About WoW

Women on World Excursions, WoW for short, (or “WoW-E” when we’re feeling particularly effusive) was co-founded by two writers and world wanderers– Chris Podbielski and Malayna Dawn.

We met during a brief span of time between our world travels, when our professional lives overlapped and we both found ourselves working at that factory of dreams–Warner Bros. Television. Working on The Warner Bros. studio lot, it wasn’t long until the atmosphere that mixed fantasy and reality allowed us to recognize each other as kindred spirits who shared a love of the “imaginareal.”

Along with our passion for creative writing and storytelling in general, we shared a taste for travel, and the magic of having mixed ancestry.  Once we no longer worked in the same office, we kept in touch, putting our love of writing to use in the creation of an adventure novel, (Chris edited Malayna’s first novel, Echoes Across Time) and sharing a love of Victoriana and Steampunk.

Between the two of us, our combined heritages cover Europe, the Middle East, and Asia, and our travels have taken us across those lands and beyond.  (See our travel lists in progress, below.)

We are writers who travel.  We are storytellers, explorers, seekers and philosophers.  We are also geeks who love to play in the toy boxes of history, pop culture and the imagination.

Our website, Spiral Whirled Travels, offers creative vacation ideas based in World Culture, Time Travel and Flights of Fancy. Together, these sites comprise our new and growing WoW, SWeeT! Travel Network.

(The “ee” in SWeeT can stand for either “explorative, excursionary” or “expletive, expletive” depending on our mood!)

We hope you’ll accept our invitation to join us, and our world-wandering women friends, as we share our travels and the tips we’ve gleaned along the way.

Below are our travel lists. Leave a comment and join our conversation. And maybe one day, we’ll all travel together! Field trip!

Malayna has been to:

England, France, Italy, Greece, Spain, Holland, and Germany… Sri Lanka, The Maldives, India, Thailand, Singapore, Cambodia, Japan, Korea… Australia, Mexico and many places across the U.S..  She has taken two around-the-world trips, and claims two home bases: her hometown of L.A. and her marital love nest in Colombo, Sri Lanka.

Next places to check off her travel list:  Machu Picchu, the Pyramids in Egypt.

Chris has been to:

Australia, The Bahamas, Czech Republic, England, Guam, India, Italy, Nepal, The Republic of the Philippines, Russia, Turkey — has lived in Pennsylvania, Miami, Indianapolis and Los Angeles — and has driven across the U.S. more times than she cares to recall.

She wants to explore the Silk Road and stay in a yurt before it’s completely paved over and Walmart moves in, but may get sidetracked by the siren call of Jordan, Machu Picchu and Egypt.

Happy Travels!