Travel tips
Handy travelling websites
Travelling is easy
1st time around the world
Guide books
Budget
air tickets
Money
Email, telephone, post
Clothes
Handy stuff to bring
Language
Health
Safety: how to get robbed (or not)
Your own site
Makinggoodphotos
Sendingphotoshome
Reducing photo resolution and size for internet
Bargaining
Websites of other bikers
my favourite countries
Handy travelling websites
General travelling sites:
www.wereldreis.startpagina.nl
www.joho.nl
www.problemenopreis.nl
Health:
www.lcr.nl
www.gezondopreis.nl
http://wwwn.cdc.gov/travel/default.aspx (for diseases and medicine per country)
www.cvz.nl (farmacotherapeutisch kompas)
www.merckmanual.nl (medisch handboek)
Visa and offical travel advice:
www.visum.nl
www.minbuza.nl/nl/reizenlanden/reisadviezen
Biking:
www.fietsvakantie-wereld.startpagina.nl
www.wereldfietser.nl
www.vakantiefietser.nl
On-line booking of hostals:
www.hostelworld.com
www.hostels.com
Multilingual Dictionaries:
www.vertalen.nu
www.logos.it/dictionary/owa/sp?lg=EN
iate.europa.eu/iatediff
HTML help:
www.handleidinghtml.nl
www.w3schools.com/html
Currency converter:
www.xe.com/ucc
Travelling is easy
When I went to my GP to get some travelling medicine, he found out about my travelling plans and got realy excited.
He told me a little bit sadly: "I have always wanted to do it, but I have never done it".
I responded with a big smile: "I have never wanted to do it, but I am doing it".
Only decades ago, travelling around the world was quite an enterprise and not for the fain-hearted,
but nowadays it has become very accessible for almost anyone:
- it's cheap: you don't need much money since most non-western countries are very cheap.
- it's easy:
- lots of people speak english.
- there is lots of accomodation, restaurants and tour agencies to arrange day trips.
- travelling guide books describe anything everywhere: what to see, where to sleep, etc.
- it's close to home:
- internet and telephone are everywhere.
- with digital camera's and your own site everyone can track your adventures.
- you can post souvenirs to home, and home can post you stuff you need.
- it's safe:
- there is ATM's everywhere.
- there are special insurances for around the world travelling.
- the chance of being robbed is neglectable if you don't act stupid.
- it's healthy: - both for the mind and body, in stead of sitting in an air-co office all week.
- hygiene has improved around the world, and if you might get sick there's good medicine and hospitals almost everywhere.
So anyone can do it if he wants to, there is people with kids and 60-year old people travelling around the world. If you realy want to there are no excuses to keep on postponing your dream, so don't end up like my GP.
All you need is the guts to pause your current boring life for a while.
Nevertheless, beneath I mention some travelling tips from my own experience.
1st time around the world
1st time around the world, just like me? Like in all other matters in life, all you need to realise is that you are not the first one, so learn from others:
- Start with reading some special books like "First time around the world" (from Rough guide) or for the Dutchies "Handboek wereldreiziger".
- Some shops are specialised in travelling and working abroad, like the JoHo shops in NL (www.joho.nl).
- On the internet are loads of sites and forums, for instance there is a special Dutch club for bicyclists around the world: www.wereldfietser.nl. - Invest in making or having made your own site .
- The best way to travel is alone. It is not the easiest way but you'll meet more people, both travellers and locals, you're more flexible, etc. Unfortunately lots of people don't feel comfortable travelling alone and don't take the effort to learn it.
- Bycicling is one of the best ways to travel but don't be a freak: skip the uninteresting parts by throwing your bike on a bus or plane or selling/parking your bike and go backpacking. If you doubt about biking, try it in New Zealand by renting one.
- It will be hard to take in account all seasons in all countries on a long trip and you don't really have to because the rainy seasons are often no problem; only snow makes areas unaccessible.
- Plan your trip from easy (and boring) to difficult (and challenging and interesting):
- start of easily in an Englsh-spoken 1st world country like most of Europe, Canada, USA, Australie, New Zealand; - then make your way to a 2nd world country like Mexico, Marokko, Malaysia.
- then make your way to third world countries (Indonesia, Guatemala, Peru, Bolivia, etc).
