Recently, Facebook reminded me of a status I posted a few years back. “Alexandra Baackes is having non stop fun all the time and absolutely loving life.” At the time, I was dripping with sarcasm. Today, I could write that status in pretty non-ironic way. Today, on my twenty-third birthday, life is good. I might not…

Usually I make an effort to put out pretty polished content with good stories, complete thoughts, and neat little endings. This will not be one of those posts. I’m just going to ramble here for a few hundred words about some personal observations and moral dilemmas, okay? It’s vaguely travel related, I swear. There was a…

Alternatively Titled, A Work in Progress Remember when I blogged about getting kind of fat while living as an expat? Who would have guessed that fifteen pounds would lead to one of my most popular posts! I’ve mentioned a few times that I initially dropped those pounds in the hardest/easiest way possible – the breakup diet…

I meet some pretty amazing people on my travels. I hesitate to start naming favorites, but lets just say that if I were to do so, my friend Wes would be somewhere near the top of the list. Wes and I met on Koh Tao and I knew we were destined to be friends when I…

Traveling — stepping outside your own culture and comfort zone — tends to come with a side dish of ethical and moral decision-making. Maybe you’re concerned about the environmental impact of a Caribbean cruise, or you’re fretting over what to wear in a conservative country like Egypt. Maybe you’re wondering how to help poverty-striken children in…

Most people think a year of full-time travel is simply not possible without winning the lottery or inheriting a fortune. Outside of one guy I met in Vietnam who really was traveling off the windfall from a long-lost uncle, this is simply not the case of the hundreds of people I have met on my extensive…