Link to article: Flocations Is A Travel Booking Site That Helps You See Beyond Your Budget

Screenshot: Flocations.com

A few weeks ago, I came across a TechCrunch article about a new airline booking website called “Flocations.”

Founded by four guys from all corners of the globe (specifically France, Singapore, India and Canada), Flocations allows you to visually compare flight prices for a number of different destinations at once, simply by entering your budget and clicking on the cities of your choosing.

When you click on a city, you get a list of fares and airlines, as well as hotel suggestions.

“While people might have well known destinations like Phuket and Bali in mind, it would take them time to compare the prices for those, while on Flocations they can compare them in a second, as well as dozens of other places they did not even think of,” says French co-founder Florian Cornu.

TechCrunch’s Catherine Shu writes:

Southeast Asia is currently the Singapore-based startup’s target market. It’s a good place for the Web site to test its potential in because the “region offers hundreds of affordable, fantastic destinations,” says Cornu. He notes that there are 56 destinations less than four hours away by flight from Singapore, while travelers based in Jakarta, Kuala Lumpur and Bangkok enjoy a similarly rich array of potential weekend getaways. Cornu says that the company also hopes to expand to Europe and North America by 2013.

The team gets flight information directly from airline Web sites and manages it in their own database for fast processing. They also have partnerships with hotel booking providers. While the company won’t disclose exact numbers, Cornu says Flocations has “several thousand” repeat users. The Web site will monetize by offering hotel bookings through the site.

Link to article: Hip-hopper wants to ditch first class and rough it for a bit…

"Sometimes I just wish I could be normal. Only sometimes, though."

U.K. rapper Tinie Tempah wants to go backpacking.

The 23-year-old recently told Bang Showbiz he felt he’s missed out on some of the young and wild and free shit normal people get to do because he is a cashed-up celebrity.

Boo hoo.

Hate to break it to you, Tinie. You’re not identifiable enough to be mobbed when you go backpacking anyway. Honestly, if you ditched the plastic frame glasses, 97% of people wouldn’t even know who you are. With the glasses on, 90% of people outside the U.K. don’t even know who you are.

So I would suggest you take a month off your loathsome schedule of touring, recording, partying, and kicking it in limos/VIP rooms/luxury hotels with models (God man, how DO you do it? Sounds awful.) and just go on a trip. Besides, you won’t be alone in your quest to fit in among the proles (See 28. Rich kids pretending to be poor).

“I’m looking forward to visiting some of the countries I’ve fallen in love with and seeing them properly,” he said.

You’re 23, dude. Go do it now.

Why do backpackers insist on taking photos of children wherever they go?

Sure, foreign kids are cute. I’ll give them that. But they’re also often super dirty and smell funny. I suppose all kids are dirty and smell funny though, not just foreign ones.

But do immigrants come to Canada/U.S./U.K./Australia, wander onto a schoolyard and have someone snap photos of themselves with their arms out, surrounded by white children? Just wondering.

The following is a journey into the mind of a backpacker taking photos of local children, particularly in the developing world:

• “OMG look at how cute these local children are!” (snap)
• “Look at these kids. they live in tin shacks, but somehow they’re so happy.” (snap)
• “Look at their genuine smiles and the joy in their eyes. These kids literally have nothing.” (snap)

• “I’m honestly shocked they’re not asking me for money or trying to pickpocket me…” (snap)
• “…like those damn gypsy kids in… Hey, kid. Take your hand outta my pocket.” (brushes kid’s hand away) (snap)
• “Look at this one, touching my face and my hair. Never seen skin or hair like mine before. WOW!” (snap)

• “I am so enlightened by this experience. More enlightened than my friends back home.” (sigh) (snap)
• “I am so glad I came to (developing world country). I appreciate (developed world home country) more now.” (snap)
• “Seriously. Look at these children.” (snap)

• “I don’t want to say that I’m like Jesus. But I love little children, just like Jesus, which explains my arms-out messianic pose.” (snap)
• “I hope their parents don’t come out during our photo shoot. I don’t want them thinking we’re exploiting their kids.” (snap)

• “Hurry up, Kevin. Take the picture. I think that might be one of their parents.” (snap) (takes off running)

For those of you interested in “The etiquette of photographing strangers” (of any age), check out this article by Lonely Planet author Richard l’Anson.

