In 2015, the world was shocked after news surfaced that an American dentist had paid US$50,000 to shoot a lion in Zimbabwe. The lion, it turned out, was 13 year old Cecil, Zimbabwe's most famous lion. The reactions on social media left nothing up to the imagination, and the outrage was global.

Mr Verstegen was an asshole. A man without manners. But he had a point.

Meet He, meet She. Both are travelers, and both like to think that they are independent travelers, as if the social element of human nature is something one can deny. What He really means by it is that He prefers to be a single traveler on some trips if that can bring him closer to the local population of an interesting country. He wants to learn things that haven't been written in the books (yet). What She really means is that She wants to come across as an independent woman, taking on the world by herself. But what He thinks that She means, and what She thinks that He means, is that the other person does not want to travel together. The longing, the desire, the comradeship, both feel it, yet both ignore it.

Departures are arrivals. The moment you walked out the door back home, you were already on your way back home again – no matter how long you were going away for; otherwise, after all, you would have become an immigrant. A traveler departs home only to arrive back home again after a wicked adventure. He may be on the road for years, but he’s never on the road forever.

Funnily enough, culture shock is rarely experienced by backpackers and seems more associated with those who practice slow travel: the foreign exchange student, the expat, the youngster on his first working holiday. Backpackers always talk about reverse culture shock, the coming home blues when nothing has changed and nobody wants to listen to your stories, but are not prone to go through culture shock once they get to their destination. There is a simple reason for that: a backpacker is generally surrounded by people who are in the same boat, (s)he is in effect on holiday and moves around a lot.

The quickest way to get to know a little bit about a country's background is by reading a handful of facts about it. Here are ten fun facts about Vietnam!

The guy laughed at me in my face. 'Sacramento?!''Yes, Sacramento.''Dude, I'm glad it's you and not me.'

Here is what happens if you haven't read In Australia: you will start asking questions that get the answers they deserve! The following questions have been taken from an Australian tourism website and the answers are given by its staff (source unknown).

It was supposed to take two days, but ended up taking five. Road trips through Norway can easily be underestimated, because the country is so immensely long and there's so much spectacular nature along the way.

Many people seem to think of Canada as a place without any real history. These people obviously haven't been to Alberta's Dinosaur Provincial Park, where remnants of 75 million years old can be seen, untouched, in their original spot. What do you mean, no real history?

One of the best ways to obtain an authentic American experience is becoming a camp counselor. Every year, 6.9 to 11 million children spend a few to eight weeks at a summer camp, and all these kids need to be supervised, entertained and educated. That is what the camp counselor does. Since the American population itself can not provide the camps with the more than 1.5 million staff members they need, about 20% of all counselors comes from abroad.

The following hike takes you through Kununurra and its surroundings. The Kununurra Walking Trail has been divided into six sections, giving you the choice on how far and long your walk is going to be. The walk encircles the town and passes the Diversion Dam, Mirima National Park and ends on Kelly’s Knob. Allow 6 to 8 hours for the full walk.

The best travel book writers can be the laziest of travellers. They begin their story with a fantastic itinerary, warming the readers up to the premise of what is to come, and then halfway into the journey they turn their back on their adventure and go home for a while. Paul Theroux did that when he circumnavigated the Mediterranean Sea for The Pillars of Hercules: on one page he sneaks onto a tourist ferry to a Greek island to get out of Albania, and on literally the next page he is, without one letter of explanation, on a cruise out of Nice, France. Bill Bryson never finished the Appalachian Trail, and in his latest book, The Road to Little Dribbling, he devices a perfectly straight line through Britain but then doesn’t travel along it.

On the late evening of October 16th 2009, after a Green Day concert in Rotterdam, I returned to the hostel in Amsterdam where I happened to be staying. The concert had been great, and I came back to the hostel with a box of stirfry noodles I'd bought at the little shop near Rembrandt Square. This hostel was located in an 18th century building on one of the oldest canals in Amsterdam, held nearly 180 tenants at full capacity, and was popular for its proximity to the Red Light District.