Anil Polat, the author of the popular travel blog Foxnomad has just launched his e-book titled The Ultimate Tech Guide for Travelers. He kindly sent me a complimentary copy for review.
With a professional career as a computer security consultant and as a long term traveller, Polat is almost uniquely qualified to write on his pet topic. With a striking design, the book is easy to read, well written and targeted for anyone with a little computer familiarity but is bound to have some new ideas for the fairly experienced computer user. It is packed with money-saving ideas for using computers on the road, a place fraught with expensive hotel wifi and dodgy internet cafes. It is targeted at both Windows and Mac users with lessons for Linux users as well.
The e-book is rich in links to sites that offer further detail or explanation on a specific topic along with links and suppliers and companies of recommended services. One excellent aspect of the design is the highlighting of key tips which stand out when referencing the book at a later date.
The nine chapters covers all the major areas of travelling with computers including:
- selection of the most suitable computer for travel;
- finding free or inexpensive software for email, photo editing, office tasks, language translation, travel budgeting and data security;
- backing up data (in multiple places);
- securing data;
- establishing wireless connections on the road (even in remote locations);
- good habits at internet cafes;
- getting open internet access in restrictive countries;
- using e-book readers and mobile (cell) phones
- great tricks and tips for getting discounts while travelling (such as cheaper airline flights and saving 30% on Apple purchases).
Most importantly, Polat backs his book with six months of free consulting to assist the purchaser to setup their own computer travel setup whether it be to save photos on the way or setup free telephony back home. It also includes a year of free updates and is available on Kindle and Nook, along with being a standard PDF.
At $37, the price is on the high-end for travel e-books though it is an excellent resource. However by taking advantage of two or three of the tips could comfortably save more than the cost even before considering the value of six months of access to Polat's expertise (you typically can't get much consulting time for $37 so this alone makes it good value - don't hesitate to take advantage of it). That makes for excellent value and hence Ultimate Tech Guide for Travelers is a book and resource that I can heartily recommend.
Disclosure: Travel Wonders receives a small commission on any sale of the book made from this website.
Thursday, December 9, 2010
e-Book Review: Ultimate Tech Guide for Travelers (Anil Polat)
Thursday, October 7, 2010
Book Review: Tea Time with Terrorists (Mark Stephen Meadows)
Stranded in Paris (if that is the right word when in Paris) when 9/11 struck, Mark Stephen Meadows was planning to travel home to the US. With airports shut and terrorist becoming the new word of the moment, Meadows decided to follow his journalistic instincts and explore the psychology of terrorism and the makeup of the people behind such acts. As his laboratory (“something like a Galapagos” in his words), Meadows selects Sri Lanka – an island nation with a self-contained evolution through terrorism.
The book starts like an action thriller – a dozen or so bombs going off in various parts of the capital Colombo in 1984 sending the country into chaos before sharply contrasting the relaxed, easy-going life that has been practised for centuries. Meadows describes Sri Lankan life: “Water is pulled from the wells, coconuts are knocked from the trees, fish are dragged from the sea, and the big tropical sun swings overhead, tying the days into each other in a steaming, sweaty rhythm of ancient customs.”
Renting a motorcycle, Meadows headed north into Tamil country and home to the Tamil Tigers (LTTE) and scrabble set of other terrorist, free-fighter, drug smugglers and militant organisations. The Tamil Tigers are infamous for inventing suicide bombing, along with conscripting children, women bombers and linking financiers into militancy.
Throughout his journey, he arranges interviews with leading players in this three decade conflict, including the mastermind (Shankar Rajee) behind the multiple Colombo bombing. Each interview is conducted in a relaxed manner (often under intense security) over a cup of tea, such a symbolic and treasured element of Sri Lankan life.
“I have never had tea smile at me. I push my nose into the steam and inhale an entire spice market in one breath. Cardamom and cinnamon and berries roll out with a sugary flavor that, despite being smelled, hits the sides of my tongue, making it water, and the smell also has a silver lining of something almost like a delicate soapy scent.”
The book continues in its three phases and the contrasts between them – the rich culture and life in Sri Lanka (key symbols such as tea and the elephant are a consistent thread through the book), the savagery of the terrorist acts and the interviews with the leaders of the various organisation, each adding a further insight into the conflict. Meadows reflections on the interviews and his introspection and developing thoughts are probably the highlights of the book.
Remarkably Meadows opens all his interviews with the same question, getting hesitant, non-committal or clichéd answers to the differences between the Sinhalese and Tamil people. It is a constant reminder that the world often battles small differences far more than large ones.
