Traveling Light

By Colleen Friesen

Award-winning travel writer Colleen Friesen has compiled some of her best travel stories in Traveling Light.
Her travel articles collected two top prizes in the 2009 Travel Media Association of Canada awards and have been featured in most of Canada's major newspapers, as well as magazines as diverse as Adventure Cyclist, More, Canoe & Kayak and Homemakers.
In 2007 one of her narratives was a finalist in Canada's National Magazine Awards and was a gold-place winner in the Western Magazine Awards that same year.
Whether you're following along with her humiliation at 'taking the waters' in Vichy or making up a love potion with a shaman in Malaysia, you can be guaranteed of a great adventure.
Traveling Light is your ticket to see the world with a few less shadows.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Colleen Friesen
• Release date: Feb 22, 2011
• ISBN: 9781458044655

Colleen Friesen

Colleen Friesen believes in acts of transformation and redemption. She sees her life as proof, after she swapped her caulk boots - as British Columbia’s only female log broker - for a laptop and camera and a new career as a travel writer. Though most of her writing is about travel, she also likes to write stories that explore insights gained through encountering other worlds; away and at home. Her travels have, so far, taken her to forty-five countries, confirming her belief that everyone, and every thing, is interconnected. Her blog combines travel writing, photos, videos and armchair philosophical ponderings to create an exciting collage of ideas and inspiration.

Book preview

TRAVELING LIGHT

Colleen Friesen

Smashwords Edition

Copyright © 2011 Colleen Friesen

Follow the Traveling Light Blog by Travel Writer Colleen Friesen at:

http://www.colleenfriesen.com/blog

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Table of Contents

Chapter One - Packing Tips or Traveling Light…

Chapter Two -Travel Tips 101…

Chapter Three - On Being A Bollywood Star…

Chapter Four-Syrian Dreams…

Chapter Five - Mexican Magic…

Chapter Six - French Lessons…

Chapter Seven - The Road to Hell…

Chapter Eight - Czech Cycling…

Chapter Nine - Truth & Justice in Africa…

Chapter Ten - When Irish Eyes are Smiling - Look Out…

Chapter Eleven - Attack of the Shark…

Chapter Twelve - Malawi Moments…

Chapter Thirteen - Love Potion - Malaysian Style…

Chapter Fourteen - Peel Me A Grape…

Chapter Fifteen - Questions of Security…

Chapter Sixteen - Floating Through Florida…

Chapter Seventeen - Quebec For Two…

Chapter Eighteen - Ring of Fire - Hot Springs of British Columbia…

Chapter Nineteen - Nightmare in Tuscany…

Chapter Twenty - City of Sinners…

Chapter Twenty-One - Heaven’s Gate…

For travelers everywhere…

"Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the men of old,

seek what they sought."

-Matsuo Basho

As a freelance travel writer I’ve had many opportunities to see various bits and pieces of the world. Bearing that in mind, I’d like to say that in no way are my stories purported to be definitive of a destination.

Rather, these stories are some of the moments that seemed to me to embody the experience of the place.

I’ve put together a few of my travel stories, some previously published, some not, but all of them, felt from the heart. It is traveling that continues to reinforce my belief that people are good…some more than others, but basically…good.

Thanks for joining me on this journey,

Colleen Friesen

Chapter One - Packing Tips or Traveling Light…

Smug isn’t quite the right word.

Righteous, perhaps? That’s closer, I muse, as I wheel my luggage past the airport’s baggage carousel and straight to the Tucson exit – where I wait, and wait, for my husband, Kevin, to be reunited with his bloated bags.

I am the Queen of Packing Light. While the over-burdened needers-of-porters and renters-of-luggage-carts swarm all around me, I regard the world’s lightest carry-on at my feet. Empty, I can pick it up with my pinkie. Truly it is a bag made for those who know how to pack.

Like me.

Case in point. Earlier this year, and a lifetime after leaving Vancouver, I landed before the Shangri-La Hotel in Kuala Lumpur with 17 other travel writers. I hadn’t yet discovered my perfect carry-on, so I was toting one discreet zip-bag that now sat diminutively among the piles of luggage on the sidewalk.

Is that it? hissed a patrician-looking writer from Winnipeg.

Uh-huh. I tried to appear casual about my packing prowess.

Whaddya do? Wear the same outfit 12 days in a row?

I smiled, an indulgent and beneficent smile, a smile for the unenlightened.

By the third day she was shadowing me. Teach me how to pack.

I entertain myself with such memories as I wait. Finally, Kevin staggers into view with his Olympian weight. How many outfits could he need for a six-day train journey into Mexico’s Copper Canyon?

To be fair, my packing system can get irritating. If everything isn’t piled just so…well... By our third day in Tucson, it’s downright annoying how Kevin has room for the laundry bag he blithely stuffs into an empty corner of his mammoth case. I vow to take even less next time.

But there are other forces at work. I’m sweating more than in my usual Canadian habitat, which creates more semi-smelly clothes than I had counted