About TLGA

There is nothing quite like the silence of the Boundary Waters in my home state of Minnesota. With over a million acres of protected wilderness and thousands of miles of canoe routes, it is the ultimate place to disconnect and find a different kind of flow.

By Corey Gasman

Last updated: May 2026

What is The Local Guide Abroad?

The Local Guide Abroad is a travel site for people who plan trips around great meals, walkable neighborhoods, smart logistics, and days that actually make sense.

This is not a checklist travel blog. TLGA is built for travelers who care about how a place feels once you are there: where to stay, how to move, what to eat, what to skip, and how to leave enough space for the parts of travel you cannot plan in advance.

The goal is simple: help you travel smarter, eat better, avoid obvious mistakes, and build trips that feel intentional without becoming overplanned.

Waking up to the rhythm of the reef, three nights of sailing, island camping, and pure blue horizons with Ragga Sailing Adventures in Belize.

Why this site exists

A lot of travel content online falls into two camps. It is either too generic to be useful, or so extreme that it does not match how most people actually want to travel.

TLGA sits in the middle. It is practical without being boring, personal without being self-indulgent, and built around the details that make a trip work in real life: neighborhoods, food, timing, transportation, safety, pacing, and knowing when not to cram more into the day.

The Local Guide Abroad exists because travel should feel exciting, not chaotic. A good guide should help you make better decisions before you go and feel more confident once you arrive.

• Food-first travel: because meals are one of the fastest ways to understand a place.
• Smart neighborhoods: because where you stay shapes the entire trip.
• Real logistics: because transportation, timing, budgeting, and safety matter.
• Flexible planning: because the best trip is structured, but not suffocating.
• Honest context: because not everything popular is worth your time.

An unforgettable lunch in Kintamani, where the only thing better than the food was the incredible view of the volcano overlooking the Ubud highlands.

The TLGA approach

1) Start with the neighborhood

A great destination can feel frustrating if you stay in the wrong area. TLGA puts neighborhood strategy near the center of travel planning because location controls your daily rhythm, transportation, meals, walks, safety, and overall energy.

2) Build the day around one strong idea

The best itineraries usually have one main anchor per day: a neighborhood, a long lunch, a museum, a market, a beach, a hike, or one experience you really care about. Everything else should support the day, not crowd it.

3) Eat like the trip depends on it

Food is not a side note here. It is one of the best ways to understand a place. TLGA looks at restaurants, markets, cafes, street food, drinking culture, local dishes, and the small food moments that often become the best memories.

4) Know what to skip

Good travel advice is not just a list of things to do. It should also help you avoid bad timing, weak neighborhoods, tourist traps, unnecessary detours, and activities that sound better online than they feel in person.

5) Leave room for the trip to breathe

Overplanning is one of the easiest ways to ruin a good trip. TLGA favors structure, but not rigidity. The best days usually include enough space for a recommendation from a local, a street you wander down, or a meal you did not expect to remember.

Why trust TLGA?

TLGA is not built from scraped lists or generic travel summaries. The site is shaped by real trips, personal photography, food memories, neighborhood research, planning experience, and a practical understanding of what makes travel feel smooth once you are actually on the ground.

The perspective behind TLGA comes from 45+ countries, a full year around the world with a backpack, years of food-focused travel, and thousands of travel photos taken across cities, beaches, mountains, markets, restaurants, and small neighborhoods around the world.

It is also shaped by design thinking. A good trip has flow. A good guide should have flow too. TLGA is built to help you move from inspiration to practical planning without getting buried in generic advice.

Standing at the edge of the world in Chamonix, where the panoramic views of Mont Blanc remind you just how massive and magnificent our planet really is.

What you will find on TLGA

TLGA is organized around the way people actually plan trips. Some readers start with a destination. Others start with a packing question, a safety concern, a budget problem, or a food idea. The site is built to help you enter from any of those places and still find a useful path forward.

What TLGA is not

TLGA is not about rushing through every attraction, chasing every viral restaurant, or pretending every destination is perfect. Some places are magical. Some are frustrating. Most are both.

This site is also not trying to turn travel into a performance. You do not need to see everything, eat everywhere, or optimize every hour. A good trip needs shape, but it also needs breathing room.

The best travel plan is usually not the busiest one. It is the one that helps you feel comfortable enough to enjoy where you are.

Earning my advanced diving certification in the Similan Islands was a major highlight of my world trip. There is no better place to level up your skills than in these crystal-clear Thai waters.

Who is behind TLGA?

The Local Guide Abroad is written by Corey Gasman, a Minneapolis-based traveler, designer, photographer, and food-focused explorer who has traveled through 45+ countries and spent a full year traveling around the world with a backpack.

This page is about TLGA as a travel resource: what the site believes, how the guides are built, and how it helps travelers plan better trips. Corey’s personal travel story, round-the-world trip, digital nomad life, and background live on the About Me page.

The short version is this: TLGA combines real travel experience, personal photography, design-minded planning, neighborhood research, food curiosity, and practical advice for people who want their trips to feel smoother, deeper, and more human.

Not quite the Chef’s Table at Smoking Goat in London, but sitting at the kitchen counter gave us a front-row seat to the action and a great chance to chat with the chef while he was expediting.

New here? Start here

The easiest way to use TLGA is to start with your biggest question. If you know where you are going, start with the destination guides. If you are still figuring things out, start with travel planning.

Popular destination starting points

These hubs show how TLGA organizes destinations around real travel decisions: neighborhoods, pacing, food, logistics, and the small details that make a trip work.

Food-first travel

Food is one of the main ways TLGA looks at travel. These guides are for readers who plan the day around the meal, the market, the cafe, the bar, or the neighborhood worth lingering in.