Having hitch-hiked around Europe as a teenager, I travelled to Asia and Australia to gather material for my first book – Nomadic Gatherings.

The sale of travel articles and photographs helped finance further travels on the African continent and across the Atlantic to the Americas.

My freelance work in photojournalism gave me plenty of ideas to start TravelNotes.org – The Online Guide to Travel – in 1997.

While managing a collection of travel websites now take up much of my time, travel, photography and writing books about travel remain my driving passion.

Let sharing photos of travel and the stories behind them be your driving passion too. You might even make a living at it; if you’re as lucky as I have been.

If not, there’s always fruit-picking, casual labour and teaching English on short-term contracts; to further finance our travel addictions.

Making money online while you travel has never been easier either. There’s advertising and sponsorship for those with a website; self-publishing, for those with a book in them; sales through print on demand, for the photographers, artists and designers among us; and of course, there’s a large market willing to make micro-payments to license the image rights or publish your articles.

They’ll then make the money from the advertising themselves; so sometimes it pays to cut out the middle man.

More info: magun.travelnotes.org

Nomadic Gatherings – Travels in Asia and Australia by Michel Guntern

Embark on your own literary adventure and travel with the author on trains and buses in Asia, then jump into cars with complete strangers in Australia and New Zealand as the founder of TravelNotes.org introduces you to a collection of characters that bring Nomadic Gatherings to life.

For those of you interested in reading the book, here’s a taster.

NOMADIC GATHERINGS – Synopsis of Chapters.

Source: www.createspace.com

1. Taking Off – To Japan, where a booming economy meant a healthy tourist industry.

I was quite often the only blond foreigner surrounded by the ceremonious Japanese tour-guide and her flock of homely punters.

So much of Japanese life seemed uniformed with rules, rituals, and ceremony; keeping grace and saving face. I bowed; they giggled.

Photo:
Japanese girl in traditional dress during a festival in Kumamoto, Japan.

Source: magun.travelnotes.org

2. Kimchi and Gold Medals – Going to The Seoul Olympics in 1988

The Olympic ceremony was on in Seoul, and the event was being transmitted live to the on-board television above the driver.

He was interested in the proceedings too, and looked up continuously while travelling in excess of the speed-limit on the outside lane.

People in the ‘Hermit Kingdom’ were open and forthcoming; often in an almost missionary way.

Photo:
Korean cameraman with traditional hat to protect himself from the sun while filming the tennis at the 1988 Olympics in Seoul, South Korea.

Source: magun.travelnotes.org

3. Little Sister – Taiwan was a brief stop en-route from Seoul to Hong Kong. They found it amusing that I was heading for China.

I arrived in Taiwan with an open mind, looking for differences and similarities with South Korea and Japan.

At nine in the evening Taipei was a bustling city beneath the neon lights and Mah Jong like tiles hanging from every building. The lady at the tourist counter spoke English and wrote my destination in Chinese characters for me.

Source: magun.travelnotes.org

4. Colonial Gateway – Landing in Hong Kong

Between the modern financial offices of Central Hong Kong, old trams still trundled along Des Voeux Road, and peddlers tinkled bicycle bells almost unaware of the diesel-fuelled double-decker buses behind them.

No-one stood still for a moment in Hong Kong. I had to get a visa for China.

Photo:
The Noonday Gun is a former naval artillery piece mounted on a small enclosed site near the Causeway Bay Typhoon Shelter on Hong Kong Island, Hong Kong.

The gun is still fired every day at noon and has become something of a tourist attraction.

Source: magun.travelnotes.org

5. China Travel – Travel by Train in China

Buying train tickets for travel in China can often be a problem, with five-day waits and people camped at the station.

And what if you can’t speak Chinese?

Photo:
Walk around the streets in China early in the morning and you can find almost anything ready to be chopped up for breakfast.

This lady was getting ready for hungry customers in Chengdu, Sichuan province; the home of spicy, Chinese food.

Source: magun.travelnotes.org

Round Beach Towels

How cool is reading a copy of Nomadic Gatherings in Sydney while lying on a round beach towel and watching the surfers ride their boards through the waves off the coast of Bondi Beach?

http://shop.travelnotes.org/round.php

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Here’s what else is in the book.
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6. The Northern Capitals:
Beijing (before democracy protests), and Harbin. Japan invaded Manchuria in the early 1940s, and the Soviets followed in 1945. Some of the dome-shaped architecture remains from the Russian period, although much was destroyed during the Cultural Revolution.

7. Grasslands to Terracotta:
With temperatures that drop below -35 degrees Celsius and stay around -20 on a good day in the winter, it is a hard existence for the people of Inner Mongolia, and unfortunately many are giving up their nomadic way of life to pose for tourists or prospect for gold.

Then on to Xi’an.

8. Central China:
Workers ploughed, hoed and fine tuned the cloggy soil, while their children carried straw baskets on their backs to help with the work load. Further on, fishermen punted small craft on a river. One of them pulled up his net, but the train had passed before I could inspect the catch.

As with the rest of China, the day in Chengdu starts early. Still in the dark of night at six in the morning, figures swing through a restricted motion in a space between the trees; Tai Chi is a physical, meditational, art form popularised by the elderly. It seems a way of keeping fit without the need for fitness.

9. Minorities and Tourists:
The area in the deep south of Yunnan Province, bordering Burma and Laos, is inhabited by a dozen of the minority tribes. CAAC flights are notorious for cancellations, and when that happens in remote areas, a two-day bus journey is the only alternative.

