Dan's Adventure

When travelling for a long time there are certain tasks that need to be done once in a while that break you out of the tourist zone as you need to rely on local services to accomplish them. Although simple, sometimes they can prove to be a challenge, whether its going for a hair cut, buying new clothes or getting laundry done, its often more difficult than it should be.
Hair cuts
After almost 6 months, I’ve not managed to get the dreadlocked traveller look, I’ve been for a few haircuts along …

Nomadic Matt ran a competition via his RSS feed to win 3 nights of hostel accommodation on him. I threw my hat into the ring and a day later I received an email from Matt notifiying me that I had won. It turns out that Matt had based the budget for the competition on European prices, so when he discovered how cheap hostels are in China, he instead offered to send me the cash via paypal. Very generous of him indeed. Thanks to Matt I’ve got a bit of extra …

Today is the start of a new daily ritual that I will continue for the best part of the next year. Following eating breakfast, cleaning my teeth, washing and taking a vitamin tablet, I will now also need to remember to take an anti malarial tablet.

When I made the decision to go travelling, I knew that I had to cut out my highest expenses and find alternatives to save money. I thought it would useful to others to share the top five ways that I have increased my travel fund over the last few months.

Find cheaper accommodation – If you are renting, chances are the rent is your largest expense each month so it makes sense to try and reduce it. Until March I had decided to rent property in London and was paying a …

Whether you are going away for a week or a year, it pays to know how to get more foreign currency for your money. It makes sense to get the best deal on foreign currency before you leave and to have a cost effective means of managing your travel money whilst abroad.
Before departing, shopping around for the best exchange rate can save you a considerable amount of money, especially if you are exchanging larger amounts. In general, banks do not offer the most competitive exchange rates. Travel Money Max can …

When travelling, passport photos are an essential item. For every country you enter and require a visa for you will typically need one or two passport photos for the visa application. There are plenty of places that will be happy to take a photo of you and give you passport sized prints for a few pounds, but this is a bit of a rip off. My last set cost me £4.50 for only 4 prints. A far cheaper and easier way to get passport photos is to make your own. …

Regular readers of blogs will typically subscribe to either the RSS feed or by email, but many readers still prefer to only check the site periodically. Pushing content out to social networks is a good way of bringing new content to the attention of those who do not subscribe. Unfortunately most social networks don’t have a nice way of handling third party RSS feeds, they typically don’t integrate it well with content originating from the social network itself, which leads to work arounds being sought. The best solution that I …

In order to hire a car and drive abroad one typically needs an International Driving Permit (IDP). Its essentially a version of your own country’s driving license translated into multiple languages. The IDP is not however a license in its own right, it is merely confirmation that you hold a driving license in another country. It must therefore be accompanied by your original driving license when you use it abroad.
IDPs can be purchased from motoring associations in most countries. In the UK, both the AA and the RAC issue IDPs …