I am not sure that Meadows ever completely comes to grips with terrorism and the reasons behind it and the psyche of the major protagonists. One militant leader hauntingly describes terrorism as follows:
“Terrorism is simply targeting innocent people…Everything else fails…We are weakening the economy and making it feel our struggle. And by doing so we gain the attention we need.”
As I suspect the case for most readers, I knew little of Sri Lanka nor the civil war before reading this book. All up, it is a fascinating read – part rollicking travelogue, part portrait of an ancient culture and country and part introspection into the grisly world of terrorism, all through the humble cup of tea. I heartily recommend it.
Disclosure: The publishers sent me a complimentary copy of the book for review.
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
Free Travel Secrets eBooks for a Great Cause
Initiated by the folks at Tripbase.com, over 200 travel bloggers (including several of the most popular and well-known ones) have written up three travel secrets on their blogs over the past six months. Some wrote of special places in their home city (Travel Wonders wrote about the travel secrets of Sydney), some contributed general travel tips and others introduced secrets to great food or drink delights. 
These have been published in seven excellent and free travel secrets e-books covering different aspects of travel. The seven topics are beaches, food, family travel, general travel tips and three destination books covering Italy, USA and the rest of the world. Learn how to avoid queueing for entry to the art galleries of Florence or St Marks in Venice. Find some great places to volunteer or some secret outstanding hotels, museums or camping spots. Everyone should learn something about travel from this excellent series.
Even better is that each e-book downloaded results in Tripbase donating $1 to the outstanding cause Charity: Water. The target of this campaign is to provide four freshwater wells for a school ensuring a long-term supply of healthy safe drinking water. Just $1 gives a source of clean water for one person for one year. So please download the travel secrets e-books to learn some great secrets about travelling and helping those less fortunate than ourselves.
So get some travel hints while benefitting a great cause.
people get clean waterMonday, March 15, 2010
Book Review: 100 Sporting Events You Must See Live (Robert Tuchman)
I am a huge fan of sport and over the years of travel have made an effort to watch some of the big local sporting events when possible. I think sport is a great purveyor of positive culture and has notably bought the world closer over the years. It often transcends boundaries of race, religion, nationality and age.
I have some excellent memories of sport while travelling – feeling the drama of NFL football game in the USA, playing cricket on a dusty paddock in India, seeing passionate South Americans cheer their local soccer team, watching sepak takraw (kind of athletic volleyball played solely with your feet) in Malaysia, sweating through bouts of muay thai (boxing with kicking included) standing in a packed hall in Bangkok, playing golf at St Andrews, enjoying the stoic politeness of centre court Wimbledon and watching test match rugby in Wales. So you can imagine my excitement of being asked to review Robert Tuchman’s 100 Sporting Events You Must See Live and opened it up expectantly when I received an online copy (to save on time and shipping costs from the USA to Australia) from the publisher.
The book presents more as a reference book for a sporting bucket list – a book to store on your shelves for a long time to come back and check from time to time. The appendix even includes the full list of 100 events designed for marking off over your lifetime. Each event comes with a treasure trove of information over several pages describing the best ways to obtain tickets, related websites, the typical attendee, a secret tip to getting the best experience, nearby hotels and cafes, a little history, notable players and a few significant terms to help understand the event.
Tuchman founded a sports marketing company (which Tuchman pushes a little in his book, along with a group called GoTickets.com) and clearly lives for his sport. His passion for sport comes through in the pages describing each event.
While any choice of top 100 events is likely to be contentious and is in the eye of the author, I am disappointed with the choice of some of the events. While many of the world’s leading events are listed as expected including the Olympics Games (summer, winter and special), the four grand slams of tennis, the major golf tournaments, the Tour de France, FA Cup, the Rugby World Cup and the major motor races of the world, many others focus on local rivalries and smaller events.
An incredible two-thirds of the events are based in the United States with 40 percent of events covering just three sports – American football, baseball and basketball. None of the top 100 events are in Africa, only one is in South America and only two are in Asia (Japanese baseball and Hong Kong rugby sevens) and a further two in Australia (tennis and Australian football). None of the events are hosted in eastern Europe and only one is a women’s event (a Tennessee basketball team). Local rivalry events appear limited to the USA - no Gaelic Football in Dublin, no blood-curdling local soccer ties in Buenos Aires, Milan, Glascow or any number of other cities around the world, no Chinese gymnastics and no frenzied cricket in India or Pakistan.
While the Running of the Bulls is included, major cultural experiences such as the ancient horseback race around the main square of Siena (Il Palio), sumo in Japan or the Naadam festival in Mongolia (a contest involving wrestling, archery and horsemanship) appear forgotten.
Overall, the book is well presented with lots of detail as to how to best experience each event. And while the book makes an excellent long term reference book for the sports enthusiast, it is probably limited to those who are likely to spend a fair amount of their time in the United States.