- and leave the best and most difficult for the last: India, Africa, Middle East.
- For Dutchies: you have to keep on paying your health insurance, so buy a travel insurance at the same company for a cheap combination.
- Sign a statement that someone at home is officially stated to arrange all your (official) affairs.
- put a digital copies of all your documents (passport, driving license, flight tickets, adresses, phone numbers etc ) in your email or a secured part of your site.
- Buy a ticket around the world (only for one year).
- Plan your South American flights well because they are very expensive to buy locally.
- It's not worth including flights in Asia because they are cheaper to buy locally.
Guide books
Anything you need to know is in the travelling guide books, such as the Rough Guide, Footprint or everpresent (and not so good) Lonely Planet. They will take away most of the adventure by telling you were to go, what to see, where to eat, which bus to take. Now available are also special preparation books, which give an overview of all the things to see and do and other issues of preparation.
Budget
If you live cheap (accomodation and food) and do a fun day trip once in a while, you will probably spent about over a 1000 US$ a month in the Americas and Austr/NZ, and 500 US$ in Asia. It's hard to make a simple estimate: Canada and America are expensive but there is not much to do and camping is very cheap so you only spent money on food; Australia is more expensive than New Zealand but in New Zealand there is a lot more to see and do (and thus spent).
In Latin-America: Brazil and Cuba are expensive (more than 1000 US$), Argentina and Chili and Mexico are average (1000$), and Bolivia and Peru are very cheap (just over 500 US$).
In Asia: Japan is very expensive but most of Asia is cheap, in Indonesia or India you can live easily for just 15 US$ a day.
Africa is relatively expensive (over a 1000 US$ a month) because there are not many independent travellers and safari's are very expensive; cheaper is an organised holiday by overland truck.
Check the guide books for the budget estimations per country.
Air tickets
Booking in advance saves money but also takes away freedom and flexibility. Flying to and especially from South-America and Africa is relatively expensive so booking in advance pays off, whereas flying within Asia is extremely cheap so book it last minute through the internet, e.g. www.airasia.com.
For a trip around the world you will need a lot of flights which you can combine in a single Round The World (RTW) ticket, customised to include several intercontinental flights and several intracontinental flights. Most RTW-Tickets are valid for a year, the route is fixed but you can change the dates, e.g. www.worldticketcenter.nl .
Money
Your bank card will works in almost any ATM around the world.
You only need your credit card to book a flight on the internet or maybe for emergencies or to buy very expensive things.
Only bring a few Traveller Cheques and some cash US$ for emergencies.
It is very handy to have two different bank accounts and cards, if one doesn´t work or is stolen and gets blocked.
Arrange your banking accounts with internet banking.
Email, telephone, post
email: In poor countries most people can not afford a computer or phone so on almost every street there is a internet cafe (0.1 to 1 USD per hour).
phone: there are lots of phone stores for international calls (about 1 USD per minute), but often you can buy special phone cards for very cheap international calls (for instance 2$ per hour from Australia).
post: You can send your luggage and souvenirs and photo CD's in a box home by post (about 10 US$ per kg by air or a few US$ by sea if available).
Clothes
If there's backpackers, there's cheap laundry services or DIY washing machines and dryers.
Buy fast drying sports cloths, underwear, socks, etc, so you can wash ´m every (other) day while showering and put ´m dry on the next morning, and once a while you can bring them to the everpresent laundries. To travel light, buy clothes you can wear on top of eachother, not instead of eachother, so that in the coldest situation you can wear all your clothes together.
Handy stuff to bring
Things you should have brought from home:
- USB stick and memory card reader
- speakers for your MP3 player
- general antibiotics
- sleeping sheet (lakenzak)
Things you will probably sent home quickly:
- Levi's
- big coats
- hiking boots
- mosquito nets
- camping stove
- water purifying filter
Language
Lots of people around the world speak (a little bit of) English, and unless you plan to hang around in one country a longh time, it's not worthe learning another language. The only exception is Spanish, which you can (and often have to) use all over Latin-America. Furhtermore, it's worth improving your English if you want to buy books on the road or hang around with many tourists. Nevertheless, it is always worth and very appreciated by locals if you have learned in each local language to say a few words like "hello", "thank you", "sorry", "yes" and "no".
