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It's not every day you get to do a post based on how good something is that you've spent a lot of time and energy on, so I should really cherish the moment... okay, now that the moment's gone, I'd like to thank Josh from Izunotravel.com for the really in depth review he's done of travel blogging systems. For those of you familiar with Travellerspoint blogs it might come as a shock, but there really are other sites out there trying to do the same thing! We don't know why they try either, but hey...

Joking aside, it's great to see a blogger/reviewer really go into the kind of detail Josh has done when researching 10 different sites that offer travel blogging - view the review here. And this was done independently too I should add; the first I ever heard about it was an email from Josh letting us know we had 'won' We went up against some pretty big names, including a few sites that do nothing but travel blogging and I'm really proud to say that Travellerspoint came out number 1 overall. We were considered best in category in three different categories out of 15, although not all 15 categories actually had a 'best of category' (only 7 did). My favourite line is this one:

Quoting izunotravel.com

"Map features are better than on Google"

There's a lot to take away from the review, including some (small) points of improvement for Travellerspoint which is also very welcome. If you'd like to see the comparison chart (flash), the direct link is http://www.izunotravel.com/Customs/traveljournalreview.html

And as always, any ideas/suggestions on how we can keep on making the travel blogging system better are welcome!!

This is the second in our "Talking Travel" series of interviews with Travellerspoint members. Today's interview is with Dave Reidy, who, together with his girlfriend Laura, is working in India amongst children affected by HIV/AIDS. I was privileged to interview Dave via email and learn more about the obstacles and challenges undermining the prevention and spread of HIV/AIDS in India.

Dave and Laura at Heaven Lake in Xinjiang Province, western China.

The Interview:

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Tell us about yourselves. Where do you call home?

I am a 23 year old Rhode Islander, and that will always be my home. Laura is 24 and from Long Island. We met as undergrads at Brown University, where we both studied Political Science. We started dating our senior year and have been together ever since.

Have you and Laura travelled much previously?

Before coming to India we spent a year in Beijing as English teachers. After graduating from college that May, I moved to Washington DC and worked for the Joint Economic Committee, while Laura prepared for China and then left in August to begin teaching. I stayed in DC until November, at which time I decided to leave the JEC and head for Beijing. Thankfully, the school at which Laura was teaching had an opening for a 4th and 5th grade teacher and offered it to me.

We did a tremendous amount of traveling in China, owing mainly to the very generous vacations afforded to teachers - for example, the entire month of February is a school holiday to celebrate Chinese New Year. For that month we roamed southern China, exploring the Yunnan Province, Hong Kong, Guilin and Yongshuo. While in Yunnan we did the fantastic Tiger Leaping Gorge Trek, which to this day remains the most beautiful trek I have ever done, and spent a day floating down the Mekong river outside of Jinghong. Almost as stunning were the stark karst formations jutting up in the area around Guilin and Yongshuo. We spent a day traveling down the river to absorb the scenery and a few more biking the trails outside of Yongshuo and climbing Moon Hill.

Later in the year we took advantage of a week vacation to head West to the remote province of Xianjiang, home to ancient Silk Road trading posts and the fantastic city of Kashgar. We spent a few days hiking around Tian Shi, the famous Heaven Lake immortalized by Vikram Seth, before embarking on a 26 hour bus ride along the outskirts of the great desert to Kashgar. We soaked in the culture and scenery (and delicious food!) around Kashgar, and managed to take a brief camel-back day trip into the desert. Let me assure you that everything you have ever heard about camels being ill-tempered is more than true - mine complained at every small slope and even threw me off to show his disgust. We also spent a day driving high into the Karakoram Mountains, almost to the border with Pakistan, to see the starkly beautiful Karakul Lake, which is one of the highest bodies of water in the world.

We were also sure to explore the numerous fascinating sights in and around Beijing, including several visits to the Great Wall. On one such visit we spent 2 days hiking and camping along an unrestored section of the Wall with some friends. We also traveled north to Harbin, deep in Chinese Siberia, for their famous annual ice sculpture exhibition. Harbin is the last real city before the completely frozen wastelands of Siberia, and each year they celebrate by carving massive structures completely made of ice.

What inspired you to go to India and work with people infected with HIV?

