Rob at World Nomads

Planes are for the Little People

rob_wood — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 11:05:00 GMT

If you like travel then you are probably going to be seeing the inside of quite a few of them.

The problem is that the cattle class of most airlines are not really designed for grumpy 6'4'', 100kg Aussies with personal space issues - especially on long haul flights. Add to that a budget travel mentality, and well, the choices for luxury air travel start to dwindle pretty quickly.

Consequently, I am pretty picky (when I can be) about deciding which airlines to go with.

Let me say from the outset, that Korean Air does not float my boat. It's not just the seat width which gives me flashbacks of childhood nightmares in which I am going down a waterslide which gets progressively narrower(anyone remember the scene from Tank Girl?), it's also the funky spicy Korean dishes which means the chances of you staying out of the toilets (which are designed for circus folk sized people) on your 16 hour flight to London are slim to none.

Airlines from Middle Eastern countries generally scare me a little too. It's not the planes themselves, but rather the fact that the entire cabin will burst into cheers and applause when the plane touches down as if landing safely were such a rare event that it deserves its own cheer squad. I mean, isn't the whole idea that you get there safely?

Japan Airlines is surprisingly good - the cleanliness, service and good food makes up for the fact that the seats are a little on the small side.

By far the best, biggest and most comfortable seats I have encountered were on an Aeroflot aircraft. Of course their reputation for falling out of the sky might count against them, but really... what price comfort? (In reality, their fleet has been upgraded since the bad old days) Of course, large seats don't protect against the eventiality that a large Russian woman will buy three of them, lie down and put her feet in your lap for a 12 hour journey (yes, that did happen to me).

All up it's really not a big deal, but when you can choose a slightly more comfortable airline for not much extra cost, it is well worth forking out.

Skiing Japan

rob_wood — Fri, 7 Jul 2006 15:46:00 GMT

There are a few reasons that Japan kicks a lot of ass as a ski destination.

It's not just the skiing - although it's great - that keeps drawing me back there.

Actually, it kind of is. I mean, Niigata which is just an hour or two out of Tokyo by Shin-Kansen (bullet train) had fantastic snowfall on the couple of times I skied there. At least a foot of fresh snow every night I was there! One one evening it was closer to three foot!

Another of the great things are the skiing habits of the Japanese public. For some reason, they only like to ski where others have skied before them. That means that on most runs, there will be a 5 meter wide trail of well-tracked snow that everybody follows. Right next to that track is often a couple of acres of virgin powder that nobody has even touched - a scenario that seems to last at least until early afternoon, by which time the Japanese skiers have started to follow the few foreigners onto the good stuff. Of course, there aren't that many foreigners where we went so a few times we were even getting to lay fresh tracks on the last run of the day!

One thing that kind of bugged me though was chairlift etiquette. Even if there were 200 people waiting for a lift up the mountain, the locals will only ever get on a chairlift if they know the other people on the lift - even if it means one person goes up in a quad! That is in stark contrast to other places I have skied where the chairlifts are a great place to make new friends.

But then again, there ARE Onsens. Onsen is the Japanese hotspring and they are a damn fine thing at the end of a hard day of skiing. Just the thing for tired muscles and bruised egos. (Be sure you're carrying travel accident insurance like World Nomads!)

The funny thing too, is that although Japan is generally a pretty expensive place, skiing in Japan is actually cheap - especially if you organise it with a Japan based agent. I had a couple of 4 day trips with everything included - transport ex-Tokyo, hire, accommodation, passes, food, ski-gear etc for about $350 which I was pretty happy with.

So happy in fact that I am going back again real soon! ;)

Walking Hadrian's Wall

rob_wood — Mon, 3 Jul 2006 15:08:00 GMT

Hadrian's Wall is one of those things that anybody who wants to spend a little time in England really should see.

It's a wall, a very long one actually, that was built by the Roman emperor, Hadrian, in the second century to either keep the Scots out of England or keep the English in. While that might seem counter-productive to many people, Hadrian thought it was a good idea.

