Tips / Planning

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Have you heard of the infamous “Pharaoh’s Revenge”? Whom does it strike? How do you deal with it? Travellers to Egypt are, for the most part, familiar with this dreaded phenomena. You will find the remedy here, along with a list of symptoms that let you know you have been stuck down, a list of ways to avoid it and how to distinguish it from a simple stomach-upset. “Pharaoh’s Revenge” is the Egyptian tummy bug that many tourists to Egypt dread and/or experience. Therefore, most tourists arrive in the country armed with a plentiful supply of medicinal products designed to combat stomach problems. These remedies, for the most part, are not designed to combat the Egyptian tummy bug.

2 1/2 years worth of pictures, videos, and documents with sensitive information like copies of my passport and social security number. Losing this would be heartbreaking and even worse if stolen. These are the precautions I take and recommend on the road .

Quitting your job to travel the world is definitely possible but it does take preparation. It’s especially true if you have a slew of material goods, debt, and among other things that could hold you back from traveling or worse — force you to return home while you’re traveling. Preparing does get frustrating and overwhelming but the process can also be quite rewarding.

The inspiration to write this article came from TripBase that listed their seven links. Using the same titles, here’s my version of the seven links.

An email from Kimi: “I do have a couple of questions for you. First of all, I’m about to turn 23, and while I am working two jobs, I only have about $15K to my name (all school loans paid off). There are certainly things I could sell for extra money like my car, but I just wanted to get your opinion about whether or not you think that’s enough to get me started on my long-term travel plans. I plan to build a blog around my travels, but I don’t want to go bankrupt trying to build a name for myself which is the biggest fear holding me back from traveling. Any advice / tips you can provide me would be extremely appreciated.”

We’re not all cut out for long-term backpacker travel and that’s okay. Some of us are ashamed to admit that we get eventually get sick of hanging out at hostels and subsisting off of ramen noodles and the occasional kebab. You find yourself stuck in the rut of “get on bus, arrive in new city, check into hostel, see the sights, repeat.” Isn’t this the type of monotony you wanted to leave behind when you decided to go on this trip in the first place? The side effects of this travel lifestyle can be exhausting, but here are a few ways to keep them at bay.

Now, I could have used a backpack like Michael’s but I wanted less hassle from the low-cost airlines. If you have ever had any experience with Ryanair, they lure you in by appearing to be cheap but then screw you over at the last minute. (Kind of similar to a few girls I’ve dated in the past.)

This time however, I was smarter. I even went as far as buying the approved Ryanair carry-on bag to maximise my free allowance (or what I like to call “The Ryanair bribe”). The benefit with these kind of bags is you have more accessibility than with a backpack. But more importantly, while everyone else was made to weigh their bags or put them into the baggage-sizer, I was allowed to walk on by.

I’ll be returning home on July 11th after a year in Asia. I visited home last year too after a year around the world. Reverse culture shock hit me hard last time but I think now I know what to expect.

We had close to 40 people in the room at the Backpacking Webinar. An impressive turnout considering this was our first webinar for Art of Backpacking. Our last webinar was on Travel Writing and Growing Your Readership over at Art of Travel Blogging. If you’d like to watch the webinar again or if you’ve missed it, I’ve provided the link in this article.

Backpacking often means doing things independently and on a budget. Generally when we think of tours, we think of a guide that’s holding our hands and telling us of every move to make. Not all tours are like this though. There are several tour companies that understand the needs of a backpacker to be independent. They have the option to take out all the bells and whistles to strip down to the experience of what backpackers may be seeking. Why would a backpacker need a tour? Because you can’t do everything on your own. It’s almost impossible or difficult to stay over night at Halong Bay in Vietnam without booking some sort of arrangement. A tour would then need to be booked. As independent as we strive to be, we simply cannot do some things without the help of others and there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s especially great when you still want to be a backpacker but you’re limited on time.