Should we learn Thai? Can we take the train to Tibet? What’s the best place to walk the Great Wall of China? What did you think of Nepal? A friend recently asked me for advice on his upcoming three-month trip to Thailand, Nepal and China and my recommendations and warnings may be of interest to others hoping to travel to these destinations. This post deals with Thailand while the next two will cover China (including Tibet) and Nepal.

Most people arrive in Thailand through its capital, Bangkok, which some people love while others absolutely hate. It has some interesting things to see – the Royal Palace, beautiful temples, and great shopping – but the traffic, noise and crowds usually send people traveling either north to the mountains and forests or south to the beaches on the peninsula.

A visit to the north usually focuses on temples, markets and local arts & crafts. In Ayutthaya, water taxis will take you to the wats lining the river in the same way worshippers traveled centuries ago. There are many other things to see and do such as visit markets and markets, take elephant rides, walk through parks and gardens, and shopping for souvenirs.

The town of Lopburi is monkey heaven – and people heaven for fans of monkeys – with a temple dedicated and inhabited by our simian relatives who entertain with their antics (see photo). The walled city of Chiang Mai is well known to travelers for its night market and, just outside of the city, you can enjoy elephant or river raft rides and visit native villages. The border city of Nongkhai has fantastic silk shops selling relatively inexpensive – considering the quality – clothing and fabric.

Travelers flock to Southern Thailand for its beaches and diving sites. We’ve only been to one town on the peninsula – Ao Nang in Krabi province – and we found it to be nice but very tourist oriented. The beaches were pretty good and the expeditions to the many islands with enormous sandstone formations were great. Krabi is an hour’s plane ride south from Bangkok on the peninsula and is very hot and humid year long. It was in the high 90F/30s in January with humidity in the 90 to 95 percent range.

We were able to manage okay speaking only English with a few polite words in Thai (please, thank you, hello, goodbye). Chang Mai , Lopburi and certainly Bangkok have enough tourists that there many English-language signs and the people are used to our wild gesticulating with broad grins on our faces to express whatever it is we need. In Bangkok, we stayed in a decidedly non-tourist area and managed okay by pantomiming and always smiling.

Next week, China and Tibet.

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HOW TO TRAVEL: We’ve looked at the Who, What, Where, When & Why of travel and you may be wondering “how the heck to do it”. There are as many ‘How’ questions as there are travelers and I’ve used two approaches to addressing issues that may come up: 1) through this blog I’m providing you with 365 travel tips – one for every day of the year; and 2) this posting on how to do research so that you may find answers to your questions.

When doing your travel research, you’ll find that sources of information come in many different media including: websites, guidebooks, newspaper travel sections and magazines, non-travel news media, on-line blogs, local residents, people who’ve traveled there, literature and technical books. Sorting through so much information to discover what is relevant to your travels requires focus and organization.

You focus by:
• Having a clear sense of your travel style: luxury all the way, middle of the road, or good value.
• Creating rules of travel for yourself to ensure you get what you want out of your travels. Examples of rules of travel include: visiting only countries where English is spoken; good food & wine; no cold weather; modern countries only; short flight times, etc.
• Drawing up a list of places you want to go and ranking these based on your needs and missions.
• Avoiding being distracted by all of the information you uncover by referring to your travel style, rules of travel and list of places to go.

You succeed at research by:
• Using more than one source of information to balance various biases and get a clearer picture.
• Finding a way to organize the information that works for you so that you never have to go back to research something you’ve already uncovered but have misplaced. Ways to organize include: by destination, by activity, by cost and by amount of time needed for the trip.
• Documenting your findings either on paper or on your computer – these must be organized so that you don’t waste time looking for information.

Here’s a recap of the steps to take to make sure you will travel in 2010:
1. Make a New Year’s Resolution to travel in 2010.
2. Answer the Who, What, Where, When, Why & How questions.
3. Think of issues that make planning difficult & organize by importance or degree of difficulty.
4. Consider ‘Where’ sub-questions to research destinations, issues and strategies.
5. Figure out the ‘What’ questions and answer.
6. Ask ‘Who’ to travel with, learn from, get local knowledge, and/or trust when traveling.
7. ‘When’ to travel: make a plan to take advantage of every opportunity to travel.
8. Know ‘Why’ you travel to get the most out of the experience and to try something new
9. ‘How’ to travel includes how to do research as well as reading the 365 travel tips on this website which give you pointers on handling issues related to: destination, transportation, accommodations, eating, activities, health & safety, and packing.

