Q: Who?

After several years of addling around Asia as a fly-by-night tour leader with Melbourne-based Intrepid Travel, Mikey decided it was finally time to start building a real career in travel journalism and web design. In 2009, he authored Bangladesh: The Bradt Travel Guide with Belinda Meggitt. Today he works as a professional web designer in Australia and struggles to find time to travel between his projects. And when he does manage to get his travelling boots on, he writes articles for clients such as CNN Traveller, Fah Thai Magazine and Silk Road. His latest project is to put his guidebook online at The Bangladesh Traveller. For more of his work, visit the design portfolio.

Q: Where?

Mikey is a Canadian-born Chinese, who was raised in Calgary, Alberta (think of it as the Texas of Canada—oil, cowboys and big steaks). For the last decade he has been travelling in Asia, mostly in China, Cambodia and Bangladesh. Having witnessed the shocking effects of poverty and corruption in Cambodia, Mikey saw fit that he should spend some time saving the world and finished a volunteer posting as an IT Specialist in Bangladesh over 2006-2007, fixing machines ranging from desk-lamps to file servers. As one of Asia’s most populated and poorest nations, Bangladesh has had it rough, to say the least. He worked with the Bangladesh program office of VSO, a non-government organization that sends aid abroad in the form of skilled volunteers.

Mikey’s time as a volunteer is now over, thank Allah, but little did Mikey know that he was going to be in Bangladesh for the long haul. In July of 2007, Bradt Travel Guides decided to take him on as a guidebook writer to one of travel’s bleeding edges. In 2009, Bangladesh: The Bradt Travel Guide was published worldwide, and was Mikey’s first (and hopefully not only) book.

Q: Why?

Without letting this turn into a diatribe regarding the inherent inequalities of the current world economic model, there is no argument that the gap between the developed and less developed worlds is undeniable. VSO was unique in that it didn’t provide direct monetary aid to less developed countries, it provided skills training on the benefit of enthusiastic volunteers. Do you remember the old parable of teaching a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime? In the “developed world” we have all the opportunities we need on our doorstep. In other countries the cycle of poverty is nearly impossible to break. Mikey wants to be the change he wants to see. His vehicle: tourism.

Starting November 2007, Mikey and his partner Belinda Meggitt began research on the Bradt Guide, but also worked to bring stories to the bigger world about this little country. They’re publishing Bangladesh travel news over at The Bangladesh Traveller, but also reaching out to mainstream media via radio, print and photography.

Still more questions?

Feel free to contact me. Better yet, feel free to hire me for a freelance job!

By e-mail: mikeyleung DOT ca AT gmail.com.