The Thoughtful Travel Podcast

I'm not alone in finding Japanese museums about earthquakes and tsunamis interesting and impactful; I know my friend Catherine who travelled with me in Tohoku last month is the same. This episode will test out whether it's just the two of us, or if more of you share this feeling - a yearning to understand more about these kinds of disasters, to get to know more about the human stories behind them,...

Here it is! This is the live recording of our panel at South By South West (SXSW) Sydney, from October 2023, on the topic “Why We Need Travel More Than Travel Needs Us”. It was such a thrill to be on the podcast stage at SXSW with Catherine Marshall, Susanne Etti and Justin Watson, three fabulous guests who had so many interesting stories and opinions to offer for this tricky topic.  We start off...

There are many, many ways to see Japan, but I think I've just experienced my favourite: on foot. In late September/early October 2023, I undertook a six-day trip with Walk Japan, on the Self-Guided Basho Wayfarer walk around Sendai. And it was brilliant! In this episode, I give an overview of the content and logistics of this trip, which essentially includes hiking various segments of the route th...

It's a strange phenomenon, but podcast episodes full of stories of things going wrong on our travels are always popular! For Episode 307, I've got two stories of strange goings-on while my guests are at sea. Enjoy?! First up, Antonio Cala tells the story of that time he and his wife needed to be rescued by the Jamaican coastguard. Fortunately, we know they lived to tell the tale, but let's just sa...

If we want to be mindful of our carbon footprint when we travel, a good way to do this is to consider more carefully the kinds of places where we choose to stay - like focusing on eco-accommodation. This is a part of my travel I definitely haven't given enough thought to in the past, and this episode has inspired me with stories about all kinds of accommodation options which are more sustainable a...

Travel experiences should be accessible to everyone - I strongly believe that's an important part of the whole thoughtful travel ethos. As part of the Year of Accessible Tourism in Queensland, I've put together this episode about accessible travel on the Gold Coast in Queensland, Australia - it's full of great stories of people doing better, and I hope you enjoy it! First up, I chat with Daniel Wa...

Bangkok is a city which rewards many repeat visits and my recent trip there proved it! Putting together Episode 304 was a special chance for me to chat with several friends, old and new, who I had the joy of travelling with on our recent trip to Thailand.  In this episode, I start of chatting with Paddy Jenkins about our mutually favourite part of this Bangkok trip - visiting the Portuguese quarte...

Thank you internet: you've made many things possible, two of them being podcasts, and working as a digital nomad. In this episode on digital nomading, I've got three guests who all bring quite different perspectives on digital nomad life, and I hope it sparks some thinking! First up, I chat with Will Hatton, aka The Broke Backpacker, who's spent many years wandering the world, making money in vari...

Ah, finally, I've made it to Chiang Rai! I've wanted to visit this most northern part of Thailand my whole life, as my dear late aunty came from Chiang Rai. Spending a few days up there was delightful, and full of really fascinating experiences, but I've narrowed it down to my three favourites for this podcast episode. First: the White Temple. It's a very new temple, built on the site of an old on...

In July 2025 reports were published by The Observer (UK) suggesting significant parts of Raynor Winn’s story are untrue. This is a really sad development for books that both I and my listeners have held dear. You can read the main Observer article at  https://observer.co.uk/news/national/article/the-real-salt-path-how-the-couple-behind-a-bestseller-left-a-trail-of-debt-and-deceit  ...

Community-based tourism experiences are one of my favourite things to seek out when I travel, and this episode is a great explanation of what CBT is, illustrated with fabulous examples from Thailand, Jamaica and Australia. I first chat with Justin Meneguzzi who gives a great overview of community-based tourism as a whole, and then illustrates this with an example from an organic coffee farm he vis...

Thailand was calling, and I had to go! Three and a half years after my last pre-Covid adventure abroad, I finally managed to get out of Australia for a short media trip to Thailand. I'm home again now and celebrating that trip along with the milestone of the three hundredth episode of The Thoughtful Travel Podcast seems very appropriate. In this episode I'll tell you a little bit about my trip to...

