131–140 of 148 posts
Here’s a guy who’s headline (to the rest of us) is he was in the middle of documenting tech in the 90’s, and, to hear him tell it, that’s not the thing that defines his life. Wired was just a middle filler for his real story , which is about travel.
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Used to be Russia until early March.
Is there any real mainstream news in Russia? I'm lead to believe that all of the news there is government controlled propaganda.
But if you were someone who "didn't follow the news" for the last 10 years, you would consume government's propaganda instead, and believe it. Which is my point.
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You can still drop your phone if you want to, but if you don't, that implies that your judgment looked over the sum of all things and decided to keep the phone. Or not.
phones are to ingrained into everything. like i remember when i was younger if you got lost you could go somewhere like a gas station and maybe get directions. why would you do that now. so someone else can look it up on their phone for you? or tickets, payments, menus are on phones now
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phones are to ingrained into everything. like i remember when i was younger if you got lost you could go somewhere like a gas station and maybe get directions. why would you do that now. so someone else can look it up on their phone for you? or tickets, payments, menus are on phones now
> or tickets, payments, menus are on phones now I see you've never been to developing country. Good luck with your online menu in street restaurant or same with buying shady overpriced ticket where even locals dunno what's real price and you end up paying less than locals (Indonesian buses in general).
My next job I want to travel again. I spent three years traveling to not-sexy places in the USA an UK, and a year going between US and China. Despite note being hot destinations in any of the countries, it was still fascinating. I quit a year before the pandemic because there was a loneliness about it, and I was never going to find a significant other if I was always gone. During the pandemic I took up Mountain Bikin…
I never want to travel for a job ever again if I can avoid it, and it seems that the world has changed enough that's an option (fingers crossed). I spent most of my early career traveling all over the place. Meetings in 3 cities in 2 countries in a day? No worries. Got to be 8 time zones away for lunch tomorrow? My carryon is already packed. I got to see great things; always found a way to eek out a little time here…
The big lesson I learned was if the engagement was on a Monday morning, and I had to fly Sunday, that needs to be reflected in compensation somehow. I was forcefully adamant that I flew during the week only without structured and logged PTO compensation.
The other company I worked for had no issues with me booking longer stays past the engagement as long as I covered expenses for those. That gave me a day or two in most places and I could hit highlights.
>In every culture the native costume is the first thing to go, native architecture is next. Food is one of the last to go, even in modern places where people are wearing blue jeans. So these days I like to go to places where there is still native costume and native architecture. Unfortunately these areas are shrinking. I'm not nostalgic about it; I understand the reasons behind the changes, and it's a net improvement…
> Humans are cursed to be discontent once they find out there are better options available. Yeah, it turns out the “simplicity of famine” after a tribal territorial dispute destroyed food supplies isn’t so great after all. Or simple water sanitization problems causing severe sickness for 1/4 of your people. That simple life is good when it’s the right ratio of work rewarded with reward (food, shelter, respect in your…
More people have suffered and died in modern warfare than any other wars because its that much easier to harm and kill people at scale.
That's my cherry picked argument vs yours.
>In every culture the native costume is the first thing to go, native architecture is next. Food is one of the last to go, even in modern places where people are wearing blue jeans. So these days I like to go to places where there is still native costume and native architecture. Unfortunately these areas are shrinking. I'm not nostalgic about it; I understand the reasons behind the changes, and it's a net improvement…
So, in which places today do people still wear their native costume in preference to western clothes such as shirts and jeans? I can think of: Gulf countries (Saudi Arabia, UAE), Bhutan, Saharan Africa. India/South Asia partially but more so for women.
I am very grateful that modern technology has led me to exciting places that I would not have found without it. I traveled for 20 months between 2016 and 2018 in Asia and Europe with my self-made 4WD camper. I spent months in the Mongolian steppe and an Iranian desert. Without the map data from the Openstreetmap project (and a satellite navigation device) I would not have found many fantastic places and wonderful rou…
How did Mongolia compare to other places you have traveled? I have been eyeing going there for awhile now - I was mainly planning to maybe spend a few days in Ulaanbataar since I would need to fly in there and then make my way over to the Altai mountains to do some backpacking and mountaineering.
The Altai was amazing. The horse trek was an organised affair (through Zavkhan trekking) and struck that sweet spot between immersion and comforts. Comfort preferences vary but we got hot meals, someone else dug our pit latrine, but we still had to pitch our tents. On horseback or not, I highly recommend it.
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How did Mongolia compare to other places you have traveled? I have been eyeing going there for awhile now - I was mainly planning to maybe spend a few days in Ulaanbataar since I would need to fly in there and then make my way over to the Altai mountains to do some backpacking and mountaineering.
Just do it. Being in Mongolia is easy. Ulaanbaatar is ugly but nevertheless interesting. There is much to learn. I liked the big market with its yurt parts section very much. The Altai is very far away from Ulaanbaatar. Very far. It is a 1.400 km tour mostly on sand tracks. I would use a car and plan a week for just the trip from Ulaanbaatar to the mountains. But only if you hurry and don't want to stop and have a lo…
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How did Mongolia compare to other places you have traveled? I have been eyeing going there for awhile now - I was mainly planning to maybe spend a few days in Ulaanbataar since I would need to fly in there and then make my way over to the Altai mountains to do some backpacking and mountaineering.
I spent a few day in Ulanbataar and then went on a horse trek in the Altai in 2014. Ulanbataar felt, to me, like a post-soviet city bursting at the seams with informality (which it is). The main plaza with its status of Ghengis Khan is something but I got the sense that the locus of Mongolian culture is outside the cities. The Altai was amazing. The horse trek was an organised affair (through Zavkhan trekking) and st…