcomed this meeting, as these kids were really traveling Europe. They were on the tramp, living by their thumbs. I wanted to help them out. I also wanted to talk with them. I was sure that they would not have the audacity to try to do the poor city.

But I could only keep laughing at them, as they were trying to land a cheap bed in Central Budapest at 1 AM in the busy season. I asked if they had any money. They said that they did, but the way they answered me meant that they would not really be willing to boot the cost of a summer-time bed. I then laughingly told them that if they wanted to sleep in-doors that they would probably have to drop between $30 and $70 for a bed each. Their jaws dropped. . . . as my own did when I first found out how much the hostels that I have been working for are charging. But this is the going rate. The cost of travel in this part of Europe has inflated to the moon. Hostels, now days, are for the lonely rich and their rich children who want to have fun and do places as well as people (the last drunk standing gets the rotten egg).

I then looked up into the night sky and found it clear and I felt the air and found it warm. I told the travelers that I thought it was a waste to drop this much money on a bed for only a few hours of sleep, and pointed out on a map two places near the city where they could camp out the night for free.

The American liked this idea, but one of his Swedish friends did not - he wanted a bed - and the other was impartial. So I shrugged my shoulders and took leave of the travelers. I left them behind in the street and continued on with my bicycle ride. But as I rounded the first corner a feeling of intense guilt came over me. These kids hitch-hiked into a big city that they had never been to before - they were beached travelers without a place to sleep. I soon gave into my conscious and doubled back to track them down.

I found the three stranded travelers sitting on their packs, dejected, on the nighttime sidewalk not far from where I had left them. I know how it feels to come into a large city late at night with nowhere to go. I know the cold, unwelcoming feeling of a metropolis whose streets are not showing you the way to shelter. I knew that I had to either find these kids a place to sleep or stay out the night with them in a show of traveler solidarity. I could not just leave them on the sidewalk and go back to my soft and cozy bed unfazed.

And, like any other chap who rides his bicycle around a city at 2AM, I was also looking for something to do.

So I talked with them for a while and reiterated the options that I had previously offered up: a bed would be a silly expense at 2AM, just go and sleep on the hill and watch the sun rise. But the bed-wanting Swede did not like the sounds of my words and he soon took leave of us and waste thirty dollars at the mafia hostel that was across the street. His friends did not weep at his departure. The remaining two kids were clearly up for anything.

"Hell," I said, "Why don't we just go around this corner to a 24 hour artist cafe and drink some wine and wait for the sun to come up. Then you can just find a place to sleep in the morning."

The travelers smiled at my plan. We went to the cafe and got a cheap glass of wine and a couple of beers and toasted to our newfound friendship. The American then broke out a little ghetto blaster radio and started playing tapes of weird sounds that he had recorded in his travels. A few tales of the Open Road were then shared, and we laughed into the night. A group of bar-goers who were guests at the Bubble Hostel walked by and I invited them to join us. They did.

I was with decent company, and I can remember talking and telling yarns, but memory did not collect my words. But feeling tells me that I was having fun. Or maybe I was doing fun.

This has been a really good stop in Budapest. I have become all filled up with that good ol' human energy that comes from being around good people and making fast friends. I have gotten a good dose of the attention that every social animal needs every once in a while, and I think that I have balanced out those lonely nights of sleeping in the bush. But it is getting time to be going.

Back to the bush. I really just want to go out into the woods, shoot some animals, and eat them. Maybe I will turn their hides into clothes and wear them like a hermitage dwelling wild man poet.

For now I am working reception at a hostel in Budapest.

More Budapest hotel and accommodation information available at Budapest Hotel Accommodation!

Links to previous travelogue entries:

• Slovakia Photos
• Hobo Hideout at Budapest Bubble Hostel
• Budapest Skid Row Pigeon Hunting

Hostel Work in Budapest
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Postcards from Around the World

Postcards from Around the World

To the dear readers who recently made contributions to Vagabond Journey I would like to let you know that I have sent you out some postcards from Gyor, Hungary. I thank you.

