The Thoughtful Travel Podcast

Honestly, the benefits of travelling with kids are uncountable - and that’s benefits both for kids and their parents! in Episode 54 of The Thoughtful Travel Podcast, Amanda talks with three travel-loving parents about how they travel with their kids. First up, novelist Natasha Lester talks about what her three children learn from their travels abroad and how she considers it a far better edu...

It’s common to face a few difficulties when we travel but in Episode 53 of The Thoughtful Travel Podcast, Amanda chats with three guests who face more than their fair share of challenges when they travel, because they or a family member has a disability or a chronic illness. Their stories are inspiring and of course, their desire to travel trumps the potential difficulties and Amanda lo...

Amanda is constantly amazed how creative and inspired she feels while she's travelling - without even trying, the creativity just seems to well up in her and pour out. The best bit is, it turns out she's not alone. In Episode 52 of The Thoughtful Travel Podcast, Amanda starts by chatting with Brooke McAlary about her experience of creativity when she’s on the road. Amanda was expecting her t...

Everyone has experienced culture shock on their travels, but what about reverse culture shock? When Amanda returned back to Australia after six years living in Asia and Europe, reverse culture shock hit her badly, and she's definitely not alone: Episode 51 of The Thoughtful Travel Podcast includes chats with three other travellers who’ve had the same experience. 
First up, Amanda chats with...

Sitting in sunny Perth, Western Australia, makes cold weather or illness seem far from Amanda's mind, but they still happen to us on our travels and we still get through it! In Episode 50 of The Thoughtful Travel Podcast, Amanda chats with three guests about experiences of adverse weather and health on their travels and it turns out that these generally make for some good stories. First up, Amanda...

History can really come alive when you travel to the place where it happened. Episode 49 of The Thoughtful Travel Podcast is all about understanding history through travel, and Amanda talks with three history-lovers who have had great experiences learning about history while they travel. Zoë Dawes inherited a love of history from her father, and today when she travels she is always on the loo...

It’s been a whole year since The Thoughtful Travel Podcast launched and it has been an immensely fun and rewarding time! Episode 48 is the Grateful Anniversary Episode and Amanda starts off giving plenty of thank yous out to many people connected to this podcast, including Brooke and the fantastic Jackrabbit FM team, the dear old friends who agreed to be interviewed for the show before it ev...

Loathe tours? Amanda knows many thoughtful travellers recoil at the thought of a month-long bus tour of Europe, but there is a time and place for shorter, smaller tours and that’s the topic of Episode 47 of The Thoughtful Travel Podcast. First up, novelist Natasha Lester tells tales of the amazing private tours she took through Paris, helping her to research the history of fashion in a way t...

Travelling is a great way to make friends; travelling to meet up with online friends in the real world is another great reason to travel. In Episode 46 of The Thoughtful Travel Podcast, Amanda chats with three travellers who have tales to tell about the friends they meet up with around the world. First up, Cait Flanders describes the road trip she went on through the United States which include a...

Getting out into nature is a common reason for people to go travelling but everyone chooses to experience nature in their own preferred, different ways. In Episode 45 of The Thoughtful Travel Podcast, Amanda chats with three travellers about their experiences with nature and they vary widely. First up, Sarah Ridout explains the amazing Australian outback of Uluru and the national park of Kakadu -...

Slow travel is easily one of Amanda's favourite topics - taking your time when you travel instead of rushing around to see all the sights as fast as possible is a much more satisfying way to experience a new place, she thinks. In Episode 44 Amanda chats with three like-minded guests, starting with Brooke McAlary who, as the creator of the Slow Your Home blog and the Slow Home Podcast certainly kno...

Have you ever read a novel set in a foreign place and wondered just how the author knew how to describe everything in this place? Chances are they took a trip there as part of their research and in Episode 43 of The Thoughtful Travel Podcast, Amanda chats with three novelists who have done just that. Natasha Lester is a fellow Perth-ite who writes historical fiction set in such wondrous places as...

Great Travel Souvenirs What do you bring back from a trip besides photographs and stories? I talked with three Australian travellers about their favourite souvenirs and how important they are as a means for remembering travel experiences. Sarah Ridout lived abroad in France, England and Ireland for over a decade before returning to Australia, and she collected a very smart kind of souvenir so that...

