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A Side Trip to Santa Marta

All this week, Amanda Pressner will be bringing us reports from her recent trip to Colombia. Was her adventure more "Romancing the Stone" or more "Medellin"? Stick with us this week to find out. Any questions about traveling to Colombia? Let us know.

When deciding where in Colombia to spend our vacation, we were lured to Cartagena partly because of its designation as a UNESCO World Heritage Site and partly because of its location along the southern rim of the Caribbean. Getting the chance to explore centuries old Spanish colonial architecture—after spending the day at the beach—felt like a two-for-one deal.

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Colombia Field Trip / Embedded Travel Guides / Nightlife / Jaunted in Colombia / → All Tags

Shake It All Night Long in Cartagena

All this week, Amanda Pressner will be bringing us reports from her recent trip to Colombia. Was her adventure more "Romancing the Stone" or more "Medellin"? Stick with us this week to find out. Any questions about traveling to Colombia? Let us know.

Unless you’ve downed a few of the super-octane coffee drinks at Milas around 4 or 5 pm, we highly suggest catching a nap before attempting to take on the nightlife in Cartagena: it starts late (most clubs don’t even open until 11:00p or midnight) and ends when you might otherwise be getting up to start your day.

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Wanted: An Authentic Taste of Cartagena

All this week, Amanda Pressner will be bringing us reports from her recent trip to Colombia. Was her adventure more "Romancing the Stone" or more "Medellin"? Stick with us this week to find out. Any questions about traveling to Colombia? Let us know.

Ask a local in Cartagena to describe the flavors and dishes that make up his city’s cuisine (or better yet, as a head chef in one of the city’s myriad restaurants) you’ll probably be met with some quizzical looks, or as I did, blank stares. Define the local cuisine? ¿Cómo?

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Colombia Field Trip / Embedded Travel Guides / Starbucks Alternatives / Cafes / → All Tags

Some Starbucks Alternatives in Cartagena

All this week, Amanda Pressner will be bringing us reports from her recent trip to Colombia. Was her adventure more "Romancing the Stone" or more "Medellin"? Stick with us this week to find out. Any questions about traveling to Colombia? Let us know.

Pop quiz, caffeine junkies: What’s the only coffeehouse that’s actually headquartered in a coffee producing country? It’s Juan Valdez Café, a multinational chain created in 2002 by Colombian National Federation of Coffee Growers. Named after the country’s longtime java icon (you know, that mustachioed guy with the donkey who hand-delivers beans to sleep-deprived Americans in commercials) the company has locations in 25 Colombian cities, nine countries, including the U.S.

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Getting What We Paid For On Avianca

All this week, Amanda Pressner will be bringing us reports from her recent trip to Colombia. Was her adventure more "Romancing the Stone" or more "Medellin"? Stick with us this week to find out. Any questions about traveling to Colombia? Let us know.

After traveling to Ecuador last year, my guy Jeff and I volunteered to give up our seats on a very overbooked Avianca flight from Bogota, Colombia back to New York City. The incentive: a total of four international airline vouchers, good for anywhere in the world that Avianca flies, plus a free night in the InterContinental Bogota Hotel. How could we pass up such a deal? We didn't.

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Vietnam Field Trip / Embedded Travel Guides / UNESCO / Fashion Travel / → All Tags

Vietnam By Train: Where To Find Ancient Ruins, Tailored Suits

All week long our roving correspondent Claire Duffett will be sending back her travel reports from Vietnam. Any questions or suggestions? Let us know and we'll have Claire answer them for you.

An hour south of Hue, Hoi An offers a brighter side of Vietnamese history. The city is a UNESCO World Heritage Site unto itself, a preserved shipping village. The entire city rests inside the low-hanging slope of scalloped, stone roofs that characterize Chinese-Viet architecture.

In town, you can watch local artisans, paint, sculpt, and embroider, visit the many gated, ornate homes dedicated to familial ancestors, or stroll across the wooden Japanese Covered Bridge. The whole place is almost too quaint, and you will be surrounded by plenty of wholesome families spending there days eating and shopping. It’s certainly a great place to do both.

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The Lost Jaunted in Chile Videos

West Coast web media princess, and the latest Jaunted Embed, Shira Lazar is making her way through Chile on a top secret travel mission. She will be posting daily for the next week, in hopes of creating a glorious on-the-fly travel guide using as much point oh social webbing as she can. Enjoy.

From busy cities to laid back rural communities set against snow-capped mountains we were able to see a ton of Chile in one short week. Throughout our travels, we were also amazed at how friendly all the locals were, counting those we had only previously met online and who quickly became our personal guides and new friends. We are grateful for all of this, so we want to share some tips in how to create your own local Chilean adventure, oh that and we want to show you some videos that might not have made the daily post cut.

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Vietnam Field Trip / Embedded Travel Guides / Hue Travel / Forbidden Purple City / Demilitarized Zone / → All Tags

Vietnam By Train: Hue Cool

All week long our roving correspondent Claire Duffett will be sending back her travel reports from Vietnam. Any questions or suggestions? Let us know and we'll have Claire answer them for you.