With this ninth posting, we wrap up the New Year’s Resolution series of blog entries.

Doing research and organizing your findings will help answer your questions about traveling. You can learn a lot from professional and amateur travelers with books, websites, magazines, speakers and a plethora of information sources and subjects available (click on the thumbnail for a full image – a new page will open):

If you would like to subscribe to this blog, click on the envelope next to the word ‘subscribe’ at the top of the left-hand menu. You will receive notification by e-mail every time this blog is updated. I solemnly swear to never sell, trade or give away your information to anyone!

Three and a half months of travel across a dozen countries on three continents have come to an end as we settle into our new home in Wenzhou, China. We’ve covered a lot of ground on this second ‘Round the World Trip which began in June 2008 (as soon as the first ‘RTW ended). Here’s a brief wrap up of RTW Part Deux so far (if you want to read the entire blog entry, just click on the underlined links):

We left San Jose, Costa Rica on October 31 for a lovely resort in the northwestern part of the country and enjoyed five days at Samara where beaches, lazing around, eating seafood and lounging in the pool were the most important things we did all day (Samara Beach).

After a relaxing week, we traveled for five days on and off buses through Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala and Mexico to finally arrive in Guanajuato, MX to see friends and meet Baby Phillip (in utero) (Guanajuato).

We then flew to Los Angeles where we ran around for a week seeing family, friends and taking care of business. A friend took us to see the damage done to her property by the huge Station Fire in the Angeles Forest – it was an unimaginable sight (Los Angeles).

A cheap flight from New York City to Lisbon, Portugal meant we had to leave America before the Thanksgiving holiday and represented the last inexpensive purchase we were to make for some time as the American dollar was, at that time, weak against the Euro. Three days in Portugal wasn’t anywhere near long enough but we wanted to allow for as much time as possible in Spain. We spent one day in Lisbon and found a cheap resort (wayyyyy off season) on the southern coast where we stayed a couple of nights (Portugal).

Spain was amazing: Sevilla offers great food, art and architecture influenced by former Arabic rulers, and wonderfully friendly people. We visited the oldest castle still in use by a reigning monarch – the current King Juan Carlos I – with its Moorish arches, medieval tapestries, tiled fountains and semi-tropical gardens (Sevilla).

Gibraltar was just strange: a British outpost at the end of a Spanish piece of land well known only for an enormous rock. The English tourists seemed to enjoy all of the fish and chips restaurants, pubs, more jewelry stores than you would think possible and casinos. It is just a small city tightly crammed in a small space that the Spanish would like to have back, thank you very much (Gibraltar).

Malaga, Picasso’s hometown, was interesting with orange trees and beautiful architecture but offered a disappointing look at the artist’s work in a small museum. Valencia – well known for oranges and paella – was a much more fun city where we wished we’d had more time to spend (Picasso).

Barcelona was a hoot not just because of so much to see and do but because British friends Helen and Rob met us there for a weekend. A huge farmers’ market was a photographer’s dream to see and capture. Guell Park provided a fantasy of another kind where broken pottery was used to decorate benches, ceilings, sculptures and houses. The most impressive structure, however, was the Church de la Sagrada Familia (the Sacred Family) which has been under construction for over 130 years (Barcelona).

Madrid gave us a taste of the freezing cold we would feel for the next month, encouraging us to buy scarves, hats and sweaters. We visited Spain’s most important historical museum, the Prado, where we spent three hours admiring paintings by Goya, Velazquez, Rubens, Raphael, El Greco, Fra Angelico, Durer and Bosch. We regretted not having enough time to see the other museums Spain is known for – so I guess we’ll just have to go back (Madrid).

Our first real winter in 12 years was spent in Carcassonne in the southwestern part of France. We had snow, cold weather, rain, short days….etc. just like in Canada or northern USA. We spent a month at Helen’s and Rob’s apartment where we celebrated Christmas (Carcassonne 1). We thought the idea of Christmas in France – with its wonderful food, wine, music and architecture – would be something truly special. And it was. Seeing where the traditions of my French Canadian heritage had originated and living in a Medieval city (where the new part is 700 years old!) was a very special treat (Carcassonne 2).

Every day in Carcassonne we would hear church bells announcing the time – even throughout the night. On Christmas Eve and day, the cacophony of competing bells from the various cathedrals and churches in the neighborhood seemed almost constant. The bells drew me out Christmas Eve to walk the streets filled with churchgoers and beggars who hang around knowing the devout will feel particularly charitable as they exit the temple (Carcassonne 3).

