Clarissa Tan
Staff Columnist
Author Archive
Year of Yes

Ask the person next to you for $100.  Now go up to a stranger you find attractive. Ask them to marry you. I’m guessing both […]

Jacinda Webber
If you died tomorrow, would you be happy with your life?

Clarissa is a solo traveler who has been to 52 countries on the backpacker’s budget, or $30/day.    As a kid, I hated traveling (I […]

Anasthasia Shilov
Reel or Real? Roadmap to being a travel influencer

Last week, I was in the Branford dining hall when a girl asked me, “Are you at-clar-dot-tee-ex-en??” To be fair, I did the same thing […]

Catherine Kwon
On passport privilege

Let’s play a game.  How many countries are in the world? Quick! Cover the answer below and take a guess. 

Sending virtual hugs!

Last summer, I met a guy named Louis at my hostel in Portugal. He had just quit his 9 to 5 government job and was spending his earnings on a grand Eurail trip. Before leaving for Morocco, Louis bestowed upon me a small origami frog, signed by all the other backpackers along his journey. 

Lessons I learned from my Worldpackers hosts

Laos was a peculiar — and somewhat accidental — choice for my first time as a Worldpackers volunteer. It’s one of the most underrated countries that I have visited. Its golden temples glitter with intricately-laid rubies and diamonds, but without the crowds of its more popular neighbors like Cambodia and Thailand. 

Why I reneged on my gap year

The very first day of junior year, a classmate yelled at me from across the High Street - Elm Street intersection: “OMG, hey! Why are you back on campus??” I froze in the middle of the street. 

#FOMO?

After 10 hours on a night bus, a three-hour flight and a dreary walk through the rainforest, there I was — sitting on the purest white sand beach in all of Bali, sipping $1 coconut juice underneath a picturesque palm tree, watching birds fly across the sunset in a perfectly cloudless sky. 

You’d have to stop the world just to stop the feeling

I can confidently say that I have a friend in every country I’ve visited. But in all of the time we’ve spent together, we’ve never asked for each other’s names.