Health
Have all your vacinations before you go, bring a medical kit with extra medicine and your malaria profylaxe.
Generally, hygiene has improved all around the world, and if you might get sick there's good medicine and hospitals almost everywhere.
Do take care with drinking water, buy bottles if you doubt.
Safety
see also: www.joho.nl/ex/veiligheid
How not to get robbed
Most important is to look assertive, use your commen sense, and trust your instinct to tell you who is thrustworthy and who not (no joke). Ask around for dangerous places and common tricks.
In a coach, the big backpack goes underneath in the big storage room or on the roof, and you take a small backpack with all valuables inside, and while sleeping between your legs.
In dangerous cities, don´t walk the streets with any back pack, but take a taxi when arriving to your hostal and leave your luggage there. If you go walk the streets, leave everything you can´t put in your pockets in the hostal, only take a wallet with little money and a small camera and a city map sheet. If you sleep in a private room, hide the money belt, if you sleep in a dormitory, take your money belt with you. Be carefull using ATM's and spread your money overd different acounts and put most of it on inaccesible savings accounts.
How to get robbed
Almost everyone I met who was robbed did something stupid or uncarefull, just read my own stories of the Gypsy in Chili, the corrupt police in Brazil, or the money changer at the border of China and Nepal.
Most likely your money or camera gets stolen while you where not attending it, eg. looking in the other direction in the busy bus station, sleeping in the night bus, or from you hostal room when you were out.
Also very common is to pickpocket you while distracting your attention by bumping into to you, getting crushed in the metro, or spitting or spraying or semaring something on your shirt and wiping it off (even itching powder), or slashing: cutting your backpack when you are distracted or when it's stored in the bus.
Often people make up very complex stories to convince you to lend them money or to give money to a good cause, or try to sell you a deal to good to be true (fake jewelry).
Very good at tricks are the money changers at the border with fast fingers, fake notes, or even preprogrammed calculators.
At ATM's you also have to be careful that you don't get robbed after having received the cash, or that somebody has puts some chewing gum in the ATM card slit so your card gets stuck and they will make a withdrawal while you have left the ATM for help.
Another common trick is to drug you: the nice guy or girl in the disco who offers secretly drugged food or drinks or slips a tranquilizing drug in your drink, and the most sophisticated I have heard: a guy asking the way while rubbing against your hand with a street map soaked with a drug that makes you very cooperative.
Less commmon are the violent robbings such as two guys sandwiching you while the third jumps on your back and threatens to slit your throat, a couple of guys with a gun, etc.
Your own site
Advantages of your digital diary:
- you keep a diary for yourself, otherwise you forget most of it.
- your family and friends and other travellers know what you are doing, it's fun and safe.
- you can't tell a whole year of stories when you come home.
- you can put digital copies of all your documents in an email or on a secured part of your site.
You can keep a digital diary and email the stories and pictures once a while to a list of friends, but I find a site handier and more fun.
There is several possibilities for you own site:
1. You do everything yourself, it's easier than you think, especially with a little help.
2. You have some one else build and maintain the structure of the site. You only insert text and photos, anyone can do this.
3. You email text and pictures to some one puts it all on your site.
4. You have a standard (and often free) site where you can upload the pictures (and sometimes also stories) to. Disadvantage is that these sites often need a lot of clicking and that photo's and text are often separate.
Making good photos
The big advantage of a digital camera is not only that it is cheaper and handier, it is also very easy to experiment wth making photo, because you can immediately see the result and you can throw away all the bad ones.
Light and focus:
settings: Read the manual of your camera, it often contains all the technical basics about the settings of light, focus and colors.
sun: - Preferably make a picture with the sun in your back contrast for more contrast.
- Preferably make pictures early morning or late afternoon when the sunlight is softer.
flash: One of the biggest advantage of digital camera's is that they hardly need any flash. Use the flash:
- during daytime for a dark foreground object against a light background,
- during nighttime when it is realy to dark and the object is between 2 and 10 meters.
focus: Unfortunately most compact digital cameras can not adjust the depth of focus, which you can use to:
- attract the attention to the in-focus object and put the out-of-focus object into the background.
- make an moving object clear against a blurry background to sugget speed.
