Next Step

Earlier this month:
- My wife got the go-ahead from her boss
- 2 Weeks later I got the final go ahead from my boss
- TODAY we heard from other people that we can go...

...SO now its ALL system ahead! YEaaaHaaaaaa

Good Travel Site Ideas

I am currently looking into nice places to go to. Looking for some online itenaries, etc. The problem with that is that I am seeing SO many sites and I don’t know where to start or stop reading.

The other problem I am having is that my computer has SO many open tabs in FireFox that it is slowing down my PC (if that is possible :) ). So I NEED to close down some of these sites I still wanted to read through at a later time. So I guess my best bet is to just blog about them and then I could always revisit them. At the same time I am freeing up some memory and getting rid of all those tabs, which might raise an eyebrow or two.

(this is a work in progress)

It seems like many people point to these travel sites:

- LonelyPlanet: Has a lot of helpful info.

 

- TravelFish: Seems like an interesting site.

 

- TripAdvisor: Nice it has some of the things you need to do in each of the countries you want to visit. This is cool. I don't want to miss out on any cool things to do in a country. It also has a before you go section, etc. It has hotel and accommodation ratings. Nice. It also has some free guides. You can even have a tripwatch added to places you want to visit. It will give you weekly updates.

- GapAdventures: They seem to have a lot of information on trip itineraries. So this could be a cool place to check out which places they prefer to go to and then go there yourself. I saw they have a top travels tweeter section which seems to be cool. I would like to ask some people some questions :)

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I have also found some interesting travel tips, as in how to travel from one place to the next.
- The one site I still want to check out is The Man in Seat Sixty-One, which seems to give you lots of information on how to travel on a train in certain areas in the world. Even times. Do’s, Don’ts. I will have to read up on it or use it as a resource while travelling. It even has maps and MUCH MUCH more. Might just return to this site.
- Ruba: A very cool looking user interface online. I am still to check it out, but it seems like you can read up on some travel ideas in each country. I see they also sell tours on this site (something I dont want to do) but it is cool to read up on what people say. (Get some ideas). You can also add your own best places for others to see.
- Tripsay is a sight, well, pretty much where you can say what you think of a place and based on that other places are recommended to you. I played around with it. Cool idea. I just don’t have enough time to figure it all out (and I would like to have a “average” rating for a place.
- Weather.com is great to figure out the average weather for China for instance :) So that you know what the best time is to travel.
- TravelPod: Seems like an amazing tool to use in order to journal about your travels or to read up on other people’s travels. I’ve gotten some ideas reading people’s journals, but I especially like the layout and use the Google map to show where they did what.
- CouchSurfing: I don't know if I personally will ever do this (having a wife and all) but I think if you are sure you will be safe (or you have some kind of self-defence built into you) then this could always be a relatively cheap way to do a holiday. I will still keep this door open, but will make sure my wife would be safe before I ever do this.
- BatchGeoCode: This site is very cool if you want to do a batch search for GEO locations. (In case you need the latitude and longitude for cities). (Ok, I might be doing something wrong, but my points got all messed up – still busy trying to convert Excel info into a map with lines, etc)
- GPSVisualizer: This seems to work very well. I will still double check (with all my MANUAL labour I put in before :) but this DOES seem to be very accurate – mostly)

 

Some sites give good ideas about itineraries (but I might not use it at all):
- TravelDojo: Gives the TOP 10 places to see
- HimalayanTrekking: Ideas on that are (Tibet, Bhutan, Cambodia,Nepal, Inda, Indo-China, Thailand)
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World Photos: AMAZING!

I came across an AMAZING looking site. Its called Panoramio.

It pretty much involves showing some of the MOST AMAZING photos taken in certain areas of the world. It overlays Google Earth, meaning you have a google earth map and as you browse around or zoom in, images related to the area will appear. It also shows the most likes images bigger.

This results in a very interesting effect where you literally SEE the world in photos :) Go check it out.

Cheaper accommodation

My wife and I LOVE travelling. So whenever I stumble upon something interesting I decided to blog it – for future use :)

This site allows you to rent rooms from people rather than staying in expensive hotels. You can search for the place you want to visit and then view availability. I don’t know how safe this is… but at least you have all the person’s details. I will also not advice people to do this by themselves. Anyways. There are many sites like these – I know of coachsurfing – once again – I don’t know how safe (or clean) it will be – but if you have a STRICT budget, then I’m sure it will be ok. Just travel with someone :)

Travel Light with One Bag!

 

There is this site which is dedicated to teaching you how to travel light :) I remember once showing a cousin of mine how to pack only one bag for a weekend away. I have always liked travelling light and just think it makes things easier.

I was once travelling thought Europe and I met this guy who was “back packing” with two HUGE suitcases… I don’t know what he was thinking :) Maybe people like him (and myself) could learn from this site.

Well, I haven’t read through a LOT of this site – so I can’t say its all 100% truth, but it does look like an interesting read.

If you want to read more about travelling light – click here.

Jet lag calculator

Have you ever had Jet Lag? Hehehe, it’s really terrible. I remember returning with my wife from our honeymoon in Thailand. We would fall asleep like 7pm at night… only to wake up again at like 4am (or something silly like that). It was terrible.

I would tell my wife to FORCE herself to stay awake at least another hour, only to fall asleep myself 10 minutes after my little “lecture” :)

Well, British Airways came up with a link to help with Jet Lag. If you want some advice on the best things to do to minimize jet lag, click here.

Kerala - a place I wanna see!

Got a link to this place called Kerala. View it here.
I definately want to work that into our 6 month holiday :)