Travel Turtle

Places to Travel in 2009

I was very excited to see that Concierge.com’s It List for 2009 included Central Philippines. It’s truly a beautiful place that is really accommodating to foreign travelers.

Check out their list for some great ideas of where to travel next year!

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5 Ways to Save Money While Traveling

A simple way to be able to travel more, is to be able to keep travel costs down. Don’t you agree? The following tips are the ways I try to keep my own travel costs down, so that I can afford to travel more frequently. Or at least make sure that I don’t go broke while on the trip.

1. Travel off season! This seems so obvious, but actually do it! Hotels are cheaper, lines are non-existant. Not only do you save money, but you save frustration. One New Year’s Eve I headed for Boston and was able to stay at a really nice hotel for about half of what it would normally cost! And there was still a ton to do in the Boston area and I didn’t have to worry about crowds.

2. Watch where you eat! The one area you have to budget for while traveling is food. Everything else is pretty expendable. Since you have to eat, make smart food decisions. Stay at a hotel that includes breakfast, and actually eat breakfast there. Buy fruit, granola bars and sandwich supplies at a local grocery store and take these snacks with you while you explore. If you must dine at a well-known restuarant, see if they serve lunch. Most restaurants offer the same selections at lunch, for a more affordable price.

3. Limit Souvenirs! Do you really need any more magnets and shot glasses anyway? Most souvenir options are nothing more than K-mart goods with a commemorative sticker on it. You can make those yourselves!  Do something more memorable, keep a journal, sketch images, take pictures, collect ephemera and make a trip scrapbook when you get back.

4. Find out the customs! Take an hour or two and read up on the place your traveling to. What can you learn by doing this? You can find out when the local museums offer free admission, if there are free concerts in the park, whether or not coffee shops charge you more when you sit at a table, and if it is neccessary to tip at restaurants.

5. Pack light! With airlines charging more for baggage than they have in the past, now’s a great time to learn the great art of packing light. If you limit your luggage to one carry on (and you can limit your luggage to one carry on even if you bring your laptop, digital slr camera, clothes and will be away for 3 weeks - ask me how I did it!), you won’t have to pay fees, and you won’t have space to fill your bag with souvenirs. So, when you really, really want that $40 sombrero, your luggage space will make it impossible for that to happen.

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Geography Awareness Week

This week is Geography Awareness Week. I love geography. I used to have a large world map on my bedroom door with all of the world’s flags on it. (I also love flags.) Emma blogged about flight map posters by Mario Freese today which I think are a great way to begin Geography Awareness Week. This would have also been a great decorative item for my bedroom.

I love the brighter spots, representing the connection hubs of the most popular destinations. What I love even more are the faint lines and dots. The places that don’t get too much traffic, where you have to get on a six-seater plane, or land on something that only slightly resembles a runway and exit the “airport” to the large parking lot holding 2 cars, a cow, and unchained bikes. When I look at the image above, those are the spots that are calling for me to visit.

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How to Travel Creatively

“London Times” by arete

Want to bring a little bit of arts and crafts culture into your next trip? Here are various ways you can insert creativity into your travels.

• Most Required: A notebook. People seem to love the moleskine, and I think they’re great. Take notes of places you want to go beforehand, keep notes of what you did during, and reflect on the way home.
• Most Obvious: Go to a museum. If you’re up to it, do some research before you go and read up on the architecture of the building, or of a couple of paintings and exhibits. This gives you a destination once you arrive. Stand close to the paintings. Note the brushstrokes.
• Most Deliberate: Bring your knitting, sketchbook, craftbook. Sit at a park or on a train and do some work as you watch this new world go by.
• Most Introspective: Take pictures. Get really close. Get upside down. Take tons of them. Take a picture straight down. Take a picture straight up. Find patterns. Get abstract. Have photography contests with you travelers.
• Most Difficult: Dress like a local. What’s their style? Take the first evening to shop or assemble the outfit. Take the second day to “fit in”.
• Most Educational: Take a class. Are there any one-day workshops available? Sign up and go.
• Most Collective: Pick up business cards, flyers and random pieces of paper and scrap your trip as you go.
• Most Friendly: Go to an outdoor market or a craft fair. Talk to the vendors. Ask them about the area. Buy something from them.

Are there any others you can think of?

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Remote Destinations via MSN.com

MSN.com has rounded up 8 of the world’s most remote destinations, or the anti-social person’s vacation to-do list. They have it as a slide-show, but for convenience sake, I’m just going to post them individually and link to the msn post if you want to read more. (Image of map from CIA Factbook)

1. Tristan da Cunha, South Atlantic: I’ve never even heard of this place.
2. St. Kilda, UK: I have a thing for remote islands off the coast of the UK and I’ve been a bit close to this one when I went to Scotland several years ago.
3. Timbuktu, Mali: This is one place I’ve always wanted to go.
4. Easter Island, Chile: Another place on my wish list, I am infatuated with those statues.
5. Kimberley Region, Australia: I’ve read that Nicole Kidman’s next movie is supposed to reinvigorate travel to the country.
6. Antarctica: I seriously look up different companies that sail to Antarctica several times a year. I would say this is one of my top 5 dream experiences.
7. I’m skipping this one because the story associated with it has since proved false.
8. Altai Mountains, Outer Mongolia: Again, Mongolia is on that list of top 5 dream destinations. I’ve never heard of the Altai Mountains specifically though.

