Ten delicious pieces of wisdom I have learned from experiences (both first and second hand) traveling.

1. Do move your bowels.  Get yourself to a washroom when you have the urge.  Q: What is worse than going to the bathroom in a stinky crap infested hellhole with no TP?  A: Not going to the bathroom for a couple days while your feces turn into concrete that need to be surgically removed.  When you are traveling in a foreign land, nobody knows you, so just make time to move those bowels — even if its while standing over a trough behind someone else doing the same thing.  And if there is no TP, sacrifice some clothing. Think how good you will feel when its all over, and the stories! This tip has nothing to do with writing, but its very important.
2. While hulking even a small laptop around the world might not be practical, consider getting a Palm or PocketPC with a keyboard to do all your writing.  Its easy to store and inconspicuous which makes your bag less likely to be stolen.
3. Write every day, even if you don’t publish (or can’t publish it due to your location) be sure to write down the days events.  Seems obvious, but its not always easy.  You’d be surprised how easy it is to forget the name of that thing you ate yesterday that tasted like bacon with burnt mustard and sesame seeds.
4. Get a partner in crime to help maintain your blog from home base while you are in a foreign land.  You won’t be able to do the things you normally do (like destroy comment spam).  This person can also help when the formatting gets messed up because you used a keyboard that was set to a different language resulting in strange characters.
5. Include pictures with your posts. Don’t just describe things to people, show them.  Take pictures of everyday life wherever you are visiting, this is the stuff that you will forget.
6. Don’t be that guy that always compares everything to everywhere else they’ve been.  ‘Oh the food is so much better in Rhodesia.  The hotels are far nicer in Ceylon.’  You might be right, but don’t be a snob.  Write about what its like and let others draw conclusions.
7. Don’t sell yourself out, write for yourself first and your audience second.  For me, travel blogging serves as a diary of what I did and where (and what) I ate.  It is hard to write for both yourself and your other audience (the people who read your blog).  Just make sure that you don’t feel like you are rushing to meet the editors deadline in order to break the story.  Write for you, you are the editor, keep traveling fun.
8. Don’t feed the monkeys or dogs.  That’s just sage advice, a monkey bite is not cute and will require a doctor’s visit.  That said, it makes for compelling reading.
9. Do stay in one place for awhile (if you can).  While its fun to see as many sights as you can in the time you have, its also great to live like the locals do and observe day to day life.  While the Temples of Angkor were amazing, what was astounding was how people live their daily life.  Try to get past the smoke and mirrors.  Have you seen Vietnamese soap opera’s?
10. When all else fails, people watch. People are funny everywhere so make sure you can communicate with them a little. In whatever place you visit, learn how to say yes, no, thankyou, it’s delicious, and get lost. In Vietnam the phrase ‘nit dao’ (pronounced neet dow with a deep and rising tone in the last word) will be very handy. Someone told me it means get lost, you are giving me a headache. Whatever it means, it makes people go away. And oh yea, don’t forget to bring cheap sunglasses that hide your eyes.

The striped lady really really really liked me. Nong Khai Thailand

Written as an exercise for the Group Writing Project at Problogger.net.