Archives May 2013

There’s no point abandoning your cubicle like our famous adventurists  if you’re just going to spend your time in hotels. It’s great staying in five-star accommodation, sinking into king-size beds and having staff bring you food at silly hours, but it’s expensive and unsustainable – especially if you have a family.

Going abroad should be about exploring– being outside, absorbing the atmosphere and experiencing new things. Nothing allows you to get to the heart of nature and local culture than an active camping holiday. What’s more, it’s much friendlier on the old wallet!

Modern camping provides cheap holidays
Camping has changed. Once associated with muddy sleeping bags, tents that rattled in the wind and meals out of cold tins, now it’s about modern tents and lodges, beautifully maintained parks and great locations. There’s a growing appetite for more authentic holiday experiences, and active camping holidays tick all the right boxes.
One of the best advantages about camping, of course, is the price. Whether you’re traveling as a couple or as a family, at home or abroad, campsites are by far and away cheaper than hotels and offer perfect solutions whatever the budget.

Top campsites with great facilities
Campsites have become quite sophisticated, too. They have facilities for everyone, including children, and act as a great base if you’re into walking, cycling, fishing – or any other activity you can think of.
If you’ve got an image of a lonely tent in an overgrown field, wipe it from your mind. These days you can get large tents, with social areas at the front – which is great if you’re traveling in a group. Sites now also have small wooden lodges, which are filled with all the self-catering equipment you’ll need, and larger lodges have kitchens and decking at the front for barbecues – making it cheaper to eat if your food budget can’t stretch to restaurant meals every night of the week.

Campsites in Europe even provide facilities like swimming pools, kids’ entertainment and sports clubs, which is great if you’ve got a family. Some of the accommodation and campsites from providers such as Eurocamp.co.uk for example give you an idea of how traditional camping has evolved.

Flexible holidays
Whether it’s a tent, a camper van, a caravan or a wooden lodge, they give you a place to eat and sleep, leaving you to do what you want to do, when you want to do it. Arrive whenever you want, stay for as long as you like and enjoy the peace and quiet away from the hustle and bustle of city life. It’s the sort of flexibility and affordability that you just don’t get from package holidays.

One of the number one reasons we hear that people don’t abandon their cubicles and travel is a lack of money. One tip for managing your travel funds is to compare bank accounts. There are a lot of metrics for this, but essentially you want an account that you can access from around the globe, and one that has the added features you want, like checking and credit, or maybe just debit. Our tip? — Look into a basic bank account, for ease and less confusion down the line. Get a good account that will work for you, and that you can access from online while abroad.

Yeah, money is important. And that means (sadly) that you may have to pay your dues and work for a while before you hit the open road. Many of the long-term travelers we’ve met on the road are older. They worked hard for the right to bugger off the grid. On the other hand, many of them were self employed and able to work from hostels and cafes along the route. Either way, one thing all travelers with long-term aspirations have is great money management skills.

Second, know your financial situation. Don’t run from your obligations. You’re abandoning the cube, not society as a whole. If you run from debt they’ll eventually find you. So, get your financial situation to a manageable, happy place where you have enough to get by and have debit eliminated. Many travelers work from the road as writers, web developers, critics, photographers, etc. Find a skill that will pay and keep your bank account replenishing by putting in a few hours here and there for the cause.

Third, with a bit of work you can travel for far cheaper than you ever imagined. Instead of booking hotels, look for hostels and join HostelWorld for discounts and deals. CouchSurfing is another way to save money as you travel. Going by land is cheaper than by air in some countries (Asia, Africa, S. America especially). One thing that gets expensive is being in a rush, you are stuck buying whatever you need to have to get your vacation done in a time frame. That’s not relaxing. Take your time (just quit, ATC, baby!) and really travel on a dime. With solid, financial planning behind you and frugal living ahead it can be done.

Best of luck as you look for traveling cash and organize your financial portfolio so you can focus on enjoying this adventure called life.

If you are a regular traveler, you know that it is almost unavoidable to be stuck in an airport. Either you have a long layover or your flight has been delayed, and worse, it gets cancelled. No matter what the reason is, it is quite a relief that by having a smartphone or tablet PC available, you will be able to be entertained while waiting by visiting some of the most addictive websites. We have laid down some examples. Read on!

Have Fun

If you are inclined to having fun while killing time at the airport, there are two sites that you should not miss. First, there is Buzzfeed, which it basically gives you all the deal about hot news, entertainment, lifestyle, and more. There are lots of interesting human-interest stories packed into the site. You will definitely enjoy reading them and discovering a lot of new and interesting things along the way. You surely would not be able to notice how much time passed by because the articles on this site are all-engrossing.