“Photographing strangers can be daunting, but it needn’t be,” he writes. “Most people are happy to be photographed. Some photographers ask before shooting, others don’t. It’s a personal decision, often decided on a case-by-case basis.”

But approaching foreign strangers and children in a palms-out messianic stance certainly can’t hurt.

Lonely Planet Launches iPhone App for Soliciting Friends’ Reviews in Real-Time

Lonely Planet recently launched (Dec. 5) an iOS app that grants users access to friends’ reviews and recommendations, in addition to content from a number of travel publications — all in real time.

The app, called Wenzani, “brings together recommendations from your friends and the world’s most trusted publishers into a fun, location-based guide that is constantly being personalized for you.”

It’s a good move on the LP’s part, to curate backpackers’ interactions via social media like Facebook and Twitter. Ultimately, the advice being exchanged can inform their own travel guide content, particularly for identifying hot new restaurants and small businesses. Because it’s all in real time, it helps the LP keep its advice fresh and updated to the minute.

One of the coolest things about the app is its ability to let friends notify each other about upcoming concerts and events in places they plan to visit (watch the video on Wenzani).

Link to article: Croatian cliff casualties mount as Aussies dive into danger

First things first, the URL for this Australian newspaper is www.smh.com.au. When it’s reporting news like this, SMH is an appropriate acronym.

Something about Aussies diving into danger doesn’t feel that unusual to me. Take a look at the photo I chose for my first post about Aussie Guys. I don’t even know if the guy leaping into the crowd is Australian. I just saw the photo and thought: That dude’s gotta be Australian.

I’m not trying to make light of people’s serious injuries or even their tragic deaths. But when a 20-year-old woman “does not judge the distance correctly and falls onto rocks near the water’s edge,” or when a 24-year-old woman “plans to jump from the cliff but decides at the last moment to withdraw only to slip, fall and plunge to the rocks below,” breaking both her arms, her jaw, ribs and hip, and requiring that her kidney and spleen be removed, it’s a matter of people just being idiots.

Sorta like planking. For the record, I like planking and I think it’s hilarious. What’s not hilarious is when a 20-year-old Aussie man plunges to his death after “planking” on a seventh-story balcony.

SMH.

Link to article: Can you ever be too old for backpacking?

Apparently not.

A few weeks ago (July 28), Kim Wildman wrote an article for MSN.co.nz saying you’re never too old to go backpacking. She’s 41. The people in the above photo are closer to 71. That’s false advertising, MSN. Come on, now.

Wildman is honest: Having gone on her first backpacking trip at 27 (across some southern African countries) and her first solo trip (to Eastern Europe) at 30, she admits to often being the oldest person in the dorm room.

“For me, age always has been, and hopefully always will be, a number,” she writes. “It’s more about how you live your life rather than how many candles are on your cake. At the same time, as the years have marched on I’ve noticed the gap between myself and younger travelers at hostels is indeed widening.”

I disagree. You can be too old for backpacking. When you can’t carry your luggage on your back anymore* or you can’t stand “roughing it” in cheap, dirty accommodations, that’s when you’re too old to be backpacking.

In spite of her surname, Kim is no party animal. She proceeds to identify the following features of the young backpacker’s landscape:

• all-night drinking parties
• crawling into your bunk just before dawn
• unhygienic bathrooms
• dirty bedsheets

And yet, Wildman is accepting of her counterparts, regardless of their age. “No matter whether my dorm mates belong to gen Y, gen X or the baby boomers, as long as they share my independent traveling spirit then, as far as I’m concerned, they can only make my hosteling experience richer.”

Her tolerance should be commended.

*About luggage: “I’ve already traded in my traditional rucksack for a far more practical and convenient (and might I add less backbreaking) trolley backpack,” Wildman writes.

I stand corrected.

One day, when I get old, will I hate something I used to love dearly? Will I become jaded or just realistic?

These are questions I asked myself when I recently saw the Kabul Hostel listed among The Guardian’s 10 Best Hostels in Barcelona.

Kabul Hostel, Barcelona: "An institution in the best possible sense."

I have stayed at Kabul on two occasions: Once, when I was 22, on my first backpacking trip to Europe, and a second time, when I was 30, on my first backpacking trip with — get this — my brother and my parents. No joke. My parents are cheap. They didn’t want to stay in a hotel. They wanted an “authentic” backpacking experience. They were also the only people over 30 in the entire building, cleaning staff included.

