The Tux in the Backpack

We all know how to use Google and its products, there are however some features that are very useful indeed while travelling, and not everybody is familiar with them. Here’s the 20 most useful ones.

They’re not in a specific order, because their importance depends on what you are or are not yet familiar with. I’m not adding links to every specific feature, product or user guide. If you’re not familiar with them I thought you could.. ahem..do a Google search!

1. Hotels/Hostels websites after checked reviews on Tripadvisor, Hotels.com, etc.
Most hotels and hostels have a website nowadays. After checking reviews from previous customers on Tripadvisor or any other comparison hotel website, type the name of the hotel in Google to find the original website and book directly with them. It will save you the comparison websites’ commission (and some of them do take a big cut!)

2. Airline Travel Info
Your family wants to know if your plane has landed? Meeting up your travel buddy at the airport? Just type the flight number in the search box (e.g. KE 526)

3. Currency Conversion
How much is 1000 Indonesian rupiahs again? just type in the search box unit + currency + to + destination currency (e.g. 1000 IDR to USD)

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Popularity: 13% [?]

Is Flashpacking wrong?

To start with, the term itself has some kind of negative connotation: Flash, as in ostentation, or acting pretentiously.

Many sources in fact define Flashpacking as Backpacking on a bigger budget; the money being the one making the difference as it allows Flashpackers to afford traveling for a long time, but mainly to afford good quality (if not luxurious) accommodations.

Reading a comment on a Vagabondish article we discovered how some “unconscious” Flashpacker even felt bad in having more money than the average Backpacker and upgrading for a single room instead of a dorm: “My wife and I are flashpackers and we didn’t even know it. We felt a little guilty or even ostracized for having a bigger budget than backpackers, and it’s great to see that we have nothing to be ashamed about and we’re not alone.”

In the news you can find some bad stories of wealthy flashpackers bribing farmers in Australia in order to get holiday Visa extensions.

So is Flashpacking just a richer, sometime more incorrect, version of Backpacking?

Fair Flashpacking

You have both the cash and the ideas to actually help out a bit.

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Popularity: 14% [?]

When traveling around – especially if in a country where you don’t speak the language – it’s easy to end up chatting to people who speak your language. Quite often they are visitors like you (doesn’t matter if flashpackers, backpackers or honeymooners) or foreigners that live there, expats.

While visitors, especially tourists, are often over excited about the place and can’t wait to share their fantastic experiences with you (oh, you must absolutely do that!), expats are more relaxed and often not too bothered to talk to yet another visitor like you.

So keeping in mind that talking to the locals would be the ideal solution to get to know more of a culture, here are the 10 reasons why expats are a better chat than tourists while traveling:

1. Expats just know more about the place, in any aspect. Simple and straightforward: they’ve been there way longer than any temporary visitor.

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Popularity: 13% [?]

Like every year Travel + Leisure World’s Best is out. The list, voted by travellers and readers, compile the best touristic cities, islands, hotels, airline companies, cruises, etc.

So what’s in there for the Flashpacker?

While some of that info are irrelevant to Flashpackers, some are quite useful. Best hotel in the world? Well quite surely it will not be in a Flashpacker budget. Best touristic city? Does that mean chock full of tourists? Best airline company? Well for short distance flights usually Flashpackers will travel on low-cost airlines, consoling themselves thinking that it’s still better than a 19 hours bus ride.

When it comes to long-hauls flights though low-cost airlines haven’t got there yet, and often prices online are quite competitive even for the best companies. So if you have to, while not doing it on an airline company that will sure give you a great service?

Long-hauls Flashpackers, here’s the Travel + Leasure list of the best Airlines for this year.

1. Singapore Airlines
2. Emirates Airline
3. Thai Airways International
4. Cathay Pacific Airway
5. SilkAir
6. Japan Airlines (JAL)
7. All Nippon Airways (ANA)
8. Virgin Atlantic Airways
9. Air Tahiti Nui
10. Korean Air

All details and the rest of the Best of 2008 here. Wishing you all a Happy and Stylish Flashpacking.

Popularity: 9% [?]

How many tourists with a Lonely Planet in their hands have you spotted while travelling? In any main touristic site there are hundreds of them, often looking at the picture on the guidebook instead of the real thing in front of their eyes. The bible status of the Lonely Planet guidebook is in fact enhanced by the fact that people don’t simply carry it in their bag, occasionally taking it out to consult it, but they have it always, constantly in their hand, like if the “foreign” world they’re in will crumble on them the moment they drop the guide.

If a “secret”, off the beaten track location is on the Lonely Planet you can be more than sure that is not that “secret” anymore. We already mentioned how difficult is to find locations not touched yet by mass tourism, and we know that Lonely Planet is bringing “tourists” – and feel free to read that word in the worst possible way – even in the most remote (and once preserved) locations.

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Popularity: 11% [?]