At the request of a reader - Motorcycle Bob - I recently began accepting contributions of $10 - "1 day of travel" - for the simple reason that, as of right now, my financial fractions are not constant. There is a leak in my pool of travel funds and it is not being filled up as fast as it is draining out. So I put up a little link on this blog and on the pages of Vagabond Journey.com to accept small contributions from readers. In return for a "1 day of travel" Paypal contribution, I send the contributer a postcard from wherever I may be in the world with a little note that shows my appreciation.

I really do appreciate it.

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Wade from Vagabond Journey.com
in Budapest, Hungary- July 22, 2008
Travelogue -- Travel Photos
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Someday I think I will be able to make up the $10 to $15 a day I need to keep continuously traveling the world and writing about it, but that day is not yet today. I have not done too bad for myself so far - or so I think - and I actually make up a modest portion of my bean money through advertisements on Vagabond Journey.com and writing the magazine pieces. But as I look down the Road I see a point where my pool will be drained dry if I do not up the flow of my income now.

I have no intention of becoming wealthy off of this (the very notion of wealth makes me chuckle a feral sort of giggle), and my final intention is to make the much coveted ten to fifteen dollars a day that will allow me to keep traveling. I think this amount is possible to come by if I keep working hard at this website and travelogue. When I first began publishing on the internet with the intention of supplementing my bean money with internet provisions, I decide that I would give myself two years in the venture. I figured that I would work hard at internet publishing for these two years, and, if in this time, I find a way average $10 a day then I would keep on keeping on.

Woman at post office in Gyor, Hungary putting stamps on postcards for readers.

I had no idea at that time that I would fall in love with this lifestyle. I did not know that at 14 and a half months in I would really come to enjoy publishing words on the internet. This is fun.

"Keeping a good travel blog is a full time job," once wrote Ubertramp.

I read these words and then feel into a sea of uproarious laughter, for they are true. Publishing this Vagabond Journey website has almost become a full time job, albeit one that, as I have mention, I have come to really love.

I work as I travel every day. I take photos, take notes, write, read, publish, and work (and learn) HTML code throughout the day. I am laughing as I write this, as this lifestly seems to me to be bordering on the ridiculous. But if you, dear reader, ever cross my Path in the flesh, you will see for yourself how odd my days tend to be. I am the man who is standing in the middle of the street who, upon having his fancy struck by some relevant seeming detail, is jotting down notes in his little black notebook like a poetical lunatic and then huddled up in some hollow corner of a flop-house writing about them throughout the day.

Yes, I am an inveterate scribbler.

My friend Bicycle Luke the Fruit Pirate goes to no small length to jest at how often - "Every five minutes" - I tend to have my face skewered up inside my little notebooks.

But this is fun for me. It gives me something to do- a focus to my ramblings, a direction, a path, a line of consistency that I can follow throughout the world. I want to keep doing this.

And mailing out postcards to readers to show my gratitude for contributions is just one way that I can continue assembling the funds to live like this. I could fairly easily find conventional temp employment on the Road teaching English or doing archaeology or any number of other trades, and make far more money and work less than I do on the computer. I have done this for many years. I am an archaeologist, an English teacher, sometimes pretend to be a gardener, and an odd-jobs-extraordinaire, but I do not enjoy these professions half as much as I like writing words.

I would happily write words for a few peanuts a day than make a donkey cart load any other way. This is my choice, my preference, I have other options but I choose this one. I wake up in the morning with a smile on my face.

So, Ubertramp, you are a wise man, this travel writing round is a full time job, but it is also a love and a passion.

Letter from Motorcycle Bob that gave me the idea to begin accepting contributions:
http://www.vagabondjourney.com/98-002-contribute-vagabond-journey.shtml

Links to previous travelogue entries:
Bicycling to Budapest
Notes from the Czech Republic
To Budapest

Postcards from Around the World
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Hostel in Olomouc on Hobohideout.com

Hostel in Olomouc, Czech Republic on Hobohideout.com

“Clean sheets mean a lot, to a guy who sleeps on the floor.”
-The Decendents

I rolled into Olomouc in the Czech Republic around 12 days ago, and jumped right into making internet pages on Hobohideout for the Poets’ Corner Hostel. I worked hard on the site, and it came together well. The staff at the hostel supported me in whatever I wanted to do, and it was very enjoyable to make the pages for them as well.

