1. It doesn’t matter that you’re American.When East German border guards tromped through the tight train corridor, stopped my study abroad program director, and pantomimed the click of a camera, I knew I’d messed up. Big time. Just moments earlier, as the train slowly rolled across the border from West Germany into East Germany and communism, I’d snapped a picture of a patrol tower.
ALL IN EFFORTS to keep you fine, foreign visitors from putting your foot in it.Assume that Australians are all blonde-haired, bronzed, buff beach bunnies.We’re not. We used to market ourselves like that back in the ’70s and ’80s, but due to the fact that we have the highest rate of skin cancer in the world, we’ve spent the last 20-odd years trying to keep everyone well-protected.
I consider myself to be a part of today’s new breed of freelance writers. I can’t make a living writing features or ghost writing books, but I can make a living writing a gratuitous amount of newsletters, blog posts, landing pages, “About Us” pages, sales emails, and general web copy of virtually every conceivable type.
![Congo’s Sapeurs + Guinness = the best ad we’ve seen in 2014 [vid]](https://jorgemolder.com/img/mata-2020/3608/image_0ZjcggauyQ5VoLBRP.jpg)
“WE ARE THE SAPEURS. The society of elegant persons of the Congo.”And one of the strongest visual sells of an ‘African’ story I can recall seeing in a very, very long time. I’ll stop looping it eventually, and the patina will fade one day, I’m sure. But until that happens, or until someone writes the incredibly dexterous media studies critique of it that I don’t expect, it’ll get to stay as a favourite.
WE’D BEEN PATIENT MOST OF THE DRIVE. But somewhere around the 6th hour across North Carolina, having dropped from the highlands to the Piedmont to the coastal plain, past the damp winter fields of cotton stubble, past the endless stretches of pine flatwoods, the kids were getting restless. Nobody could wait to reach the Outer Banks.
The World Economic Forum released The Travel & Tourism Competitiveness Report 2013, providing research on how global communities can expand this part of their financial infrastructure. It sampled 140 countries.An interesting aspect of the study, which was graphically depicted by the Washington Post’s World Views blog, is what places were more or less “welcoming” towards foreign visitors.
We’re super-stoked for this nugget of great news to pass along!A FEW WEEKS ago we were excited to report that Laura Cook — Matador community member and student of the MatadorU travel photography program — won The Guardian’s contest for November with her entry seen above, titled Solitude.We were also pumped to see that a couple of other MatadorU students — Genevieve Hathaway and Stephen Chapman — had their photos short-listed in the contest.
![Crossing the street in Ho Chi Minh City is terrifying [vid]](https://jorgemolder.com/img/mata-2020/3954/image_58x4PqGxSaudmr1f7hh2.png)
![18 amazing glass floor experiences [pics]](https://jorgemolder.com/img/mata-2020/3621/image_qEQrXppPt54v58bts3.jpg)
![Sleeping rickshaw driver, Hoi An, Vietnam [postcard]](https://jorgemolder.com/img/mata-2020/3129/image_1ZeI6p6scknKx.jpg)
