A few weeks ago I met up with Matt from Nomadic Matt and Shawn (Sean? Shaun?) from Wandering Why for lunch. Of course chatter turned to my favourite topic, nerdy internet stuff, and eventually we started talking about another favourite of mine, link sales.

I mentioned that I often get contactedout of the blue by people looking to buy links. Often they’re good offers, but every now and then they stink. I mentioned that I had been contacted in the past by people looking to buy permanent links in older blog posts. The links would be in posts well buried by now so, by the buyer’s logic, it shouldn’t really effect my site at all.

Matt said that he’d been contacted recently by a chick offering $90 to buy links on six old posts of his. I had actually been contacted by her at a similar time, it turns out. We both knocked her back. I replied that I don’t sell permanent links (but I love to buy them!) and that I probably wouldn’t sell them for $90 each, let alone $90 for six.

So I’m guessing this chick got in touch with quite a few travel blogger types. Often they’re working for an SEO company on behalf of someone else’s site. I wonder how many people took her up on the offer? My logic is that $90 isn’t that much but a permanent link is forever. I would need a lot more money thrown my way befor eI’d consider sticking a permanent link to any part of any of my websites.

What do you think, is $90 for six links on old, buried posts a good deal?

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Given the choice of paying $9 for a deck class ticket or paying $54 for a cabin, the cheapskate in all of us would go for the $9 ticket every time. Ok… so a deck class ticket means a mat on the floor, I can handle that. The boat ride is 36 hours? I’m starting at this point to think maybe this wasn’t such a good idea.

I boarded the boat without a clue of where I was supposed to go and spent a good five minutes wandering aimlessly before I was rescued by a boat employee and pointed in the right direction. He took my up one floor to deck class where about 200 people and their belongings had already settled in. It seems like each ticket reserved you a rectangle shaped space on the floor of the deck and I was directed by him to my new home for the next day and a half.

I had been told before that people from Myanmar love to laugh and it seemed to be the case on this boat ride. People were chatting and sharing of food and, despite everyone being practically on top of one another on a hot, uncomfortable boat deck, people were happy and laughing almost the entire time. I was adopted by a few families and was able to communicate a bit with them with wild arm gestures and I managed to keep a group of people entertained for a while when I let them take photos of each other with my camera.

One of my favourite parts about this trip was the camaraderie that develops between the passengers. Everyone looked out for me which could be explained by the fact that I’m a solo woman foreigner but the friendly atmosphere seemed to exist between everyone on that deck. At night, after the lights went out, the people on my half of the boat were still cracking jokes and giggling like school girls for ages which I couldn’t help but laugh at.

The trip from Bhamo to Mandalay by boat really is about the journey, rather than just being a way to get from point A to B but holy crap… 36 hours is a long time to spent sitting on the deck of a boat. It was a pretty awesome experience overall though and I’m glad I did it but I probably won’t be jumping on any super long boat rides again anytime soon!

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I’ve recently spent a bit of time travelling with a friend in China and Thailand and its made me reconsider whether solo travel is really the best way to go. Normally I’m all for solo travel but I had such a great time on this trip that it’s made me reconsider my previous feeling that solo travel is always the best way to go. This topic has been done to death but these are just a few thoughts based on my recent experiences.

• Two heads are better than one - Decisions by committee can be good when the other person is full of good ideas on what to do. My friend is always eager to do something and having someone else reading the guidebook and finding cool things to do is great for lazy people like me.
• Someone to share funny and amazing moments with - I’ve seen some cool things on my travels and have often wished I had someone around to share the moment with. This trip was no exception and all of the funny and amazing things that happened were just a bit better because my friend was there. Plus it’s always nice to have someone to say ‘remember when…?’ to.
• Comfort during hard times - I recently had some bad news from home and being alone when that happens pretty much sucks. Having a close friend around to give a hug when you need it is almost as good as having you mum there.
• Someone to kill time with - Travel isn’t always fun and there can be a lot of downtime and delays to deal with. Having a bit of good company around makes time pass a lot quicker.
• Always have a dinner/drinking/dancing buddy - I’m not one to hit the pub alone so going out for me usually means first finding some people to go out with. This isn’t always possible though which can mean some quiet nights in when I’d rather be partying. My friend and I are on the same page when it comes to going out which meant I always had someone to drag out to the bars with me.
• Everything is cheaper - Sharing a cab is cheaper than getting one on your own, a twin room is cheaper than a single room and tours and eating and drinking can work out cheaper as well. We were taking cabs everywhere in Beijingand stayed in a twin room in Bangkok so having a buddy around meant savings for both of us.
• You have another set of skills at your disposal - Having lived in Egypt for two years, my friend is a very good bargainer. I’m pretty crap at it. Having her around meant that suddenly I was getting better prices for things than I would have gotten myself. If you’re with a friend who speaks the language, who is good at reading maps, can ride a motorbike or can do things that you can’t do, your opportunities will be expanded.
• More likely to meet people - Sure, solo travellers are more approachable, but I’d argue that I’m more likely to do the approaching when I’m with a friend. It seems a lot easier to be super outgoing when you’ve got a sidekick nearby and it helps when your friend is outgoing as well. I think in Bangkok as a group of five we mainly scared people away, but in Beijing as a pair we met loads of people.

