The Thoughtful Travel Podcast
by Amanda Kendle
The Thoughtful Travel Podcast with Amanda Kendle is a show for travel lovers. Each episode is packed with travel stories from fellow travel addicts on topics like using foreign languages, meeting the locals, getting lost and what we learn from our travels.
Episodes
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405 Travel Can Cause Significant Change
Travel can change your life! It sounds like a cliched salesy headline but it's my experience that it's true, and the guests in this episode would agree. I start off chatting with Mike Clapper who had a career epiphany - and set up a now successful new business - off the back of a particular…
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Book Club 27: Nala's World by Dean Nicholson
This special episode is the audio of the livestream of the October 2026 meeting of the Thoughtful Travellers Book Club, chatting about the book "Travels with Nala" by Dean Nicholson. If you'd like to join the Thoughtful Travellers Book Club, sign up for our updates at...
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404 Egypt and the Nile: Cruising with Catherine
I had the joy of visiting Egypt in September 2026, and spending ten days seeing Cairo and cruising the Nile, visiting historical highlights including Dendera, Luxor, Kom Omob, Esna and Aswan. I'll be sharing my experiences across several episodes but to start with, I've got an overview of the…
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403 Off Season Travel
With high tourist numbers in some popular places making travel less enjoyable, it only makes sense that there's an increased interest in off season travel. Choosing a shoulder or off peak time to travel makes sense for so many reasons to me, and it's often when you'll have the much better...
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402 Ireland: Chats with Locals
Ireland and the Irish - we all have a story to tell, right? In this episode I get the insider stories from Ireland - both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland - from three brilliant guests who all agreed to answer questions about why they love living there, their favourite traditions…
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401 Travel-Related Careers
About one in ten jobs across the globe are in the travel industry, but from the hundreds of conversations I've had over the years, I've learnt that the paths to working in tourism and travel are many and varied! In this episode I chat with four people who've found their way into this industry...
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400 Forty Questions for Four Hundred Episodes
Episode 400 ... what?! Back in 2016, I certainly didn't imagine I'd reach Episode 400, and yet, here we are. It seemed something to celebrate so I asked my dear friend Sasha Wasley along to ask me 40 questions for 400 episodes (aren't you all lucky I didn't opt for 400 questions?!). Some of the...
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399 Impacts of Childhood Travel
For those of us with the great fortune of being taken travelling in our childhood, I'm certain that there are many ways this impacts our lives - changing our mindset and exposing us to so many new ideas, cultures, languages and people. In this episode, three guests concur: starting with James…
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Book Club 26: Travels with Charley by John Steinbeck
This special episode is the audio of the livestream of the July 2026 meeting of the Thoughtful Travellers Book Club, chatting about book "Travels with Charley" by John Steinbeck - https://amzn.to/4sGQFOu If you'd like to join the Thoughtful Travellers Book Club, sign up for our updates at...
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398 Conservation and Tourism
We all want the places we visit to exist for longer than our lifetime (and hopefully MUCH longer) - right? Conservation in the travel space can mean a bunch of things, and the three guests in this episode each have a story to share about their own connections between conservation and tourism.…
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397 Travel Dramas Always Teach Us Something
Things inevitably go wrong when we travel - some big, some small, occasionally some trip-ending, but most travel dramas seem to end up being great stories we tell later and moments that also teach us something - about how we travel, about our personalities, about the world! First up in this…
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396 Spending A Year Abroad
If you have the opportunity to spend an extended time travelling - like an entire year - I say, grab it! In this episode I chat with three people who’ve had the good fortune to stay away from home for a year, for very different reasons and in many varied parts of the world - what they have in...
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395 Cultural Deep Dives
Learning more about a place when we travel there is something that always gives me a thrill, and in this episode we take a cultural deep dive into three very different aspects of culture across the world. I first chat with Silvia Gentile Polese who shares a story from her first trip to Bali…
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394 Unusual Accommodation
Where do you sleep when a trip takes you away from a standard hotel room? This episode features some of the more unusual kinds of places we can stay on our travels - some brilliant, but some pretty uncomfortable! I chat first with Tim Geisler, a bit of a master of unconventional accommodation…
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393 Taiwan: Chats with Locals
Taiwan is starting to gain more attention as a fascinating place to visit: it's a great blend of delicious food, interesting history and culture, beautiful landscapes and above all, welcoming people! In this Chats with Locals episode, I talk with three people who live in Taiwan and ask them what...
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392 What You'd Tell Your Younger Travelling Self
If you could go back in time and tap on the shoulder of your younger self as you backpack around the world, what would you say? I've been pondering this question and asked several other experienced travellers to tell me their thoughts on it too, and the results are pretty interesting! In this...