After finishing the teaching year in China, we decided to spend another year abroad and quickly zeroed in on India as the place where we would like to be. Once we decided that, we began looking for jobs. We are both political science graduates with a heavy focus on public policy, and are both very interested in international public health. Through our studies we had learned a great deal about the HIV/AIDS epidemic, and were exceptionally keen to get involved and help. We were lucky enough to stumble upon two positions with the Clinton Foundation working on Pediatric HIV/AIDS, and now here we are in India.

What are some of the major factors contributing to the HIV/AIDS problem in India?

There are many factors contributing the continued growth of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in India, but I would argue that few have the impact of generalized misinformation, stigma, and discrimination. Sex, and therefore HIV/AIDS, remains a taboo subject in what is still a predominately conservative society, and this in turn impedes people from getting information about HIV/AIDS and how it spreads. People continue to engage in what is termed "high-risk behavior" without realizing that they are putting themselves in danger, and thus the epidemic continues to spread. Those who are positive risk being ostracized from their communities because people often do not understand how HIV/AIDS spreads and worry that they may contract it from simple daily interactions, which is not true. This unfortunately makes educational communication about HIV/AIDS more difficult and feeds into what becomes a cyclical problem.

Your work is specifically about helping treat children who are infected with HIV. What are the challenges in getting sick children to receive treatment?

The challenges of linking children to treatment mirror those that plague all positive patients - misinformation. Positive children are often expelled from schools, and parents then become reluctant to test their children. There is often a prevailing attitude among parents that since they cannot help their children if they have HIV/AIDS and the children may face discrimination then they are better off just knowing the status of their children. This is one of the main myths we try to combat by spreading the message that you can do something to help your child if they are positive. Anti-retrovirals are available free of charge in government medical facilities, and can work miracles. In addition to communication, there are several barriers to treatment for children, especially poor children in rural areas. Medical centers are often far away, possibly even an overnight journey, and in addition to paying the cost of the trip parents also have to lose a days wages. Far too often this is simply unaffordable.

You started off your trip in Delhi and then flew across to Mumbai, where you are now. How do the two cities compare?

I read somewhere that Mumbai is a tropical, third-world version of New York, and that statement couldn't be more true. The city is constantly alive and pulsating with electricity, just as Manhattan seems to be at all hours of the day. The crowds, the traffic, and the generally hectic pace of life never let you forget that you are in what is possibly the most populated urban area in the world. Delhi, conversely, has the feel of a large town that just kept growing. It is sprawling and has several small city centers instead of one true urban area. For my money, I'll take Mumbai any day. I find the excitement and energy to be intoxicating, and as a multi-cultural urban melting pot you can experience the best of all different Indian cultures and cuisines in a single day.

How long do you have in India? What comes after that?

We are planning to stay in India at least through the beginning of August. After that, who knows...

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To read more about Dave and Laura's experiences in India, check out his blog.

It's been a while since adding a new language to the travel blogging area, but considering the number of Scandinavian bloggers that are active, today's addition of Danish should be welcome to many! A big thanks to Andreas who is currently blogging about his travels for providing the translation. As with past translations, this is especially of benefit to your readers if you were writing in another language anyway. Now the labels and default text will all be translated to match your writing.

You can set the language for your blog in the settings part of your travel blog management area. These instructions should help if you are unsure. The only difference should be that you need to select Danish from the drop down list instead of 'German'

Don't have a travel blog yet?

Please contact us or send me a PM if you want to help us translate to other languages than the ones currently available. We're offering increased photo upload limits in return. You can get a whopping 200 MB a month.... that should tie over even the most fanatic photo uploader.

Last year, I interviewed Timothy Allen, a professional travel photographer who had been travelling around remote corners of Nepal, Bhutan and India - all the while getting paid to do it. We received a lot of positive feedback about that interview. It seems the lure of combining travel with work is something that attracts many passionate travellers.

Recently, I corresponded by email with Peter Delevett, a professional journalist who has branched out into travel writing. After working for 5 years as a reporter, columnist and editor, Peter decided to spend more time writing about his travel experiences. His work has appeared in the San Jose Mercury News, World Hum and will soon also be featured in Sunset magazine and Lonely Planet's website.

But his biggest work to date is a 88,000-word travel memoir, Walking on the Moon, which he wrote about a 14 month trip he made after college in the early 1990s. The book is currently in front of a publisher in San Francisco.