Being a sucker for history, walking the length of Hadrian's Wall was something I had wanted to do for a long time. Finding a friend to accompany me wasn't too hard, but it was the same friend who had come with me to Iceland so we weren't exactly the most over-prepared of travelers. "She'll be right mate," was our typically Australian attitude to almost everything we did.

Day one saw us at Bowness on Solway which is on the west coast of England and the beginning of the wall - or at least where the wall had been originally. It also boasts mudflats, a couple of houses, some fields and a dog. But no wall that we could find.

We decided to ask one of the locals - the owner of the dog in fact - where the wall was.

"You see that pub?" he asked us.

"Um.. yep."

"That's it."

Hmmm. It seemed the enterprising locals had pilfered the remains of this ancient monument of one of the great walls of the world, in order to construct a pub. Well, I guess we couldn't really argue with their priorities.

The first couple of days walking were quite easy, though the walk east from Carlisle was steadily uphill for most of the day.

It was day three by the time the blisters and rain started to bother us a little.

Walking 90 miles with giant blood blisters on the souls of your feet because you were too stupid or stingey to buy a decent pair of walking shoes engenders a few emotions. For starters, anger at your own stupidity and stinginess. Anger at your walking buddy for not informing you of your initial stupidity. Anger at the fact that you are wet to the core as is everything in your pack. Anger that you're angry.

Even so, the range of emotions you feel at your predicament can be put into perspective.

Late on day three we hit our lowest ebb, having climbed steadily uphill for 10 miles, still soaked and with blood blisters. My friend's anger boiled over.

"I'm grumpy," he said. He's a man a few words.

"Still," I replied, "it beats being at the office."

"Hell, yeah!" was his reply.

And there is the crux of deciding to walk the length of Hadrian's Wall. It got a little wet, a little cold and a little painful with the blisters, but our worst day walking was still far superior to our best day working in the office.

Disclaimer: That was before I worked at World Nomads - a truly great office environment with an incredibly enlightened boss! ;P

After day three, the rest of the walk actually picked up. There were the Crags which are a lot of fun to walk along. In this section of the wall, we were lucky enough to see a RAF jet pass below us when climbing up the side of one of the hills. We were even close enough to see the pilot's face (or rather helmet) and he did a barrel roll as he passed away from the hills and headed north towards Scotland. Show-pony!

There were also the various forts and historic sites that are all great!

We seemed to spend a lot of time camping in farmer's fields, running from famer's dogs and waving to friendly farmers. There are even one or two free campsites along the way if you know where to find them.

The last day, in Newcastle, is pretty uneventful as most of it is spent walking through the suburbs. Even so, touching the water at either side of England after traversing the length of the wall is quite a satisfying experience and well worth the effort.

Now, we did it in a pretty haphazard way - no preparation - just pack a tent, a watter bottle a few cans of baked beans and start walking.

And if I ever do it again, that is exactly how I will do it.

Sleeping in Airports

rob_wood — Fri, 30 Jun 2006 14:01:00 GMT

When you live the travelling lifestyle, there will almost certainly come a time when you will either have to sleep at an airport or it will simply happen without you thinking about it due to your own exhaustion.

I like to call this "airosomnia" and it happens to the best of us.

The thing us airosomniacs come to realise is that not all airports are equal when it comes to bunking down. In fact there is a huge disparity in the quality your foreign cousins will instill in their airport slumber facilities. There will also be a huge range of experiences in each airport quite seperate from the actual physical facilities.

For examle, that hairy, smelly arrogant piece of s*%t carabiniero at Fiumicino Airport in Rome who thinks it's fun to prod sleeping travelers with his night-stick, enforcing some non-existent "No Sleeping in the Airport" policy (apparently sitting there awake, looking like a very tired vagrant is perfectly acceptable). Or the "lounge Nazi" at Kuala Lumpur who, after you attempt to even sit on the comfortable lounges, will tell you that they are reserved for "patrons of his restaurant" and that you will have to move along despite the entire place being totally empty.