Travelling in some kind of van - a campervan, a caravan, an RV, a motorhome - is a unique and fabulous way to see the world. I was lucky enough to spend many months in a campervan as a child, exploring both Europe and Australia, and it was completely life-changing! In this episode I have three guests with a wonderful variety of van experiences. First up, I chat with Julie Kaplan, who is a self-des...

There are so many ways we can try to do better when we travel, and looking for tours or activities that have a conservation angle is one that, with a little research, can be surprisingly easy. In Episode 298 of The Thoughtful Travel Podcast, I chat with two tour operators who have been diving deep into the conservation travel area for years, and to a traveller who was impressed by a conservation p...

City names like Mosul, Karbala and Basra - and of course the capital Baghdad - are familiar to us all, but not from seeing people's holiday snaps, unfortunately. Tourism in Iraq is a very small-scale affair, but I've been curious about it recently after seeing a couple of people I knew travel there - and I've interviewed two women who've recently travelled to Iraq for this episode. First up, I spe...

Making connections - either brief or lasting - with local people when you travel can often be the highlight of a trip. In this episode, three guests tell stories about people they have befriended on their travels and I hope it inspires you to be open to these kind of connections when you are next wandering the world, too. My first guest is Antonio Cala, who talks about a stay in Mexico in the firs...

Travelling overnight in a train is, I think, a very special experience. I've slept peacefully on overnight trains in Russia, Finland and Vietnam, and will happily do so again, for many reasons. Spending extended periods of time on trains is a wonderful way to get chatting to other travellers, a comfortable way to really see a country's landscapes, and of course, it's also more environmentally frie...

In July 2025 reports were published by The Observer (UK) suggesting significant parts of Raynor Winn’s story are untrue. This is a really sad development for books that both I and my listeners have held dear. You can read the main Observer article at https://observer.co.uk/news/national/article/the-real-salt-path-how-the-couple-behind-a-bestseller-left-a-trail-of-debt-and-deceit ************...

Many of us like to “do good” when we travel, and getting involved in some kind of citizen science program when we travel is a fantastic way to do this. Citizen science might involve making observations of wildlife or flora, collecting other kinds of data or even working in a science lab, and the guests on this podcast have a variety of wonderful citizen science experiences to report. First up, I c...

Getting animal experiences right when we travel is something we can all try hard to do - checking ahead of time whether the ways we might be about to interact with animals are ethical and appropriate.  In this episode I have a bit of theory and practice to share. First up, we hear from Nora Livingstone at Animal Experience International, an organisation which helps travellers volunteer at ethical...

There is, apparently, no end to the appetite of both me and my listeners to hear stories about things going wrong on our travels. It’s not that we want to laugh or point fingers at people who have bad things happen to them - I think it’s more an empathy and sympathy, and the kind of entertainment that arises from someone who’s told a travel story many times, and can tell it well. That’s my excuse...

This special episode is the audio of the Facebook Livestream of the March 2023 meeting of the Thoughtful Travellers Book Club, talking about Travel as a Political Act by Rick Steves. Justin and I chatted about some of the positives of this book - the various lessons learnt from travel and some guidelines for travelling thoughtfully - along with a few parts we didn't agree with so wholeheartedly. I...

Happy 7th birthday to The Thoughtful Travel Podcast! This is a special episode with a few interesting tidbits about the podcast, inspired by members of the Thoughtful Travellers groups who gave me some excellent suggestions. For example, I've got the stats to show you which seven episodes have been the most downloaded over the history of the podcast; I've also got our group's version of the seven...

What really goes on behind the scenes of travel writers, content creators and podcasters, and their counterparts in the tourism and travel industry, public relations firms and tourism boards? I recently spent the best part of a week in Sydney immersed in this world and I realised that lifting the curtain on how this part of travel and tourism works might prove interesting for my listeners. This ep...

It'd be great if any time we took ourselves travelling and volunteered somewhere that it was a purely good act. The problem is, of course, that we are now getting to understand just how damaging some kinds of volunteer tourism can be. Is it all bad, though? I don't think so! But we definitely have to be very, very thoughtful any time we sign up for voluntourism. In Episode 288 of The Thoughtful Tr...