After the success of last year's interview with Timothy Allen, I decided to interview Peter to hear more about his experiences as a traveller and writer. He was happy to indulge, providing insight and tips for travellers dreaming of earning a living through travel writing.

After you graduated from college in the early 1990s, you spent 14 months backpacking through Asia and Europe. What inspired you to take so much time out to travel?

My sister was living in Tokyo on a homestay during my senior year in college, and we had talked about meeting up there after I graduated and traveling around the country. While I was making plans for that, I decided to make it the starting point for a round-the-world trip. I was lucky that my parents had set aside money for me to go to college, and by laying out of classes during the fall semester of my senior year and working in a record store, I was able to save that tuition money to bankroll my trip. My dad helped me find a "bucket shop" in New York City that sold round-the-world tickets, and I asked a lot of friends who'd traveled through Asia where they would go. I just figured if I didn't do it then, I'd get a job and would never have the time to do it.

Had you travelled much before that?

I was actually born in Japan, when my dad was in the service, and although I don't remember living there - we came back to the States when I was about 18 months old - I had always grown up wanting to go back. I'd been to Canada with my parents when I was real small, and then to Mexico a couple of times with a boys' choir; I also spent a couple of weeks in Europe (France, Germany and Belgium) with the same choir when I was around 11.

Looking back now, how do you think that 14-month trip after college changed you as a person?

I think it changed me tremendously. I had to become more self-reliant; I had to open myself up to new experiences, new foods, new places where I couldn't speak the language. I learned to rely on the kindness of strangers. I also had a lot of time to read and think, to look back on mistakes I'd made and think about what kind of person I wanted to become. Among many other things that were going on in that time of my life, I was getting over a very nasty breakup with a longtime girlfriend, who was subsequently killed in a car accident, and I wrestled with guilt over that for a long while; having time to myself on the road to process and reflect on all that was very therapeutic.

And as more time went by, I found myself torn between this desire to keep traveling, to stay free, and this feeling of wanting security and stability. A voice in the back of my head was saying, "You should go home, get a job, grow up," and another voice was saying, "No way, man, don't sell out." So part of the end-process of that trip was trying to synthesize those two sides of myself and resolve that tension.

Fast-forward to today: you're married, you have a good job, a house. Could you ever see yourself packing up and heading off with your wife for another extended journey overseas?

Yeah, we talk a lot about that. We're both very lucky because we love our jobs and our home in California. My wife has a great job with a big airline, so that lets us travel very cheaply, but one of these days, when she's ready to retire, we plan to spend at least a year or so abroad somewhere. In the meantime, we're trying to see as much of the world as we can in bite-sized chunks.

You'd been a professional journalist for five years before you started doing some travel writing on the side. What attracted you to travel writing?

I think I see it as a way to marry two great passions. I love going to new places and discovering what's unique there and sharing it with other people.

Do you have any tips for people who would like to make it as a travel writer?

Keep your day job. Seriously, I talk to a lot of travel writers, and that's advice I consistently get; it's very hard to make it as a full-time travel writer unless you're independently wealthy or have a spouse who can support you. I know people who do it, of course, and they work incredibly hard; everyplace they go, they try to spin off several different stories from each trip. Like maybe they contribute to a guidebook and sell another story about the same place to a magazine. You have to be very entrepreneurial.

Aside from that, look for a way to differentiate yourself. Go places the rest of the crowd isn't going to and tell us why we should go there too. Or if you're going to a really popular destination, like say Italy or Paris, work to find an angle that hasn't been written to death. Maybe try to find a niche market that's being underserved - "people who want to travel with their pets," say - and think of ways you can target that market and publications that might be able to reach that market.

Read good travel writing and work to make your own writing better. Learn to take good digital photographs and online video. Try to bring as much to the table as possible when you're pitching. And don't be too discouraged by rejection, because you'll probably get a lot of it.

Tell me a bit more about your book. Why did you decide to write it?