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Book Club 25: The Venice Hotel by Tess Woods
This special episode is the audio of the live-streamed May 2026 meeting of the Thoughtful Travellers Book Club, chatting about "The Venice Hotel", a novel with very thoughtful travel themes, with author Tess Woods - https://amzn.to/4ug8Cou If you'd like to join the Thoughtful Travellers Book…
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391 Enviable Travel Jobs
It's easy to be a little envious of anyone who gets to travel to interesting places as part of their work, but when the work itself is also truly fascinating, then I think it's fair that we can all be rather jealous! Nonetheless I loved chatting with these four guests about the experiences their...
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390 How to be a Good Volunteer Abroad
The world of volunteer tourism is a tricky one. Getting the balance right between enabling people to volunteer in another country, and meeting the needs of the places they volunteer at, isn't easy, and the guests in this episode have many thoughts about what can go wrong and what are better ways…
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389 How Travel Transforms Our Thinking
The more I travel (and the older I get!), the more I realise how little I know, and how wrong I've been about so many things! In this episode, I chat with three guests about various ways their travel experiences have transformed their thinking and perspective, and the general consensus is that...
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388 Iceland: Chats with Locals
Iceland is a place many travellers dream of visiting; if, like me, you've been lucky enough to see Iceland, you probably desperately want to return. In this Chats with Locals episode, I talk with three Icelanders about their country: why they like living there, what Icelanders are really like…
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387 Ten Years of The Thoughtful Travel Podcast
A decade ago to the day - 25th March 2016 - I launched the first episodes of The Thoughtful Travel Podcast. Somehow, I have just kept interviewing great people about their thoughts on travel, put together episodes almost every week, and magically, I've now been running this podcast for a full ten...
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386 It Could’ve Been Much Worse: Surviving Travel Dramas
Some travellers have a much keener sense of adventure and embracing physical risk on their travels, and others just stumble into a travel drama they didn't anticipate; we have all kinds on this episode about things going wrong! First up, Tudor Morgan, a veteran of many Antarctic stays and current...
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385 Women in History and Travel - International Women’s Day 2026
It's International Women's Day again and I've got a different focus this year: some of the ways history and travel is not the same for women! When we travel, especially on our own, we can be confronted with cultural differences and people's opinions in a starker way than others, and I loved…
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Book Club 24: Always Home, Always Homesick by Hannah Kent
This special episode is the audio of the live-streamed February 2026 meeting of the Thoughtful Travellers Book Club, chatting with author Hannah Kent about her book "Always Home, Always Homesick" - https://amzn.to/3Kxcb7M If you'd like to join the Thoughtful Travellers Book Club, sign up for our...
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384 Travel With All Your Senses
We often focus on the visual when we travel ... after all, travellers go sightseeing, not "sound-hearing" or "taste-tasting"! But when we look back on our travel memories, it's often a smell, taste, sound or feel that actually has the most long-lasting impact. In this episode we hear from three...
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383 Small Connections, Big Memories
One of the most memorable parts of travel is the people that we meet - not just the friends we make or the people we stay with but also the incidental encounters along the way. Speaking with people on our travels is one of the ways we learn the most about the places we're visiting and it's…
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382 Travel Meet Cutes
We need some light relief in these tricky times and I found these stories just perfect! Finding love while you're travelling sounds like it belongs in a romantic comedy, but even those must be inspired by truth: this episode has stories from three couples who met in far-flung parts of the world,...
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381 Elephants, Tigers and Responsible Animal Tourism
Various statistics suggest that more than half of travellers want to see animals when they travel: that's why we keep returning to the topic of animal tourism and how we can do this in ways that both keep humans interested in caring for animals but without doing too much harm - and while bearing…
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380 Pandemic Travel and Big Life Changes
It's (somehow!) six years ago that we started to learn about this new virus and then find ourselves caught up in a global pandemic. While there were some truly tragic parts to that crisis, it turns out there were also some good results, too. Quite by chance recently, two guests in the space of a...
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379 Overtourism and What We Can Do About It
Can you imagine that we didn't used to talk about overtourism? It's really only a decade since this word entered common usage but it seems we hear about it constantly now. In this episode I chat with two guests who have great perspectives to add on this issue, and I also share some tips on how we...
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378 Seoul Trip Report: Spontaneous Budget Travel to South Korea
I last saw South Korea's fabulous capital Seoul way back in 2002, so when my 15-year-old son spotted a great flight price in November I was very keen to take him there! This podcast episode reports back on our week in Seoul, and I even persuaded my son to come on and chat about our trip, too. I'm…
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377 Overlooked Perspectives on Travel
How often do we go somewhere with a preconceived idea and find it hard to really see other perspectives ... well, speaking for myself, pretty often! In this episode I share three stories which highlight ways to learn about and understand different perspectives - but are also just great stories on...
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Book Club 23: The Geography of Bliss by Eric Weiner
This special episode is the audio of the Facebook Livestream of the December 2025 meeting of the Thoughtful Travellers Book Club, chatting about book "The Geography of Bliss" by Eric Weiner - https://amzn.to/47KtLea If you'd like to join the Thoughtful Travellers Book Club, sign up for our…
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376 All Aboard for 2026 Travels!
