Culture Guides
The joy of travel comes from a simple fact: when you go somewhere else things are different. The world is a collage. Each community your bus takes you to brings a new array of food, language and expression. You can even try a new flavor of lover or expand your consciousness (see our Drug Guides for the Traveler section.)
Road Junky has 87 Culture Guides articles. Scroll down to view.
The A to Z World Culture Encyclopedia
From African tribal masks to Zanzibar street food there is a lot with which travelers can get acquainted. This guide is the launching off point to learn about the diverse ...
Guide to Development and International Aid
Disclaimer: This article contains my opinions on the aid industry and development which have been formed in a large part by time spent as a development volunteer in
September 11 and the Loss of Airplane Naiveté
When the first plane hit the World Trade Centre in New York, I thought it was just some terrible accident. Airplanes were, after all, strange and improbable things. It took ...
World Anthropology at the Crossroads
Go! Go! Damnit!
When anthropologists approach a foreign culture in the hope of gaining some understanding of the values and nature of the people who live there, they generally consider a ...
Begging Across the World
In India when one chooses to give a few rupees to a beggar by the side of the road it’s good etiquette to salute him at the same time. He, ...
South Sudan is the World's Newest Nation, but Who Will be Next?
On Saturday South Sudan became the world’s newest nation, seceding from the other Sudan, hoisting a new flag, singing a new anthem, celebrating in a new capital.
The South Sudanese ...
Towering Monuments to Human Folly
Travel can be a reminder of the aspirant genius of humans all over the world. Wherever people can be found, the drive to surpass and to exceed can also be ...
The Instant Global Morning-After Self-Locator
With the release of The Hangover 2 it has become more fashionable than ever to wake up lost and hungover in a shitty hotel in a strange city (sorry Bangkok, ...
Here be Pirates: A Guide to Buccaneering in the 21st Century
All over the world, hordes of red-eye Deppendents are cramming themselves into cinemas to catch the latest instalment of Pirates of the Caribbean. It’s not only hormonal tweens reduced to ...
Chasing Rainbows in Chennai, India
I had been watching satellite TV in my hotel room for far too long. The more I watched, the wearier I became. The advertisements were almost carbon copies of the ...
10 Weirdest Foods in the World
Whilst trying to gross ourselves out a while ago, our travel editors got their heads together and came up with 10 really weird foods they’d eaten or seen eaten on ...
The Death of Ritual - Are Travelers Culture Vultures?
A good part of the reason that many of us travel is that our own culture seems so impoverished. Every town in the developed world seems identical with the same ...
Build Your Own (Sexy) Incan Temple
Along the tourist trail winding its way through the Andes, Incan ruins are money. Forget Chan Chan and forget Tiahuanaco; whoever built those ruins, they sure weren’t Incas. If you ...
The Daylight Savings Time Index of Rogue States
In the last few weeks people all over the world have been winding their clocks forwards or backwards in slavish obedience to DST – Daylight Savings Time. The southern ...
The Proud and Noble Tradition of the Bolivian Road Block
If you travel through Bolivia without encountering at least one strike or protest or road blockade, you should probably ask for your money back. In a country full of mountains ...
Visit Mexico City (without losing your internal organs)
The moment you leave Mexico City International Airport, a man with a greasy moustache grabs and bundles you into the trunk of a taxi. He drives you screaming through the ...
Saint Patrick - The Drunken Saint of Travelers and Irish
Once upon a time the role of the Irish was fairly well defined; they were good for dying by the dozen while they built the English some castles, they grew ...
An Open Letter to Banksy (with Helpful Suggestions)
Dear Banksy,
Let me start by saying that I dig your shit. I know every liberalish middle-class white person in the world says the same thing. Let me add my ...
Hollywood and the Mafia
When it comes to the mafia, Hollywood has a lot to answer for. Images of the ‘mob’ conjure up masterful performances from De Niro, Brando, Pacino, Peschi, the criminal organizations ...
Ten Pacific Island Culture Shocks
Rereading Paul Theroux’s excellent The Happy Isles of Oceania, I felt moved to share some of the juiciest cultural oddities. At Road Junky we’re a fan of culture shocks to ...
Kevin Bales On 27 Million People in Slavery Today
The price is about 10.8 billion to emancipate the 27 million people who are in slavery across the world today. Across the world people are tricked and abducted into human ...
10 Best Places to get Stoned Around the World
There’s a big difference between drugs and natural medicines in our eyes which help us see the world as it really is, infinite. Of course, the biggest trip of all ...
The Wikileaks Cables Help Us Understand the World
Sometimes we wish we were real journalists.
When the story of the year – if not the century so far (at least that’s how historians may come to see it) – ...
The Dance of Several Million Veils
“When a female student wears the veil,” a professor in Isfahan explained to me, “She is protected. She can meet her tutors on her merits as a student alone and ...
Top of the Capital Punishment Charts!
Whereas capital punishment was once widespread across the world, the 20th century came along and spoiled all the fun with something called ‘human rights’. But the party isn’t ...
Downloading in Disaster Zones
I was born in the 70’s, the so-called ‘golden age’ of porn, the decade when the term ‘swinging’ first hit the street and the Weather Underground and others were trying ...
Documentaries Through Local Eyes
Once upon a time the countries that had developed ships, steel and a religion that could be proselytized on older cultures, saw it as their duty to send their ...