The daily flotilla of tourists from Guilin has turned Yangshou into a Chinese Capri, complete with English menus and ‘traditional Chinese massage’.

10. Leased Lands:
I had flown into Britain’s leased land, left it by train, and now I would return on the waterway that many Chinese have risked everything in an attempt to float down undetected by the authorities.

When the British used aggression against the Chinese in the Opium War, the Portuguese diplomatically kept out of it; and today Macau finds itself the poorer relation of a more dynamic Hong Kong.

11. Down Under:
I was not emigrating, but as I flew from Hong Kong to Melbourne I was just as apprehensive about the land I was approaching: the World’s largest island and smallest continent, with a red centre and the largest monolith on earth, the largest coral in the world, and snow-fields larger than those of Alpine Switzerland.

Sophisticated commercial centres alongside outback cattle-stations and flying doctors; modern films, theatre, and music juxtaposing ochre-toned bark-paintings, and Aboriginal rituals; mixed with the imported colour and culture of the Mediterranean Europeans, the Lebanese, and the increasing number of Asians.

A young nation seemed to be making an old land work.

12. The Track:
After Adelaide’s social event of the year, the Formula One Grand Prix, it was time to hitch-hike up the Great Interior.

13. Alice and Nurses:
A car crash after my visit to Ayers Rock blurred events at The Centre, and I was flown to Alice Springs by the Flying Doctor Service.

14. The Top End:
Even without a railway link between the two major Northern territory towns of Alice Springs and Darwin, traffic on the road was still slight.

15. Queensland:
The road quality changed at the Queensland border. The bitumen was only wide enough for one lorry. When two trucks passed, both had to drive half on the dirt edge. If a car came, the lorry-driver held his course, and the smaller vehicle drove on the dirt.

16. A Trip to Cairns:
The reason for hitch-hiking was not to save money, but to get the whole of the country’s nothingness into perspective and perhaps unearth a few local gems by meeting the natives, or at least those on the move or on some personal mission. Albert was one.

17. South No Schedule:
I only had a directional skeleton plan, but I was subject to outside influences that could not guarantee time.

18. Along The Coast:
‘Beachies’ may look for work, but they prefer having fun in the sun on the sands of Noosa, Surfers Paradise, Byron Bay and Coffs Harbour; also known as the Sunshine Coast, Gold Coast, and Holiday Coast.

19. City of Culture:
Whole books are written about Sydney, yet I try to condense the conscious capital into a chapter. With so much going on, I hope that I’ve managed to pull it off.

20. Moving On – Two Islands:
The beauty of moving is that you find something different, and somewhere among the sheep and the scenery of New Zealand, I hoped to find the people.

21. Coming Back:
The return flight to Australia.

I was told that anyone who spent more than a week in Canberra, the diplomatic meeting place, would find themselves attending the House of Representatives for entertainment. But the capital in the parkland was also the place to finalise visa formalities for onward Asian countries.

22. The Indian Pacific:
A two-night party of a train from Adelaide to Perth.

23. Bali:
Tourist or traveller? Paradise or an attempted retreat from the prying eyes and long lenses of the world’s press?

24. Surabaya to Singapore:
The crowded island of Java. And most of them seemed to be in the streets of Yogyakarta to see the Coronation and parade around the Kraton of the new Sultan.

Where was the genuine smile in Lee Kuan Yew’s towering-modern-triumph-in-the- tropics?

25. North Borneo – Not The Jungle:
“The Jungle?” the Dutchman in Jakarta had shown surprise when I expressed a desire to travel to the Philippines, via North Borneo. In fact there is a preposterous oil-wealth, alongside houses-on-stilts-in-the-water poverty, and a King with two wives.

26. Catholics and Communistos:
The only Catholic nation in Asia, Filipinos take their belief seriously; to the extent that in San Fernando, Pampanga, they are prepared to flagellate themselves and carry out genuine crucifixions on Good Friday.

The baranguay (local) elections were also approaching, and the ‘risk areas’ were in their thousands. The media contemplated rebel strongholds and announced the daily shooting toll, guerrilla leaders were being arrested, and Cory Acquino’s holiday movements would not be revealed.

27. Days Between Night Trains:
From Kuala Lumpur to Bangkok, via Penang and Koh Samui.

The best trains are the long-distance overnighters, where everybody lives on it for the moment. The restaurant car, sharing a bite to eat or a drink or two; the queue for a trickle of water to attempt to wash and clean your teeth in the morning, when no one looks quite how they like to present themselves; and the time-passing occupations of the passengers with their guard down.

28. A Splashing New Year:
The three-day New Year in Laos and North-East Thailand.

The Vientiane I found was nothing like Paul Theroux’s visit, where ‘a naked waitress jumped on to a chair and puffed a cigarette in her vagina by contracting her uterine lungs’.

29. The Saigon Scene:
The Vietnamese march of communism in South-East Asia was retreating in a bid to restore its ravaged economy. Even Communism needs capital, and Le Tho could return confidently with an US passport and his Dollars, twelve years after his bid for freedom.

Twelve years on, people were still sailing for the unknown; stories of piracy and almost terrible conditions did not deter them. Perhaps in ten or fifteen years time they too could return with an adoptive passport and gifts for relatives.

30. The Return:
On my return to Bangkok, I needed to think about where was home.

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Nomadic Gatherings is available on Amazon.
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Source: amzn.to

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