Travelling with a friend has some big advantages and so does going solo. I think the biggest thing that going solo offers me is having time to myself which is something that I’ve only recently realised. I’m a hugely social person but I really love being able to reflect on things, write, think, draw, nerd it up on the computer and most importantly, decide when I wake up. That said, i think the advantages of having a good friend around are big ones.

It’s likely that I’ll travel with my friend again at some point and I can’t wait. I might have to lay down some ground rules this time around, but even if I end up having to sacrifice my alone time for awhile, it will be worth it.

I’m in Myanmar now (actually that’s a lie, I’m in a Starbucks in Bangkok but by the time you read this I will be in Myanmar) doing the solo travel thing for the first time in awhile and I’m curious to see how I’ll feel about going solo after having such a great time travelling with a friend.

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My plan had been to spend a night in the riverside town of Bhamo, take a fast ferry to a town called Katha the next morning and then wander off in a general southernly direction the day after. I was sort of looking forward to not knowing how to leave Katha and where would be next but then the boat was full and then I got sick. Suddenly the idea of spending several days figuring out how to get to my next, still to be decided destination wasn’t so appealling.

Unfortunately, neither was my only other option. It’s impossible to leave Bhamo heading south any other way than by boat and the only tickets left were deck class tickets for a 36 hour journey. No seats, just you and whatever space you can eek out amongst the locals, livestock and wares. Tough call but I decided that the certainty of being in Mandalay within the next day and a half beat out the possibility of being stuck in Katha for the foreseeable future.

So I bought my ticket, a roll out mat to sleep on and a bag of apples for breakfast, lunch and dinner. This might turn out great or turn out terrible but it’s the unknown that makes it fun!

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This topic has been done to death but I though I’d have a crack at it once again based on my recent experiences having a friend with me for the past month and a bit.

• Sense of accomplishment - There’s something to be said for being able to handle yourself in a foreign land and meeting each day’s challenges can leave you with a great sense of accomplishment. My friend has worked as a tour guide for a couple of years and is more of a leader type than I am so I tend to let her take the lead most of the time. It suits me just fine (I’d organise everything and she’d get it done) but I sometimes miss the challenge of working things out for myself.
• Time to myself - I haven’t had any time to myself over the past few weeks and I’ve missed it. I’m happy in my own company and can spend hours on solo hobbies or just chilling out. My friend is the complete opposite and has no hobbies that don’t involve sports and gets bored if she doesn’t have other people around. Going solo means I can have my alone time without feeling guilty.
• Get to decide my own timeline - Deciding what we wanted to do each day was never an issue since I’m prety laid back about that sort of thing but the pace at which we did things would often lead to us both becoming frustrated. I’m a big fan of slow travel, I love my sleep, and I’m not too bothered if I miss out on a so-called ‘must see’ attraction. My friend is the type who wants to get up super early and cram as much in as possible which meant that I was often either dragging her down or being dragged along.
• Healthy living - When I travel alone I’m less likely to be lured out on the booze every night and more likely to eat well. I have a very twisty arm and travelling with a partner in crime means that we both tend to lead the other astray.

Despite my love of travelling solo, I really loved having my friend around and I’ll highlight some of the reasons why in my next post. Stay tuned!

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I knew HODR would screw me over at some point, I just didn’t expect it to be so soon. They’re currently doing an assessment in Haiti to see if they’ll be able to send a deployment there to help out after succession of tropical storms and hurricaines. HODR are the people I volunteered with in Bangladesh and I had such an awesome time there, I wouldn’t hesitate to join them again, even if it means a radical change of plans.

Well I don’t think a change of plans gets more radical than a detour from Asia to Haiti! If the deployment goes ahead it will be a bit of a tought decision since I’ve already committed to taking a course in Thailand starting in November and have put down $500 towards it. I really want to do the course, but I expect the farm to be there for years to come and this volunteering opportunity won’t.

It’s all early days and I have no idea yet if they’ll deploy to Haiti or not. If they do it will mean a lot of extra money in airfares and a bit of money lost on the course I was going to take, but I could never pass up a chance like this one. It’d be one hell of an adventure, that’s for sure.

