Yu!

I finally got my own domain after much huu-haa (more on that later). Will be writing up some travel diaries and random thoughts here (or just lamely bombarding and using up your bandwidths with my narcist-ish pictures).

So as the first entry, I decided to post up my all-time-travel-tips. Yoroshiku =D

I've come out with a check list as follow, please let me know if you have better ideas or tips!

Wikitravel
Very very useful - especially for cheapskate who doesn't want to pay for Lonely Planet =p (I got most of my Lonely Planets in secondhand bookstore yo! Tips: look for them early Autumn when most travellers came back from their trip! And Appu has pointed out that we can get e-version of lonely planet for single chapters online!). Wikitravel might even include something like a 1 Day Travel Plan, for eg. One day in Tokyo.

Collins Phrasebook + cd
Not extremely important but you can see this as an excellent opportunity to pick up another language! Nothing feel better when you spoke in a foreign language and found out that people can actually understand you =D (ok and then the trouble arised when people starts to answer you in foreign language and you understand nothing. lol.). It costs around US20 for a set of phrasebook + very useful cd!

STA for airticket
Based on previous experience, STA quotes the best price if you buy online. But I will always check it with other local and asian travel agencies, and also your prefered airlines. Remember to apply for airline membership to earn points - who knows you might travel so much that you can get a first class seat one day woo!

Train ticket
Buy day-pass, x-day-pass etc - you will save a lot if you are travelling the whole time! And, for some place, eg. in Germany, buying the train ticket months earlier will guarantee at least 50% cheaper!!!

Accomodations: Google map, HotelsCombined and TripAdvisor
Google Map is really convenient to find out which accomodation is at which location. However, it does not have the full listing.

One of the most troublesome task is to find out which hotel booking site provides the cheapest rate for a certain hotel. I recently came across a cool Australian-based site, HotelsCombined that search through the hotel listing sites. So when you select certain hotel from the result list, it will further show you another list of the different rates in different hotel listing sites. This makes thing much easier and you can now be sure that you have booked a hotel with its cheapest rate! Also, Googlemap is embeded to the site so for every hotel, you can browse for the map and photo directly. (By the way, I'm planning to stay in Cecil Hotel found from the site, anyone stayed there before? Or any better recommendations?)

Due to that HotelsCombined is still a new site, the reviews database has not been built up. TripAdvisor is where I would go to read up the reviews after decided which hotel to stay in from HotelsCombined. So if you can't sleep in a noisy room, make sure you check the reviews that the hotel is quiet enough!

Google for (images : select large image size)
Map
- Map with Tourist Attractions
- Metro / Train map
I don't really prefer printing Google Map because it looks ugly =p
But, do find out how to get from one place to another (and how much time you need) with Google Map!
You can normally pick up free maps from the infodesk/train station in Australia, Singapore and Japan. But in some countries especially in Europe, it can cost around a dollar or two. So if you are not prepared to spend more, print them out and bring them along! Look out for map in pdf format! In fact, for non-cheapskate, you can find detail maps in Lonely Planet (I have tried other travel guides and still think Lonely Planet is the best one around).

Google for blogs
Read up the travel logs for the month that you are going to travel to find out more about the climate (what to wear and bring) and what is special for that particular season. For eg. Tulip Festival in spring, Seafood featival in winter etc.

Coupons!!!
Remember to pick up free travel brochures from the airport / hotel / train station etc. And look for coupons!! If you are lucky you might even get buy one get one free tickets! And don't forget to check if there's any online offers =D

That's all for now! Might have missed out some points so will always update this entry. And please leave a comment if you can think of any good points. Domo arigato gozaimasu =D