The Thoughtful Travel Podcast

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.

  • 22 minutes 4 seconds
    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 everything's more complicated than we first think.

    I speak with Nikki Padilla Rivera about her experiences in Vietnam and Cuba, two very different work trips that introduced her to local knowledge and culture in varying ways and smashed her preconceived ideas about these places. Next, my discussion with Tom Sykes harks back to our younger years of travelling and how we now reconsider our old thoughts and attitudes, and in general how much travel teaches us about the nuances of the world, politics, culture and more. Finally, I round out the episode with a story from James Ward about a perspective shift in his daughters after he took them to Zambia.

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    15 April 2026, 2:09 am
  • 31 minutes 19 seconds
    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, and all about their favourite Icelandic traditions. I also ask them what surprises visitors to Iceland, why they think it's such a popular place for travellers, and what important information we need to know before we go.

    The Chats with Locals series, sponsored by Slowly, a global penpal app, is something I've been wanting to do for ages: some of the best moments of our trips come from speaking with local people, learning about what's the same or different where they live compared to us, and getting the unexpected stories that you don't know about (for me in this episode, it's about the fame of cats in Reykjavik - there's an intriguing reason!). Since Iceland is one of my all-time favourite places, it seemed a great place to begin! A huge thank you to my three guests Ragnhildur, Alda and Halli for so openly and warmly sharing information about their home country, Iceland.

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    4 April 2026, 1:13 am
  • 31 minutes 1 second
    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 years!

    To celebrate, I've compiled some of my very favourite snippets of stories my guests have told me over the years. I've got the sad stories, the hilarious stories, and the ones that gave me advice I've both ignored and also followed!

    A huge thanks to every listener and every guest over this decade - I appreciate you all so much, because without guests and listeners, this would be a very boring podcast indeed. Here's to another decade!

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    24 March 2026, 10:01 pm
  • 21 minutes 23 seconds
    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 Antarctic Ambassador for HX Expeditions, calmly explains a near-disaster he experienced some years back when working for British Antarctic Survey.

    Patrick Nash then explains a tricky border crossing from the 1980s between then Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo), and the Central African Republic. Over the years, I have heard a number of harrowing border crossing tales from my guests and this is up there with the best of them!

    Finally, I chat with Shannon O'Brien about an accident she was involved in while travelling in Myanmar. To go with the theme of this episode it could, of course, have been so much worse - though it was already pretty bad, I reckon!

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    *Full disclosure: Amazon Services LLC Associates Program

    NotABallerina.com is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

    Support the show: https://thoughtfultravel.substack.com/

    See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

    18 March 2026, 11:02 am
  • 20 minutes 34 seconds
    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 hearing more about this from listeners who contributed to a chat on this in the Thoughtful Travellers Facebook group. 

    History is also not the same for women - and women are often omitted from the history we learn about a place when we travel there. I chat with Nikki Padilla Rivera of She Shapes History about how this happens and what this fabulous Australian-born tour company is doing about it.

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    8 March 2026, 11:12 pm
  • 54 minutes 1 second
    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 updates at https://thoughtfultravellersbookclub.substack.com/

    You can also read more about it at https://notaballerina.com/bookclub, and you can keep up with all the thoughts about our current books in the Thoughtful Travellers Facebook Group at https://facebook.com/groups/thoughtfultravellers 

    *Full disclosure: Amazon Services LLC Associates Program
    NotABallerina.com is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

    Support the show: https://thoughtfultravel.substack.com/

    See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

    1 March 2026, 12:14 pm
  • 24 minutes 13 seconds
    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 travellers about their own experiences with non-visual senses, starting off with travel writer Tom Sykes, who also emphasises why this is important for writer as well. I then chat with Hannah Ballint about some of her fondest travel memories, which often involves sound and smell, across Vietnam, the United States and Australia. Finally, Ethan Kavanagh takes us through some of his highlights of a trip to Ireland with a focus on the feel and taste, too.

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    26 February 2026, 11:17 am
  • 24 minutes 12 seconds
    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 amazing how long these people stay in our minds, even when we don't know their names.

    In this episode I share some of my own small but memorable encounters, as well as including stories from four guests. Eryn Gordon starts us off with a tale from Thailand, where the people are stereotypically friendly and she proves it to be true. Amy Willis then shares a place she goes where it's easy to make a connection with the local people wherever you are. Nomad Bianca Rappaport explains how she's managed to both make and maintain connections during her years of housesitting in many places around the world, and finally Heidi Brown highlights one of the big benefits of repeated visits to a beloved place.

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    *Full disclosure: Amazon Services LLC Associates Program

    NotABallerina.com is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

    Support the show: https://thoughtfultravel.substack.com/

    See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

    19 February 2026, 11:45 am
  • 25 minutes 3 seconds
    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, sometimes both far from home. If you think about all the decisions that led them to be in the same place at the same time, you have to really start thinking that fate is a thing!

    First up I chat with Edward and Kim, who together tell the story of how they met - and later, how they became a couple and many years later, husband and wife - when Kim decided to head to Tanzania to do some volunteer work before going to graduate school.

    Next, Hannah Balint explains how she was about to leave Vietnam after living and teaching there, and just a few weeks before her plane took off, she bumped into a handsome Australian in an unusual place.

    Finally, I talk to my friend Shaney Hudson about how she originally met her Dutch husband. This tale also crosses many continents and it's pretty amazing that love always seems to win the day!

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    12 February 2026, 11:28 am
  • 24 minutes 7 seconds
    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 in mind that for many communities, animal tourism can be a significant part of their economy. To sum up: it's tricky!

    In this episode I get a bunch of different perspectives. I start with Eryn Gordon, a travel writer who visited Thailand and had her first encounter there with an animal sanctuary that was ethical on paper but made her question this when she was there in person - something that many tourists experience.

    Next, I speak with safari guide Suyash Keshari, who has many years of experience working in tourism with tigers in India (and other animals around the world), and discusses the difficult balance of tourist behaviour that does and doesn't impact animals in ways that actually change their lives.

    Finally, John Roberts takes us back a couple of decades to describe some of what was happening when the world first started to consider whether it was okay or not to train and tame elephants for tourism purposes, and some of the tricky elements of this in the Thai context in particular. 

    Links:

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    Show notes: https://notaballerina.com/381

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    4 February 2026, 11:22 am
  • 25 minutes 26 seconds
    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 couple of days told me stories about huge changes in their lives brought about by their travels around Covid times, and these stories were so interesting I quickly decided to create a whole episode on the topic.

    First up, I chat with Shannon O'Brien, an international school teacher who was actually working at a school in Shenzhen, China, at the start of 2020. During a school break for the Chinese New Year, Shannon flew to Sumatra, Indonesia, for a short holiday. Spoiler alert: it became a very long holiday!

    I then speak with Eva Westerling, a German doctor who in 2019 had decided that it was time for a big change and was contemplating a permanent shift to Morocco. When the pandemic hit, she and her partner were in the earliest stages of setting up a tourism business in Morocco, and then of course, no tourists came. 

    My final guest is Eryn Gordon, who was working a corporate job in the United States when the pandemic began, and she soon found herself out of work. Instead of laying low like many of us did during Covid times, Eryn instead decided to get a new qualification and move to the other side of the world, to work in Seoul, South Korea.

    Links:

     

    *Full disclosure: Amazon Services LLC Associates Program

    NotABallerina.com is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

     

    Support the show: https://thoughtfultravel.substack.com/

    See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

    27 January 2026, 12:46 pm
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