The Freak Show Factor

Like Amanda, I also noticed that there are two categories of travel blogs here: advice and experience. Brooke vs. The World (travel anxiety) and Sprouts en Route (the best guest) are advice about how to travel. Almost Fearless and Vagabonding are about travel experiences. I enjoyed the travel experiences blogs more than the advice ones, even though you'd think the advice ones apply to me more: I do get anxious flying (especially to Israel, which is the only place I ever go), and i do worry about being a crappy guest. Further, I don't care for Starbucks, nor am I interested in ever going to China; I am equally disinterested in going to Uganda, and I don't give a you-know-what about nature (in this case white water rafting.) So why were the experience blogs more compelling than the relevant advice ones?

The freak show factor.

It's fun to read about weird stuff. Starbucks (something familiar) in China (unfamiliar) is freaky. Scottish people talking is freaky. The advice blogs were practical without being freaky. Might I add, they weren't that practical, either. Mind you, they COULD HAVE been freaky. I would have enjoyed reading about disaster guests, and total airplane meltdowns. Further, the advice blogs lacked authority. I would have trusted them more if they had given me some examples of how they learned the information they're sharing. (ex: I learned how to be a good guest after one of my guests used all the toilet paper in the house to design a wedding gown.)I also wasn't clear on what the take-away was at the end. I think there's a lot one could say about host-guest relationships, which vary greatly in formality. Shouldn't there be a different protocol for staying at my aunt's house than with a friend-of-a-friend?

Lastly, while this isn't a literary component, blogs can have pictures. The advice blogs had a few stock photos. The experience blogs had personal pictures that made the event much more real. Again, if the advice blogs had had pictures of "how to destroy your guest room and piss off your host forever" or "what I look like after 6 margaritas before my flight," they would have been more enjoyable.

Extra lastly, this was a great hook: "I’ve been meaning to do a post on the supermarkets here in Beijing but I haven’t been brave enough to haul my big-ass camera around the teeming multi-level thunderdome of shopping known as my local Lotte’s."