Here at the Perceptive Travel Blog, the beginning of each new month means just one thing – access to the latest edition of the Perceptive Travel webzine.

Guaranteed to stimulate the wanderlust that we all suffer from, each new edition of Perceptive Travel webzine opens up new experiences and destinations for us to explore.

And the September edition is no exception.

Michael Buckley heads to South Korea in search of  monks taking flying leaps, all in the name of Buddhism. These monks, based at Golgulsa Temple, are practitioners of Sunmudo, a form of Zen Buddhism that mixes yoga, meditation, and martial art moves.

 Carla Seidi looks at the importance of Chickens and Tea in Aberbaijin. Turns out that these two products are possibly even more important than paper money when it comes to status and community relationships.

Meanwhile, Chris Epting takes a trip down memory lane, visiting his hometown and the home of the writer John Cheever, who in the role of mentor, first encouraged Chris to follow his dreams by ‘writing a journal’. 

Plus, as usual, there’ world music reveiws and travel book reviews to check out.

As for this month’s prize giveaway, it’s a  Alpental Fleece Jacket from ExOfficio. Entering the giveaway contest is as easy was subscribing to the Perceptive Travel newsletter or by checking out the Perceptive Travel facebook page.

Happy reading!

I hadn’t planned on going to Melbourne, Australia.

But the abrupt end to my ‘around the world’ trip resulted in having to return home to a cold and wet New Zealand a couple of weeks earlier than planned. And cold and wet was something I wasn’t quite ready for.

So when friends, who were heading to Melbourne, Australia for a few days,  suggested I join them, I jumped at the chance. Surely, I thought, it would be warmer in Australia.

Sadly, I was wrong.

Turned out that Melbourne was just as cold and wet as Christchurch. In fact, it might have even been colder, thanks to a wind that felt like it had blown through from the Antarctica.

Not willing to let a little thing like rain and icy winds stop us from sightseeing, we soldiered on, adding layer after layer of clothing to keep out the cold.

We walked the streets, wandered through the huge open air Queen Street Market, and examined Federation Square‘s fascinating architectural designs.

In the end we had to give up.

Tired of cold noses and wet feet, we headed back to The Langham hotel for warmth, hot tea …and dry shoes.

We arrived too late to partake in The Langham’s Chocolate Indulgence Afternoon Tea.  But that was okay, because we got something just a good -  a room with a view.

Located on the nineteenth floor, the room had a bird’s eye view of the Yarra River that flows through the center of Melbourne. 

On this side of the river you can just make out the Southbank Promenade. Sparsely populated during the winter months, it becomes alive in summertime, with locals and visitors alike strolling around and checking out the area’s upmarket shops, restaurants, cafes, food courts and  five-star hotels.

Across the river to the right is the award winning Melbourne Aquarium with it’s 360 degree Oceanarium housing giant sharks and stingrays .

Directly across the river are numerous well worn train tracks that allow commuters, and the occasional tourist, to get into and out of the city with ease.

A little more to the left, just out of sight, is the Flinders Street Train Station. Built in 1910, it’s not only Australia’s oldest train station, it’s also the busiest suburban railway station in the Southern Hemisphere.

Throughout the evening, sipping first hot tea and later wine, we sat and watched the flow of the traffic, the trains, and the river.

Sometimes having a ‘room with a view’ is really all you need.

In travel, like life, things don’t always go to plan.

But even when disaster strikes, there is usually a silver lining.

You just have to find it.

So while Mom was safely tucked up in a hospital bed at the Oslo University Hospital, I decided to go and find my silver lining – the Vigeland Sculpture Park.

The park, which had been on my original list of places to see, was in walking distance of the hospital. So, armed with map and camera, I left the hospital and headed out.

All it took as a short ten minute walk down Kirkeveien Street and I was there.

The Vigilend Sculpture Park is a wonderland of life-size bronze and granite sculptures depicting humans, ranging from small children to closely entwined lovers, friends, families, and elderly couples, in everyday activities such as walking and playing to holding hands and hugging.

The work of one man, Norwegian sculptor Gustav Vigeland, this park has been a favorite of locals since 1940.

In a deal with the city of Oslo, Gustav Vigeland situated his home and workshop (now the Vigeland Museum) in the park and then proceeded, over two decades, to design the entire park around his obsession with the human form.

Highlights of the park include ‘The Fountain’ a controversial sculpture  of 60 individual bronze figures (children, teengages, old men, and skeleton) representing the circle of life and the highly symbolic “Monolith” consisting of 121 intertwined human figures representing human’s desire to reach out to the divine.

But it’s ‘The Angry Boy’ who draws the biggest crowds.

No one knows why he is so upset.

But everyone wants to take his photo.

(photos by Liz Lewis)

In all my years of travel, I’ve never had a real travel disaster. Planes have left on time. My luggage has always magically appeared on the airport carousel. Nothing has been stolen. I’ve even managed to avoid injury and illness.

And yet, despite this stellar travel record, I still take out travel insurance for each and every trip.  I like to know that if something happens, someone, somewhere, is there to help bail me out.

And so it was, that when disaster finally did strike, in the form of illness, it was the travel insurance – both my mother’s and mine – that saved the day.  

Here’s what happen.

One day we were happily cruising around the Baltic on the Star Princess, completing the last few days of our epic two and a half month cruise vacation covering half the world.  The next day,  with absolutely no warning,  Mom suffered an acute cardiac event.  Being a sea day, she was admitted to the ship’s medical center where she received immediate and excellent medical attention. 

But although the initial crisis resolved fairly quickly and Mom was soon feeling much better, the ship’s doctor felt she was far from recovered and should be disembarked to hospital at the ship’s next port of call – Olso, Norway. 

Seriously, this was not part of our game plan. We were two days away from Copenhagen where we  were planning to part ways – my mother to start the first of two bus trips around Europe and me to head home to New Zealand via  New York City and Nova Scotia.  

Instead we were stranded in Oslo, Norway -  Mom tucked up in a bed at the huge University Hospital while I alternated between talking with medical staff and talking with the insurance company.  Four days later, Mom was discharged refreshed and ready to go. I, on the other hand, was exhausted.

It was a disaster. But one with a happy ending. Mom is back in good health.  And having travel insurance means that we will will recoup our financial losses.

And there was even a small silver lining – flying home to New Zealand business class!

Dreaming of adventure but unable to leave home?

 Then get yourself a copy of the Traveler’s Tales award winning anthology series The Best Women’s Travel Writing 2010: True stories from around the world  to read.

It’s full of fascinating travel tales by interesting women from all walks of life, including Perceptive Travel’s own Alison Stein Wellner with a tale of culinary heat seeking.

In less than 300 pages, this  book takes you to far flung places that most of us only dream of and shares experiences that, in some causes, will have you doubled up laughing and in others, leave you cringing and shaking your head in disbelief.

Discover the hidden magic of Flamenco in Spain, how the perfect wave in New Zealand offers a lesson in love, learn about political activism and human rights in Burma, cultural understanding through language lessons in Vietnam, and why some people just have to find the hottest food ever.

There’s romance, high adventure, misadventure, spiritual growth, exotic cuisine, with plenty of  humility, humanity, and hilarity thrown in.

And along the way, each of the writers have discovered not only new place and faces, but also a new understanding and awareness of the self within the bigger world.

It’s designed to be read one essay at a time. But odds are, once you pick it up and start reading, you’ll become too engrossed to put it down until the end. And when you finish, you’ll be left wanting more.

Mostly, you’ll be wanting to take off on an adventure of your own.