Keith Jenkins is a thirtysomething living in Amsterdam. His greatest passion is travel: having visited more than 60 countries across six continents. He talks to us about Amsterdam.

Peter Gilbert was just passing through Sapa, a hill town in the north of Vietnam, on the way to Laos when he heard about an organisation dedicating itself to improving the literacy of local children. Initially he volunteered for three months as an English teacher with Sapa O’Chau but after a short visit home to Sheffield, and a winter season working in Japan, he returned to continue helping with the project.

Big John, who ran a guesthouse, restaurant and bar in Sihanoukville, irked a few of his potential customers when he left a negative comment to Chris of Backpacker Banter’s post, 10 Myths of Backpacking Travel. It was suggested that although John is entitled to his opinion Chris’s site wasn’t the place for it, so we thought to offer him a forum here and ask him about his life on the Cambodian coast.

A photograph of Wadi Musa, Jordan.

A photograph of Plovdiv, Bulgaria.

A photograph of Ohrid, Macedonia.

Lebanon was another country that was only regarded as a maybe for our (didn't quite make it to) Cairo to (almost) Istanbul trip. By the time we got to Syria revolution was in the air and I was turned away at the border. From Jordan, Syria awkwardly sat slap bang in the way of our route home to Turkey so we instead flew in and out of Lebanon.