Monday, December 7, 2009
Book Review: Surviving Paradise (Peter Rudiak-Gould)
Many people dream of life on an idyllic palm-fringed island surrounded by azure blue waters. Peter Rudiak-Gould was no exception when he volunteered for the WorldTeach program and was posted to the remote Marshall Islands. Laying roughly halfway between the Philippines and Hawaii, the Marshall Islands are noted as a battleground of World War 2 and where the US conducted their nuclear test program (on the now deserted Bikini Atoll).
Not only that, but Peter was posted to Ujae, which the Marshallese consider remote, with a population of less than 500 and with no telephones, cars or shops. For ten months, Peter undertook teaching rude and wild children with little interest in education and who really saw him as little more than a novel longer-term guest. Though the adult population was perfectly friendly, Peter felt that they shunned him and left him somewhat alone.
This tiny island challenged Peter as every step he took and every activity was scrutinised and watched by the population. The Ujae population live in a community-based environment with limited space. And there was little opportunity for Peter to escape this. Early in his book, Rudiak-Gould notes "This was my new world, so I decided to explore it. ... I stepped onto the beach and embarked on a bold one-man expedition: to circle the entirety of the island's shore. Forty-five minutes later I wondered what else I could do for the rest of the year." He continues “This was a country of 1,225 islands totalling only seventy square miles of land – it was Washington DC, shattered into a thousand pieces over an area the size of Mexico."
Only twenty-one, Peter was determined to offer the most he could to the children and to absorb, learn from and understand the Marshallese culture, history, language and people. In this way, the book goes well beyond the simplistic young man’s journey of discovery with insightful stories and fascinating details into the effects of American support for these remote atolls.
Rudiak-Gould learns the Polynesian-based language of Marshallese which gives an insight into the local lives. There are eleven distinct words for coconut and eighteen words for breadfruit. The overwhelming number of fishing terms highlight the dependence on this highly developed skill include the simple four-letter word apep for “using woven brown coconut fronds to catch sardines and minnows as they are chased ashore by larger fish”.
Marshallese is rich in sailing terms (over 100 terms related to a canoe and 35 describing the wind) befitting their remarkable ocean skills. With only the currents and skies to navigate by and sailing a simple outrigger canoe, the Micronesians covered thousands of miles over the open seas, settled many of the Pacific islands including Hawaii and Easter Island and brought the sweet potato from the South American mainland. Fishing in the traditional way using nets and spears continues from the canoes, the islanders expertly locating hidden reefs and known locations for specific species without even a compass.
As a virtual appendix in the book, Rudiak-Gould studies the effect of climate change on an island country that is average of only two metres above sea level. The islanders continue to live in their typical day-to-day existence and are putting their faith in God to solve many of these complex medium-term issues. The book includes an interview with the President of the Marshall Island and his view on global warming and the issue that his nation is one of the most threatened by the rising sea levels.
Surviving Paradise is a fascinating account of an apparently idyllic island life in a place that Peter Rudiak-Gould describes as “a culture based on survival. What looked like paradise was actually one of the hardest places on Earth to live”. Now studying anthropology at Oxford University, Rudiak-Gould combines a sense of travel adventure with humour, the contrast of island and western living, an insightful cultural understanding of the islanders and a brief analysis of climate change. In the writings of someone in their early twenties, it is an entertaining and engaging journey through one of the planet’s most remote communities and is an ideal read over the festive period.
Note
An interview with Peter Rudiak-Gould will appear in the next few days.
Friday, October 2, 2009
Book Review: Overcoming the 7 Major Obstacles to Traveling the World (Anil Polat)
Anil Polat of Foxnomad has recently published an e-book titled Overcoming the 7 Major Obstacles to Traveling the World, inspiring people to not let obstacles and excuses prevent them from travelling the world. It is a book aimed at people keen to travel but finding reasons to not go. Aimed both as a one-time read and as a regular ready-reference with a collection of tips and ideas towards reaching a goal of travelling to your dream destination, this book should help inspire fighting your demons that may be holding you back from travel.
Polat takes seven of the major issues and covers thoughtful ways to overcome each of them. On the topic of expense, Polat looks at ways to make practical everyday savings towards travel from tracking a budget and curbing your spending to savings with your computing needs and selling excess stuff from around your house. Similarly, the author looks using your job skills rather than treating it as a shackle to your current location.
There is considerable focus on the issue and discomfort of leaving family and close friends behind with this electronic age making staying in touch much easier and more practical.
Produced as an e-book and priced at US$14.95, Overcoming the 7 Major Obstacles to Traveling the World is available for immediate download. For the month of October, the author is donating the funds from the e-book to micro-lending organisation, Kiva.