Second, there is Failblog, which also has a wide variety of interesting and really funny stories to tell. Each article often comes along with a nice photo that will help you imagine the thought vividly. While browsing the site, you will find yourself smiling, even when you are under a sticky situation as a delayed flight for over five hours. Ouch!

Educate Yourself

If you are more of the type who wants to discover facts on just about anything and everything under the sun, OMG-Facts is the right website to scour. Do you want to learn why cracking your knuckles can actually have therapeutic benefits for your muscles, tendons and joints? Do you want to know what Steve Jobs has done great apart from introducing us to Apple? There’s a lot to discover and you can do it best when you are having an idle time at the airport.

Make Money While You’re Waiting

Did you know that you could actually have fun and make money while you are having a bad day with your flight schedule? Visit www.bingoonmobile.co.uk to discover lots of amazing mobile bingo sites that will help bust your boredom and give you an opportunity to earn real money along the way. The site offers different options of bingo sites that are available on mobile devices, so you can play the relaxing and enjoyable game of bingo and vie for real money while being stuck in an airport.

These options we offered are just the tip of the iceberg, as we all know that the internet is a jungle of entertainment. So the next time you’re facing a few hours at the airport, sit back and enjoy!

*This post provided by guest blogger.

Back in the states I’m always amazed at how often I find myself at the store. I feel there is always something I “need” which, of course, isn’t true. The American life is set up to create the perfect consumer. Sometimes, I think we’re the robots they created just to keep the machine of our economy alive.

We get out of high school and go to college. Bam! Now we’re in debt and have to have a job to pay off the debt we accrued. There isn’t another way. It’s ironic because people blame the Universities for being liberally skewed but there for-profit institutions are what trap many Americans into the most conservative lifestyle.

If you didn’t go to college, you’re kicked out of the home around 18 and encouraged to have the all-American work ethic. Time to get a job, bum! Use that required education you were forced to receive to flip burgers or stock shelves. What about travel? What about just wandering around thinking? When will you have the time to define who you are?

Here’s how: you watch TV, see fashionable, fit people with great jobs, great hair and Nikes. Now you need a pair of Nikes to prove you’re on track. To prove you have a job, are worth something to society. Society invested in you and now makes you feel guilty if you diverge from your predestined path. You have to SHOW you belong in this society or you’ll be scoffed. Don’t want to shave your legs young woman?- hippie! Don’t want to comb your hair young man?- pothead! Don’t want to get a job?- bum! The list goes on. And it’s all based around consuming things.

Capitalism is an economic idea and doesn’t have to be tied to the idea of democracy. You can bash one and have the other. In fact, we could agree as a democracy to do so, but so many Americans have the idea that capitalism is our way of life, not the democratic part. When we say we are spreading democracy, is that all we want to spread or are we opening new markets for our products? When a building making clothes for us collapses and kills 500 people do we feel guilty for demanding such cheap prices for things that we force laborers we don’t want to look at to be stacked several stories high. Good thing they are out of sight, too, because they don’t wear the right stuff or behave the right way to fit into our paradigm. That’s oversimplified, of course, but it is worth thinking about how much our ideology of consumerism is impacting not just us, but everyone around us.

Homes in many other countries are not decorated. They don’t have shelves or storage because they don’t (or can’t) stockpile. We have cabinets full of stuff we don’t use on a daily basis. Begging the question of why we bought it in the first place. Other homes just have a table (where you eat) and some floor space (where you sleep). You don’t need much to be happy and content. A roof, some source of heat, family, food. My neighbors spend a fortune on chemicals to make their grass greener. That’s money they worked hard for, time they spent away from their families. They buy yard art to impress their neighbors, “See! I’m productive and relevant to society!”

We even rate our economy by consumer confidence. How confident are we as a people? Let’s express it by purchasing things we don’t need. That shows we’re on track to a bright future. Ha!

We’re not immune at all. We live in a suburb at the moment that is quite stunning. We have nice furniture, art on the walls, cabinets full of things and drawers full of more things. Things are all around us. We’re very American in this sense. But, with all these American capitalist-consumer things, we’re detached from the people around us because we’re so surrounded in things and work. I’d like to see more of the democracy part of our ideology and less of the commercials, radio ads, billboards, newspaper ads, coupons and other reminders of consumerism. What if there were that many reminders of our national ideology? Wouldn’t that be neat (or perhaps, too much?).