Our Christmas was very simple with most of the gifts we gave each other edible so that we wouldn’t have to carry anything with us as we continued our trip to Asia. We inadvertently spent the most money EVER on a chicken for our Christmas dinner (Christmas). Helen & Rob, the owners of the apartment, and three of their friends joined us to celebrate the New Year. If we had a white Christmas, you might think we could also have a white New Year’s – but no, it was a wet night. We put on as much clothing as we had to go see the fireworks at the medieval walled city but it was not to be (New Year’s Eve). We spent our last week in Paris and enjoyed it as much as the previous two times we’d been there even though it was wet and cold. My favorite thing of all was the morning spent at the Orangerie museum that contains eight of Claude Monet’s Water Lilies paintings (Paris).

After five or so weeks of cold weather we decided to travel to Thailand for two weeks before going to Hong Kong and Wenzhou, China. Hot and humid is the only way to describe both our little beach town in Krabi, on the Thai peninsula and Bangkok. Temperatures hovered at about 95˚F/34˚C and it took us awhile to get used to the drastic change (Krabi). The national capitol was a bit cooler and so we could be more active visiting museums, temples, markets and neighborhoods (Bangkok).

The real purpose of our time in Hong Kong was to finalize our visas to live and work in China. Even though it is such a huge city, we like Hong Kong for its cosmopolitan feel. It is a great city to transition into China as there is enough English spoken and written on signs and labels that you can easily get by (Hong Kong).

A week ago, we arrived at Wenzhou in eastern China. I’ll start writing about our adventures here starting with Monday’s blog posting: This Ex-Pat Life. Our travels in the next year will likely be limited to exploring our new country and, during longer vacations, seeing other parts of Asia we’ve yet to visit.

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Why Travel: Baby Boomers make up the most traveled generation in history. We started young in the back of the woody station wagon sustained by Pop Tarts, orange Tang, transistor radios and comic books. Many of our peers backpacked on $5 a day through Europe or followed the Hippy Trail in Asia after high school or college. We earned tens of thousands of air miles on business trips and often used these bonus travel vouchers to fly our families across oceans on vacations.

Our travel habits aren’t likely to change as we enter into the life stage where career and children no longer take up all of our time and money. People in their fifties and sixties continue looking for opportunities to keep active – physically and mentally. For many, that means taking trips that offer new knowledge and experiences, allowing us to rediscover old interests, latent talents and the chance to make a difference in the world in ways that are new to us.

People travel for different reasons. If you go somewhere because of a need for meaningful experiences, you need to know your motivations and develop missions for travel that are specific to your desires.
Before you jump at any travel opportunity, stop and think about your own reasons for making such a voyage. You’ll get a lot more out of your journeys if you are clear on why you want to travel and what you expect to get out of it. Once you know this, it’s easier to take advantage of the opportunities that are right for you. Like most people, you have limits on your time and money, so you’ll want to evaluate any travel prospect before investing your hard-earned resources.

Here’s a recap of the steps to take to make sure you will travel in 2010:
1. Make a New Year’s Resolution to travel in 2010.
2. Answer the Who, What, Where, When, Why & How questions.
3. Think of issues that make planning difficult & organize by importance or degree of difficulty.
4. Consider ‘Where’ sub-questions to research destinations, issues and strategies.
5. Figure out the ‘What’ questions and answer.
6. Ask ‘Who’ to travel with, learn from, get local knowledge, and/or trust when traveling.
7. ‘When’ to travel: make a plan to take advantage of every opportunity to travel.
8. Know ‘Why’ you travel to ensure you get the most out of the experience as well as to evaluate opportunities to try something new and different

The next blog postings will continue with each of the 5W & 1H questions to dig deeper into the issues and how you might begin to address them.

Photos: You need to have a clear idea of ‘Why’ you travel and what you want out of the experience (click on the thumbnail for a full image – a new page will open):

WHAT’S NEXT: We’re in mainland China, in our new home in Wenzhou. We’ll be living here for at least a year while husband Jacob teaches English and I write my travel book.

NOTE: My “This Expat Life” blog will return in the next week.

If you would like to subscribe to this blog, click on the envelope next to the word ‘subscribe’ at the top of the left-hand menu. You will receive notification by e-mail every time this blog is updated. I solemnly swear to never sell, trade or give away your information to anyone!