Travelling to countries with different customs and cultures from your own can induce varying kinds of culture shock, and Episode 41 of The Thoughtful Travel Podcast looks at a few examples of culture shock across Asia and the Middle East.  Amanda begins by speaking to Matt Treglia about some of his very first travel experiences abroad, and especially the terror that came with trying to cross...

Amanda is always looking for great reasons to persuade others to travel more and Episode 40 of The Thoughtful Travel Podcast provides quite a few of those. Amanda chats with three guests who each have had interesting experiences teaching them something important on their travels Jeff Ryan, who in previous episodes has taught us the dangers of porcupines eating the rubber parts of your car, returns...

It’s 2017, everyone’s making plans for a new year, and it’s time to talk about one of the things that sometimes stops up making travel plans: fear. In Episode 39 of The Thoughtful Travel Podcast Amanda talks with two great travellers who have had various worries before they’ve embarked on big trips, but they did it anyway, and of course are glad they did. First up, she spea...

Episode 38 of The Thoughtful Travel Podcast is the final episode for 2016 so Amanda is talking about New Year’s Eve Travels. Celebrating a new year is fun wherever you are but being somewhere away from home can make it even more exciting and memorable. First up, Kim-Ling of Travel-Ling has a great story to tell about a New Year’s Eve she spent on the island of Ibiza. Let’s just s...

Merry Christmas! With Christmas just around the corner, Episode 37 of The Thoughtful Travel Podcast turns to travelling at Christmas time and Amanda chats with several travellers who have spent Christmas in far flung parts of the world. First up is Annalicia Lynn who had an interesting Christmas in Taiwan while she was teaching English there. Amanda and Annalicia chat about the cultural difference...

It’s all about Japan in Episode 36 of The Thoughtful Travel Podcast. It’s rare that Amanda chats about a single destination but she's made an exception for Japan, because a bunch of my guests have talked about it and she's just come back from a fabulous week exploring one of her favourite countries in the world. Photographer Martin Bailey moved to Japan 25 years ago to work in a lace f...

In Episode 35 of The Thoughtful Travel Podcast Amanda has a lot of fun chatting about the magic of making friends while you travel. There are so many bonuses of travel they don’t advertise in the brochures and developing friendships with people from all around the world is certainly one of them. Julie Jones joins Amanda to chat about the lifelong friendships she has formed while travelling a...

Stereotypes of people by nationality are rife in the world, and come up all the time when we travel. In Episode 34 of The Thoughtful Travel Podcast, Amanda chats with three people of different nationalities about their experiences with stereotypes on their travels. Jeremy Kloberdanz of The Life Bohemian has an interesting story to tell about an immigrant man he and his wife met while travelling ar...

You might just be able to get the best of both worlds by travelling around the world and helping people by volunteering. It’s not always that simple, but in Episode 33 of The Thoughtful Travel Podcast Amanda talks with three guests who have volunteered across several continents with a huge variety of organisations. First up, she chats with Serena Star-Leonard who started off a project to cre...

Lots of people keep a travel journal when they travel and in episode 32 of The Thoughtful Travel Podcast, Amanda talks with three guests about their travel diary habits. Chris Christensen of the long-running Amateur Traveler podcast kicks things off by describing the journalling habits he has learnt from his wife, a hardcore travel journal keeper from way back! After Chris, Amanda speaks with...

In Episode 31 Amanda is talking about the different ways, both good and bad, that the internet has changed travel - how we plan and book it, how we act when we’re travelling, even how much money we spend on it! Jeff Ryan has a great perspective on this topic having spent 28 years gradually hiking the Appalachian Trail in the US. Over those three decades, he has seen the internet change many...

It's time for another round-figure episode of The Thoughtful Travel Podcast, and Amanda is celebrating Episode 30 with a random mix of chats with some of her favourite travellers. What do they have in common? They're all talking about topics which start with L and have four letters! That's good enough for Amanda! First up, she returns to the story of Martin Bailey, who moved to Japan pretty much o...