After trekking through the terraced mountains, I climbed back aboard the train, headed back to Hanoi, then south to Hué (pronounced Hway), a small city in the center of Vietnam, dense with history. It seems almost half the city is contained within the walls of the Citadel, the royal capital of Vietnam’s ousted monarchy.

Inside the stone gate, neighborhoods, moats, and pagodas all surround the Forbidden Purple City, the complex once accessible only to the Nguyen kings and his concubines and eunichs. I expected a maze of opulent palaces; I found a grassy field. Fighting during the American War 40 years ago virtually razed the Forbidden City, and like most things unrelated to the Communist party, little has been done to restore it.

The liveliest part of the grounds is the massive koi ponds near the main entrance, where young Vietnamese feed bread to giant fish who flap and scramble over each other, mouths agape, trying to catch the crumbs.

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Vietnam By Train: Hanging With The Hmong

All week long our roving correspondent Claire Duffett will be sending back her travel reports from Vietnam. Any questions or suggestions? Let us know and we'll have Claire answer them for you.

After returning to Hanoi from Halong Bay, I rode our first overnight train northwest to Sapa, the mountainous town famous for its proximity to Fansipan, Vietnam’s tallest mountain, and for the ubiquity of indigenous tribes.

Riding Vietnam’s national railroad is an experience in itself, and during my travels through the country, I slept on four trains. Cars range from whimsical, antique wooden boxes that look like something straight out of Darjeeling Limited to dingy, plastic cells with mattresses covered in hair.

True story—I found a bottle of warm urine resting on the windowsill in one of my rooms.

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Vietnam Field Trip / Embedded Travel Guides / Halong Bay / UNESCO / Kayak Travel / → All Tags

Vietnam By Train: Cruising Halong Bay

All week long our roving correspondent Claire Duffett will be sending back her travel reports from Vietnam. Any questions or suggestions? Let us know and we'll have Claire answer them for you.

From Hanoi, we headed east to Halong Bay. More than 3,000 limestone islands jut out of the Gulf of Tonkin, so it's often compared to Krabi in Southern Thailand, though I visited there in November and Halong’s landscape is far more impressive. It does, however, lack the sandy, white beaches.

Like many UNESCO sites, the beauty of Halong Bay is constantly at odds with the ugliness of heavy tourism. Its adjacent city is the worst of rapid, unchecked development, with hideous high-rises abutting massage parlors and slums. The bay itself is littered with “junk boats,” heavy wooden boats that ferry tourists through the maze of islands.

While the antique boats themselves look quite beautiful lumbering through the water, there is simply too many of them. Often, the iridescent glean of oil is visible on the water, and I floated past empty bottles and debris.

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Jaunted in Chile / Shira Lazar / Patagonia Travel / Embedded Travel Guides / → All Tags

Feeling Patagonia, Part II

West Coast web media princess, and the latest Jaunted Embed, Shira Lazar is making her way through Chile on a top secret travel mission. She will be posting daily for the next week, in hopes of creating a glorious on-the-fly travel guide using as much point oh social webbing as she can. Enjoy.

After a couple of days of wining and dining during a press trip, we felt more than half way to putting our freshman fifteen back on. So there should be no surprise we were excited to see some physical activity on our schedule in Patagonia. On tap: kayaking and rock climbing!

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Vietnam Field Trip / Embedded Travel Guides / Hanoi To Do / → All Tags

Vietnam By Train: Ahoy Hanoi!

All week long our roving correspondent Claire Duffett will be sending back her travel reports from Vietnam. Any questions or suggestions? Let us know and we'll have Claire answer them for you.

The seasoned—and spoiled—traveler often complains of desensitization. After viewing a few world wonders, everything becomes banal. So when an amazing place comes along, particularly one without a ton of hype, it restores a traveler’s basic belief that there are places in the world worth seeking out and crossing great distances to experience.

For me, that place is Hanoi. When I traveled the length of the country last month, I started in the capital, and it exceeded all expectations. Sure, its inhabitants say the city was even better 10 years ago, but it's still great and I don't risk sanctions by my home country now for visiting it.

Perhaps you’ve heard the city is quaint, with vendors lining narrow streets, selling bowls of steaming pho and two-cent glasses of ice-cold local beer. I promise—it’s more charming than the image in your mind right now. And even if people have mentioned that the country, while economically liberalized, remains staunchly communist, you can’t conceptualize the ubiquity of political propaganda—with posters, flags, and Ho Chi Minh’s face virtually everywhere.

Even if someone told you Hanoi’s dotted with lakes surrounded by parks with giant, looming trees and well-kept promenades, you can’t imagine how green the city truly is. In Asia, the “pave paradise, put up a parking lot” ethos is often an unironic way of life. Historic buildings are demolished and replaced with high rises; lakes filled and parks razed to make way for new developments. In Vietnam, a country that spent most of the last century at war, it’s amazing that its centuries-old architecture—and trees—somehow managed to survive.

Our only warning is that once in Hanoi, you might be met with a strong and sudden urge to never leave. However, if you stick around for only a few days, here are a few Best Ofs in town.

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