We find that Hong Kong is the perfect place to begin a stay in China. Its unique mixture of Cantonese and English allows for a smooth transition between the West and the East and lessens the expected culture shock. There’s enough English in signs and menus and most people – at least those involved in business and tourism – speak enough of the language to make transactions fairly easy.

The city caters to business people and tourists like no other in Asia with western-style food, hotels, stores, entertainment venues and toilets. But if, like us, you want to actually experience Canton you can easily find neighborhoods where very few westerners hang out. Our hotel is western style (although the beds are a lot harder) but outside of its doors we are surrounded by small businesses, restaurants, markets and parks that cater to the locals.

Most travelers are familiar with the local food as it’s similar to what’s served in the thousands of Chinese restaurants operated by members of the Diaspora around the world. Menus in areas populated by tourists feature English and Chinese characters and in those that don’t see many foreigners, photo menus help you decide and order food.

Restaurants in the city represent cultures from around the world which means you can get a good Indian curry, the freshest sushi, exquisite French pastries and, if you’re homesick, American foods from restaurants such as California Pizza Kitchen, Pizza Hut, McDonald’s, Burger King and Kentucky Fried Chicken.

Knowing we aren’t likely to have a good burger and fries for the next year (or more), we splurged on a couple of American-style hamburgers at a newly-opened restaurant. Biting into the fresh bun, beef, bacon and cheese was a pleasure we won’t be repeating for a while. When we complimented the waitress on the food we also asked whether the chain was elsewhere in China. She responded: “No, this is our first restaurant in China. We’re from Korea.” Maybe in a decade they’ll make it to the off-the-beaten-path city we are moving to.

Like most travelers, we enjoy going through markets and Hong Kong has a number of fairly popular ones such as the Night Market and Ladies’ Market. These are fun if you aren’t really looking for anything in particular and just want to enjoy the colorful stalls, the noise, the crowds of people and the bargaining going on between sellers and potential buyers. They’re also great for souvenirs which you can buy in semi-bulk: ten small purses or chopstick sets or paper fans. Cheap electronics, designer copy purses and clothing, and myriad household doodads are also available.

Market vendors have all sorts of selling and bargaining strategies but still manage to make you feel like you got a great deal. Of course, the first price they give you is at least twice as much as the item is worth: it’s assumed that buyers know this and they’re not expected to pay it. Once a price is agreed to, vendors will try to sell you more of the same thing (not kidding), or something else that either goes with it or is totally unrelated.

We did some of the usual activities and sights of Hong Kong including taking a ferry across the harbor and to nearby Macau (for Jacob’s visa process). In the three times we’ve been here, we’ve never gone up to the peak to get what is supposed to be a spectacular view of all of Hong Kong and its harbor: it’s always too foggy or misty to see anything.

One of my favorite things to do is to walk through the larger parks where gardens and aviaries allow visitors to escape the din of the city. We found a beautiful one in Kowloon where you can almost forget you’re in Hong Kong as the noise and pollution diminish the deeper into the park you walk.

The entire city is getting ready for New Year’s (February 14th) and so parks, stores, government buildings and pretty well everything is decorated with red and gold pendants, lamps, lights, streamers and Chinese characters. The Year of the Tiger means every possible model of the big cat is displayed and we managed to find a Disney Tigger dressed for New Year’s for Jacob.

In a few days, we fly to our new home in Wenzhou on the east coast of China where we’ll live for a year, Jacob will teach English and I will finish writing my travel book.

Our three and a half months of travels are coming to an end after 13 countries (Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, United States, Portugal, Spain, Gibraltar, France, Thailand, Hong Kong/Macau/China. Of these, four were just passed-through countries and only three were new to us (Portugal, Spain & Gibraltar). I did reach my goal of having visited 50 countries in my 50th year on this planet: my total is currently 52 countries visited….but stay tuned as this number will most certainly increase during our stay in Asia.

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WHAT’S NEXT: In a couple of days we move to our new home in Wenzhou, China for – at least – one year.

NOTE: My “This Expat Life” & “Writing on Wednesdays” blogs are on hiatus until we settle down in Wenzhou in February 2010. Between now and then, I’ll be writing only about Baby Boomers Traveling. Hope you enjoy coming along with us.

If you would like to subscribe to this blog, click on the envelope next to the word ‘subscribe’ at the top of the left-hand menu. You will receive notification by e-mail every time this blog is updated. I solemnly swear to never sell, trade or give away your information to anyone!