About Small Footprint Travels
Imagine experiencing villages steeped in history, photographing welcoming people, eating delicious foods from around the world and then learning to cook them.
If this is your kind of love—to travel and experience, then you will definitely want to join one of our small-group tours. We lead you into magical settings and experiences with local people in Southeast Asia, Latin America & Morocco.
We create our tours to reveal the photogenic places we know in the lands we travel. This includes magnificent landscapes, mouth watering foods, colorful markets, and historic sites.
During our tours, we want you to experience a place, not just snap a picture and then drive on. Moreover, we focus on off-the-beaten path places as well as classic sites. We strive to give you time to wander off and discover things on your own as well.
About Our Hosts
Meet Benjamin Porter
My life has been one of photography and travel. As a young boy moving from one city to the next with my family (my father was a hospital director), I met new people and explored new cities. Hence, I got the travel bug from a young age. Wanting to capture these experiences, I started photographing at the age of 10 and eventually became a photographer.
In my early 20s, I traveled for a year throughout all of Latin America. At the end of my amazing journey, I had fallen in love with the people and indigenous culture of one particular country: Bolivia—a beautiful and remote land. I have returned many times over the years, and a part of me will always feel that Bolivia is my home.
Before my professional photography career developed, I funded my camera passion by working as a merchant seaman on U.S. ships traveling the world. On one of the sailings, we docked on the island of Sumatra, Indonesia, my first contact with Asia. Its mysteries, exotic nature, and culinary delicacies captivated me.
More recently, I spent a month in India followed by a week-long stopover in Malaysia. This trip re-awakened my desire to spend more time in Southeast Asia and from this Small Footprint Travels was born.
Meet Myo Koongnoo Porter
Born in southern Thailand, I consider myself an unflinching traveler, one who is as comfortable trekking through the mountains to visit remote hill tribes as shopping for bargains at the famous weekend market in Bangkok.
But my true love is cooking Thai food, especially teaching how to do that. In the past several years, I have offered cooking classes in the United States and Thailand.
In addition to my native southern Thai dialect, I speak the dialect of the Isan region of northeast Thailand, as well as Laotian and English. And I enjoy introducing our guests to the people and wonders of this part of Southeast Asia.
