World traveler Clown Tom Bolton
Adventure stories & photos
Tom Bolton’s world travels
Adventure stories & photos
Destinations include Asia, Africa, Europe, North America, Central America, South America, Australia, New Zealand & Papua New Guinea. Check out my newest page: England-London added in March 2019 and updates to Portugal and Spain in 2024.
A little about myself and how I became an international traveling performer. I’m a professional clown and juggler living in Stuttgart, Germany. In 2019 I became a dual American/German citizen. I speak English, German, basic Spanish and lousy French, the later 2 languages having gone down hill in recent years from lack of practice. I grew up mostly in Dayton, Ohio USA but was born in 1960 in in San Juan, Puerto Rico.
My father was doing his military service as a doctor at Fort Brooke/Rodriguez U.S. Army hospital. The base was located in the city landmark known as Castillo San Felipe del Morro, which was built by the Spanish in colonial times as a fortification to guard San Juan Bay.
Last I heard, this space is now used as an art school, which is kind of symbolic karma-wise. My paternal grandparents were my initial inspiration to see the world. They were freshly married in 1926 and rather than put their money into the stock market they opted to make their first trip around the world. They lived a number of years in Spain, where my father was born, eventually settling in Mexico City for 40 years. They were often traveling in exotic lands starting back before jet planes and TV were even invented none-the-less Lonely Planet guides.
Studied before becoming a world traveler
Growing up as one of 10 kids, we didn’t manage to travel a lot but made trips to Chicago, the Baltimore/Washington area, eastern Canada, through the south to the gulf coast of Alabama and a trip to California via New Mexico, Arizona and Colorado. At 15 I went alone to Switzerland for a month to see relatives. I studied Finance at the University of Dayton from 1978 to 1982 where I took every opportunity to travel around the States and Eastern Canada mostly by hitchhiking. In 1983 I went to Europe which has been my home ever since. I now live from paying gigs but at first I made my way just making comedy-juggling shows on the street. I would spend the winter months in warm places like Asia, Latin America, Morocco, Hawaii, Australia, New Zealand and Papua New Guinea. I often make free little shows for the people in third world countries during my travels. This often opened the door to peoples’ hospitality and interest, creating the opportunity to photograph them without it just being an intrusion.
Photo site is a work of passion
I’m no web designer and this whole project grew out of a simple 2-page overview of my travels. Unfortunately, I don’t find the time and money to travel as often as I used to, so most of my experiences are from the 1980’s and 1990’s. I have presented many of my favorite photos, others are not great shots but are relevant to the text. Sometimes I don’t remember all the details, so if you find errors or see a photo falsely attributed, just let me know! Many of the photos were scanned from my prints and slides. I choose a rather small format and low quality when I started this site (2007) to lessen the chance of people stealing the photos and so that the pages would load quickly. In the meantime, most everyone has DSL connections and any updates have been in a slightly larger format. The site has been redesigned in WordPress in 2017. I have reformatted most of the original photos but doubt I will ever find the time to do them all. Worse, some of the prints and negatives have gone missing so that I cannot redo them. In the meantime, I have continued to add pages and content based on further travels. As of late-May 2024 the site has over 5863 photos. For those who have seen my page before, new additions in 2024 have been Heilbronn, Esslingen, Bad Wimpfen, Schwäbisch Hall, Schwäbisch Gmünd, Mainz, Wiesbaden, Saarbrücken, Neustadt an der Weinstraße, Ettlingen, Kloster Maulbronn, Lienzingen, Calw, Marbach, Horb, Ulm, Speyer, Nurenberg, Schorndorf, Günzburg, Frankfurt, Konstanz, Rottweil and Worms on the Germany pages and Stasbourg and Colmar in the French section of the southern European page
Enjoy and recommend this site
An idiosyncrasy of this site’s programming is that that it is set up for 2 columns. But even on a very large computer screen the photos side by side do not appear as large as if one narrows the window setting just to the point where all is displayed in one column. Thus the largest photo size is seen by narrowing the window to this point –although the formats appear ever smaller as the window is narrowed as long as there is still enough width for both columns.
