Dan's Adventure

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 …

Over the weekend Dan’s Adventure has received a much needed face lift. Several aspects of the original design annoyed me, but the ones that prompted me to make a change were:

It was too blue
The navigation tabs didn’t look right
It felt too much like a standard blog

The last of those may seem daft considering this is after all a blog. The new design uses a magazine style layout with featured content at the top, newest items in each category on the right, and popular articles at the bottom. The use of …

You don’t have to visit my blog to stay up to date. Instead, you can subscribe by email. Whenever I add a new post I will send you an email linking you to it. You can unsubscribe at any time.
Alternatively you can subscribe to the RSS feeds:

Subscribe to posts – Contains all new posts
Subscribe to comments – Contains all new comments

Email subscriptions and the RSS feeds are managed by FeedBurner.

The poster in the window offering buy two get one free caught my attention and with time to kill I thought I’d take a look. I usually avoid bookstores like Waterstones and Borders as Amazon is nearly always cheaper, even with delivery added on, but on this occasion I was pleasantly surprised. I left Waterstones with three travel guides and £38 lighter. I also made a stop in Borders and picked up a novel that I have read many good things about. The latest additions to my bookshelf are:

Lonely Planet …

I spent the bank holiday weekend in London visting friends and enjoying lots of skating, a bit of roller hockey, too much alcohol and plenty of sunshine. The cheapest way of travelling between London and Glasgow was by bus, so on Wednesday night I boarded the sleeper bus to make the 8 hour journey.
I bought a copy of the June/July issue of Wanderlust to read on the bus as it has a feature on Indochina, covering lesser known destinations and itineraries for Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam. The majority of the …

On Saturday morning my Dell XPS M1330, which I have only had since last February, passed away. A failure of a component on the motherboard has resulted in a short circuit which prevents it from turning on. The cost of repairing it is ridiculous, as it is out of warranty, so I made the decision to replace it.

I have opted for something more suited to travelling, a Samsung NC10 netbook. Its quite a bit smaller than the M1330, 13″ vs 10″, about half the weight, and the battery life is …

I’ve bought several books to help me research my trip, but the only ones I find myself actually reading are those with lots of pictures! Some may use this as an opportunity to mock my reading skills, but the fact is, books such as Lonely Planet’s The Africa Book and The Asia Book are truly inspiring. They are filled with pictures that make everywhere look amazing and descriptions to accompany them that provide just enough information to make you want to go there even more. Another that I’ve been unable …

After deliberating over whether to buy a waterproof camera housing or an actual waterproof camera, I ended up opting for the two camera approach. Last week a Pentax Optio W60 arrived to take the place of waterproof camera and a Panasonic Lumix TZ5 arrived to be used for everything non water related. I’m going to take the TZ5 out with me over the next couple of days so expect to see some new pictures appearing in the Scotland gallery.

To accompany the cameras I have purchased a Gorillapod which is essentially …