When I was wrapping up my stay in Viet Nam I about a week to write a research paper. Rather than spending a week cooped up Ho Chi Minh City, I rented a laptop packed up my books and caught a flight to the Con Dao islands off the south coast. I spent my days SCUBA diving and my evenings cranking out the paper. For most of the time I was the only diver, and represented 50% of the western tourists on the islands. The boat in the picture was fishing near our dive site and would swing by in the late morning to sell us some really fresh lunch. It was a perfect last week of my trip.

When I was backpacking as a kid, my dad told me that when looking for a place to take a poo or eat lunch, always consider the view first. With this in mind, I decided this was a good spot for lunch. Click the picture to see the larger version.

Toubab Diallo is a quiet little fishing town with a spectacular boutique hotel. It’s just across a bay from Dakar, which shows up as a couple of lights on the horizon. There is so little light in Toubab Diallo that I was able to just set my camera down at night, and the resulting picture is lit only by the moon. It’s an amazing place, and a must for a night if you are ever in Senegal.

If you have a picture that you think would make a good background, send it to me at weldon [at] questingforadventure.com with the story and I’ll put it in rotation.

My friend Noelle in Dubruvnik with Flat Stanley

When you travel solo, the pictures you send home can look quite lonely. The easiest fix for this problem is to bring along a fake travel buddy.

My first encounter with the fake travel buddy was the gnome in the movie Amalie. But there is actually bit of debate on the internets as to which came first, the traveling gnome prank or Flat Stanley. The traveling gnome started in the 80’s in Australia, giving it a major jump on the Flat Stanley Project, which started in 1995 a pen-pal project. However, the Flat Stanley books first came out in the 1960’s. In the stories Stanley would mail himself to his friends, so it is conceivable that people took that idea and started picturing themselves with Flat Stanley well before the gnome came on the scene.

You don’t have to wait until you’re on the road to have fun with little travel buddy. I used to have a stuffed penguin hanging around my apartment. One night we gathered a group of folks and hit the town with the penguin. Much like roving with a travel buddy, the penguin added some fun flavor to the evening.

My friend Aaron gets a smooch from the penguin

The photo above by Geoff Pingree is the grand prize winner of National Geographic Travel’s photo competition. I’m a little shocked. Really? The best photo? Don’t get me wrong, it’s a good picture. Congratulations to Geoff and all that, but I don’t think this is even this best picture that made it into the finals.

Check out this one by Bernardo Carvalho:

If you ask me that’s a much better picture. Though, maybe that’s why I’m not a judge in the photo contest. In any case, It’s well worth checking out all the finalists and prize winners. And then think about what picture you’ll be entering next year. It’s worth a shot.