I knew very early, like within a few weeks of starting out, that I wanted to write about the trip. This is a little unconventional for a travel memoir, but one of the first really weird things that happened on the road was trying LSD for the first time, in Tokyo. And it was such a bizarre experience - Tokyo can be kind of mind-blowing even when you're sober - that I thought, "I have to find some way to express this." There's a certain school of thought, of course, that travel memoirs are a dime a dozen, so in crafting my story, I tried to think about what made mine different. I wanted to talk not just about all these amazing ancient cultures I was being exposed to, but also about the hard-core backpacker counterculture, which was very new to me - and in some ways, tied very much into the sense I had at the time of wanting to escape from the "conventional" path of getting a good job and doing what was expected. Travel, as I say at the end of the book, is often just as much about finding new things within yourself as it is about finding new places in the world.

And in that regard, I think my story also is universal; it has something to say to people whether they're at that same stage of discovery in their lives, or whether they're looking back at that time with the wisdom of experience.

In terms of process, I kept journals as I was traveling, but I didn't actually sit down to start writing the book until more than three years after I'd come home. I got up early on New Year's Day and took my laptop down to the water to start writing. It took another four years to finish it, because I was working full-time and could only steal a bit of time here and there to work on it. When I was done I'd written 120,000 words, and I then spent another couple of years trying to edit and refine it, to focus on the question, "What's the story I really want to tell here?" So I pared it by more than 25 percent, and I'm now shopping it to a major publisher in San Francisco. Keep your fingers crossed.

Why do you think people enjoy reading about other people's travel adventures?

I think in one sense, we enjoy seeing and hearing about new places and encounters that we haven't been able to get to ourselves - to think, "Wow, how crazy that must have been," or "Wow, I never knew that," or "Wow, I wish I'd seen that - it's so different from my own experience." But on the flip side, I think we also see commonalities to our own lives; all of us have been strangers somewhere at some point, all of us have enjoyed the sense of discovering the unfamiliar. Or we've been in an awkward or embarrassing situation because we couldn't speak the language, and looking back you laugh at it, and we can all relate to that because they've happened to us too.

Do you have any future trips planned?

Yeah, my wife and I are headed to Rome and Moscow in April to visit friends. We did Rome a few years ago, during Easter, and I wrote a travel piece about that experience. I've been wanting to get to Russia ever since my big globetrot in the early 90s and just never had time, so I'm really looking forward to that.

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Check out these articles written by Peter:

• Rome for the holidays: Pomp and History of the Vatican Add Drama to Christianity's Holy Celebrations (PDF)
  
• The (Full Moon) Party's Over
  
• The Distance from Dachau to Darfur
  

I know, I know, I've been neglectful. After some great interviews last year with Greg, Rich, Dave, Frank and the Engelmans, I let it slip as the TP Overlords had me focus on some other big projects (like this and this).

But I'm back. New Year's Resolution #34: Do more interviews with Travellerspoint members.

So here goes, the first in a brand new series of interviews. Who's up first, I hear you ask? Michael Burm - or, as he's known around Travellerspoint, Utrecht.

Addicted to travel, Michael? Sure looks like it!

At 30, Michael's tally of 39 trips through almost 70 countries is pretty impressive. In 2007 alone, he made trips through Asia, Europe, North America and Australia - while keeping his job back home in Holland.

I caught up with Michael to find out how he manages to do all this travelling - and why he just can't stay away from the road.

You made quite a few trips in 2007: Australia in March/April, Ireland in May, Iceland and Canada in September, and finally China in November. Where do you get all this time from?!

Well, that's one advantage of working for the (local) government - I get extra holidays. The standard is about 5 weeks of holiday, but because I work 40 hours a week and get paid for 36, I save 4 hours each week on top of that. That, and about 1.5 weeks of working overtime, means I have about 11 weeks of holiday a year. And almost all of that I use for travelling. I realize I am in a rather luxurious position, because compared to other jobs and other countries I just have more days to spend.

Do you travel on a really tight budget to be able to do all these trips?

I certainly do not splash with money, but I am not really travelling on a very tight budget either. The plane tickets alone sometimes cost a fortune and countries like Iceland and, to a lesser extent, Ireland and Canada are not really cheap. But when travelling in countries like Iceland, I sure am trying to find the cheapest double rooms possible and sometimes also living on cheap food. On the other hand in China things are so cheap that it is possible to stay in really nice mid-range hotels and have a good meal in a more up-market restaurant. Those things can also be highlight of a holiday. For example: a nice lodge in Namibia, or restaurant M on the Bund in Shanghai with a killer view of the skyline of Pudong. But I stayed in rather crappy places while travelling as well, like cold hostels in Bolivia and Peru and breeding nests of cockroaches in Jordan and Syria. I just like it diverse and I really prefer some mid-range travelling in general, with charming small hotels or guesthouses being my favorite. It just adds something to a trip in my opinion.