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Inside a Journal

I have a lot of journals, but for now I’m going to post one I made between late 2001 and early 2002. It was inspired by the journals of Dan Eldon. Before I write about my journal, I have to write a little about Dan Eldon.

There’s a lot to say and I will try to keep it brief. Get the book The Journey is the Destination to learn more or check out the website, but please do. Dan Eldon started keeping journals at a young age. He lived and travelled all over the world, 46 countries to be exact. He lived in Nairobi, Kenya most of his childhood and started various charities to help the locals. His journals matured as he did. He used various methods in them; photography, collage, paint, words. They seem to really capture the world around him in a very abrupt and honest way. He eventually became a photographer for the Associated Press and was stoned to death, along with three other journalists, in Somalia in 1993. He was 22 years old. He packed a lot of life into his own life and his story, images, and legacy are inspiring.

The journal I kept between 2001 and 2002 was a direct reaction to Dan Eldon’s journals. It’s probably the most consistent journal I’ve ever kept for that long of a period. I wrote a lot of quotes in it some were serious, some were Jack Handy. Here are some pictures from my favorite pages:

^^ I actually made this in 1999 during my Italian class in my notebook. I always misplaced it, so I decided to just stick it in this journal for safe keeping.

^^This is a quote by Julie Alger titled Lesson 1:

At least I’ve learned this much:

Life doesn’t have to be

all poetry and roses. Life

can be bus rides, gritty sidewalks,

electric bills, dishwashing,

chapped lips, dully stubby pencils

with the erasers chewed off,

cheap radios playing too loud,

the rank smell of stale coffee

(and then I stopped writing it… but the poem actually continues)

yet still glow

with the inner fire of an opal,

still taste like honey

^^I made the heart painting in 2000 and, like the drawings, misplaced it often so I decided to just keep it in this book.

^^This page was a lot of fun. I traced my hand five times in this catalog we had at work and cut each out. I then stapled it to the page in various angles, so the hands are almost like a book. On each page I wrote something different. Usually just a quick line, maybe a quote from a movie. During this time I worked at a travel agency. Although I love to travel, I hate to fly. I’ve almost always hated to fly, but after September 11th, the fear was much stronger. I had a group of regular customers from the middle east. One came in to book his holiday travel and through our conversation he learned that I was scared to fly. He told me “don’t worry. they checked all of my friends and I. They went through all of our bags.” I wrote down what he said on a post-it, and it’s on one of the hands I cut out.

^^There’s not much to say about this. It was just a random page with a list of my favorite things.

So, that’s that. What do you think?

I will probably share more journals later. My travel journals are a lot of fun. Do you have your journals available online? What’s the link? Who inspires you?

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It’s all about Trains

I was going through some of my pictures, and I realize I like trains. The more I thought about it, the more I realized… I really like trains.

My first train ride was in 5th grade when I joined my class on a trip from Miami to Washington DC. I travelled on several european trains during high school. I tried to get a job with Vodkatrain (a train that goes from Moscow/St. Petersburg to Beijing and beyond, how awesome is that?)

For my honeymoon, my husband and I railed through Scotland and England. In England, I noticed some really cute details at the train station. Here’s an example of one:

If anyone knows where this is exactly, please let me know.

In Scotland, we went cross the highlands to eventually get to the Isle of Skye. One of our stops was in this remote area:

I jumped off the train to take this picture, and some picture of sheep, and all of the sudden had an anxiety attack. If the train left me there, it would take a LONG time for me to find another human. There were no buildings in either direction as far as I could see. It’s definitely a beautiful country, but not a part I wanted to be stranded at during my honeymoon. So, I jumped back onto the train.

Last year I went to China. There were several things I noticed on our train trip to Datong from Beijing. Mainly, there are literally people everywhere. The smallest of Chinese cities are still larger than my closest city. The countryside, however, is also filled with people. It’s not the concrete jungle that the cities are, but every time I looked out the window, I saw people in the fields.

We stopped for a few minutes at this stop:

Here’s where I noticed something I’ve never seen before… people crossing railroad tracks. That is so illegal everywhere I’ve been, so I had to take some pictures. (Please note the third picture, there are people crossing as a train is heading into the station)

Finally, we have the most recent train pictures. This is from the Bologna train station on the way to Florence. I previously blogged about this particular train ride here. I was pretty annoyed by the time we got back to the station and just wanted to get home. To try to take my mind off of it all, I attempted to take pictures. I wasn’t really inspired, so I wrote a few haikus. Here are the pictures, followed by my haikus.

1. Bologna Station/Wondering if the locals/Will take our money
2. In six minutes the/train arrives to take us back/to Firenze CIAO
3. The dog in my view/is a puppy & just peed/& now scratches itself

So, that sums up some of my train experiences to date. I really want to take a trip across the Canadian Rockies, take the trans-siberian/trans-mongolian railway, and go on a trip a la Darjeeling Limited in India. What else am I missing?

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