Composition:
1. Less is often more, leave things out in stead of trying to press it all into one picture. Avoid disturbing details like cables, poles, etc.
2. Don't put your object in the middle of the picture, it's very boring.
3. Create depth in your picture by having objects both in the foreground and in the background and preferably also inbetween.
4. Put the horizon at abouth 1/3 from above, so about 1/3 sky.
5. Persons: don't let them pose, make a spontaneous picture by saying "cheese" before or after you take the picture.
6 Persons in landscape: shoot over the shoulder in stead of alwasy in the face.
7. landscape/building: a person of animal in the picture makes it more interesting and gives it a scale.
8. Building: not frontal but at an angle.
9. Portrait: shoot from the shadow side at an angle (not en face or en profil).
10. Make movement: walk or bicycle out of the picture.
11. Make a line: a road, a row of trees.
12. Make rithm: a repeating element like trees of pilars or mountains.
13. Try portrait format (in stead of landscape) gives another effect and sometimes more depth.
14. Photogrpahy is like all other arts: once you master the rules, you break them to create something interesting.
Sending photos home
If you make hundreds of digital photos it is to much data to sent by internet, so you must transfer the photos to a cd and sent the cd home by post. Make a copy cd to send after the first cd has arrived to make sure you don't loose your pictures.
You could bring your memory card to a photoshop, and they will ask a lot of money to put it on a cd. Some internetcafes do it as well, faster and cheapier.
You can do it yourself easy. Don't use a cable between your camera and the computer because this is very slow, instead stick the memory card in a memory card reader (often available in internetcafe's).
t's and wait a long time until they are download.
Reducing photo resolution and size for internet
There is a difference between the resolution, the size, and the file size of a picture:
- The resolution of a picture is expressed in DPI (Dots Per Inch), this is the number of pixels per inch. A higher resolution means more graphical information in the picture, you can blow up the picture without seeing single pixels.
- The size of a picture is simply the height and width of a picture, in cm's of inches.
- The file size of a picture is the MB (Megabytes) of the data file in which the picture is stored. The higher the resolution and the higher the size of a picture, the higher the file size of a picture. The file size depends on the compression method (mostly JPEG), a phot woth more details and colors cannot be compressed so much and has therefor a larger file size.
AN example: a 4 MegaPixel camera has a total nr of pixels of 4 million. If you would print this onto a 2 by 2 inch photo, the photo has a resolution of 1000 dpi. The filesize is about (depending on the JPEG compression) 2 MB.
Why reducing the resolution for the internet?
Most digital cameras have a high resolution and therefor the file size of the picture is also very large.
You only need this high resolution if you want to print a photo (especially posterprint), because a print also has a high resolution.
You don't need a high resolution picture to look at the picture on a computer monitor, because they have very low resolution of 72 DPI.
The high resolution requiers a high file size and this makes everything very slow, the computer and especially the internet.
Therefor you must reduce the resolution of the photos for the internet.
Why reducing the size for the internet?
Normally a photo is about half the size of your computer screen (.cm x .cm).
If you want to show the pictures samller on your site (for example 5 x 6.7 cm), you have to resize the width and height.
How to reduce the size and resolution for the internet?
The easiest way is to use Microsoft Word instead of complicated graphic programs which cannot handle lots of photos at once.
0. Open a blanc document and save it as pictures.doc for example.
1. INSERT / PICTURE / FROM FILE
select all your pictures at once in one directory
2. you can edit each picture if you want:
rightclick picture / SHOW PICTURE TOOLBAR
- use the rotate button to rotate (you can also do this with multiple pictures at once in the explorer) - use the crop button to cut away edges
- use the contrast and brightness button to adjust the colors
3. doubleclick each picture and choose the tab SIZE to adjust either the height or the width exactly in cm; the height/width ratio does not change 4. save the pictures.doc file
5. save it again as a web-page filtered file
a pictures.htm file is made with only text without pictures, you don't need this file.
a directory is made containing separate files for each new (resized and low resolution) picture, they are named image001.jpg, image002.jpg etc.
if you want to rename these new picture files, use copies because they are all linked with the html file.
If you don't have Windows XP with Word 2003, there are extra step involved: you might have to insert each picture one by one, and you might not be able to make a filtered web-page which generates not only the reduced image files (uneven numbers) but also the orignal ones (even numbers).
