Category Archives: Travel Tales Monthly

is my bookazine of travel stories, told 10 at a time, from a wellspring of some 10,000 or so travel tales told to me by more nearly 1,750 world travelers and adventurers whom I have encountered and interviewed in my own personal travels to more than 125 countries over four decades. Ten travel tales at a time, in the form of stories and brief vignettes, will appear in each ‘monthly’ as they make their way into collections of similar sorts of stories centering on particular countries, subjects and themes, and ultimately into a series of more than 200 ebooks covering a huge variety of travel-life experiences. These travel stories want to be told. Travel Tales Monthly is meant to tease you and entice you–just as in real travel–to experience on. Thus, Travel Tales Monthly is meant to draw you further into the world of travel and adventure, but this time merely vicariously as an armchair traveler–or better yet–as a wielder or bearer of a mobile smartphone or tablet device.

Travel Tales Monthly Bookazine

Travel Tales Monthly
No. 12 June 2015

Travel Tales: The Paranormal & the Strange

TTM 12 Cover copy

My new Travel Tales Monthly issue No. 12 for June 2015, a monthly book-of-the-month bookazine, is now available in my eStore. Go towww.michaelbrein.com for more information and to purchase or subscribe.

Michael Brein’s Travel Tales Monthly Bookazine Issue No. 12 for June 2015 contains among the best travel stories from Michael’s huge collection of about 10,000 travel tales that he has gathered in interviews with nearly 1,750 world travelers and adventurers during his four decades of travel to more than 125 countries throughout the world.

Continue reading Travel Tales Monthly Bookazine

A Hint of What’s to Come

The Story of Heine

An Excerpt from  
Travel Tales Monthly No. 12 June 2015

Heine Look-Like

I’m about to complete a new ebook and audiobook in my Travel Psychologist Travel Tales Series on the best of my collected travel stories so far on the paranormal and the strange. It’s interesting as hell! I’m so proud of this ebook. Why not have a looksee or a listenhear? 

Continue reading A Hint of What’s to Come

Travel Tales Monthly Bookazine

Travel Tales Monthly
No. 11 May 2015

Travel Tales: Planes, Trains & Automobiles

My new Travel Tales Monthly issue No. 11 for May 2015, a monthly book-of-the-month bookazine, is now available in my eStore. Go to www.michaelbrein.com for more information and to purchase or subscribe.

Michael Brein’s Travel Tales Monthly Bookazine Issue No. 11 for May 2015 contains among the best travel stories from Michael’s huge collection of about 10,000 travel tales that he has gathered in interviews with nearly 1,750 world travelers and adventurers during his four decades of travel to more than 125 countries throughout the world.

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Travel Tales Monthly Bookazine

Travel Tales Monthly
No. 10 April 2015

Travel Tales: the Best of the Best

TTM 10 Cover

My new Travel Tales Monthly issue No. 10 for April 2015, a monthly book-of-the-month bookazine, is now available in my eStore. Go to www.michaelbrein.com for more information and to purchase or subscribe.

Michael Brein’s Travel Tales Monthly Bookazine Issue No. 10 for April 2015 contains among the best travel stories from Michael’s huge collection of about 10,000 travel tales that he has gathered in interviews with nearly 1,750 world travelers and adventurers during his four decades of travel to more than 125 countries throughout the world.

Continue reading Travel Tales Monthly Bookazine

A Hint of What’s to Come

Verboten!

A Spooky Excerpt from  
Travel Tales Monthly No. 10 April 2015

[Travels of the ‘Spy’]
East Berlin, East Germany, 1964
by Michael Brein

Checkpoint Charlie

I’m about to complete a new ebook and audiobook in my Travel Psychologist Travel Tales Series on the best of the best of my collected travel stories so far. It’s interesting as hell! I’m so proud of this ebook. Why not have a looksee or a listenhear? I even have a monthly special this month to help pave the way for you.

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A Hint of What’s to Come

The Peterhof Fountain

A Hilarious Excerpt from
Travel Tales Monthly No. 9 Mar 2015

[Travels of the ‘Fool’]
St Petersburg, Russia, 2001
by Michael Brein

SquirtingFountains

The Squirting Fountains of the Peterhof

I’ve just completed a new ebook and audiobook in my Travel Psychologist Travel Tales Series on funny travel stories. It’s funny as hell! I’m so proud of this ebook. Why not have a looksee or a listenhear? I even have a monthly special for April to help pave the way for you.

