I've always found that the best travelers are the very same people who are intensely interested in the history and culture of their own home city.

What a treasure of awesome sights and attractions our country has.

Luckily you cannot get to the Golden Triangle in a bus. You can only access it on your own two feet!

Dubai,I think is a big bore - a city deliberately built to appeal to tourism, and only built for that purpose, and not possessing a valid culture or history of its own.

To travel best requires some time preparing for your visit to a particular location - that you don't travel anywhere without spending a few nights reading about the culture and history of the place you are visiting. This is what most of us don't do - we fling ourselves on an exotic destination hoping that someone will tell us what we are looking at, but by that time it's too late, and all the lectures and tour guides simply add to our confusion.

My favorite place that I've been to that most people haven't been to is the Golden Triangle in the northeast of Thailand, which is inhabited by people as if in the Stone Age, without any form of power, without running water, simply living in huts on stilts.

At its best, travel should challenge our preconceptions and most cherished views, cause us to rethink our assumptions, shake us a bit, make us broader minded and more understanding.