Cool Travel Guide’s Alternative Holiday Mojo Maintenance Programme
Here's my alternative guide to that top ten list of ways to find and keep your holiday mojo: 1. Immerse yourself in your destination at least a month or so before you leave. Read as much as you can about the history, culture, people, politics, cuisine, etc, watch movies and listen to music about the place. That way, when you arrive your knowledge will be greater and your discoveries will be deeper and will consequently stay with you longer.
2. Do plan for your return, but stock the fridge with the food and liquor of the place you’re travelling to. Better yet, buy a local cookbook, some ingredients, and a bottle of the local drink of choice while you’re there, so you can continue to savour your experiences when you return.
3. Don’t arrive back early. Stay away as long as you possibly can and make the most of your trip. Even better, maintain that adventurous spirit and fly in the morning you’re due back and rock straight up to work with your luggage and souvenirs for your boss and colleagues. (Leave a change of clothes at the office on your last day.)
4. Definitely ease back into work gently and answer only important email. Spend the rest of the day emailing friends and family about your vacation or typing up your holiday diary before you forget your experiences.
5. Don’t just keep one reminder of your holiday close to you – create an online shrine of memories and memorabilia, scanning in your ticket stubs, postcards, matchboxes, bottle labels, and coasters, blogging anecdotes and recollections, and posting your photos for everyone to see. Buy souvenirs that you can use – a beautifully designed kitchen item from Scandinavia, clothes from Buenos Aires – and they way the memories will always be with you.
6. Keep your connection to the destination alive by buying CDs, DVDs and books and magazines from the place while you’re there and listening, watching and reading them when you return. If you went to Spain spend have a Pedro Almodovar film festival one weekend. If it was Lebanon, then stick Fayrouz on the stereo and keep her there. Paris or Milan? Send a few hours thumbing through French or Italian Vogue.
7. Don’t just “slip into holiday mode”, stay in holiday mode: take a short walk every evening (just head to the nearby park or around the block), head to a local café every day for an hour, have a candelit meal every night, and spend time reading a book before bed.
8. Do relax every day, but relate your choice of relaxation to your holiday – swim if you went to the Mediterranean, do yoga if you went to India, get Thai massages if you went to Thailand, and so on.
9. Be a tourist in your hometown every week – head to a concert or show once a week, visit a museum or sight on the weekend that you’ve never been to, go on a walking tour or guided visit, and get out of town regularly, even for a day.
10. And when you’re so sick and tired of Fayrouz, you can’t stomach another taco, and you just can’t get into tai chi, apply for leave, start planning your next holiday, and return to #1.
Any other ideas? I'd love to hear your tips.
Travel Insurance Tips - Part I
With all insurers guaranteeing travellers millions in health protection and medical cover, travel insurance is a small product offering a big amount of protection.
But why do policy holders sometimes face problems with completing the insurance process? The biggest cause is often with the customer's lack of familiarity with their specific policy details, so let's now consider twelve tips in two parts to empower readers buying travel insurance.
- Is travel in the USA included? Adding this element of cover to travel insurance has a skyrocketing effect on price. A good tip is to remove this element if it is definitely not needed.
- Are the excess levels competitive? This one usually bites people returning from their trip when they go to make a claim and read the policy document or the first time! To their surprise they find that an honest claim of $100 lost or stolen cash is going to cost them $70 in fees, admin, and insurance excesses. It is wise to find out what these costs will be, and whether they apply per claim or per category claimed.
- Read the small print before purchasing. All the good insurers have a link to a PDF download or separate page detailing the specific policy clauses. Reading this will shed light on precisely what can and can't be claimed, and what information the insurer requires in order to process the claim successfully.
- Declare all known medical conditions. Even apparently insignificant ones! The quote will be calculated based on several factors, age being a major one, and current level of health is another. Failure to declare information which is later considered to be a part of any medical treatments received, will likely void the entire claim. Which is not desirable news after being airlifted by MEDEVAC helicopter for $50,000!
- Keep all receipts! When it comes to recovering costs from a travel insurance policy, receipts really strengthen the claim. Examples include receipts of valuables taken on holiday plus electronic items such as iPods, netbooks, laptops. The same goes for jewellery and expensive clothes; anything bought before or during the trip is worthwhile keeping.
- Stay sober! Many incidents occur under the influence of alcohol and insurance companies are well rehearsed in declining these claims which arise out of personal carelessness. The best way is to avoid the circumstances which precipitate so many unnecessary injuries, thefts, and losses.
How travel writers select hotels
How travel writers decide upon which hotels they are going to include in a guidebook or story is a topic that received some media attention earlier this year after Lonely Planet writer Thomas Kohnstamm revealed in his tell-all book how he'd favorably reviewed a place after having sex with the waitress on a table. How the staff perform - on the job, not after hours - is certainly something that comes into the equation when we're considering hotels for potential inclusion in our books or articles. But a whole host of other factors are also up for scrutiny. Mr and Mrs Smith shared on their blog recently the qualities that define a good boutique hotel for them in What makes a Smith hotel? The 'wow' factor is high on their list, but also other elements, from a sensational setting and imaginative interiors to remarkable views and a 'nothing is too much trouble' attitude. While these attributes appear on the long list of criteria we tick off, the criteria we use varies depending on the project and readers. It can even vary within the same project. For instance, when we write for Thomas Cook or AA, we know their readers are mature travellers (30 years upwards) who don't want to waste money but are happy to spend up on special properties that will provide them with memorable experiences, whether it's a beach resort or luxury B&B. Lonely Planet and Rough Guides, for instance, have a much wider readership: all ages, all budgets. Lonely Planet's accommodation is structured by economics: budget, mid-range and top-end. And while there are always going to be certain constants we'll consider across all price ranges, for example, whether rooms are clean, there are things that only apply to a particular category, and the list will inevitably be shorter the lower the budget. After all, we shouldn't have many expectations of a place that only charges $20 a night. On the other hand, if the rate is $300 a night then our list is going to be long. We're going to spend more time looking at the property, and we're going to be scrutinizing it a whole lot more closely. That's not to say we don't run our fingers over the furniture at all properties. We do. We also look for mould in the bathroom, scuffs on the carpets, peeling wallpaper, cigarette burns on the furniture, and, yes, we'll have a bounce on the mattress. But the four and five star properties will be the ones we'll check in to. A lot of travel writers will do it the other way around - they'll sleep at the budget hotel and do site inspections of the top end places. But the way we see it is if a backpacker has a lousy experience at a hostel they may only be blowing $30. If a traveller has a dreadful time at a luxury property, they might have wasted a whole week's pay, especially if they're stayed a few days. Although it's important to get it right for all hotels, it's far more crucial at the top end than it is at the lower end. Therefore, it's more important that we experience the boutique and luxury properties than it is for us to stay at a youth hostel. And let's face it, you get to a certain age when you can no longer share a dorm with strangers and you simply prefer to travel with certain comforts. We didn't become writers to travel like teenagers. Nor to copulate on restaurant tables either.
The photo? One resort where you're guaranteed a very special experience: the Six Senses Hideaway Hua Hin at Pranburi, Thailand. We stayed in the private pool bungalow, pictured, last October while researching spas, hotels and restaurants for the DK Eyewitness Thailand guide.
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