The end of 2025 is imminent and it's time to look back on our discussions and travels and then get ready for a thoughtful and fun 2026! In this episode I'll tell you which episodes were the most downloaded during 2025 and share some other podcast highlights. And then it'll be crystal ball time:...
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375 Chris Christensen: Deep Dive into Travel Podcasting
Chris Christensen had the foresight to start a travel podcast before almost anyone had even heard of podcasts - way back in 2005. The Amateur Traveler podcast is still going strong - and is approaching its one thousandth episode. Chris and I chatted about the evolution of podcasting in general…
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374 Cultural Intelligence for Travellers
When I learnt that past guest Renae Ninneman runs a business providing cultural intelligence assessments and intercultural training I was immediately fascinated. And when Renae offered to guide me through a CQ - cultural intelligence - assessment complete with a debrief, and was happy to record…
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373 Dangerous Animals on our Travels
Travelling to observe animals in the wild is a huge reason that we move around the world. The best case scenario is that we can see them without disturbing their environments or habits, perhaps take some photos, and head home. The worst case scenario is that something goes wrong and these animals...
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372 Ayutthaya, Thailand: Visiting Thoughtfully
One of my favourite outings in Bangkok last month was heading north to the UNESCO World Heritage-listed historic city of Ayutthaya for a day, together with my friend Vincie. Since we are both deeply into contemplating thoughtful travel - Vincie is the founder of RISE Travel Institute - we decided...
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371 Travel Trends for 2026
The new year is coming at us fast: 2026, here we come! At this time of year the reports and articles about travel trends are rife, and I like to look through them all and see what might be happening in tourism and whether or not I like it (by which I mean, of course, does it fit with a thoughtful...
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370 Van Life Diaries: Europe 1985: UK, Ireland and Singapore
In this final episode of the Van Life Diaries: Europe 1985, we return to England, drive through Scotland and Wales, and catch a ferry to Ireland. Then it's back to London, a farewell to our beloved campervan, on to Singapore for a few days and finally we end up back home in Perth, Australia…
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369 Travel and Language Learning
Travel and learning other languages often go hand in hand, whether we're cramming in a few words before we visit somewhere for the first time or we are intentionally travelling to practice a language, perhaps even heading to a language school for full immersion. This episode covers all manner of...
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Book Club 22: Moonlight Express by Monisha Rajesh
This special episode is the audio of the Facebook Livestream of the October 2025 meeting of the Thoughtful Travellers Book Club, speaking with author Monisha Rajesh about her book "Moonlight Express: Around the World by Night Train" - https://amzn.to/4nAkyNx If you'd like to join the Thoughtful...
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368 Bangkok Trip Diary and Thoughtful Travel Scorecard
Bangkok called my name again in September, and this episode recaps my experiences spending five days in the Thai capital, for a mix of work and fun purposes (of course, even the work parts were fun!). Along with explaining what activities I got up to in Bangkok, I decided to rate each day in…
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367 Visiting Lesser-Known Places
Now that we're worried about crowds and overtourism, the idea of visiting lesser-known places is a real winner. I've always loved to go to the places that aren't listed frequently on travellers' itineraries and maintain that many of the best experiences happen there - and the stories from the…
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366 Travel and Mental Health
Is travel good for your mental health? If you believe my guests in this episode (and me), then it's a resounding yes. I chat first with Kaila Yu who explains some of what she thinks helps your mental health when travelling, including some chat about the miraculous quiet of being under the sea…
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365 Monisha Rajesh: Deep Dive into a Love of Train Travel
Chatting with author and journalist Monisha Rajesh was just as delightful as I expected (and I had high expectations!). Long-distance train travel is basically synonymous with being a thoughtful traveller, and our chat ranged from a favourite train (you are allowed to have favourites!) through…
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364 Van Life Diaries: Europe 1985: Denmark, Sweden and Norway
In this episode of the Van Life Diaries: Europe 1985, we move on to Scandinavia. Starting off in Denmark, we looked for Lego, noticed the size of the Little Mermaid, and enjoyed spending time in Copenhagen. From Denmark it was a short ferry ride to Sweden, and while my Dad and I muse that we…
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363 Di Westaway, Coastrek Founder: Deep Dive into Going Beyond Your Comfort Zone
Di Westaway is the founder of Coastrek and Wild Women on Top, and she has had the most fabulous career building up these businesses - topped off with many well-deserved accolades like an Order of Australia medal for services to women's health, fitness and charity services. It was so much fun to...
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362 Travel and Creativity
Creativity is an important part of my life, and I have so often observed that when I'm travelling, and also on my return, my creative thinking gets a huge boost. In this episode I chat with other travellers who feel the same. First up, I talk to author Spiri Tsintziras. Spiri has written several...
About this show
The Thoughtful Travel Podcast with Amanda Kendle is a show for travel lovers. Each episode is packed with travel stories from fellow travel addicts on topics like using foreign languages, meeting the locals, getting lost and what we learn from our travels.
Hosted by
Amanda Kendle