The receptionist took pity on us. He at least put is in a room with only four bunks; our family had our own room.

The party atmosphere was a shock not only to my parents, but also to the young people we met in the hostel bar.

“We’re here with our parents,” my brother told an American girl we met. “You’re fucking kidding, right?” she said. “Nope,” I said. “They’re upstairs sleeping, or trying to sleep. They have earplugs.” People were incredulous.

“Why on Earth would your parents want to stay here?” she asked.

“Well, I stayed here years ago and loved it,” I explained. “The location is perfect and it’s dirt cheap. I warned my mom that it would be a little crazy and the funny thing is, her eyes lit up when I told her that. I think she wanted a glimpse of what the young backpacker scene is like.”

We asked for it.

“A Barcelona institution in the best possible sense, the recently renovated Kabul has been housing backpackers since the pre-Olympic days, before the sailors and prostitutes patrolling the nearby Rambla were replaced by Geordie stag parties,” writes The Guardian’s Sally Davies. “It’s an unbeatable location, right on the arcaded Plaça Reial in the centre of the Barri Gòtic, but is really aimed at hard-core party people –- the cheap beer and all-night comings and goings of the clubbers make it less fun for anyone here for a quiet weekend of sightseeing, especially in the larger rooms (mixed dorms sleep up to 20 people).”

After three sleepless nights in Barcelona (which my brother and I thoroughly enjoyed), my ‘rents had seen enough. Or maybe they’d heard enough: girls shrieking in the hallways, people shouting, listening to loud music and drinking boxed wine in the adjacent rooms before going out (with all the windows open, as there was no air conditioning).

“This is unbelievable. These kids do not sleep!” said my mom, on the second night. My dad grunted from behind his sleep mask. The earplugs offered little relief.

But we were operating on opposite schedules. Mom and Dad were getting ready to go to bed, just as we were all getting dressed to go out.

We stayed in a private guest house in Venice, the next stop on our trip. No more party hostels for Mom and Dad. NOW, they realized the peace and quiet was worth the extra money.

Honestly, I don’t hate the Kabul Hostel. I had a blast both times I was there. My parents hate it.

Growing up kinda sucks. And so, I resist (see 44. Finishing school/Quitting your job).

Happy I get to watch this guy play right now.

Whenever I’m traveling, I tell myself it’s good to be disconnected from home. And it many ways, it is. More often than not, backpackers are excited to escape from home — school, a former job, a breakup, whatever — so being overseas (in some cases where you can’t even speak the local language) is refreshing. (See 44. Finishing school/Quitting your job.) Not for sports, though.

Missing sports makes me homesick.

I realize my opinion has been colored by the following:

• I’m North American and apart from basketball, the professional sports I like to follow are not widely played overseas.
• I’m not a hard-core soccer fan and don’t pretend to be (see 41. Soccer)
• I’m not a holier-than-thou hippie who strums his guitar pretending he doesn’t care about sports, to pick up girls (see 18. Guitar)
• I’m back home, living in a city whose team is on a Stanley Cup run.
• I went and saw the Heat-Blazers game in January, which the Heat (currently the Vegas favorites to win the NBA title) won in OT. Beenou.
• The NBA Playoffs are fantastic this year.
• I didn’t have to wake up at 3 a.m. local time to watch the Super Bowl in Spanish this year. And I wasn’t in Vietnam drinking by myself when the Riders were in the Grey Cup (which I wasn’t able to watch anywhere) either this year.
• I watched basically all the March Madness games and went to Vegas to watch the Final Four, in what was one of the best tournaments of all time. Or did it just seem that way because I was actually home to watch the whole thing? I dunno. Beenou.
• I just slept in, made breakfast and watched a wicked E:60 piece on Carl Crawford. Found out he’s a stud all-around athlete from Fifth Ward Houston. I wouldn’t be able to watch that in Paris. I mean, I’d be in Paris… Yeah, I wouldn’t have seen it, nor would the MLB standings mean anything to me there.

Where was I going with this? Oh yeah, it’s good to be home and watch sports. Friends, family and 1st-world infrastructure are all right too, I guess.

All of that said, I can’t wait to go on another trip.

Link to article: Residents of Berlin’s hippest district lash out  at backpacker influx

Dunno if I'd want these hipsters eating watermelon near my doorstep, either.

A recent report by The Independent’s Tony Paterson reveals how residents of the Kreuzberg district of Berlin are fed up with the scores of young, budget backpackers invading their neighbourhood.