When I was getting ready to ride out of town last Wednesday, Greg - Captain Oddsocks - invited me to stay a little longer to work on some other projects and to keep making videos for the hostel. I took his offer with a big smile on my face, as Olomouc is a fine town and I have enjoyed my stay here very much.
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Wade from Vagabond Journey.com
in Olomouc, Moravia, Czech Republic- June 23, 2008
Travelogue -- Travel Photos
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And I also needed to perform some great leaps of maintenance on my bicycle and to scavenge the gear that I need to roll on out of town in one piece.

So it worked out well. Making hotel webpages on Hobohideout.com is a good way to travel the world with very light pokets, and I thoroghly appreciate the hospitality that I have thus far been shown by the hotels that I have done this work for. I speak with modesty when I say that I that I think the hotels appreciate the pages as well. I received this email yesterday from Greg after he looked over the Hobohideout site that I had made for his Poets' Corner Hostel:

Hi Wade, that's awesome!

I really like the music you chose for the video and you did well to get photos of Kamila; she usually runs a mile when I have my camera around...;-)

I just changed your sheets today, so you'd better stay a bit longer to get the use out of them. If you really want to get moving this week, you'll have to come back some time, because you've earned more accommodation than that.

See you tonight for dinner, Greg.

So I headed over to Greg’s apartment that night, and he provisioned me with a heeping plate of chicken and peas and potatoes. It was the most satisfying meal that I have eaten in three weeks. He then treated me to a rather intense game of Settlers - which I promptly lost - and a few laughs and a real good time. The Poets’ Corner is run by good people. I will travel through here again - This is the very best thing that I can say about any place in the world.

I like making web pages for hotels and hostels, as it also enables me to have a little closer contact with the people who run them and the sense of having some friends out here on the Road. I work hard on the Hobohideout pages - I do them as well as I possibly can - as I really want to help out the hotels and hostels who are willing to put up a vagabond for a week or two as a trade for work.

For these are the places and people that still honor the old traveling tradition. I tip my hat in their direction.


Vagabonds wander the world ever on the look out for opportunities to earn their keep as well as their bean money. I enjoy traveling like this.

Making pages on Hobohideout has enabled me to travel the world even cheaper than I ever had before. I have found a way to earn my bed through working a few hours a day - everyday. When the tallies and figures are added up at the end of the day, I am spending far less than $10 a day to travel well in some of the most expensive places on the planet.

“It is far easier to save $20 than it is to make $20.”
-Andy the Hobotraveler

Hobohideout.com is the snowball project of my friend Andy the Hobotraveler, which has been in the works for the past decade. Now, the dream has been given wings, and the site has started to soar. It is now averaging well over 4,000 unique visitors daily, and this is just the beginning.

People are using Hobohideout.com.

My path finally converged with Andy’s last spring in Guatemala, and he mentioned that I could get free accommodation through making hotel webpages on his site. “Making websites for hotels is how I traveled for two years,” he told me. So I tried it in Guatemala, and it worked astonishingly well.

I am generally pretty accustom to finding work while traveling, and with finding ways (any way) to travel cheaper, travel better, and to just keep traveling on. So walking into hotels and offering a website trade for a bed is not too far out of my ordinary practices. But the effectiveness of the Hobohideout pages is far beyond what I had previously anticipated. In point, these hotel pages work. They come up well in the search engines, and I hope that they bring some foot traffic and money into the hotels and hostels that have been kind enough to give me a little shelter from the storm and a chance to trade some work for a bed.

This has been some good traveling.

Dear readers, if anyone is interested in trading work for a bed and making hotel pages on Hobohideout.com, send me an email at Vagabondsong@gmail.com. The idea is to have a group of around 25 hobos wandering the world, living for free, and making good internet pages for hotels and hostels.

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