I’ll keep you posted!

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I decided that just being in Myanmar wasn’t off the beaten path quite enough for me so I though I’d be a bit ridiculous and head way up north to a town called Myitkyina. There’s no real reason for tourists to head to that town except to catch a boat to another town to catch another boat all the way back to Mandalay. So essentially, my first week in Myanmar was one massive commute.

I hopped a bus from Yangon to Mandalay on my second day to start my trip. It took 16 hours and it would have been ok had I not been sitting next to a beer swilling, farting, phone number asking, betel nut chewing, snoring fat man with little to no concept of personal space. He kept falling asleep on my shoulder or leaning over on me so I was squashed against the wall of the bus with no escape. After a few hours of encroachment I took it upon myself to poke him when he invaded my space and he eventually got the hint.

The second leg of my journey was a 24 hour train trip from Mandalay to Myitkyina that started out pretty well and quickly deteriorated into the trip from hell. I booked a sleeper berth that turned out to be pretty comfortable. It wasn’t too crowded and my fellow bunkmates were friendly. I ended up spending a lot of time chatting with a 17 year old guy who was heading up north to work in the mines. He desperately wanted to go to university and the only way he could get the money was to spend two or more years doing this dangerous work. He told me that his brothers has all joined the army and that, even though they did not agree with the government, working for them is the only option for many people.

At 5am, only a few hours from Myitkyina, the train ground to a halt. after the train didn’t move for 3o minutes I just assumed that it was a really early breakfast stop and that we’d be on the move shortly. A couple hours later and I started to wonder a bit more, especially since most of the train’s passengers were now camped outside along the tracks chatting and drinking tea. Apparently a train had derailed ahead of us and there was no way to pass but I had heard that this journey was often delayed so I wasn’t too surprised or annoyed. After ten hours when we finally got moving again I wasn’t too impressed. Ten hours! It sucked.

I spent a couple of nights in Myitkyina which turned out to be a pretty cool town. It’s home to the Kachin people who are a minority group in Myanmar. I spent a lot of time chatting with the guy who runs the YMCA where I was staying about the government, religion, language, family and learned a lot about the area and it’s people.

A couple days later I would start the third leg of my journey on a tiny longboat to some town that’s not on any map I’ve ever seen (and that I forget the name of). It was 7 hours of bumpy boating action and it was beautiful. The boat stopped in small settlements all along the river where people were bathing, washing clothes, sifting sand for precious stones and trying to sell food and drinks to us. I stayed in that town for one night, walked around, ate dinner, threw it up a few hours later (the food here isn’t the best), read a bit and went to sleep.

The next morning I was up early for phase four of my seeingly neverending commute; a 5 hour boar ride on an even smaller boat that the day before. It was more of the same but this time it rained which meant that we the boat was closed in with canvas sheets and I didn’t see anything for hours.

After several days and about 50 hours on one form of transportation or another, I arrived in Bhamo ready for the last leg of my journey, a 34 hour boat ride back to where I started. At this point I am starting to wonder if I’ve gone crazy.

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By the time you read this, I’ll be in Yangon finding my feet in another new country. Ah the joys of the delayed post! I’ve got a few lined up for the next month since I’ve heard that internet in Myanmar is hard to come by.

I was hoping to leave my computer in Chang Mai and travel super lightly but I haven’t really found a place I trust enough to leave it for seven weeks so it looks like it’ll be coming along for the ride. I don’t thin kMyanmar is known as a late night party mecca and I think other travellers are a bit thin on the ground right now so that could mean some quiet nights. Just what the doctor ordered!

If I’m not too tired from doing things during the day, I’m hoping to get lots of things done during my downtime in Burma.

• Photos - I’ve got loads of photos to sort through before adding them to my travel blog so I might atempt to make a dent in them. I’d like to separate everything into folders so that I can just upload them in one go. I might even get really ambitious and do some photo editing and tweaks so that my photos look really sweet.
• Country guides - I’ve been meaning to update Travoholic.com for ages now and a major part of that is country guides for the places I’ve been on this trip. I’ve got lots of stuff written down in detail but need to edit it all and then design an interface for it all. I’m not sure how I want to organise the new information so will need to have a think about that, do some drawings and see what I can come up with.
• Catch up on my books - I just filed my taxes for the 2007/08 UK tax year and realised how much easier it is to do when everything is up to date. Unfortunately, nothing is up to date for this coming tax year and I’ve got a lot of catching up to do.
• Practice photography - I’m going to actually use my big camera for a change. Normally I can’t be bothered with the thing because its so heavy and bulky, but this time I mean business! I’m more into taking portrait photos and people in Myanmar are meant to be super friendly so hopefully I won’t be too shy about asking if I can take their photos.
• Relax - I need to recover frm the boozefest that the past month and a bit has been. I’m looking forward to some trekking, biking, wandering around and just generally kicking back and being booze-free for at least a month. Bring back the healthy life!