“The culprits are mostly young British, Scandinavian and Italian tourists coming to the city via easyJet and other budget airlines for mini-break holidays,” he writes. “They are accused of rowdy all-night partying, and offensive drunken behaviour such as leaving trails of broken bottles and vomit in their wake.”

Sounds pretty standard to me.

Also standard: Guidebooks leading them to the promised land. “At night they flock to (Kreuzberg’s) trendy all-night bars, which are advertised in guide books as a ‘must for party animals,’” adds Paterson.

As if it weren’t bad enough, these traveling degenerates have allegedly been playing loud techno music until the early hours of the morning. Oh my.

Official tourism statistics indicate the number of visitors to Berlin has risen dramatically in recent years due to increased flight traffic via easyJet and Ryanair.

In the end, it seems to be a classic case of old hipsters complaining about young hipsters trespassing on their turf. Boo-hoo. Burkard Kieker, director of Berlin’s tourist marketing agency, effectively told residents to suck it up. “Berlin is becoming a world city again,” he said. “We have to get used to that.”

Six years ago, it was my first time backpacking on my own and I thought I would like it. I was visiting my brother in Manila and since he was busy with work for a couple weeks, he spotted me some cash so I could venture out and explore the Visayan Islands by myself.

“Ooh yes, this will be a great way to see more of the Philippines, get in touch with my inner self, keep a journal and do a bunch of reading,” I thought. Indeed, it ended up being all of those things, but it wasn’t the same. I was lonely.

I just dug up an old e-mail I sent my friends on that trip. It read:

I’m in Cebu City right now in between island hops and not getting laid. Haven’t yet met many tourists, even at the resorts. Just disgusting old men, strolling the beaches with young Filipinas who wouldn’t normally be caught dead with these scumbags. I’ve heard Thailand is even worse for this. But the Visayan Islands are awesome and I’m thoroughly enjoying the last bit of my vacation/lazy-bum-stuck-between-finishing-school-and-finding-a-real-job-and-getting-a-life stage (see 44. Gap Year).

I always thought traveling alone would be a fun exercise in self-discovery, or some cliché shit like that. Some people actually prefer traveling alone. After about a week of doing so, I’m convinced I’m not one of those people. I find myself taking in awe-inspiring landscapes and gorgeous sunsets by myself, without anybody to appreciate them with me, nobody to simply look over and say, “Fuck, is that ever beautiful.” Instead, I’m smoking a lot of Marlboro Lights.

Was I bitter that fat old sexpats were clearly getting more tail than I was? Certainly. But there was more to it than that.

Here are a few reasons why rolling solo isn’t for me:

• I’m socially dependent. It’s who I am. I’m not the quiet guy brooding in the corner. I’m not wired like that. I’m drawn to people and people are drawn to me (beenou). Even when I set off on my own to travel Southeast Asia a couple years later, I made it a total of four days before latching onto a group of Chilean dudes, two of whom I proceeded to travel with for six fun-filled weeks. My Visayan trip was different because I really didn’t meet ANY other backpackers. I suspect it’s different now and more young people are traveling to the Phils, but it’ll never get the kind of traffic that Thailand gets, which is kinda nice.
• I’m always on a tight budget. Hopefully that will change in the future, but on all my overseas trips to date, I’ve been scraping by day to day. That’s not to say you can’t have fun if you don’t have money. But had I a bit more cash to work with, I could have done more than simply reading in my nipa hut, tanning on the beach or smoking cigarettes. I could have learned how to scuba dive (more on that in a later post), gone on a group tour/jungle trek or gone zip-lining. More importantly: activities like these are ways to meet people.
• Great experiences are worth sharing. Like I said, I’m a socially dependent person. Still, having seen and experienced some unforgettable things by myself and with friends, the with-friends memories are better. The food tastes better, the music sounds better, the sporting event is more exciting, the sunset is more breathtaking. And the next time you see that co-traveler, you have something to remember together. Looking back, the disasters are funnier and the redemptions are sweeter.
• Safety. Do people go camping or go on remote hikes by themselves? No, because it’s just plain dangerous. Unless you’re a complete nutjob like Grizzly Man or the dude on Into The Wild. Neither story ends well.
• Keeping up appearances. Try going to a bar by yourself some time. It’s terrible and you look like a total loser. But at least it’s introspective.