Continue reading A Hint of What’s to Come

Travel Tales Monthly Bookazine

Travel Tales Monthly
No. 9 March 2015

Travel Tales of Humor: Funny Travel Stories

TTM 9 Cover

My new Travel Tales Monthly issue No. 9 for March 2015, a monthly book-of-the-month bookazine, is now available in my eStore. Go to www.michaelbrein.com for more information and to purchase or subscribe.

Michael Brein’s Travel Tales Monthly Bookazine Issue No. 9 for March 2015 contains among the best travel stories from Michael’s huge collection of about 10,000 travel tales that he has gathered in interviews with nearly 1,750 world travelers and adventurers during his four decades of travel to more than 125 countries throughout the world.

This issue is all about travel tales of humor: the funniest travel stories so far! Why not laugh yourself silly with this collection of funny, hilarious, gut-wrenching, LOL (laugh out loud) travel humor. Oh yeah, we do our fair share of ridiculous, raucous, belly-achingly funny things when we travel. And, I ask you: is this NOT one of the most important goals of travel—to laugh ourselves stupid?

Thank God, the funny happens more than the horrific; the ludicrous more than the lame—travel is never boring and never lacking in wonderful, memorable funny causes célèbre that stay with us for the rest of our lives.

Whether falling through someone’s roof on a horse in Afghanistan; whether getting soaked by taunting the ‘fountain gods’ on a lawn at a castle; whether being thrown out of a restaurant in Buenos Aires for dancing on the tops of tables; whether chilling your wine in a bidet, the funniest travel moments that make you laugh are a welcome counter to those rare horrible travel events that make you cry. And it is also these memorable stories that remain with us, isn’t it, after all is said and done, in our travels?

Feel free to laugh out loud with these travel tales of humor presented here in this current issue of Travel Tales Monthly.

For many people, life is all about getting laid, lauded or loaded, but for many of us, it is more about sampling the lives, the cultures, the oddities, the sights, the sounds, the foods, the drinks, and the humor of the peoples of other lands.

For me, it is all of the above, but it is also about laughter. I like to laugh much of the time, and probably would ALL the time if I could. Laughing abroad is what makes travel especially memorable. Of course, we remember the times that we cry; but we do, indeed, also remember the times that we laugh.

Introduction to Travel Tales of Humor: Funny Stories.

Part 1

Travel Tales of Humor: Funny Stories is divided into two parts simply because there is so much material. Part 1 appears here in the current Travel Tales Monthly issue No. 9 Mar 2015 and serves as a general introduction to this subject matter.

Part 2

The unabridged, expanded forthcoming ebook Travel Tales of Humor: Funny Stories,  part of The Travel Psychologist Travel Tales Series, is a larger volume and includes both Parts 1 and 2.

011.Humor

The travel stories in Part 1 consist mainly of the funniest personal travel tales of Michael Brein (me), the author. The travel stories in Part 2 are, largely, the funniest stories of world travelers and adventurers whom I’ve encountered and interviewed throughout my travels over the last four decades to 125 countries.

Mostly, your travels will typically be exciting and interesting, but funny things can and do happen to you at almost any turn along the way. The freedom from the typical constraints of home that travel offers us allows us to act and behave in ways that are often atypical and different from how we normally behave at home.

Thus, in travel, we can take a few more risks and chances and do a few more silly and funny things that we might not ordinarily do at home. With this expanded propensity for more silliness, of course, comes the opportunity for more funny times, more laughs, and more great memories.

For me, I’ve found that I’ve reveled in acting out the ‘Fool’ or the ‘Clown’ in my travels, very often making people laugh at my own expense. It is all in good fun. I’m not typically like this at home but more so in my travels.

I hope laughable events happen to you a lot. I sincerely hope that the funny travel tales of humor that appear in these pages make you laugh and give you a hint of what lies in store for you in your own travels.

If something fantastically funny happens to you, you deserve to also be in these pages!

Got a funny travel tale for The Travel Psychologist Travel Tales Series?

Please contact Michael Brein at michaelbrein@gmail.com.

Travel Tales Monthly Bookazine

Travel Tales Monthly
No. 8 February 2015

Cons, Scams & Other Rip-offs in Travel 

My new Travel Tales Monthly Issue No. 8 for February 2015, a monthly book-of-the-month bookazine, is now available in my eStore. Go to www.michaelbrein.com for more information and to purchase or subscribe.

Travel Tales Monthly Bookazine Issue No. 8 for February 2015 contains among the best travel stories from my huge collection of about 10,000 travel tales that I have gathered in interviews with nearly 1,750 world travelers and adventurers during my four de-cades of travel to more than 125 countries throughout the world.

