Janet Fullwood, 48, has traveled in 60-odd countries and has been publishing travel stories and photos for 22 years, the first one being a newspaper story on camping and backpacking on Kauai. Since then, with a few breaks for extended periods of roaming the globe, she’s worked out a career — first at the Dallas Times Herald and since 1987 at The Sacramento Bee — that allows her to travel on someone else’s nickel and get paid for writing about it. Travel and writing are actually just a small part of her job, which involves producing a weekly newspaper travel section with writing from many sources.

Carl Parkes writes the Southeast Asia Handbook Moon Handbooks: Southeast Asia (3rd Ed.) for Moon guides, as well as Moon country guides for Thailand Moon Handbooks: Thailand (3rd Ed.), Singapore the Philippines Moon Handbooks: Philippines (3rd Ed.). He also contributes reviews and profiles to Reed Travel Group and Weissmann Travel Reports. His latest book, National Geographic Traveler’s Thailand will be released in spring of 2001. He lives in San Francisco.

Frank Bures has published travel pieces in Outside, Salon, Geographical, Outpost, and Oregon Live. As an emerging freelancer, Bures’ example and insights are especially valuable to writers who have just started — or have yet to begin — their travel writing efforts. Bures lives in Portland, Oregon, where he works part-time at the world-famous Powell’s Bookstore.

Laurie Gough is the author of “Kite Strings of the Southern Cross,” which won a silver medal for Foreword Magazine’s Best Travel Book of the Year, and was shortlisted for the Thomas Cook Travel Book of the Year award in the U.K. Gough has also written for Salon, Outpost, and the Toronto Globe and Mail. Her work appears in several travel anthologies, including “Travelers’ Tales: A Woman’s World,” The Adventure of Food,” and “Salon.com’s Wanderlust: Real-Life Tales of Adventure and Romance.” She divides her time between Ontario and northern California.

Jeff Greenwald is the author of four books: “Mister Raja’s Neighborhood” (John Daniel), “Shopping for Buddhas” (Lonely Planet), “The Size of the World” (Ballantine) and “Future Perfect: How Star Trek Conquered Planet Earth” (Penguin). His travel essays appear in numerous anthologies, including “I Should Have Stayed Home,” “In Search of Adventure” and eight volumes of the award-winning Travelers’ Tales series. Jeff lives in Oakland, writing full time and contributing travel and science articles to a wide variety of publications.

Joe Cummings’ Lonely Planet guide to Thailand has sold over a million copies in its various editions since 1982. Cummings also authors the Lonely Planet guides to Southeast Asian destinations such as Laos and Myanmar (Burma), and he writes guides to northern Mexico and Baja for Moon Handbooks. He divides his time between homes in Chiang Mai, Thailand and Todos Santos, Mexico.