Travel to Understand
Plug into Indonesia
Join me on YouTube for a series of videos from Indonesia, from Sumatra to Java and on to Bali
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RON RUSSELL
Learn more about my travels, YouTube channel and work as a journalist
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HOW I BECAME A TRAVEL VLOGGER
I love to travel. No surprise there. And since stepping back from a long, rewarding career as a print journalist, I've had more time to devote to travel than before. So when a friend suggested that I vlog my travels my reaction was, "Why not?" After all, I've been a storyteller all of my adult life.
With vlogging, only the medium changes. And while I'm still relatively new at it, I'm not new to traveling, having visited five continents and more than 60 countries so far. I'm eager to share my journeys with you to lots of new places I want to explore as well as to destinations I want to re-visit. I warmly welcome you to come along by subscribing to my YouTube channel and to let me hear from you.
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MY BACKGROUND AS A JOURNALIST
I've spent much of my life working as a daily newspaper reporter or writing magazine-length articles at one publication or another. That includes a long stint at the Los Angeles Times, where I was part of a team that won a Pulitzer Prize.
In four decades as a working journalist I would like to think I've learned to see the world as it is, and not merely as we may wish it to be. Even through a smudged window, the world is a beautiful place with a lot to appreciate and learn from.
I've seen this first hand while reporting on the rich and powerful, the poor, the ordinary, the good and bad. I believe a similar sensitivity applies to the act of traveling. A tourist goes looking for beauty, for inspiration, for distraction, for fun. A traveler goes for those things too, but also for understanding.
“Travel isn’t always pretty. It isn’t always comfortable. Sometimes it hurts, it even breaks your heart. But that’s okay. The journey changes you; it should change you. It leaves marks on your memory, on your consciousness, on your heart, and on your body. You take something with you. Hopefully, you leave something good behind.”