I began to write about my travels, alongside my mother, when we travelled the world when I was a child. We’d keep extended journals and write about our daily experiences and adventures travelling the world, and I’d make sketches and write poems as well about what I was seeing and experiencing, with the purpose of eventually publishing them.

My mother herself experienced many historical events firsthand, living through them and seeing them in a very different way from the exaggerated things one reads and watches in the news, which she then found annoying. And I’ve been able to do the same, living in parts of the world where "many fear to tread" and finding most of these regions completely safe while learning firsthand to use my common sense, and also observing situations which I’d then later read in the news and (depending on the news source, since some seem more objective than others) being extremely annoyed.

I recall an anecdote where my mother once spent time in a particular city, arriving there at night and wandering alone for some time through the streets while finding it extremely peaceful and uneventful, and then learning afterwards when she had travelled to the next city that, according to the media, the city had been experiencing some sort of nearly miniature civil war, with "fighting everywhere in the streets" at the same time and right through the area where she had walked and seen nothing. And she was a very observant person, not to mention that something as extreme as was portrayed did not require any special powers of observation to notice.

In any event, following a lifetime since the age of two (and actually beginning before I was born) of living in and travelling through many countries and across all continents, mostly overland and almost always solo since my late teens, I’ve long desired to record all of these experiences in volumes, and I’ll be doing the same for hers.

We haven’t travelled as "tourists" but as adventure travellers, using grassroots budgets and working and sometimes volunteering in different locations in order to remain in these regions for extended periods if we wished.

Like some of my global citizen friends, I also prefer land and sea travel to air travel. So you can expect in these volumes to find some very unusual experiences, often humorous, since I seem to be able to capture the humorous side of many situations I observe and experience, but occasionally also serious, and sometimes even hair-raising, heart-in-mouth types of experiences.

As an adult, most of my overseas living and travel has been conducted in the interest of my university studies, particularly postgraduate and medical -- some for my archaeological and medical practicums, and some for my research for my historical novels I’m now publishing.

I hope also that my experiences I’m sharing can encourage you to do the same. They don’t require an enormous budget, as you can see from these pages, and they are not difficult or dangerous if done with common sense and awareness. If I can do them, anyone can.

And I did mine solo, mostly through male-dominated traditional societies deemed "dangerous," which are not dangerous at all and, in fact, are much safer than much of the West.

I write using many anecdotes and in an often conversational way, since I have a natural enjoyment for storytelling. I’ve really enjoyed writing these experiences and hope you will also enjoy reading them and sharing in my journey!

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