If you burn all your pictures on cd but want to save them on your computer as well to look at them, you can save a lot of space (and increase speed) by reducing all your photo's to 72 dpi (no resizing): a 2MB picture reduced to 72 dpi only about 100kB, still full screen for your computer. You can easily do this by using with the above pictures.doc file between step 1 and 2, but start of with a larger blank document (about landscape format withour margins).
Bargaining
Whenever bargaining is possible, it will be used against you: almost everone will trie to rip off the rich gringo, and I don´t blame ´m if they are poor. Worst are the indonesians, take care! Important is to know beforehand what´s a good price by asking around, by looking in your guide book, or by first bargaining until you have crossed the limit and walk away and make the deal with someone else. Use all your tricks (look uninterestedly, look at other vendors, walk away, ...) because they will too. Never jump in a taxi before asking the price.
About travelling
travellers
+ and - of travelling
Travellers
Tourists know where they going but don't know where they have been;
Travellers don't know where they are going but know where they have been.
It seems to me as if there are tree major categories of travellers:
1. Holiday travellers, with loads of money and little time.
2. The majority of world travellers has loads of time and saved just enough money for some months to make it to their next working permit, often begin 20´s, during or after their studies or first jobs, often not realy happy with their home situationand thus not eager to go back home and start a new life.
3. A minority of world travellers has loads of time and saved just enough money for one or more years to make it around the world, often begin 30's, in between jobs, happy with their home situation but curious to see more of the world, and then go back home and pick up the good old life again. That´s me, except for the saving part.
+ and - of travelling
+ You feel yourself very rich and priviliged when you see all the poverity around you.
- You are ashamed of being comparitively filthy rich and are ashamed of your silly little problems and are ashamed of your country and other rich countries sustaining the poverty by international politics and economics.
+ You meet a lot of interesting and weird people, because boring weazels are not likely to travel.
- Most contacts are short and superficial.
+ Your autobiografic memory makes time seem to go faster when your are getting older and have fewer new experiences in your routine everyday life, years pass by quicker and quicker. The easiest way to slow down time is travelling because of all the new experiences, see also ¨Waarom het leven sneller gaat als je ouder wordt; Douwe Draaisma¨.
- Your memory is overflowed, if you don´t make pictures or notes you wouldn´t know what you did last month.
+ You learn new languages and practice the old ones.
- Talking Spanish all day is tiring and it´s hard to express the finesses.
+ You´re not lying in your bed at night solving problems at work.
- You´re lying in your bed at night figuring out where the next bed will be.
+ You don´t have to clean your house.
- You have to pack and unpack every day.
+ It´s a lot more fun.
- Euh...
Websites of other bikers I met on the road
I didn`t meet a lot of long distance bikers, most of them are Dutch,German,French or Swiss.
Here are a few loonies:
www.abenteuer-fritz.de
In 2004 in California I met Fritz Kratzeisen from Germany, biking around the world from 2003 to 2008 at the age of 65 ! A very very impressive man and journey.
www.geocities.com/leon_maurice_and_tyrone
Also 2004 in California, I met Leon Steber from Australia, biking for half a year through North America, his website has very good pictures.
www.travelbybike.ismijnpassie.nl
In 2006 in Japan at the top of a 3000 m high mountain, I met Rob Helmink and Lucie Immink from the Netherlands, biking for 2 years from Europe to Asia and New Zealand.
www.mundial.ch.vu
In 2007 in Vietnam, I met Esther & Daniel Schluessel-Neuenschwander from Switzerland, who were already biking all over the world for over two and a half years.
my favourite countries
These have been my favourite destinations:
1. Bolivia (culture, nature, activities)
2. the rest of the Andes: Peru, Chili, Argentina (nature, activities)
3. Indonesia (culture, nature, activities)
4. India (culture)
5. Mexico, Guatemala (culture, nature)
6. Japan (culture)
7. New Zealand (nature, activities)
8. Laos, Vietnam (culture, nature, activities)
9. Tibet (nature, culture)
And these have been my least favourite destinations:
1. Australia: very nice people, good for surfers but for the rest only few places of interest in a huge country
2. China (ex Tibet): very big but very little left of the longest and biggest culture on earth
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