So I’ll be out of touch for about a month. Or I think I will… I hear internet is patchy at best but I’m not sure how outdated that information is. I’m working at getting a few posts lined up while Im away but I probably won’t be able to approve or reply to comments until I get back to Bangkok in my October. Speak to you then!

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I’ve put it off since the UK tax year ended back in April 2008 but I’m sick of having it hang over my head and have finally sat down and filed the damned thing.

Most of the work was already done since I created a system for keeping track of revenue and expenses back in January when I was at home in Canada. That’s made keeping on top of things a lot easier and from January to the end of the tax year in April I just made sure to hang on to receipts and put any revenue and expenses onto the spreadsheet as soon as possible. Unfortunately I’ve been pretty slack since then, but it means that when I sat down to do my return today, it really hasn’t been as painful as I was expecting.

Actually getting registered to file my return online was a hassle though. I had to make a few phonecalls to Inland Revenue in the UK to get them to update my address to my aunt’s house, then had to wait for some passwords to be sent though the post, then had to get in touch with her to get them. But once that was taken care of I was fully registered and able to file my return online.

So this morning I’ve been doing just that. It’s taken me about a half hour to go through my spreadsheet checking numbers and things and about 20 minutes to actually file the return. The website for filing is very straightforward and, although there were a couple of things I didn’t totally understand, I muddled through ok. Pretty painless really, I’m not sure why I’ve put it off for this long, although in the UK if you file online you have until January 2009 so I guess I’m actually early!

Because I worked full time in the UK for eight months for the tax year, my income has been boosted and I owe some tax. Boo. It’s not a huge amount but it’s a bit of a chunk out of my saving so I’m thinking I will start to set aside a bit here and there to go towards tax so I don’t end up coming up short next year.

One bit of advice I will give… keep on top of your records! For the current tax year I haven’t done a thing since about June and I’ve just been motivated to get my books in order. Catching up a year later will be a nightmare so in future Im going to do my best to record everything as I go.

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I consulted the boss today (my bank account) for the first time since early August when my friends arrived, the Olympics were attended and any idea of watching my spending was thrown out the window into the sewer and washed away out to sea. The bank account does not seem to be healthy at the moment and, while I’m not at all surprised, I think it’s about time I start paying more attention to what I do with my money.

So far during this trip I haven’t thought twice before spending money. If I wanted to do something, save time by flying, order an expensive meal or stay somewhere a bit more expensive, I didn’t really give it a second though. It’s been great but now it’s time to return to my roots as a budget conscious traveller.

It’s not so much that I’m running out of money, my fear is more about what I have coming up during the coming six months. The next four months will be super cheap given that I’ll be travelling around Myanmar, Laos and then taking a 10 week course in Thailand that has partially been paid for. It’s the bits after that that I’m worried about, combined with the fact that I won’t be able to get much work done (this seems like a common problem lately…) until the course ends in mid January.

After January is when things will start to get expensive. I’ll be heading to Australia sometime before the end of February and plan to stick around for about four or five months. I’d like to either study either Spanish or take guitar lessons (or maybe both) and I’ll be back in the clutches of my Aussie mates who will no doubt be going out a lot. Courses can be expensive and the airfare to get to Oz will put a dent in the bank account as well.

Then after Australia the plan is to go to Buenos Aires, rent a place and continue studying Spanish for about six months. I was originally going to go by cargo ship but that’s not an option from Australia so an airfare of about $2000 will need to be paid sometime next year, not to mention the costs involved when renting an apartment.

So… I’m thinking that now might be the time to reel myself in a bit and start acting like a budget traveller. It’s been a ridiculously fun eight months but the purse strings are about to be tightened and the freewheeling ways are a thing of the past. At least until I get my bank balance up again. If my earnings can stay steady while I’m Myanmar, Laos and on this course then I should be in great shape come January. But there’s always that fear that my lack of work ethic will finally bite me in the ass and the bottom will fall out of my earnings. Time will tell I guess! I’m actually pretty curious myself to see what happens.

So I’m off to Burma on Monday which means that I’ll once again be out of touch. I’m going to work hard for the next two days on getting some posts ready for this blog, getting a few new pages of content up on my travel sites and catching up on Wanderstruck (I’ve added a few new posts, photos and even a couple videos so check it out).

I’m slowly learning that working on the road is a lot harder than I thought it would be. It’s still better than a cubicle though!

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