Out of the four trips you did last year, which was your favourite? Why?

Ok, not to do you a favour, but that was definitely Australia. It had been on my list as a favorite place to go for a long time and finally me and my girlfriend had the chance to go there for about a month. Of course we had to choose which part - and that also answers the 'why'. We chose to travel straight through the centre of the country from Melbourne to Darwin. Mainly because I like deserts so much. The outback of Oz is something amazing and although some people may think it is rather monotonous, it is not. And even on those rare occasions when you travel for 100 kilometers and things barely change, that still is great fun. It just empties your mind totally and gives such a good feeling about the emptiness of the country as well. Compared to the Netherlands, there couldn't be a bigger difference when you ask me. Yep, after Namibia (another empty country), Australia is my number two ever!

Uluru at sunset.

What do you love about travelling?

Basically what it all comes down to for me is the chance to leave the everyday life and just experience something totally different in a totally different environment with new cultures and natural stuff to explore. Although I have about 11 weeks of holiday, that still leaves about 41 weeks of work and of course enjoying the weekends and evenings. But that's a life with a pattern that, although being nice, hasn't got that many surprises. Travelling does. Since I was a little kid I have always been interested in geography, topography, climate related things all over the world. I dreamed of going to far away places, seeing unique landscapes and awkward animals not be found anywhere else. I mean, seeing a koala, cheetah or whale in his natural environment just gives me the shivers. It's pure - and I hope it will stay that way eternally.

When did you make your first big trip?

The first trip outside Europe immediately took me to the extreme other end of the world, New Zealand. During my last 6 months of study I worked more to save money than I actually studied. The money I saved I used to start realising my travel ambitions. And why not start at the end of the world and slowly make my way back in the years after that! I stayed about 5 weeks or so in New Zealand and after that I went to Bali to relax and party a bit. And of course see something of that island as well.

It was also my first big trip that I made by myself. Later that year, when I was already working where I work now, I again left for about a month, to Chile and southern Argentina. Both trips I did just by myself, which was a bit strange in the beginning of course. But I liked it and although most of my travels are with somebody else, travelling alone sometimes gives the best impression of a country. Although I must admit I like it more to travel with somebody I know from home, so you have something to share in the future as well. That also can be one of those rewards about travelling, saying to each other '...do your remember...' and thinking back about that place far away from home and far away in the past as well.

What are your travel plans like for 2008?

I am just about to arrange tickets to Brazil for next June. My girlfriend and I will be visiting the Amazon, the Pantanal and the Iguazu Falls and steer clear of beaches and big cities. I have never been to the real tropical rainforests, so I am looking forward to that trip for sure.

Although more doubtful, I also have my mind set on visiting the mountain gorillas later this year in Rwanda and/or Uganda. If there is one creature that has difficulties surviving in a world of poaching and destroying the forests, it is this animal closely related to us mortal human beings.

That still leaves me with 4 weeks of holiday...any ideas someone? No seriously, I am sure I will drag some places out of my list. The Galapagos, Antarctica and tigers in India are very high on my list as well. But that will be for another year I guess, as this year (well, actually this January already) we are moving to another house as well, which costs time and money. I might just fit in a nice European city on the other hand, I still haven't been to countries like Croatia, Bulgaria or the Baltic States. Strange, that people want to travel to far away places, but haven't seen their own surroundings.

Finally, stroke our egos a little... What's your favourite feature on Travellerspoint?

Surely the forum. I like to ask questions and answer others' as well. A good second is the photography feature and I must say, there are loads of really good pictures in that gallery. But of course I like a good deal of joking around on the forum as well, sometimes with sarcasm and an ironic twist. Sometimes I am a bit misunderstood though...wonder how that happens..;-)

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Check out these other interviews with Travellerspoint members:

• Talking beer, business and travel with Greg Wesson
  
• World peace, a wheelchair and a walk across Australia
  
• Why Gelli Doesn't Fly, and Other Pertinent Questions
  
• Living the Dream: An Adventure from Dublin to Sydney
  
• Family Travelling: The Engelmans Take on North America