Put yourself in Paul Thoreau's place. A man on the shady side of middle age like me gets off a bus at a border.

Who on earth could you be you're not George Clooney? You're a bum.

Hi I'm Rick Steeves. Today on I'm Rick Steeves.

Paul Tharoo describes what it was like to return to Malawi in Central Africa

40 years after teaching English there with the Peace Corps.

Frugal traveler Seth Kugel tells us what he found when he picked

a small town at random to get away from the usual touristy parts of Mexico.

2,000 people living an old-fashioned lifestyle and pretty happy doing it the way they were doing

and they were very generous in letting me be a part of it. It's one of my best travel

memories ever. And Neil Taylor explains how the newfound energy in the Baltic countries is contagious.

Color has come back. The gray atmosphere that there was,

Sobby at times, has gone completely, and that's why they can be so welcoming to tourists.

Three accomplished travelers take us off the beaten path coming right up on Travel with Rick

Steeves. Travelers can connect with people in the most unlikely places.

Hi, I'm Rick Steeves.

Today on Travel with Rick Steeves, Paul Thoreau explains how his best-selling book,

Dark Star Safari, came about when he decided to rough it, regardless of his age, on a return

visit to Central Africa, his mission to see what had changed in 40 years.

He joins us a little later in the hour. Neil Taylor knows the Baltics like a local.

He'll share the highlights of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania 20 years into their post-communist world.

Let's start out with Seth Kugel, traveling off the usual tourism grid in Wahaca, Mexico.

Seth writes the Frugal Traveler column for the New York Times.

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