If you have an enthusiasm to travel the world, here is a chance to free yourself from those negative gremlins with some down-to-earth advice in an easy to read format.
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
Book Review and Contest - Imagine: A Vagabond Story (Grant Lingel)
A few weeks ago I received a pre-publication copy of Grant Lingel's first book Imagine: A Vagabond Story for review. Grant and Travel Wonders are offering two free signed copies of this rollicking backpacking adventure.
Seven lousy credit points short of completing his degree, a spot of confusion on what to do next at this watershed moment in anyone's life and with a few hundred bucks in his back pocket, Grant Lingel heads for Mexico.
Starting as a guest entertainer in a flashy Mexican hotel, Grant very much lives life day-to-day. Early days are a blur of easy sex, cheap drugs, gallons of alcohol and brief acquaintances in among work shifts. When a chance to share a van with five strangers arises, Grant grabs the opportunity with both hands. Over a short period, Grant and his new friends trek through tropical rain forest, scuba dive, hike dingy caves full of bats, climb smoking volcanies, sit atop Mayan pyramids, discover tumbling waterfalls in remote national parks with gun-toting soldiers and drive their van off a steep mountain track as they venture through Mexico, Guatemala and Belize.
Eventually Grant settles a little, volunteering at a couple of Guatemalan hostels meeting a "United Nations" of backpackers, guests and volunteers with their potpourri of languages, cultures and upbringings. At this point, Grant seems to change character being shaped by friendships that are more than temporary and with values that starts to shape Grant's thinking and life.
The book beautifully captures the varying characters that Grant meets with a wonderful eye for fascinating detail - some are types of people that I could picture from my own travels. Similarly, Grant captures the exotic wilds of Central America - the stunning landscapes, the dusty villages, the harrowing roads. At times, I'd have liked to know more about some of the characters but I guess travel at times only realistically offers fleeting glimpses of people that lead such different lives and probably have great stories to tell.
Grant's story barrels along at a rapid pace, each day bringing new places, different people and varying adventures. His typical and conservative family upbringing in New York seems but a fading memory. Grant's boundless energy, adventurous tales and youthful exuberance disguises a truly personal journey of self-discovery, building of character, freedom and growing-up, yet one he is contented to share with the world. It is an easy-reading book I heartily recommend and would make an excellent travel companion on your next journey.
On offer are two copies of the book signed by Grant which will go to the two best comments, describing your ideal vagabond adventure. Ensure that you leave an email address so I contact the winners. The competition closes on September 15.
Meanwhile, I'd suggest you buy a copy of Imagine: A Vagabond Story, view an excellent gallery of photos from Grant's trip and learn more of his ventures through Central America.
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
Book Review: The Beijing of Possibilities (Jonathan Tel)
Last year for sixteen days the world stared mesmerised at Beijing - the creative artistry of the opening ceremony, the architecturally stunning swimming and athletics stadiums and the phenomenal sporting achievements of sprinter Usain Bolt and swimmer Michael Phelps. Behind the gold medals and sporting dramas, the media of the world tried to scratch below the surface of Beijing with various "human interest" stories but with little effect.
Jonathan Tel manages to lift the veil off Beijing and reveal the inner Beijing in a series of twelve fictional short stories in The Beijing of Possibilities. Highlighting the constant battle between tradition and the modern world, the stories take typical Beijing residents that a visitor would never meet and the Olympics media never highlighted or found.
In The Three Lives of Little Yu, Tel describes an infertile couple who raise three daughters (all named Yu) over three decades with tragedy befalling the first two. It is summarised by a typical Chinese proverb that litter the book's stories - "You cannot stop the birds of sorrow from flying over your head, but you can prevent them from building nests in your hair".
The Double-Happiness Ball Bearing Factory details a young man seeking employment via a headhunter and highlights the ingenuity required entertaining westerners seeking joint ventures and the quirkiness of Chinese astrology resulting in a rejection of another job.
Tel's characters are a strange mix. From a couple desperately trying to return a valuable ancient jade spoon they discover in their unit and a teenager working to pay off her father's debt to a cycling Gorillagram that prevents a theft but is accused by the police of being a capitalist sympathiser and a pickpocket who fortuitously forms a relationship with a rich businessman, Tel successfully unmasks layers of a sometimes stifling culture, rich history, generational change, government control and ancient superstition that would be impossible to discover in a visit to Beijing.
The Unofficial History of the Embroidered Couch is a satirical look at a relationship between a Ming Dynasty maiden and a modern Chinese advertising agent arranged over the internet.
Overall, it is the way that Tel can take the everyday mundane life of typical Beijing residents and share their dreams, humour and irony that makes The Beijing of Possibilities such an entertaining and insightful read.