So, enjoy my site and I hope it might make people realize that despite occasional conflicts of culture, the diversity of mankind is fascinating. Also that we have a nice world and it’s the only one we have so let’s take care of it. And need I mention that both the photos and text on this site are copyrighted. For good charitable causes I might give permission to use material for free but ASK first. For a commercial purpose we would have to negotiate a deal and it would have to be for something I don’t object to! Money is NOT the most important thing in the world to me but I have been struggling lately to keep food on the table and to continue my travels and support of various third-world circus projects. So if anything on this site inspires you, don’t feel reluctant to make a donation. Better yet, check out my clown site and hire me for your next event. I’m not a registered charity but can use all the support I can get. And the best help that more people might find and enjoy this site is to set a link to it and/or give it a recommendation at social media sites like Facebook.
Travel tips from my years of experience - Awareness of ones surroundings
Be incognito when traveling
This is also the downside of fancy travel clothing and accessories. If one is on the way to climb Everest or some similar activity where special equipment is needed then fine. But strolling in a city decked out is such gear makes one stick out as a stranger with money. There are of course advantages of high tech clothing. It is often light weight, compact and dries quickly. Dressing down too much can also be a mistake. If one is dirty and in rags then people will assume you are a drug addict or something. I suggest people find a middle ground. Mix and match or drop the high tech clothing while in big cities.
Rice sack as backpack cover
Accidents and vehicle maintenance
Travel light - buy extra cloths locally
The biggest problem is usually drying cloths. Difficult if you have to wash secretly and then have no place to hang them up. And nothing is worse than having to pack wet cloths into your pack especially when you are constantly changing cities. Probably the best high tech product for traveling is a microfiber towel. A small one will do and can be wrung out nearly to the point of being dry. For drying purposes, nothing larger than a hand towel is needed because one wrings it out and finishes drying. My first one was ridiculously expensive but in the mean time they’ve become much cheaper.
What to take along?
If one is mostly trekking as opposed to seeing cities it makes a difference. I still like to use a backpack. Anything on wheels makes things easier as long as one has smooth surfaces where they can roll. Trails, unpaved streets or even cobblestones in European cities will destroy luggage pretty quickly. Yet if I go for just a few days to a single destination then a small suitcase of course comes in question.
I always have a small quality flashlight like a Maglite with me. Even in cities there are power outages, unlit streets or one needs to find one’ room at night.
A Swiss knife is still almost essential for longer travels.
In most 3rd world countries it is no longer a problem to find reliable drinking water – but a scourge of pollution from throw away bottle. I bought a Safestraw in 2018, which is a water bottle with attached straw that filters the water as you drink. The advantage is that one avoids chemicals and filters out additional impurities. On the other hand it is not super cheap and takes space. Thus I would still take along a small amount of water purification tablets as an emergency alternative on some trips.
Another consideration is a mosquito net and/or mosquito repellent. Again, best to research the conditions of the country and the seasonality of the problem. Tropical regions that are humid year round can be hell without some sort of protection. If one is staying in upper class accommodation then one can expect mosquito nets being provided in problem areas in cheaper places not.
I own a good quality net made to hang over a bed and always have some thin nylon rope but short of driving your own nails into the walls, there are not always places to attach it to. The main disadvantage is that while compact it still takes the space of a couple pairs of full length pants. I have another net that is like a small half tent. It is compacter than a normal net but one still needs to cover the feet with a sarong or something the mosquitos hopefully can’t bit through. The problem with this product is that the net is so fine that it becomes stifling in hot weather.
Malaria prophylactics; yes or no? Again, such a decision is very much dependent on your trip. Malaria is still a major risk in some tropical regions, especially the newer resistant strains. And no, eating lots of papaya or other home remedies will not cure it. But the first line of defense is always physical protection. Malaria carrying mosquitos are mostly active from dusk to dawn. Time to wear long pants and tops, with material sturdy enough that the insects can’t bite right through it. Not fun if it’s hot but necessary. I met people in PNG that dressed accordingly and managed to live years without getting malaria without use of chemicals or prophylactics. In the same place, others didn’t cover up in the evenings and came down with malaria within weeks.