As for actual facilities, there are a couple worthy of mention. Seoul international airport has marble floors (the only place to stretch out) that may in fact have a direct temperature transfer with Antarctica. Brrrrr! In Hong Kong, you can actually stretch out on the chairs because they haven't put armrests on them to block you, but the chairs are made of solid metal so they are both hard and uncomfortable. Fiumicino doesn't have armrests, but each chair in the row will have a "cupped" seat so it is like sleeping on railway tracks.

Perhaps the best place to sleep is actually Kuala Lumpur (after you have been kicked out of the lounge area) because they have a very nice hotel facility that you can hire in three hour blocks. You don't even have to go out through customs to access it so it's quite handy.

Of course, if you need information on your next airosomnia attack location then there's a great site called Sleeping in Airports that's worth checking out.

Icey Iceland

rob_wood — Thu, 29 Jun 2006 11:04:00 GMT

It's not that Iceland is a bad place, it's just that it's damn cold and I am not the most over-prepared of travelers.

I knew there were a few hotels in Reykjavik and even a hostel. What were the chances of one not being available? It'll be fine, I told my buddy. "There's even a camping ground there just in case."

Famous last words.

Every hotel in the capital was booked solid for a week and even the hostel wouldn't find room for us. Luckily the camping ground was just behind the hostel so not far to walk.

We set up our little two-man tent in a promising corner of the ground and were happy to see that a few others had also set up for the night. We introduced ourselves as a couple of Aussie idiots and were happy to meet some friendly faces from Finland, Denark, Sweden and a few European countries. Things weren't looking so bad.

Then came time for bed.

We rolled out our sleeping bags, purchased in Australia, that had served us so well in the Australian bush on camping trips and whatnot. 10 minutes later we still weren't warm.

Hmm. No problem, I just need some more clothing. On goes an extra t-shirt and trackies.

10 more minutes, the temperature plummeting, we're still not warm. More clothes!

Another 10 goes by and the shivering sets in. Both of us were now wearing every piece of clothing we had brought.

We spent the rest of the night shivering and getting almost no sleep due to being so cold.

"I don't care much much we have to pay or who we have to bribe, but tonight we are staying in a hotel," were my friends waking comments at 6AM.

I have to say that I wasn't going to take much convincing of that idea.

The whole "get the right equipment" thing is just one of the lessons that we lads from the tropics learnt when going to Iceland (in which the temperature topped out at 10 degrees celsius while we were there).

Who would have thought?

Some Good Travel Reads

rob_wood — Tue, 27 Jun 2006 11:46:00 GMT

If you are into travelling as much as I am (and most of you probably are), then sitting at your desk can be a bit of a drag on some days. It's times like these you need to do a bit of traveling by proxy (literally in some cases! - sorry - geek joke) by finding out what others are doing. Of course, there are a bunch of cool sites where you are going to find some adventurous folk who are willing to share their tales. Here's a few of my favourites. Most of them are actually worth a read too during the planning phase of your trip.

Lonely Planet - If you haven't heard of these guys yet, then you are probably dead. They have the biggest travel forum on the internet and we here at World Nomads work closely with them on a bit of stuff too (World Nomads is their recommended travel insurance provider). If you need to find out some information about a particular destination, then this is probably where you will find it.

Gadling - This is a blog that is prolific in finding the best of the net with regards to travel. They update so many times per day that there will almost always be something new when you visit the site and they come up with some pretty interesting stuff. Some of their stories can be a little light on the content side, but they make up for it with some awesome finds. Worth checking out.

GridSkipper - If you are into chic travel, then this is the place where all the cool people hang out. "Urban travel" is the catch cry here. Again, they update several times a day so there is always a new story to be read on the site.

Bootsnall - A huge travel network for all types of travel, these guys are a community oriented site that always seem to have a great selection of travel tales. The quality can be up and down cos anybody can submit an article but generally the information is great and the writing is of a decent standard. Certainly it deserves a place in the favourites folder.

Now, there are a bunch of other sites that I also visit to get the latest on travel news and fun, but I won't bore you too much with them all just yet. Take a look at those ones and I'll keep an eye out for other cool travel sites.