Travel Tips

Traveling

I took the longest vacation of my life and spent the last two months traveling in south east Asia. South Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, and China. It was an amazing trip filled with wonderful experiences and memories. It was good to get away from it all and recharge the mental batteries. I came back overflowing with project ideas and hope for the future.

As I do with all projects, trips, relationships, etc.. After the trip I do a post-mortem to reflect on what worked and what didn’t. The unexamined life is not worth living. - Plato

A project post-mortem is a process, usually performed at the conclusion of a project, to determine and analyze elements of the project that were successful or unsuccessful… Project post-mortems are intended to inform process improvements which mitigate future risks and to promote iterative best practices.

• Google maps lets you create custom maps where you can put pins in location that you want to remember. These custom maps can be shared between people. This was great for when we needed to find out hotel.

• Google maps lets you make offline and searchable maps. When google maps is not available (such as in China) OSMAND is a good alternative.

• I wish I would have packed more disposable clothing. While in south east Asia getting clothing tailor made was very reasonably priced and I picked up a bunch of clothing. If I had packed more disposable clothing I could have toss my old clothing as I replaced it along the trip.

• Offline music with Spotify and podcasts where great to get thought long bus rides.

• Everywhere used TripAdvisor. We where offered discounts on our services if we gave favorable reviews TripAdvisor. This made the reviews for most places on TripAdvisor useless. Its best to talk to the hotel staff and other guests to get good suggestions.

• Google keep was good for keeping simple notes while on the trip. I brought a pen and paper note book with me but I didn’t touch it once.

• We used Blurb (referral link) to make a photo book after the trip. These are some types of photos that I wish we would have taken more of during the trip, it would have made it easier to fill in the book.
  • Photos of plane, bus, boat tickets or better yet photos in front of the vehicle if the destination was visible on the vehicle.
  • City welcome signs that show where we were. Establishing photos for the different sections of the photo book.
  • Portrait photos with our backs against walls. When he had these photos they where good to aline a page with book ends using our backs.

• A diary of the trip helps keep the memories of the trip in order. Every two or three days we would sit down and go thought all the things that we have done and seen since the last diary day.

• Water. Never leave the hotel without water. If you run out of water your new goal is to get more water. Drink more water.

• Hotels can be noise, earplugs were a very important.

• Most places have the raver version of rehydration salts, very few places had the sugar and glucose free versions. Sports drinks are not a substitute. We brought our own but ran out half way thought the trip and ended up having to go with the sugary version of EmergenC

• Water proof cell phone case would have been useful, or at lest one of the water proof bags for my cell phone.

• Don’t wear new shoes on a trip. I got a pair of trail runners just before I left for the trip. I wore them for a few days before and they seemed to fit fine. After a two weeks of walking in them they bruised, cut up and damaged my feet. The rest of the trip after I tossed the shoes and switched to flip flops, I had to baby my feet to ensure that they didn’t get any more damaged.

• Don’t expect any place to accept visa in Asia with the exception of your hotel.

• Bring a tiny flashlight or headlamp. It came in handy several times.