Money. I used to carry most of my money in traveler’s checks but have given up on them. Too few places accept them anymore and now ATMs are found in virtually all countries. One needs a major credit or debit card to use machines but one should still have a supply of cash. It can be that machines don’t accept all cards or that one doesn’t return your card. I get fresh US dollars in large denominations and hide them in various places. One should have a money belt but still have a hidden reserve elsewhere. In more risky countries I have even folded up a bill or two and sewn them into the seam of my clothing.
Copy of passport, credit cards, travel insurance number, important addresses. I used to make multiple copies of such important documents and distribute them in various places in my belongings. Now days I make fewer copies but have such things as attachments to emails so they can be called up anywhere one has internet. In a real emergency it will save a lot of trouble. I also take an USB stick with me with copies of important documents. I have one that has a safelock software so nobody can see the documents without using password. This is important in case of loss or theft.
Micro-fabric towel. Many of the low budgets places I’ve stayed don’t have towels. Normal towels take up too much space and take too long to dry. Nothing worse than having to pack wet things into your luggage. So it is worth buying a modern micro-fabric one from any outdoor supply shop. I take a small to medium sized one. They can be wrung out so well that a large one is not necessary. Of all of the cool stuff one will find for hiking, this is the one I’ve really used on a regular basis.
Footwear. I often traveled with a decent pair of running shoes and then some sort of flip-fops for beaches and extreme warm weather. For many trips this was sufficient. The problem was often when I had opportunities to hike where one needed a more protective hiking boot. Most traditional high top hiking boots are simply too heavy and take up too much space. Thankfully over the years new materials have been developed to offer robust but much lighter boots. But even so, my experience was that such boots were impractical in hot, humid weather. But I put off on buying low cut hiking shoes because I figured they were hardly better than running shoes. With hindsight this was a mistake.
Despite having 4 or 5 pairs of high top boots of various qualities I finally got some low cut trekking shoes that are top of the line. Luckily, there is now a Decathlon sporting goods store in my area that offers quality products for considerably cheaper than the competition. Vibram soles are still the standard for having the best grip in wet conditions. I’ve had a number of experiences with running shoes or even hiking boots that went from acceptable to a struggle because of rain or snow. And the stiffness of my low cut trekking shoes adds a lot of protection without being more uncomfortable.
For my second footwear I have also gone for more protection by using sports sandals or crocs. Both breathe well in warm weather. I‘ve had a number of times where I was on a beach with flip-flops where there were nails or glass – or ended up going off on an adjacent jungle path where I encountered long thorns. All situations where flip-flops were next to useless. Crocs are not as protective as good sports-sandals but more so than flip-flops and very comfortable.
Travel Guides - Lonely Planet, Bradt, Footprint
In the past I used the South American Handbook and the Central American Handbook by Footprint publishers. These were concise guides with more in-depth information about cheap travel. The company now has a large range of travel guides to individual countries or smaller grouping. The handbook guides managed to cover so much information by using small type and few graphics but were very recommendable. Some of their individual country guides advertise that they are slim enough to fit in a pocket.
As of this writing I am planning a trip to Ethiopia. Footprint has no guide there but I found an excellent one by Bradt. I had already bought the Lonely Planet after seeing that it was a brand new edition. Yet reading through I got little feel for the country as it is written like an advertisement trying to push things rather than give an honest review. It is also clearly slanted to travelers with a larger budget and not backpackers. The Bradt guide is much better written. It is much more informative but also thicker and a larger format than the LP. If I feel it is too much to carry, I plan to cut out sections that I don’t need. Maybe this is one of Bradt’s best guides and one of LP’s weaker ones but it definitely gets the better review from me.
So, those were just a few tales from my many travels over the last thirty and something years. I hope you've enjoyed another side of a traveling clown! If you want, write me an email or better yet, book my show or set a link to this website or just state me as the beneficiary of your will!
To book or see more information about Tom's clown show and entertainment, visit one or both of his clown websites:
Clown Stuttgart www.clowntombolton.com
Clown juggler Stuttgart, Gremany www.clown-event.de