DON’T FORGET TO WRITE - travel advice about communicating while on the road
Friends and family back home – along with the ever growing network of new friends you’ve met on the road – love to hear what trek youre taking in Nepal, what Great Barrier Reef island you’re staying on, and how many big five animals you saw on your safari.
Sending Email while on the road is of course the best way to stay in touch, but the speed of the connection can vary widely, not just country to country, but city to city, and accommodation to accommodation. If you are one of those I-will-die-without-my-broadband, then there are definitely some countries to avoid, while if you are a hater of new technology there are some must go places where email cant reach you – yet.
Email Connectivity and Speed
This is an issue that faces a lot of travelers, one that can frustrate to the point of not even wanting to go near a computer: the speed of the internet while overseas. You will often hear travelers moan about it, asking the internet manager, ‘How is it today?’ as though asking about a patient on life support (especially Americans).
In my travels, email connections have been a mixed bag, especially in the early 2000’s when speed in the western world increased the use of graphics and more in email messages, while less developed countries could hardly keep up with the growing bandwidth.
Today, broadband is more and more common, and the frustration less, though there are some countries I would brace for frustration if you are addicted to your high speed ADSL:
The Worst:
Egypt. Uganda. Nepal. Cambodia.
The All Time Worst:
Ethiopia (literally a hair pulling 5-7 minutes per click)
The Best:
Singapore. Dubai. Japan. UK.
The All Time Best:
Maldives (well, the resort had a satellite link…)
Best Choice
Email programs like Yahoo and Hotmail, which have an incredibly strong following in developing countries. Gmail is growing in popularity, but still lags these two pioneers in free email service. Still expect there to be slow patches, and plenty of ‘unable to load page’ messages.
Worst Choice
Web based email systems like Apple’s Mobile Me, which can be impossible to open or take an age to load. Internet use is very new in many parts of the world, and broadband is something that is just not necessary where most business is done face to face. This will change, but until then forwarding emails to a Hotmail or Yahoo is a better option.
Advice
Choose your email account wisely before departure, even if you intend to travel to countries where the internet is known to be fast. I use Gmail for most of my mail, although I also have a Mobile Me account from Mac, which I rarely open while on the road due to the connectivity speed issue mentioned above.
Choose The Right Accommodation
Wi Fi is surprisingly prevalent in places you would least expect it. Angkor Wat. Macchu Picchu. The Pyramids. Accommodation options near many of the world’s top sites offer free Wi Fi for guests, and the service is often available throughout the hotel or resort.
At a Phuket resort I visited, the Wi Fi was available even on the beach, and I happily tapped away at my laptop under palm trees sipping a Thai Iced Tea. You cannot beat that.
Research accommodation in your destination carefully – many have websites where you can compare the services with other hotels before you arrive. At a dive resort in the Philippines, I chose a hotel that cost half as much as the best in town, that offered free Wi Fi while the most expensive charged $15 USD a day for it. Shop around.
Whether the Wi Fi service is free or charged also heavily depends on your room rate. Hotels charging less than $25 per night usually do not offer Wi Fi for free, though they may give you a password to their network should you request it or due to seasonality (in low season they may offer free services as well as reduced room rates). Some hostels in competitive destinations will offer a fixed amount of free internet access per day, or even unlimited access at computers located in the lobby.
Stay at a boutique hotel these days in the $100 to 150 USD a night range, and it will be rare property that will not give access to their Wi Fi network. Rooms, lobby, and pool area are increasingly covered as the Wi Fi systems come down in cost. Even in remote places like Kep, Cambodia, and Pohkara Nepal, where internet connectivity can be dismal in cafes, Wi Fi in boutique resorts can be as fast as that enjoyed at home.
If you want free internet or Wi Fi, stay away from the chain hotels, unless you are staying in the executive floor, where internet may be included in the room rate. The chain hotels can charge as much as $25 per day (plus service charge) for Wi Fi or Broadband access, a total ripoff when sometimes an internet station across the street is charging $.50 an hour for the same thing.
Starting a Blog
With thousands of new blogs started daily, setting out on a trip is often the catalyst for travelers to create their own. Below are some of the most popular. I have used Squarespace and Wordpress and prefer WordPress, not just because the service is free, but because of the sharp templates available.
Some examples:
WordPress.org (download templates to host elsewhere)
WordPress.com (templates that can be used for a free blog)
Blogger.com (free blog with templates)
Squarespace.com (all plans are charged)
If you want to stand out from the crowd, choose a theme or angle for your blog. It could be about traveling as a family. It could be about searching for a particular kind of experience (scuba diving, trekking, etc) you will be undertaking on your trip. You will attract more likeminded readers and give them a perspective no one else may be covering, opening up doors to media interviews and more.
Maintaining Your Blog
More and more travelers are creating blogs from their trip that replaces those dreaded and impersonal mass email detailing their latest adventures. With digital cameras and video recorders, these blogs can be a fun way to combine different media into an effective ‘postcard’ (paper postcards are soooo last century) that can serve as an update device for contacts, and as a virtual journal for years.
Depending on the country’s internet connectivity and speed, updating a travel blog from the road can be a joy or a nightmare. On more than one occasion I have heard expletives uttered from a traveler that has lost an entry for their blog because the internet cut out, a power failure hit just after they pressed send, or the dreaded message ‘this page could not be displayed’ appeared just as they thought they had uploaded the content.
Back up your work! Write it in Microsoft Word, or Word Pad, and save it repeatedly – I speak from experience, after having lost pages of copy because I pushed my luck by writing the content directly into the blog entry.
Some internet cafes will allow you to plug your laptop into their internet system, always ask, because then you can write your copy in the comfort of a restaurant with a view, a deserted beach or cozy hotel room, march down to the internet café, connect, upload, and voila, the blog is updated; should the internet have problems you can return when they are resolved or wait until you are in a more internet friendly place.
While traveling in Africa my blog remained updated, due to the 5-mintes-a-click nightmare I found at all the internet places I tried. When I arrived in Dubai, I connected my laptop and uploaded the content. Patience is important, and your expectations – a simple blog with entries decorated with 1 photo is going to be a lot easier to maintain than a site with flash graphics and tons of photos.
Business Cards
What? Why should I carry a business card while I’m traveling? Well, its not a business card to sell a service, but yourself. In many countries (especially in Asia) business cards are de riguer in social situations (less so in Latin America however) and having one with your email address, website and/or blog and other places where your new found friend can reach you are a great way to avoid the scribbled email address in your journal situation from last century. I’ve handed over a card with a photo of myself to locals and returned years later to find they KEPT the card and remembered me from my last trip.