Avatar - the Story of Our World, Not Pandora
Avatar has become the biggest grossing film in history based on its stunning 3D effects, gripping storyline and the exotic imagination of James Cameron. Who wouldn’t book a one ...
10 Leading Causes of Travel Deaths (maybe)
The number of ways that you can die are uncountable but not to great that you can’t bring a little imagination to the proceedings and start adding up how many ...
101 World Culture Shocks
World culture becomes increasingly homogenized with each passing year but there’s still enough diverse instances to prove that ancient anthropological truth best summarized by Obelix: these humans are crazy. ...
The Left Hand Toilet Technique and Spitting – World Hygiene
From Morocco to Bangladesh, use your left hand to eat with, pick stuff up in the grocery store or even worse, to shake someone else’s hand and you’ll be considered ...
The Bus Busker in Latin America: All the Road's a Stage
In Latin America the bus is king, holding the place occupied by the automobile in North America or the train in Europe. More than the dominant form of transport, it’s ...
The Story of Stuff - World Over-Consumption
The Story of Stuff is a lucid, hard-hitting take on the trap of modern economics and how we are literally consuming our planet that even someone who voted for Bush ...
Another 101 World Culture Shocks
When we published 101 world culture shocks last year the reaction was tremendous with lots of readers across the internet getting all puffed up about some of the ...
Asterix, French Comic Hero
The poor old French. Once the dominant world culture with their own empire and the aristocrats of Russia taking French lessons to sound sophisticated at their salon parties, now their ...
Asian Culture in the West
The rain banished the May heat and turned the narrow streets of Florence into death zones with umbrella prongs passing at neck-height. Confused gaggles of tourists made the pavements unpassable ...
The Culture of Tipping Around the World
Let’s come out and say it: tipping sucks.
It’s the residue of ancient class distinctions when one kind of profession was considered inferior to another and the difference had to be ...
Old People Around the World
“I have 2 sons, they all live in the city now. The oldest is a teacher now, he calls me sometimes. The younger son said he might come visit. The ...
Where East and West Meet
‘East is East and West is West and never the twain shall meet,’ Kipling famously said and for a long time that was the standard wisdom. The world was divided ...
Forget Tsunamis - the Internet's Down!
Internet and travel are becoming inseparable for many these days. Travelers buy tickets online, reserve hostels, check the weather and of course, log on for the latest scintillating editorial from ...
You, Me and the Credit Crisis
Some years ago, a friend who has been driving motorcycles around India for the last 20 years found himself staying in a peasant’s hut somewhere in Karnataka. Impressed by his ...
Interview With Eco-Activists Plane Stupid
RJ: How the hell did you break through security at an international airport? Did it require much planning? How were nerves on the night?
Wiz: Well, firstly, yes there was ...
The World is Full of People - Overpopulation Videos
One of the often forgotten luxuries of living in the First World is the relative absence of crowds. A third of the world’s population is Chinese or Indian and in ...
The Ecological Recession and Over Consumption
Until recently, people who talked about the massive losses of Amazonian rainforest or disappearing species were considered ‘greens’, ‘hippies’ or maybe just good-hearted ‘romantics’. Yes, it’s terrible that cute animals ...
The U.S. Election Around the World
Forget Halloween or New Year’s Eve. The biggest party of the year is happening this Tuesday and the whole world is coming out … to watch TV.
And, naturally, the big ...
Culture Blinded by Poetry in Sinai - Want to be the Editor of Road Junky?
Last winter I was hiding out in Sinai and as Hanukah had already passed, there weren’t too many Israelis on holiday and only the odd other foreigner around. ...
Stumblers Love/Hate Road Junky and 101 Culture Shocks
When we woke up this morning our hangovers evaporated in the moment that we saw that Stumbleupon.com had sent us around 30,000 extra visitors over the weekend.
Wow.
First of all ...
10 Ways to Assimilate and Integrate with a Foreign Culture
Any Road Junky who doesn’t want to be a culture vulture needs to get out of their mindset and really get to grips with the culture they’re traveling in. So ...
Eastern Spirituality for Sale in Vanity Fair
When I was younger I thought that the Western world was lacking in spirituality. I was reading plenty of books about the East at the time and deduced that our ...
The Digital Divide and the Traveler
Once upon a time there was no such thing as the internet. Shocking, but true. Travelers on the road had to go to the nearest post office to collect their ...
Your Second Home in the Sun - Aaaaaaagh!
It’s been years since I’ve lived in England, 13 to be precise but I still pass through every now and then to connect with a few old friends and make ...
Western Union - Getting Rich on the Backs of the Poor
Disclaimer: Road Junky could do with the publicity generated by a law suit for libel from Western Union but we’d like to advise our readers that is purely an opinion ...
Misha Glenny Talks About the World Mafia
Organised crime is getting more and more organised.
The Danger of a Single Story - Lies of Modern Culture
Chimamanda Adichie speaks of the misleading myths that frame the identity of powerless peoples.
Pachinko, Gambling in Tokyo From Wim Wenders
Loud, repetitive and cutesy, pachinko parlours help the modern Japanese relax.
Super Size Me - the American Weight
Morgan Spurlock’s gonzo insight into the American fast food business.