There’s not a one of us who hasn’t been at some time or other in his or her travel life conned, scammed or hasn’t fallen victim in one form or another to some sort of clever ruse or rip off, often perpetrated on unknowing travelers who are well-intentioned, sometimes naive, and often traveling ‘on automatic,’ i.e., not paying close attention to what is going on.

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Travel Tales Monthly Bookazine


Travel Tales Monthly

No. 7 January 2015

Women Traveling Alone:
Sexual Hassles & Assaults

TTM 7 Cover copy

My new Travel Tales Monthly Issue No. 7 for January 2015, a monthly book-of-the-month bookazine, is now available in my eStore. Go to www.michaelbrein.com for more information and to purchase or subscribe.

Travel Tales Monthly bookazine Issue No. 7 for January 2015 con-tains among the best travel stories from my huge collection of about 10,000 travel tales that I have gathered in interviews with nearly 1,750 world travelers and adventurers during my four decades of travel to more than 125 countries throughout the world.

The January issue samples safety and security of the woman solo traveler (as well as women traveling together in pairs or very small groups)—the quest to achieve safe and secure, relatively comfort-able, unencumbered, and unimpeded travel throughout the world.

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Travel Tales Monthly Bookazine

Travel Tales Monthly
No. 6 December 2014

 Drug Tourism

My new Travel Tales Monthly Issue No 6 for December 2014, a monthly bookazine, is now available in my eStore. Go to www.michaelbrein.com for more information and to purchase or subscribe.

Travel Tales Monthly Bookazine Issue No. 6 for December 2014 contains among the best travel stories from my huge collection of about 10,000 travel tales that I have gathered in interviews with nearly 1,750 world travelers and adventurers during my four decades of travel to more than 125 countries throughout the world.

The travel tales that are featured for December, as well as each following month, include a fascinating mix of travel stories as well as a few brief vignettes. These are, simply said, great travel stories!

The December issue samples ‘drug tourism’ — the quest to achieve the sorts of brain-states that travelers avidly seek out for the purposes of recreating, vegetating, meditating, cogitating, experimenting, exploring, or seeking enlightenment and personal growth.

Such tales as Snake Wine, The Full Moon Party, and Magical, Mystical Marrakesh illustrate how travelers wander the world to experiment or explore by ingesting, injecting, imbibing, chewing, eating, snorting, and smoking a variety of drugs, substances, plants, and even ‘medications’, in order to morph from the normal, oft boring, mundane, ordinary, conscious waking-state into the brainless or the superconscious in the attempt to achieve various mental states of being that range somewhere betwixt and between the ‘mindless’ and the ‘mindful’.

It is one thing to dabble in a limited way with substances at home; it’s another matter, altogether, to venture into a vast world of the exotic — a world that is a veritable ‘candy store’ of magical, mystical drugs and substances that are there for the taking.

Some travelers are lured to the hypothetical mysterious so-called ‘blue’ pill or the ‘red’ pill. They can not only choose one of these pills to satisfy their exploring, their inquisitiveness, their mental journeys piled on top of their physical travel journeys — they can choose both, as well as a panoply of other substances.

But what are the consequences of ‘doing’ drugs and substances in a foreign land? In one of our featured stories for this month, Snake Wine, our traveler toys dangerously with drinking, willy-nilly, a concoction of blood and venom of a deadly poisonous snake in a Taiwan night market.

And even worse, and unbelievably, in The Full Moon Party, our storyteller describes how a couple of hippies get in over their heads by spiking the drinks of two Spanish policeman with LSD! How safe or sane is that?

Next, several of our stories describe how travelers seek out the jungles of South America (and also South Africa) in order to drink a horrid, vile tasting concoction — called “ayahuasca,” — perhaps throwing all caution to the wind and often throwing up violently in the process — and for what? — evidently to engage with some sorts of unknown forces, energies, spirits, or entities, even, that seem to take over and ‘intervene’ in their bodies, minds, and spirits, presumably on their behalf!

Acting in ways often contrary to good common sense, we have in this month’s issue a number of travelers who dare to taunt fate via taking unknown drugs and substances, often in the face of possible dangerous and disastrous consequences due to the unknowns involved in doing so.

All-in-all, you will also see some aspects of travel that you, yourself, may not ever have even considered before.

And, once again, you will certainly experience vicariously those odd vagaries of travel-life that can await you and can suddenly appear just around the corner at about any turn along the way.

Winding up this month’s issue is Michael Wiese, our guest contributor, an acclaimed author, filmmaker, and world traveler, who describes his own bouts with the wild, wacky, and mysterious world of ‘Mother Ayahuasca’.